282: Anthony Blunt 3

At the beginning of November 1979 Anthony Boyle published “The Climate of Treason”. The book could not explicitly refer to Blunt, but it still raised suspicions that Anthony Blunt was the Fourth Man. That Blunt employed a lawyer to demand that the copy be vetted for any possible references was a disastrous action since it only drew further attention and at last gave reasonable grounds for journalists to make public comment. On 15 November 1979 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, prompted by questions from a Labour MP, confirmed in the House of Commons that Blunt had been an agent and talent spotter for Russian intelligence. Immediately Buckingham Palace, where Blunt in his capacity as a respected art historian had been employed as personal advisor on art, announced that Blunt’s knighthood was cancelled and annulled. On 20 November 1979 Anthony Blunt gave a wholly unexpected interview to “The Times”, so providing his personal account. Thus the sudden if slightly belated interest in homosexual matters that results in everything below. Comment about commie queers prior to Blunt’s statements might have been a tad libellous. Blunt was rightly vilified across the press, although in the abuse heaped on him there may be some undigested elements of class hatred and homophobia. So what follows is a test of ingenuity as cartoonists and humorists vie for as many ways as possible to spin gags out of the idea that gay = spy


Mac in “Daily Mail”, 19 November 1979

So first off it’s a Russian boyfriend. For an aging civil servant, as Blunt was. Possibly some aspect of the idea we’ve seen before that the civil service is packed with ‘em, that the high-end of the bureaucracy is a veritable boy’s club for well-educated pooves. Although the humour lies in that it’s a phone call from a lover at the most inopportune moment.


Bill Caldwell in “Daily Star”, 20 November 1979

Then it’s a subversion of the previous macho spy stereotype of James Bond. Which we’ve seen Cyril Connolly do already fifteen years earlier. Besides a “Punch” parody from the mid-1970s when someone or other said the intelligence service was stuffed full of homosexuals: “The Spy Who Minced In”, it wa.


JAK in “Evening Standard”, 20 November 1979

As we’ve seen before, when homosexuality is the problem then Jak can be relied upon to turn the situation on its head, replacing the institutionalised homosexual – vicar, sailor, or whatever, with some definite instance of heterosexuality.


Cover to “Private Eye”, 23 November 1979

Can’t you see? Are you blind? It’s a pun – queen, her royal majesty, and queen, homosexual.


Michael Heath in “Private Eye”, 23 November 1979



Michael Heath in “Spectator”, 24 November 1979


Michael Heath in “Spectator”, 19 January 1980

This is Michael Heath’s regular trick of blanket assumptions of equivalency. Both of these assume that anything gay is therefore automatically associated with spying.



Mahood, in “Punch”, 28 November 1979

Assorted suggestive pictures to append speech bubbles to. You’ll notice that two men together in a semi-intimate setting could be either spies conspiring to pass confidential information or else a homosexual clinch. The phrase “fellow traveller” was used to describe the Communist sympathisers who sprang up in England in the 1930s


from “Punch”, 19 December 1979
a spoof article about the events of the 1980s
speech bubble reads “Shut that file!” – a play on Grayson’s catchphrase “Shut that door”.

It was sheer coincidence, but both Larry Grayson, the well-known camp British entertainer and Blunt had the same horse-faced mien. So here the writers employ Grayson’s camp, luvvie tones to retrospectively interpret the scandal of the previous weeks. So some of it is an attack on Grayson’s persona, his behaviour on TV, his treatment of his guests and his limp wrists. There’s also a slight denigration to Blunt in suggesting Grayson was the ideal man to play him. It’s the acceptable face of homosexuality, without hinting at any bedroom shenanigans.




The first 1979 series of “Not the Nine O’Clock News” had a sketch about the Communists and Western forces trading spies at a checkpoint. After the exchange, the camera follows the Russian spymaster leading his English double agent back to Russia. The English spy thanks his spymaster (Mel Smith), and enquires what work he will get in Mother Russia. The spymaster says “Don’t be foolish. No boyfriend of mine works”. So it’s back to the same assumption that any spy must be gay.

281: The Beatles - John Hughes / Eric Idle

“National Lampoon” October 1977
Written by John Hughes
Art by Ernie Chan

Well, this is rather “qu’est-ce que fuck?”
From an issue of “National Lampoon” devoted to the Beatles.
By the later 70s the history of the Beatles had been worked over, and reworked over, and turned over yet again, so that every tittle of fact relating to their careers had been brought to light. This also included Brian Epstein’s homosexuality, which gets worked into the grand unifying history.
Eric Idle’s “The Rutles” (1978) has a piece which also plays on the idea that Epstein (Leggy Mountbatten in the alternative fantasy world of “The Rutles”) was not wholly attracted to the Beatles’ simply because of their musical talents.

Mrs. Mountbatten: "Leggy told me he'd been to see these young men in a dark cellar. He was always very interested in young men-- youth clubs, boy scouts , that sort of thing. But these he said were different."
Brian Fowl: "In what way?"
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Well, their hair, their music, their presence.
Brian Fowl: He liked it?.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "No, he hated it.
Brian Fowl: What did he like?
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Well......their trousers.
Brian Fowl: What about their trousers?
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Well they were very.......tight.
Brian Fowl: Tight?
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Yes, you could see quite clearly. . .
Brian Fowl: Oh I see.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Everything. Outlines. The lot.
Brian Fowl: Oh. Yes thank you.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Clear as day.
Brian Fowl: Thank you very much.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Nothing left to the imagination.
Brian Fowl: Yes thank you very much indeed, Mrs. Mountbatten.
Mrs. Mountbatten: "Not at all.

It doesn’t spell everything out. Coy is maybe even the word. But it’s evident, in an Alan Bennettish sort of a way.

Quite what the fuck Hughes is after is rather more up for grabs. But then everything’s up for grabs in this comic parody, as long as it’s offensive. It’s one thing to offer stereotypes of predatory homosexuals, its then rather working the odds in your favour to write other characters abusing them for that homosexuality. There’s also a little racism and anti-Semitism , from a supposed Nazi to boot. And even if you like the Beatles Hughes is offensive about them too, beside suggesting they might have murdered this fictional Epstein. And that’s beside the incidentals of evisceration and rape, which don't normally make for comedy. A rather "Deliverance" style gay anxiety there. At best you can say this piece is the comedic equivalent of somebody deliberately working themselves up to vomit in their host’s face. The plot makes no sense, and what sensibilities Hughes thinks he is offending for laughs is unclear either. I suppose he’s offending my sensibilities. The unpleasantness about homosexuals, but then I’m offended even more by the fact that it’s just a stinking pile of shit. The only thing I can compare it to is the Nazi atrocity “Meng and Ecker” comics brought out by Savoy Books.

Honestly, for all the talk of the last few days that’s cropped up about the absence of gay characters in Hughes movies, homosexuals and gay Hughes fans in particular are better off for it. If Hughes had featured any they would almost certainly have been of a piece with The Donger.

The casual throwing around of “fag” and “homo” is par for high school life. So when Hughes characters do the same, it’s just verisimilitude for the audience, and I don’t blame Hughes. It’s when you see the stuff he wrote for the “National Lampoon” in the late 70s that you realise what a lucky escape gay fans had. Between the two of them Hughes and P.J.O’Rourke filled dozens of pages of every issue, and you can see them staking their territory of conventional, middle America, it’s styles, mores and prejudices. Indeed quite a few bits in Hughes films started off in the “National Lampoon”.

But when Hughes wrote about fags and homos for NL, it was the same deliberate lack of concern that he wrote about funny foreigners. That’s not to suggest that Hughes was some rampant homophobe, but I don’t think that the man who wrote those sort of “screw you” style pieces was the man who was going to write an accepting study of gay teenage life. At best his pieces are animated by slight irritation at homosexuals and finds their encroaching lifestyles a little amusing (like “Private Eye” at the same period). At worst it’s a torrent of bizarre offence such as the above.

280: Anthony Blunt 2

in “Private Eye” 24 June 1977

At one point the “The Times” thought it had a scoop. There was a rumour that the “Fourth Man” was an academic, whose last name was five letters beginning with “B”. They managed to get it completely wrong, though, and ran with a front page story accusing one Donald Beves, a man who had died in 1961. Which was lucky, as it turned out, because you can’t libel the dead.

It was big story, as you might imagine. And lots of Establishment figures wrote to “The Times”, rightly defending their maligned colleague. It was a campaign led by George “Dadie” Rylands (hence the letter), fellow of Kings College (easily turned in “Queens” for comic effect). Rylands’s homosexuality wasn’t exactly a closed secret anyway, which I think is obvious in the letter. E.M. Forster is a perfectly suitable comic replacement as another dead, gay Cambridge academic. Onan is a pun on Lord Annan, an academic of the time. And of course, Beves becomes Poovis. So the piece plays about with assumptions of a certain type of bachelor, whose inclinations could as easily take him to homosexuality or spying as makes no difference. But really it’s about giving a damn good kicking to the editor of the Times, William Rees-Mogg.


in “Private Eye”, 8 July 1977

And of course, Rees-Mogg had to back down and apologise. So here the “Private Eye” writers are mocking him for apologising for his mistake. Great when you can have it both ways.
“The Rt. Rev” is because Mogg had a tendency to adopt a certain church-going sanctity to himself in his claims of editorial propriety and vision for the newspaper. As usual, these sort of pieces are all about blurring and confusing of facts. “Lord Bradwell” (Tom Driberg) was indeed a roaring old poof, and had been outed by the Times as such in their obituary of him. Gradually it rattles through a whole series of associations, until it reaches its conclusion which is a complete unapology, and another reference to EM Forster’s homosexuality again, confirming yet again the Time’s inability to gets it stories straight.

279: Anthony Blunt 1

One of the great journalistic hunts of the 1960s and 70s was to find the legendary “Fourth man”. The spies Burgess and Maclean had defected to Russia in the 1950s, then Kim Philby followed them in 1963. Everyone suspected there was a “fourth man” who had been assisting them in passing information and providing other support. This spy ring was confirmed by intelligence from Russian spies. But who was the “fourth man”? As it turned out, his identity had been known by a select Establishment few by the early 1950s, but it had been covered up. There were assorted eruptions of interest over the years. But almost all of them were tinged by the suspicion that homosexuality would be one of the clues. As it turned out, this wasn’t an erroneous assumption. Following the Vassall affair, there was now a strong connection in the public imagination between treacherous spies and homosexuality. It’s all the same kind of duplicitous behaviour by chaps trying to pass as something they’re not, donchaknow.


in “Private Eye”
29 May 1964
A nicely thought out play on bugging and buggery playing on ambivalence and Establishment stupidity. I suspect that Peter Cook may have some input in a few of the jokes. Don’t forget to read the titles of the books in Willie Rushton’s illustration.

Fifty Years of Comedy Queers: The 1990s to Yesterday

Intro
Part 1: 1960s
Part 2: 1970s
Part 3: 1980s

By the start of the 1990s a few sitcoms started to include regular gay characters. The perfectly pleasant and safe BBC radio sitcom, “After Henry”” had transferred to television in 1988 and had brought along the supporting character, the perfectly nice gay friend, Russell Bryant. In America “Doctor Doctor” (1989) had a perfectly nice and respectable gay brother who got into a few verbal jousts with his father, but nothing that would upset anyone. The Channel 4 television news-based sitcom “Drop the Dead Donkey” had a lesbian raising a family as one of the leads, but it was an indication of how modern it all was and she was no stereotype. The same applied with with the occasional appearances of the lead character’s gay father in HBO sitcom, “Dream On” (1990 – 1996). Much more confrontational was the sitcom “Roseanne”(1988 – 1997), introducing Sandra Bernhardt in 1990, and then Martin Mull and Fred Willard as a gay couple in 1991 who marry in one episode. “Terry and Julian” (1992) starring Julian Clary, was intended as a deconstruction of middle-class sitcom clichés and was forum for Clary to continue as he was. “Absolutely Fabulous” was about the outrageous grotesques of the media world, and its gays were of a piece (so winning it a devoted gay audience, as Buddy Cole had his devotees in America).

The 1990s repeated the situation of 1970s, where American portrayals were worthily positive while the English preferred screeching, if now ironicised, caricatures. British commentator would look on somewhat enviously as American sitcoms seemed brimful of gay supporting characters and episodes with such gay premises as being mistaken for gay, coping with the recipient of a gay man’s affections, or pretending to be gay for whatever reasons. Most of the characters were as bland and innocuous as the rest of the cast, though if the production team felt daring, they might be a bit more sceney or acerbic, fitting nicely with the “zinger” style of American humour. How memorable or good a character they actually were is another matter. Indeed, that they’re not special could be counted as a victory by certain arguments. The most popular sitcom of the 1990s, “Friends” was able to incorporate homosexuality and gay jokes as part of the natural order, as too did “Frasier”. In 1997, Ellen DeGeneres came out in real life at the same that her sitcom character also came out. The sitcom had already been running for several seasons, and had several regular gay characters, Peter and Barrett. The novelty of having an established lead character come out made international news. Worries whether this was network suicide proved unfounded as the sitcom lasted several more series and the character gradually found her lesbian way. The 1998 season saw “Will and Grace”, a primetime sitcom about the exploits of a gay man and his female best friend, mirroring several mainstream romantic comedies whose gimmick was the relationship between a gay man and his female best friend. Will was a comfortable, straight-seeming leading man, and it was his friend Jack who was the more flamboyant, gay character. Gay in-jokes were crafted for acceptability to a mainstream audience, and the show would eventually provide boyfriends for both gay characters, with assorted on-screen kisses (The comic build-up and horror of a man-on-man kiss between the UK comedians Smith and Jones in a sketch of the early 1990s was a rare outing). Other networks tried to cash in with gay themed sitcoms to little success. By the mid-1990s there are so many comedic films featuring gays of assorted stripes, that one can pick from the mainstream, the independent and deliberately gay markets for both subtle and positive or crass caricatures.

Sitcoms were in decline in general in the UK throughout the 1990s and so there is less opportunity to match the American profusion. “The Vicar of Dibley”, from the writer of “Black Adder” and “Four Weddings and A Funeral” would have an episode in which a longstanding character came out to little response. Ben Elton’s “The Thin Blue Line” had a policeman whose utter clichéd gay sissiness belied the fact he was straight and in love with a female officer. That same actor played an equally outrageous gay character in the sitcom, "Gimme Gimme Gimme". The character was over-the-top, lustful and screamingly obvious. However, he was part of the trend in humour from the late 1990s onward by gay comics, comedians and writers to exhume the gay stereotypes with added knowing venom. They knew that though they were stereotypes, often such seeming bitchy, flaming caricatures could be found in real life. If such clichés were to be made fun of, then gay people were the ones to do it. New comedy groups with gay writers and performers like “The League of Gentlemen” and “Little Britain” discovered new ways of subverting and inhabiting the old clichés. The most famous example is Daffyyd, The Only Gay in the Village, in “Little Britain”. A joke on the way some gays use their homosexuality as a way of defining their special difference from everyone else, the character’s extravagant costumes and broad performances were also a return to the style of Dick Emery. The character was played as a cartoon, so rather flattening much of the irony, since he could be seen just as a silly, flamboyant poof. An earlier sketch by the “Little Britain” team parodying gay stereotypes and American sitcoms, “My Gay Dads” was excoriated by the TV reviewer of “Gay Times”.

Matt Lucas as "Daffyd. The Only Gay in the Village"

For the last decade or so, given the profusion of homosexual characters and gags in films, sitcoms and sketches, the distinction can at least be made between good and bad jokes about gay men. It can be assumed that every writer knows better, knows when a stereotype is used intelligently and when it is dragged out for a cheap laugh. Sketch shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “Mad TV” have gays as a large part of almost every episode nowadays. They can make fun of homophobia and mainstream homoeroticism, and subvert masculine ideas about sport, cowboys and the military, but they’re also prepared to get easy laughs with swishy queens, ill-thought-out gay parodies and the shock value of men kissing one another. The lesson of “The Simpson” has been learnt, and cartoon series like “Futurama”, “King of the Hill”, “Family Guy”, and “South Park” make gay jokes of various nuances. In the case of “South Park” (whose Big Gay Al may be tribute to Alan Sues as Big Gay Al on “Laugh-In”), some of the crudest gags and stereotypes are in aid of making greater satirical points, even though there is the suspicion that no bad gay gag beneath Adam Sandler would be beneath them. Victor Lewis-Smith’s Gay Daleks, screaming “Ex-Sperm-inate” is intended as the height of bad taste. French and Saunders, two women, can drag up to play camp make-up artists, which is a lot of effort to claim the privilege of any male comedian. The long-running barely suppressed love affair between Ted and Ralph, the lord of the manor and his groundskeeper in “The Fast Show” was a subtle, slow-burning gag.

"Big Gay Al"




That straight comedians should know better is a double-edge razor. The anxiety a character like Alan Partridge or Harry Enfield’s Modern Dad feels around homosexuals, and the worn-out homophobic gags they inadvertently make to diffuse their discomfort are in fact gags at their expense. America’s “Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” give enough indications as to their satirical intent even when they employ stereotypical references. Comedy of post-Political Correctness irony and embarrassment gives comedians like Jimmy Carr, Ricky Gervais and Sacha Baron Cohen the latitude to also explore the uncomfortable nuances of the homophobic gags of previous generations. When Jimmy Carr says "I was asked to judge Mr Gay UK. I said he's against nature, he's against God and he's going to hell," it's an extreme and unexpected parodic aping of homophobia. Gervais’s persona can make his jokes about gay men seem little more than expressions of horror at being around queers. Sacha Baron Cohen plays his character Bruno as the ur-type of the vapid fashionisto in extravagant and revealing costumes living in his own gay-obsessed world. Coming on to everyone in camp tones, Bruno highlights homophobia by confronting bigots with their own nightmarish idea of what a homosexual should be. Since at least half of jokes are based on sexual innuendoes and ludicrous mannerisms, they can be taken at face value, inviting the audience to laugh at the stupid, sex-obsessed homosexual.

Just to look idly about at supposedly funny gay portrayals from the last month or so is to wonder, in a post-modern, post-value society, is everything is up for grabs? Al Murray can prance about as a crass, lascivious gay Nazi in pink uniforms who speaks only in forced lewd innuendoes, a screeching exaggerated concoction of Julian Clary, Daffyd and Lieutenant Gruber. Matthew Horne plays a TV reporter as some shallow, camp scene queen, and though all critics are unimpressed, Paul O’Grady approvingly acknowledges he knows people just like that. “Krod Mandoon” has a camp, finger-snapping Latino named Bruce, in revealing costume who is inappropriately free with his hands. The latest issue of “Private Eye” can have a cartoon about Twitter featuring Stephen Fry drawn with the same fluttery eyes, rouged cheeks, and slightly prominent, pursed lips to be found in gay caricatures from thirty-five years ago. In England, the TV and radio presenter Jonathan Ross jokes "If your son asks for a Hannah Montana MP3 player, you might want to already think about putting him down for adoption before he brings his, erm, partner home." and after complaints, it is passed as being typical of his “irreverent humour”. And then there’s the thundering juggernaut of the “Bruno” film, whose only novelty is that this cliché is paraded in real life to befuddle real people.

Matthew Horne as "Tim Goodall"





Al Murray as "Herr Schwull"

To complicate matters, gay cliches are not employed by mainstream comedians, but also by homosexuals among themselves. As has been demonstrated, many of the writers and performers in this history are gay. When even the ideas of equality and coexistence with straight society are still up for debate among homosexuals, what ideal of the perfect gay representation can usefully be asserted. If clichés continue to be used it is because, even as they evolve and are refined, some truth can be found in them. They are clichés that have stuck for a reason. Every year the same debates crop up in the gay media at “Gay Pride” time because of embarrassment over the “bad homosexuals” who some will always perceive as letting the side down.(In fact, here's the co-creator of "will and Grace" pointing the finger. Makes you proud.) There is a declension of gay identity: I am perfectly straight-acting; you are a bit of a fairy; he is a screaming faggot. And this sissyphobia will always be the case. Gay writers are just as prepared to deliberately and crassly employ the same stereotypes in cartoons intended for the gay audience like “Queer Duck” (by one of the writers of “The Simpsons” and “Steve and Ed, The Happiest Gay Couple in the World”. More intelligently and historically refined treatments can be found in a Doonesbury-style strip like Alison Bechdel’s “Dykes To Watch Out For” or Maurice Vellekoop’s occasional cartoon anatomies. The combination of performance art and coloratura savagings of the commercial gay scene by Justin Bond and David Hoyle far exceed the bile of most homophobic caricatures.

"Queer Duck"

Have I got a conclusion. Not really. Not least because I don’t think any of this will ever end. Gay men want to be taken seriously, but comedy is rarely fair. A laugh depends either upon a moment of recognition or anaesthesia of the heart. To demand that homosexuals be recognised as loveable and be respected is largely outside the domain of comedy. Of course, as soon as you phrase the argument in terms of dignity, it becomes more obvious how unreconcilable that is with comedy. Comedy and comic characters may be loveable, but that’s a rare trick and can’t be imposed by fiat. All you can hope is that writers realise a gay hairdresser can be shrill and still have the full range of human emotions and responses. Prime time comedies like “Ugly Betty” and “Beautiful People” can successfully express the recognisable teenage crises in comically camp dramatics, while remaining true to integrity of the characters. The convoluted camouflages of the varied closet cases in “The Book Group”, “The Smoking Room” and “Gavin and Stacey” run the gamut without mockery. Yet even this may be to expect a lot. Not on the behalf of homosexuals, but for any character in a comedy. The intention of these creators is to be paid. At best, the creators pay lip service to the social standards of their time for the laughs that they raise there and then without sense of responsibility to future generations. Current laughs to current tastes and current knowledge are all that matter. That’s why comedy is so powerfully representative of the attitudes of a given time. Pretending that a sitcom or film should be an in-depth fly-on-the-wall documentary depicting shining paragons of every social subset will never produce anything worthwhile. The problem is when we have to live with the aftermath. The heydays of poofs in the UK was approximately 1972-1976, but ubiquitous repeats meant those comic images continued to exert an undue influence for at least the next twenty years.

And that’s all part of our big stinking gay legacy. Can’t get rid of it. Even if you tried. We can just look at the facts really hard. And there’s nothing more likely to kill a joke stone dead than to coldly dissect it.

Fifty Years of Comedy Queers: The 1980s

Intro
Part 1: 1960s
Part 2: 1970s
Part 4: 1990s and 2000s

At the end of the 1970s there were now several means in which a gay joke could be offered and received. The 1960s and 1970s had mostly struggled with the practicalities of representation. But on the cusp of the new decade there was diversity in attitudes toward homosexuality, and the related jokes and styles available to comics. They could attempt to reflect the new masculinised gay culture of moustaches, tight jeans, and leather accoutrements. They could rely on old jokes about lisping, swishiness, and coded puns. Their jokes could be offered as satire on current cultural mores, or as a denigration of gay culture. Unlike Lenny Bruce, when Eddie Murphy used the word “faggots” in his stand-up in the early 1980s, he wanted to be as offensive as possible, because still few people actually really knew homosexuals. They knew them from funny, unsexual characters in films or TV comedies, or when prompted to consider gay sex lives, anxiety and disgust were discharged in jokes. The extent of the public’s lack of references for actual gay men is reflected in the very small roster of names alluded to by comic writers. Oscar Wilde is allusion number one, then assorted denizens of the Bloomsbury literary movement of the early twentieth century, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote and Christopher Isherwood are all that remains available, aside from the few contemporary figures caught up in scandals. Expression of gay sexuality still had furtive, shameful connotations, since it was usually only ever referred to the in the context of some national scandal, or else in the perverse and shocking exhibitions of S&M tastes.

Meanwhile mainstream sitcoms and films continued to struggle with how to include homosexuals. In the 1981 movie-pilot “Love, Sydney”, Tony Randall played a gay man, but transferral to sitcom with the promise that Randall would play TV’s first gay sitcom lead was undone by public pressure and the character was neutered. A TV write-up of the 1980 BBC sitcom “Time of My Life” describing a “trendily gay son” as one of the problems its middle-life crisis stricken lead had to cope with, may seem crass, but it reflects the notion that homosexuality was no longer a terrible problem but a fashionable issue instead. Kenny Everett’s hypermanic sketch series featured many queer-tinged performances, and Everett could proclaim a knowing “Welcome to all friends of Dorothy”. Similarly, many audiences have warm recollections of the blithely inconsequential Stephen Stucker in the two “Airplane” films (1980 and 1982). Audiences would come to expect some sort of sissy character in Mel Brooks’s repertoire of bad taste, while Neil Simon has always seemed lost at sea with homosexuals, as demonstrated by “The Goodbye Girl (1977) and “California Suite” (1978). The sexy comedies of Blake Edwards mirror Woody Allen’s development. “The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) had an outrageous scene set in a drag bar. “10” (1979) had given Dudley Moore a thoughtful gay song writing partner, Hugh. “S.O.B.” (1981) had included a gay secretary as one of many Hollywood characters, while “Victor/Victoria” (1982) was intentionally a weird blend of all sexual tastes and gender-bending. The satire of California manners “Serial” (1980) would give the world the spectacle of Christopher Lee as a member of a gay motorcycle gang. There were several Hollywood attempts to cash in on the outright gay success of “La Cage”. “Zorro – The Gay Blade” (1981) had George Hamilton (following on his Dracula in “Love at First Bite”) playing Zorro and his sissy, foppish twin brother, Bunny Wigglesworth, who cavorts in flamboyant costumes. “Partners” (1982) even had the same scriptwriters as “La Cage”. It was a buddy comedy pairing two mismatched police officers, the macho Ryan O’Neal, and the unassuming gay John Hurt (who doesn’t discredit himself, but it’s no advance on the “The Naked Civil Servant”). To solve a murder, the odd couple have to pose as a couple in a condo that captures all the worst stereotypes of West Hollywood gay life, swish mu-mu-wearing queens and hairy clones.

Stephen Stucker


"Zorro - The Gay Blade"


"Partners"

In England, the start of the 1980s saw the rise of Alternative Comedy, based on an idea of humour which didn’t rely on sexist or racist stereotypes. Its most productive writers were Ben Elton and Peter Richardson, with performers like Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders, Rick Mayall and Richard Edmondson. As the new trend, over the next five years or so it produced “The Comic Strip”, “The Young Ones”, “Black Adder”, “Filthy, Rich and Cat Flap”. Gay jokes were largely off the menu. If homosexuality was introduced it was to satirise old cliches. A languidly gay uncle was a villain reminiscent of the late 1960s thrillers in the “Five Go Mad….” parodies of Enid Blyton’s children’s story. Though “The Comic Strip” episodes by Keith Allen did enjoy their mincing poofs. Elton’s “Black Adder II” had dockside sodomy and the lead character falling in love in a women dressed as a man. Elton set the standard of mocking crap comics who got jokes by “imitating poofs” and saying “I’m feeling a little queer”. But if progressive left-wing comedians said they were on the side of homosexual equality, then the right wing was as ready to use homosexuality to tarnish their opponents. It was as much an age gap, since the Alternative Comedians were in their twenties, while the rightwing humorists were usually at least twenty years older. Ring wing newspapers, comedians and cartoonists didn’t smear their left wing opponents with accusations of homosexuality. Rather they used the Left’s gestures at homosexual equality to make the Left and its politics seem ridiculous. Sneering gags about Lesbian creches and Gay Centres are part of a larger political argument. But it is a return to the idea that homosexual demands for equality are innately laughable. Editorial cartoonists produce copious sheets of flouncy moustachioed transvestites and wiggling effeminate poofs in response to news stories, implying that any attention or money is wasted on these freaks.

As humorists were aware there was range of realistic gay behaviours to draw on, so there was the developing tactic of employing camp stereotypes to attack bigotry. In a 1981 episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati” two characters had camped it up to perturb and break a contract with a conservative housing organisation. “Cheers” in 1983 had gone further than most in showing the comic consequences of group outrage at public homosexuality and let its characters express all the confused clichés about gays. “In Sickness and Health” was a continuation of “Till Death Us Do Part”’s loveable bigot Alf Garnett. The 1986 and 1987 series featured the black, gay home help, Winston, performed by Eamonn Walker, and nicknamed “Marigold” by Alf. The performance, played up certain stereotypical black and gay behaviours, piercing nelliness, limp wrists and extravagant camp flirtatiousness, which though put on to provoke the prejudiced Alf, came close to bigoted caricature in themselves. The great problem was, and has continued to be, how much irony audiences can swallow. Are they laughing at the satirising of outdated clichés about homosexuals, or at they simply laughing wholeheartedly at the funny homos.

"Marigold" in "In Sickness and in Health"

In line with current trends in cinema, the 1980s saw the new genre of the teenage sex comedy. Summer after summer in the mid-80s’ was witness to innumerable sequels to “Revenge of the Nerds”, “Police Academy”, and copies of carbon copies of “Porky’s”. Aimed at adolescent boys, they traded in pratfalls, ogling at ladies, and reflected the attitudes of the high school. “Fag”, “homo” and “queer” were common insults thrown about by protagonists, though rarely against anyone who was identifiably gay, which was the point of the insult, after all. When repeated on TV, it was always hit-or-miss whether TV censors would cut the epithets or not. The black comedy “Heathers” (1989) would cleverly satirise high school homophobia, with a murder passed off as a gay suicide and the victim’s father bellowing at the funeral, “I love my dead gay son!” The “Revenge of the Nerds” films had its swish Lamar Latrell, who in one setpiece was incapable of running without a correspondingly limp javelin. Every instalment of “Police Academy” would adjourn to the “Blue Oyster Bar” for a little comedic gay panic by the main characters, for though it was frequented by threatening-seeming gay leathermen, they only ever wanted to waltz and tango with the police interlopers.

"Revenge of the Nerds"


"Police Academy"

By the mid-1980s even the most clueless of cartoonists and comedians had realised that most homosexuals were not quite the effeminate lipstick-wearing, flouncy sissies they had imagined. Gay cartoonists in gay magazines like “Christopher Street” and “Gay News” had been making jokes before 1980, but those were jokes for the gay audience familiar with the scene. Michael Heath’s “The Gays” strip (1981-186) in “Private Eye” had noticed fairly early on that there was a distinct new gay identity. The prevalence and flagrancy of the clone, given a few additional touches by way of the leather cop from “The Village People”, would become an easy stereotype for cartoonists for almost the next two decades. Soon it was easy for even the laziest of humorists to suggest a homosexual through some combination of: a moustache, an earring, maybe a shaved head or a leather cap, a revealing shirt or string vest, and a bomber jacket. It allows the cartoonist to note that homosexuality is actually about sexuality, but the various elements can be configured to make it all seem a rather silly display (whether you feel that it’s a bit silly already is a whole other matter). Also, as the AIDs crises enveloped the later ‘80s and early 90s, the ubiquity of the Clone/Village People stereotype as a way of getting an easy laugh shows ups up public anxiety about gay sexuality. Scorsese’s “After Hours” (1985) attempts to reconcile all the different varieties of homosexuals to be found in late night Manhattan, with fondling clones, queeny artists, and even a vanilla bi-curious encounter.

The comedy which best attempted to depict some of the complexity of contemporary gay life was tucked away on the US subscription cable channel ShowTime, and later broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK. The sitcom “Brothers” (1984-1989) focussed on the consequences of Cliff coming out to his other two brothers, Joe and Lou. ABC and NBC rejected the opportunity to broadcast the first gay-themed sitcom series before it found a home on cable. The series follows Joe as he finds his feet as a gay a man, and the gradual acceptance of their brother’s lifestyle by the hot-headed Lou and the more sensible Joe. In a foreshadowing of “Will and Grace”, Cliff was straight-acting, but his closest friend, Donald Maltby, was flamboyant, camp, flirty, and sharp-tongued – a well rounded recognisable real-life queen, if you prefer. As importantly, he was supportive of Cliff and proud of his homosexuality, though gay groups were upset that such a role was portrayed by a straight actor. Numerous gay issues were covered, and Cliff would eventually find a boyfriend. The best that the UK could offer at this time was Lieutenant Gruber in the farcical “’Allo ‘Allo” (1982-1992) by the writers of “are You Being Served”. Unlike Mr Humphries his homosexuality was more explicit since he had a crush on the lead male character, besides making effete references to his “little tank” and assorted sissy innuendoes. In its early years, Channel 4 in the UK had a remit to make minority oriented programming, and so wholly unremembered sitcoms like "It Takes a Worried Man" (1981-1983) and "Dream Stuffing" (1984) had their regular gay cast members, but ultimately contribute nothing to the dialogue.

Cliff and Donald in "Brothers"


Lieutenant Gruber in "'Allo 'Allo"

A new development in the 1980s was the arrival of gay comedians intent on a mainstream audience. Their humour drew upon their experiences as homosexuals, without trading on weak camp stereotypes. In England, the stand-up comedian, Simon Fanshawe, discussed his homosexuality like any other topic, and would go on to a checkered media career suffering homophobic criticisms. Stephen Fry employed ferocious verbal dexterity in Establishment tones to indulge a taste for filth and the witty annihilation of gay clichés against the growing homophobia prompted by AIDS and Section 28. Julian Clary took the poof clichés of extravagant costumes and double-entendres and made it as confrontational as possible, a barrage of snide insults and blistering sexual gags, returning camp to its origins as a form of attack not inadequacy. Gay American comedians seem thin on the ground at this time, but the brash Sandra Bernhard was making a name for herself. At the end of the 1980s, the Canadian sketch troupe “The Kids in the Hall” (1988-1995) was broadcast in the dead of night in both the UK and US. They employed many gags attacking homophobia and gay stereotypes. Scott Thompson, the gay member of the group, had his own recurring character, the flamboyant, scandalous socialite Buddy Cole, whose sketches ramped up gay cliché, revelling in their outrageous corruption.

Stephen Fry


Julian Clary


"Buddy Cole"

Yet all of the above is barely a drop in the ocean when you consider the absence of any gay appearances in all the family sitcoms of the 80s, which seemed to be the dominant format of the time. All those teens and their friends yet no one ever comes out. All those special life lessons to be learnt, and other than the occasional paedophilia storyline, nary a homosexual. If AIDS gets a mention in a “Very Special Episode”, it’s almost always as a result of an unfortunate blood transfusion. A 1987 episode of “Designing Women” stands out for its fury about the impact of AIDS on the gay community and the lack of concern by many. In 1990, Gary Trudeau would revisit his character Andy Lippincott as an AIDs victim and track his eventual death. And still the occasional sitcom like “Golden Girls” or “Dear John” in the late 1980s would have a gay brother or relative come out, so the audience would be reminded that it was OK. “Birds of a Feather” has a 1990 episode which goes so far as the leads wondering what they will do if their son comes out as gay, and then when they finally realise that would be fine, it all turns out to be a misunderstanding and the series returns to default. And yes, there was a “Very Special Episode” of “Blossom” where a friend who was never in any previous episode comes out and is never seen again in any subsequent episode.

Andy Lippincott in the AIDS quilt

As it turned out, the most exciting gay comedic action on mainstream American TV in the late 1980s was happening on the new channel Fox. Fox aimed to attract its audiences with more daring and blatant content, or crass bad taste as the case may be. “The Tracy Ullman Show” (1987-1990) was aimed at a more sophisticated audience, and had a recurring character, the teenage girl, Francesca, who lived with her father (Dan Castellaneta) and his boyfriend, William (Sam McMurray). The gay parents were played as slightly effeminate and over-emotional, but not unrealistically. The crux of the sketches was the love that all three had for each other, pointing out the ridiculousness of the objections of others to this modern household. Later sketch shows by Tracy Ullman would regularly feature many gay characters. Fox also took a chance with “In Living Color” (1990 – 1994), an all black sketch show, with the exception of Jim Carrey. The show had two recurring gay characters in its “Men On Film” sketches. They featured the effeminate Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather played by Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier . Every sketch the pair would appear in some new outrageous but revealing costume, finger-snapping and indulge in mysogyny and lascivious double-entendres at the expense of whatever the ostensible subject happened to be. A filthier Julian and Sandy if you liked, only almost twenty-five years later. How different they were from Buddy Cole or Julian Clary remains a matter of intent, and requires the taking into consideration privileges when one is gay or straight playing gay. The treatment of the few gay black comic characters to date is a sensitive one. The few who appear in episodes of the 1970s “Sanford and Son” are much broader than to be found on other sitcoms, the hysterical inter-racial antique-dealing queens in “Blackula” (1972) are intended as comic relief, Antonio Fargas plays a few sharp queens in films of the mid -70s, most notably in “Car Wash” (1976), and Meshach Taylor regularly played a high-fashion queen. Wayans had been fired from “Saturday Night Live” in 1986 for playing a stereotypically homosexual cop on a sketch that didn’t call for one.

Francesca's parents


"Men on Film"

Fox also took a gamble on a cartoon spin-off from “The Tracy Ullman Show” when it commissioned “The Simpsons”. The Simpsons had a gay character from the first series in Mr Waylon Smithers (named for Wayland Flowers). Rather than have him as an out character, they employed the tactic of having him closeted in plain sight, relying on the audience’s familiarity with gay signifiers to pick up that Smither’s sycophancy has turned into a crush on his boss. (Having a gay character in plain sight unrecognised by others flatters the sophistication of audiences, and dates back to the 1969 sketch “Funny he never married”, was used with the gay couples of Ed and Howard in “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and Tim and Gavin in “The Brittas Empire”, and was an ironic joke at the expense of the clueless and monstrous mothers of Dame Edna Everage and “Keeping Up Appearances”.) Intelligent gay characters, jokes and episodes would regularly appear in “The Simpsons” with cameos from the likes of John Waters and Harvey Fierstein. The Waters episode gave rise to the evergreen admission by Homer, “I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals flaming”. Fierstein would have a sideline in flamboyant gay, an out modern gay updating of Paul Lynde. The success of the “The Simpsons” was the strongest proof that American audiences could accept rich, intelligent humour, and set the standard for much of the 1990s.

Mr Smithers

Part 4: 1990s and 2000s

Fifty Years of Comedy Queers: The 1970s

Intro
Part 1: 1960s
Part 3: 1980s
Part 4: 1990s and 2000s

The next generation of comedy writers reflected a growing familiarity with fag jokes of all kinds. These were university humorists who studied the trends in humour like they had studied for their courses, and were now intent on breaking through in several senses. They prided themselves that the humour they offered was of a sterner and more controversial nature than much of what had gone before. Also that they were alert to, and even through their humour participating in, the changes that were shaking society. In England, the writers and performers of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” had performed in university revues which had led to professional careers of at least the last five years, if more. In America, “National Lampoon” magazine was a spin-off from successful publishing experiments in collegiate humour. “National Lampoon” could afford to be as offensive and intellectual as it liked, free of almost all possibility of formal censorship. The appearance of “Monty Python” and “National Lampoon” coincides with a growing visibility for homosexuality and demands for homosexual rights. Homosexual acts between adults had been decriminalised in England in 1967. 1969 witnessed the Stonewall Riots in New York City which brought the forthright demand for an end to homosexual oppression, and the corresponding development of the Gay Lib movement over the next couple of years. Both “Monty Python” and “National Lampoon” aimed at a younger, hipper audience, and each had gay writers. As they pushed the line regarding casual female nudity, similarly there is a greater emphasis on gay sexuality in their humour. In “Python”, male couples share beds, policemen are chatted up, while camp stereotypes are turned on their heads, and when gay clichés are invoked they are overblown as screaming caricatures parodying stale assumptions and lame jokes. “National Lampoon” sometimes less thoughtfully pounds away at the sissy, bitchy, misogynist stereotypes. However it also attacks simplistic homophobia, examines gay lifestyles, and treats gay sex with a daring tastelessness. “Python”’s and “Lampoon”’s cinematic contemporary, Woody Allen, showed a steeper learning curve. From “Bananas”’s prurient speculation about the possibility of a gay juror (1971), to the explicit homoeroticism of macho gym-set advertising in “Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex” (1972) , then the effeminate queens and their equally sissy robot of “Sleeper” (1973), Allen finally manages some genial contemplations about the personal lives of the Greek philosophers in “Love and Death” (1975).

Fleeting sketches, parodies, songs, comics, and cartoons are all very well, but are only a momentary splash on the attention. From the beginning of the 1970s, gays start to appear in the mainstream of comfy prime-time viewing, fit for the sitcom audiences of tens of millions. Sitcoms are a barometer of public acceptance. For even the most daring programme, let alone the most traditional, will only lead as far as the audience is prepared to follow. When a potentially conflagrationary topic like homosexuality or homosexual characters appear in a sitcom, then you know that (1) homosexuality can no longer be ignored, and (2) the production team has probably been giving it a bloody hard think. As dramas explored gritty social issues, so sitcoms follow the same formulas. The constant treadmill of production means a hunger for new materials and topics to animate each subsequent episode. New social trends are therefore good for new comedic material. As in most cases in this history, the British were first (a little national pride there). “Steptoe and Son” featured a quasi-aristocratic antique dealer with romantic designs on Harold, in 1970. This is probably the first sitcom episode to feature a gay character, and, luckily, it’s an intelligent script and believable performance. The first sitcom to feature a recurring gay character was also British. Mr Winters was a camp boutique owner in the first 1971 series of “The Fenn Street Gang”, a spin-off from the popular “Please Sir”. But more often than not British sitcoms of the 1970s preferred their homosexuals to be both camp and also deniable, since British sitcoms were more concerned with getting laughs than being socially sensitive.

"Steptoe and Son"

The appearance of homosexual characters in American sitcoms of the 1970s follows a definite pattern. This is because many of them feature in “Very Special Episodes” of the socially conscious sitcoms on CBS from arch-liberal propagandist and TV producer Norman Lear. The emphasis is on the incursion of homosexuals as a problem to be solved in a positive manner. The template is some friend of the sitcom family arrives, reveals their homosexuality, and once the characters overcome their prejudices, disappears never to be seen again. The first ever American episode about homosexuality was in the first 1971 series of “All in the Family”. Archie ridicules his daughter’s friend for seeming gay, but really it is Archie’s ex-football player friend at the local bar who is the homosexual. Neither friend ever appears again. “Maude”, “Carter Country”, “The Bob Crane Show” all have their gay friends who vanish once lessons have been learnt. American sitcoms soon slightly refined this template, so that a pleasant male would make his entrance, one of the female leads would fall in love with him, he would announce he’s gay, and everyone would realise that was OK, then he would never be seen again. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was the first one to pull this off as the capper to an episode in 1973, but “Alice”, “Phyllis”, “Taxi” and others would follow the same format, with gay characters who would never be seen again. Because us homos are just so damn loveable, donchaknow, but we just don’t stay around. When in 1976 Gary Trudeau boldly introduced the gay lawyer Andy Lippincott into his daily newspaper cartoon strip “Doonesbury”, it was with this same romantic decoy plot. Then having made Trudeau’s point, Andy vanished for the better part of thirteen years. Every one of these one-off gay characters was as straight-acting and normal as one could wish, since it disarmed prejudice and made the plots function. It was the bigots and confused who would make jokes about flamers and camp behaviour, because, as the producers wanted us to realise, they were just so unenlightened.

Andy Lippincott in "Doonesbury"

British audiences were much happier with comedy “poofs”. “Poofs” bring to the screen, in more extravagant form, the familiar characteristics of Julian and Sandy. Poofs mince about, they dress flamboyantly, they have limp wrists and camp mannerisms. They may cast a look at an attractive, butch man, and indulge in occasional double-entendres, but fundamentally, they are asexual and unmanly. Indeed, the second instance of gay characters in a British sitcom were a couple of fey, handbag carrying Britons in the historical sitcom “Up Pompeii” (1970) from the scriptwriter of the “Carry On” films. The most famous poof is John Inman’s performance as “Mr Humphries” in “Are You Being Served” (1972 - 1985), with audiences of up to 22 million. In 1976 Inman was voted funniest man on television by “TV Times” readers and also BBC TV's Personality of the Year. Mr Humphries was the gay stereotype of the men’s shop assistant in excelsis: a jaunty manner, a high voice, a staccato sashaying mining walk, hands either on hips or pressed to his cheek, often dressed in silly costumes, and a piercing catchphrase of “I’m free!”. Mr Humphries was played camp, but the writers and Inman always denied that he was gay, just a “mother’s boy”. This tacit disavowal allowed Mr Humphries to remain in a childish world of dressing up and strange acquaintances, while only ever eliciting a raised eyebrow from other characters. On prime time TV here was a broad comic confirmation of all the stereotypes.

John Inman as "Mr Humphries"

Other British sitcoms and comedies followed suit. “Poofs” require broad performances, with gags in the vein of cheeky, lewd postcard humour. The “Carry On” films may have been the commercial highpoint of this style, but despite having regular gay cast members like Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey and the occasional cameo from Michael Ward, explicitly homosexual gags and gay characters are thin on the ground. “Carry On” was much more comfortable with jokes and farce about heterosexuality, although “Carry On Abroad” (1972) and “Carry On Girls” (1973) give the audience some gay characters. The prison-based sitcom “Porridge” (1974 – 1977) had Christopher Biggins as the recurring character Lukewarm, a tidy mummy’s boy, who liked to knit, and whose visit from his quiet gentleman friend was a comic variant on all the other prison wives. “Not on Your Nellie” (1974-1995) had its pair, Gilbert and George who ran a boutique together. Every episode the silent Gilbert would appear in some flamboyant outfit, give a twirl to the show’s star Hilda Baker, who would reply, “And what are we supposed to be today? Oh, you’re one of THOSE, are you?” The popular sketch performer Dick Emery also got in on the act. Clarence was one of his repertoire of characters. He would flounce on in some new garish costume with matching ghastly cap, utter a blithe cry of his catchphrase “Hello, Honky Tonks!” for a couple of minutes’ slightly laboured camp insinuations, before mincing off again. “The Goodies” (1970-1980), by the writers of “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, also liked its mincing, extravagantly dressed camp stereotypes. The camp, effete, mimsy stage comedian Larry Grayson, with his catchphrase of “What a gay day!”, became a hugely popular TV presenter, and his first series in 1972 was promoted, “Shut that door and make yourself at home for a gay evening with Larry Grayson”

Gilbert and George in "Not On You Nellie"


Dick Emery as Clarence


Larry Grayson

The history of coded gay performers (read “screamers” and “mumsy” types) is long and deserves its own essay. Aside from the cinema actors mentioned earlier, and Inman, Grayson, Williams and Biggins, television gave a home to Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, Rip Taylor, Frank Williams, Jim J. Bullock, Victor Spinetti and many others, although each had their contorted moments to avoid explicit statements about their sexuality. The 1970s had seen several acts move from the gay clubs to mass success. In America, there was the ventriloquist Wayland Flowers and his bitchy puppet Madame. “Hinge and Brackett” had been favourites of the gay circuit in England, but since they were a traditional drag act, they were not controversial to a public that had similarly accepted Danny La Rue decades earlier. The gay community’s response to the sudden popularity of Quentin Crisp with a mass straight audience in the late 1970s was ambivalent. For all that he was a survivor to be honoured, the attitudes he expressed were at odds with the new strident sense of gay pride. The 1970s Gay Lib movement had seen gay performers attempt to make comedy out of their experiences, with “Gay Liberation Follies” (1973-1974) whose cast included Lily Tomlin, and the album “Out of the Closet” (1977).

Waylon Flowers


"Hinge and Brackett"

Several American sitcoms attempted to feature regular gay characters, but it is notable that most of the early attempts are mere footnotes in history, and that in every case they were camper than the respectable offerings of the “Very Special Episodes”. Vincent Schiavelli in “The Corner Bar” (1972) was the first main gay character in an American sitcom, but he drew flack from gay groups since he seemed often to be the butt of effeminate gibes from the other characters. The first gay couple in an American sitcom was the prissy, older George and Gordon in “Hot L Baltimore” (1975), but many network affiliates refused to broadcast this sitcom. But as both these sitcoms were summer fillers these sitcoms have no real significance. “Snips” a 1976 sitcom was never even broadcast, but its cast insist this was because network managers were uncomfortable with its character of a gay hairdresser.

"Hot L Baltimore"

But if network officials were uncomfortable with featuring gay characters in sitcoms at all, gay men were now equally concerned by the manner of their depiction. In 1973 the Gay Activists Alliance with the National Gay Task Force issued a set of guidelines to promote positive portrayals of homosexuality, having occcupied ABC’s offices after an offensive episode of “Marcus Welby, M.D. "Homosexuality isn't funny. Sometimes anything can be a source of humor, but the lives of twenty million Americans are not a joke." Eventually, Newton Dieter at the National Gay Task Force would exercise major influence, receiving automatic submission of pre-production scripts on gay themes. This is why limp wrists are few and far between on the American screen. The long-running and successful police station-set sitcom “Barney Miller” (1975 - 1982) did manage a recurring gay character in the extravagantly styled and queeny burglar, Marty from its first season onwards. But after complaints from the National Gay Task Force, the characterisation was toned down, and Marty was given a lover, Darryl. “Saturday Night Live” in its first 1975 season featured a sketch about effeminate gay men overly attached to their mothers, which would be excised from later repeats because of objections. The greatest lobbying success was the character of Jodie Dallas played by Billy Crystal in “Soap” (1977 – 1981). Jodie is the character people usually recall when they try to think of the first openly gay main character in an American sitcom. It is evident that the writers never knew what to do with him or his homosexuality though. At first he was going to undergo a sex change for his closeted boyfriend, but this outraged gay groups. From then on he was as much bisexual as anything, fathered a daughter, had no other male relationships, and by the show’s conclusion he thought he was an elderly Jewish man. Tellingly, at one point, the character’s brother, capable only of speaking through his ventriloquist’s dummy, remarked, “Did you ever notice that homosexuals have no sense of humour?”

"Barney Miller"


Jodie Dallas in "Soap"

In Britain, the mid-70s saw similar, if less influential attempts to exercise some say about the gay men who appeared on screen. The word “poof” was casually thrown around on TV as an insult to anyone’s masculinity. The ITV sitcom “Man About the House” (1973-1976) was based on the premise that a young man could only live with two lithesome young women if they told the landlords that he was a “poof”, resulting in hilarious misunderstandings (this was transferred to America in the late ‘70s as the even smarmier “Three’s Company”). Gay protests in the UK (circa 1975-1977) achieved very little change but they did at least make homosexuals heard by the media. Stage shows featuring Dick Emery, John Inman and Larry Grayson found themselves facing protests from the Campaign for Homosexual Equality with slogans like “Give Us Gay Liberation - Not Gay Titillation”. Gay Lib and its struggle for positive images of gay men meant that reissues of old Julian and Sandy sketches on LPs received hostile reviews in “Gay News”. The Round the Horne Society was refused affiliation with the C.H.E because its celebration of comic poofs was embarrassing to the cause. Emery, Grayson, Inman and Kenneth Williams would make arguments of differing conviction that their portrayals were not malicious and their playing camp was a way of making the public feel comfortable about homosexuals. Following objections, the BBC would remove the line “Take him away - he is just a German poof” from a 1976 Dick Emery repeat. The BBC however was not such a friend of homosexuals in the 1970s, incapable of representing the developments in gay lifestyles. That positive role fell to LWT, the London-based ITV franchise. Its first significant offering was “Rock Follies”, the second series in 1977 offered a perfectly normal gay-couple as main characters, Harry and Ken, who also introduced contemporary gay issues. The sitcom “Agony” (1979 – 1981) also offered a couple, Rob and Michael, neighbours to the leading character. Their occasional quarrels were to show how they like any normal couple, not the bitchy queens of earlier clichés, but gay viewers were disturbed by the eventual suicide of one of the partners. It is important that both “Rock Follies” and “Agony” were written by Americans with higher expectations of gay portrayals on TV. Horrified by this horrific succession of trivial poofs, when given the creative freedom British Tv is more likely to afford, they were able to accomplish something more substantial than American sitcoms or drama had to date.

The visibility of homosexual culture and attitudes to scandals involving homosexuals are best reflected in the works of topical comedians and satirists. The very idea of Gay Liberation was an amusing one to the writers of “Mad” and “Private Eye”. Swishy fairies demanding their right to be camp sissies was the earliest comic interpretation. Jokes about how angry or miserable “gay” men now seemed were not uncommon either. Gradually comedians like The Credibility Gap (the early work of the members of Spinal Tap) in “Where’s Johnny” and National Lampoon’s Radio Hour “West Hollywood Gay Association” alternate between flirtatious caricatures and straight misunderstanding. Popular music’s flirtation with bisexuality on both sides of the Atlantic around 1974-1974, gave rise to assorted jokes about fag rock and mincing rockers with a taste for sodomy. The major problem for humorists was how to reconcile all their old comic stereotypes about swishing sissies with the new gay lifestyle, with its new emphasis on expressions of gay sexuality in clubs and bath houses. To look at an instalment of a comic like “Little Annie Fanny” by Harvey Kurtzman, or films like “Saturday Night at the Baths” (1975)or “The Ritz” (1976), is to realise that even when humorists think they’re depicting the new gay social scene, they don’t really understand it or know how to make it cohere comedically.

The hipness of the comedian is a definite indication of the likely quality. Individual gay characters were no longer just cameo grotesques, and there are a small scattering of gay men in supportive roles as friends in films. A piece like Fran Lebowitz’s “The Primary Cause of Heterosexuality Among Males in Urban Areas” successfully inverts the new gay clichés. The ephemeral “artistic” types of the early 1960s, who’d grown into the “Bitchy fags” of the later 1960s, had evolved into the incontrovertible arty, faggy, kinky dictators of the modern metropolis. As comedy writers and performers grew more comfortable with the topic, instead of having one gay character to play off, sketches begin to appear dealing with gay couples and their insulated gay urban lives. “National Lampoon” will give us two muppet-like characters living together on “Christopher Street” (preempting “Avenue Q” by twenty-five years) and Cheech and Chong give us a space-age couple preparing for a night out in “Queer Wars” (and there were numerous jokes about “fag robots” at the time because of Anthony Daniels). Those two instances update fashion-consciousness and whiny mannerisms with a decoration of S&M, but Robin Williams in SCTV’s “The Bowery Boys in the Band” is an energetic, if swishy, good time boy. However, when it came to comedy revealing some degree public acceptance of gay lifestyles and couples, it was neither America or Britain which came up with the goods. “La Cage aux Folles”, the 1978 film adaptation of a 1973 French stage farce was the surprise smash hit of 1978-1979. The plot device of swishy men trying to butch up takes us all the way back to “Beyond the Fringe”, and it shows that as with Mr Humphries, audiences were most comfortable with fey types. If nothing else, it did finally show a gay couple who were genuinely in love, comfortable around each other, and the audiences were led to find them genuinely sympathetic in comparison to the bigots of the piece.

"La Cage Aux Folles"

Satire was the beneficiary of many fabulous gay scandals in the later half of the 1970s. Gay scandals had moved on, and it was no longer enough that someone just be outed. It was better if they were a prominent person, preferably of national significance, and a healthy dose of actual sex was even better. Comedians, satirists, cartoonists, columnists, and programmes like “Weekending” and ”Not the Nine O’Clock News” were granted liberty to discuss sexual matters which only a few years earlier would have been taboo. The death and subsequent memoirs of the politician Tom Driberg put cottaging (sexual solicitation in toilets) forever in the public domain. The long-running scandal surrounding the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe placed gay innuendoes and pillow-biting in the newspapers for years. “Gay News” became national news, when a poem sexualising Christ on the cross was successfully tried for blasphemy. The old cliché about the civil service and the spy service being rampant with a coterie of homosexuals was vigorously proven when Anthony Blunt was revealed to be the “Fourth Man” of the 1950s Burgess and Maclean spy scandal. If nothing else, these scandals complemented Gay Libbers’ assertions that homosexuals were in all walks of life and that they weren’t just sexless poofs. Britain is a small country, with national media where satirists and cartoonists vie to produce the best gags. America was far too large, and a residual prudishness meant that if there were any comparable scandals they didn’t get national media coverage, nor were deemed fit for humour. But the rise of the Moral Majority and Anita Bryant’s crusade to stem the tide of homosexuality gave a new edge to discussion about the place of homosexuals in society.

Even as the gay movement seemed to be achieving mass visibility, a massing conservative backlash was mirrored in most of the leading humorous magazines. If any of them attempted any justification, it was that all groups received an equal bashing in their pages, left wing, right wing, gays, straights, etc. “Mad” magazine became more intent on reinforcing the old clichés about swishy gays and effeminate perverts. On several occasions “Mad” seemed to wholeheartedly approve of Anita Bryant’s arguments, and “Mad” won an award of dishonour from the National Gay Task Force for 1978. Since homosexuals were now a prominent group, “Private Eye” believed they had consequently earned the right to be strenuously ridiculed as they were “more able to take care of themselves”. Many gay men felt that the magazine became unbalanced in its homophobia. Quite a few of the “Eye”’s writers were surprisingly religious, and its column on church affairs regularly mocked the homophile or homosexual attitudes of specific clergy. Auberon Waugh indulged in baroque flights of reactionary rhetoric. The editor, Richard Ingrams, made it clear when he wrote for “The Spectator”: “A few years ago homosexuals were rightly regarded as subjects for humour or else sympathy. Now we are expected to treat them as a quasi-political movement with 'rights'". Ingrams laid the blame for gay rights with the feminist movement which encouraged lesbians to operate as the extreme wing. His is a conservative argument which can only see gay politics as the ultimate non-procreative, dead-end of left-wing politics. By the late 1970s, “National Lampoon” had fallen under the editorship of P.J. O’Rourke, with substantial contributions from future film writer and director, John Hughes. Their period of creativity has been summed up in the phrase “Screw you humour”. The words “fag” and “homo” are far from infrequent in pieces by either writer. How much they meant to offend is debatable, but the idea of contravening liberal shibboleths was certainly something O’Rourke found funny (his tendency to compare black people to apes would eventually earn him serious trouble), and also presaged the 1980s appeals to unreconstructed frat-boy humour. As demonstrated by Frank Zappa in songs like “Bobby Brown” and “He’s So Gay”, cataloguing the more extreme homosexual fetishes, no matter how sexually scurrilous you were, so long as it was only intended as parody, that made whatever was said alright.