Hunter (1984-91) starred Fred Dryer as Rick Hunter, a "renegade cop who bends the rules and takes justice into his own hands" (that's like every cop on tv). He is partnered with the "stunning" Sgt. McCall (Stefanie Kramer) for cases involving serial killers, gangs, drug dealers, and guys who murder their wives. Just the thing for the the 1980s, when the rhetoric changed from "let's rehabilitate them" to "lock'em up."
We didn't watch in West Hollywood, of course. After Moonlighting, Remington Steele, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Cheers, who wants to see yet another "will they or won't they?" straight-subtext couple? Besides, it aired on Saturday night, for old people moaning about how great life was in the old days, then on Monday opposite Murphy Brown and Designing Women. Which would you watch?
But we knew about Fred Dryer: 6'6" (enough about the six foot, let's hear about the six inches), brawny, hirsute, with muscles that hardened on the street, not in some sissy gym.
He grew up in Hawthorne, California, was a football star at Lawndale High and San Diego State, then played for the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams in a career that lasted for 13 years (1969-81) and won him 104 sacks, 1 pro-bowl, and 1 all-bowl.
We may have seen Dryer when he switched from football to acting, guesting as hunks on Laverne and Shirley (1980), Lou Grant (1981), CHIPS (1982), and Hart to Hart (1984).
Not to mention four episodes of Chips (1982-87), playing focus character Sam Malone's former teammate on the Boston Red Sox, now a flashy, hetero-horny sports reporter.
We may even have tuned in to Hunter on occasion, or to Land's End (1995-96), about another renegade cop with a "stunning" partner, just to catch a glimps of Dryer's incredible bulge.
It showed someone who looked like a young Dryer in an early 1960s haircut, showing off his physique and his dick. Black and white, like Physique Pictorial and other early gay-coded physique magazines, which just started publishing nudes in 1964. When Dryer was 18 years old.
Ok, we didn't know all of those details -- I don't even know what a sack is.
We may have seen Dryer when he switched from football to acting, guesting as hunks on Laverne and Shirley (1980), Lou Grant (1981), CHIPS (1982), and Hart to Hart (1984).
Not to mention four episodes of Chips (1982-87), playing focus character Sam Malone's former teammate on the Boston Red Sox, now a flashy, hetero-horny sports reporter.
We may even have tuned in to Hunter on occasion, or to Land's End (1995-96), about another renegade cop with a "stunning" partner, just to catch a glimps of Dryer's incredible bulge.
Dryer never played a gay character or expressed the tiniest feminine-coded interest, on screen or in real life. He scowled and smirked through the world, never doubting for a moment that there were buddies to watch the game with and babes to kiss in the moonlight, that no man in human history had ever wanted to kiss a man.
Until the nude photo appeared on some of the protypical 1990s nude celebrity websites.
It showed someone who looked like a young Dryer in an early 1960s haircut, showing off his physique and his dick. Black and white, like Physique Pictorial and other early gay-coded physique magazines, which just started publishing nudes in 1964. When Dryer was 18 years old.
We were entranced. The icon of heteronormativity had a gay past. Or a gay-for-pay past.
Nitpickers pointed out that this guy doesn't look 18, and his hairstyle is appropriate for the 1950s, not the shaggy hippie 1960s, but tiny details couldn't get in the way of a good story: Fred Dryer was, or had been, one of us.
More after the break