Christopher George: Soldier, cowboy, spy, warlock, Hugh Hefner, and nude model. Is there a gay connection?

When Christopher George posed for Playgirl, in June 1974, he was 43 years old and a Hollywood veteran, famous for Rat Patrol and about 50 gung-ho, "can we win this time?" war and cowboy movies.

He reclines, eating watermelon, a little paunchy in middle age, but hirsute, tanned, gold-chained, the sharp phallic knife accentuating his obvious gifts beneath the belt.

IMDB calls him a "solidly built, boyishly handsome leading man."  He was born in 1931 to Greek immigrants, and didn't learn English until he was six years old.  In high school in Miami, he played football, soccer, and track, drove trucks, and shot alligators.  

He was planning to become a Greek Orthodox priest, but in 1948 he dropped out of high school to join the Marines, and got the acting bug.  While waiting for his break, he held a variety of macho jobs, like bouncer, private investigator, and owner of a beer bar.  He started on the stage, roles in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Mr. Roberts, The Moon is Blue, and Stalag 17.

In 1965, he got a guest spot on Bewitched as George the Warlock, a Hugh Hefner-like playboy with a harem of women. Endora hires to seduce Samantha, but he likes her attractive neighbor more. 

He was also cast in In Harm's Way. with John Wayne as a naval officer who wants to beat the Japanese during World War II.  The two shared a gung-ho, macho philosophy, and became lifelong friends.Lots of rough, true-grit war and cowboy movies, flag-waving reactions to the pot-smoking, draft-card-burning, "can't tell the boys from the girls" hippies: Massacre Harber, The Thousand Plane Raid, The Devil's 8, Midway, Mayday at 40,000 Feet!

In Project X, 1968, Christopher plays a spy whose memories of a top-secret Commie weapon are being suppressed, so the good guys use advanced technology to extract them.  He has sex with the naked lady on the movie poster.

Christopher also did some modeling.  That's how he met Lynda Day, who became famous for her work on Mission Impossible and her Playboy centerfold.  They were married in 1970.

A heavy drinker and smoker throughout his life, Christopher died of a heart attack on November 28, 1983.  He received a Greek Orthodox funeral. In 2009, the Marines flew a flag at the Iwo Jima memorial

Is there any gay potential to such an indefatigably macho, hetero-horny, beefy, boyishly handsome Hugh Hefner?

Answer after the break

Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost buddies, one gay, one bi, solve afterlife mysteries. With Luke Gage and WW1 soldier bonus

 

A growling, snarling World War I soldier -- played by Chris Pereira -- chases two teenage ghosts through the British Museum.  The intellectual Edwin surmises that his gas mask is cursed: they'll have to destroy it to restore him to wholeness, so he can go on to the afterlife.  They'll need the Minor Arcana, Volume 4, but the athletic Charles can't find it in his magic bookbag.  

With the ghost-monster in hot pursuit, they run through a mirror, but end up in a hotel, not back in the office.  Edwin explains that it's hard to locate the right mirror-dimension when you're being chased by a gas mask monster.  

Flashback to the Dead Boy Detectives office a few days ago: A World War I nurse explains that she's been hanging aroud the British Museum long after her death to help the many lost souls from her era enter the afterlife.  But one has been cursed and turned into a monster.  She hires the boys to help him.

Left: Chris's butt

Back in the present, the boys rush through the hotel, find another mirror, and end up in their office.  The monster follows!   Charles manages to tear his gas mask off -- the snarling monster underneath spews blood all over and tries to stab him. Meanwhile Edwin finds the right book, says the incantation, and the gas mask bursts into flames.  Back in human form, the ghost is calm, but confused.  The boys tell him that he 's dead, still fighting a war that ended over 100 years ago. 

Left: Chris's cock.  I know he only appears in this episode, but where else are you going to see it?

Uh-oh, Death is coming to guide him to the afterlife.  The boys have to hide, or she'll take them, too!

That's a lot of world-building in five minutes, but it comes while the boys are being chased, assaulted, threatened, and zapped about, so it goes down easily.  

The Dead Boy Detectives, a paranormal take on the common British "boy detective" genre, appeared in a number of comics and limited edition graphic novels during the 1990s and 2000s, all taking place in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe.  Edwin, the intellectual one, died in 1916, when some boarding school bullies tried to scare him by pretending to offer him as a sacrifice to Satan.  The spell worked, and he was sent to hell.  

He stayed until 1989, when some of the residents of hell escaped and laid waste to a boarding school. The athletic Charles was killed in the ruckus.  He would be going to the Sandman-world version of Heaven, but he decided to wait and hang out with his new ghost-buddy.  Now they are detectives, helping lost souls with unfinished business, lost memories, or curses that prevent them from moving on. They must keep a low profile and not perform much magic, to avoid detection from Death and an afterlife "Missing Souls" bureacracy.

Spoiler alert: In the comics, Edwin is gay, and Charles is bisexual.  They don't date each other, however: who said any two random gay/queer dudes must automatically be into each other? 

I watched the first episode of the tv series to see if the pair, now played by the considerably older George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, were heterosexualized.

The answer after the break

"Nobody Wants This": Rabbi and "bad date" podcaster fall in love, with a gay dad and a lesbian best friend

 

I certainly didn't want to see a tv show called Nobody Wants This, a romcom about a rabbi and an agnostic girl who fall in love.  But I needed a half hour series, and it stars Adam Brody, who has played gay characters, and Kristen Bell, whose character was bisexual-vague in The Good Place.  So maybe there will be some gay representation.

Scene 1: Joanne, Kristen Bell, runs away from a guy during their first date because he starts crying about how he lost his grandmother -- when he was 12!   Switch to her podcast, where she asks "Am I the asshole?"  30 minutes of the date, and she learned that Grandma was a Rockette, and spent 42 years with her soulmate, William.  A little much.

Sister Morgan: You always do this.  You meet a nice guy, and find something wrong with him.  It's like you don't want to be in a relationship. Who wants to watch a podcast about Joanne's relationship trouble?  Oh, wait, this is a whole tv show about it.

Scene 2: Switch to Noah (Adan Brody) talking to his brother, Sasha, Timothy Simmons, who is heterosexual -- "Is Esther cheating on me?"

 "No, you have to stop letting Mom cut your hair. It's dumb."  Inside, they prepare to watch the game with a lady named Beck, whom Noah kisses.  

She was snooping around and found an engagement ring in a locked drawer, so she started planning the wedding.  Noah wanted to ask, so it would be romantic. Besides, invasion of privacy.  They argue; he dumps her.

Scene 3: Jeanne, Morgan, and an old guy, Michael Hitchcock, having dinner.  Wait, there's an old lady on the other side of the booth; it's the anniversary of the day Mom and Dad got divorced!  

Mom explains to the cute waiter, Keith Walker, that they were ecstatically happy for 32 years, but then he became "a bit confused about his sexuality."  Oh, no, not another "you're just confused."  That's ancient!

She continues: "It's very trendy to be gay these days, so he switched." 

Jeanne and her sister cut her off before she says anything else stupid.

Later, Jeanne gets a phone call from a Bigwig, who wants to "talk acquisition, a spin-off, and a book deal.  Just keep having wacky relationship problems."  Uh-oh, Girlfriend is finding true love later this episode.

Scene 4: Jeanne in bed, thinking of podcast ideas, when her best friend Ashley calls to invite her to a dinner party tonight.

"Who's going to be there?" Jeanne asks with a frown. "Bunch of lesbians?"  Why don't you like LGBT people, Jeanne?  Angry because your dad turned gay?

Best friend Ashley assures her that some heterosexuals are invited, including some men that she can date and find something wrong with for the podcast: a divorced dude with a kid, so you can make fun of him for being a bad dad; a finance guy who can't talk about anything else; and a rabbi, so you can make circumcision jokes. 

Jeanne is excited.  "They sound awful!  I'll be there!"

Scene 5: The party, in a huge mansion...um, middle class house.  Mostly women, a heterosexual male-female couple, a fruity guy flirting with a woman.  

Jeanne kisses best friend Ashley on the mouth, and gets rejected. "Ewww...not gay for you." Wait, you dislike gay people, remember? Or maybe you hate everybody, so it's not homophobia, it's misanthropy/misogyny? 

Next she sidles up to Noah, who thinks she's going through a crisis.  "No, I'm just in constant need of attention."  He has the same problem, constantly needing people to tell him he's cute. 

That reminds her -- "There's a rabbi here!  Let's find him so we can make fun of him!"  She points out a bearded guy on the other side of the room.

As everyone goes in to dinner, Joanne seeks out Best Friend Ashley.  "I think I'm really into the Divorced Guy!"  

"Good.  He's a horrible person, a condescending asshole, perfect for your podcast."  Funny, that doesn't sound like Noah....

Big Reveal after the break. Caution: Explicit.