Bobby Diamond: A horse's costar, a non-DIckensian Pip, Dunky Gillis, gymnast, nude flower child, and the Mighty Mightor

 


Dig this vintage commercial from the 1950s.  Bobby is trying to chop wood, but he's too weak, causing him to lose the respect of his friend, dad, and horse.  Then his other dad calls them to lunch.  They burst with excitement: they're having Borden's Cottage Cheese!!!!








The cooking-and-cleaning dad plops on "any kind of fruit."  Yuck!

The friend pours syrup on an enormous pile of the gunk.  Yuck again!

Bobby makes a cottage cheese-and-jelly sandwich.  Triple yuck!  

But shoveling the vile stuff into his face gives Bobby the energy to chop that wood and earn his gay dads' love.

And he takes his shirt off, causing conniption fits among the gay boys of the era.


During the 1950s, television characters commonly sold the product during the story ("Let's take a break for some Maxwell House Coffee -- It's so incredibly delicious!"), so this commercial was probably shown during Fury (1955-60), a modern-day Western: The orphaned Joey (Bobby Diamond) is adopted by Jim (Peter Graves), a rancher with a horse named Fury.  His friend might be Packy (Roger Mobley), and the dad who does the cooking Pete (William Fawcett).







Born in 1943, Bobby was discovered by a talent scout and put to work in 1952, with uncredited roles in The Silver Whip, The Lady Wants Mink, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Half a Hero, and many other movies,, plus one tv show, Father Knows Best. 

In 1955, he was cast as the lead in Fury, and achieved the greatest stardom of his career. 

Though Bobby was an adolescent during the course of the series, he was generally excused from expressing heterosexual interest (he gets a crush on a girl in one episode).  The producers did give him a series of best friends to get into scrapes with: after Packy, Pee Wee (Jimmy Baird), and then Buzz (Stuffy Singer), but they didn't express any heterosexual interest, either.  The episode "Pee Wee Grows Up" would today mean getting a girlfriend, but in 1956 it meant signing up for a bodybuilding course.

After Fury, Bobby was offered My Three Sons, which became a mega-hit, but instead he decided to play to his strengths, and become the adopted son of newlywed Nannette Fabray on Westinghouse Playhouse.  It lasted for only 25 episodes. (He did score three My Three Sons guest spots)


During the Swinging Sixties, the Westerns of yesteryear seemed old-fashioned and obsolete, and the former cowboy star had trouble finding roles, in spite of his willingness to take off his shirt.

And, reputedly, his pants, as this art photo from around 1965 suggests.  Notice the penis in the mirror, very rare in the 1960s.






Moises Arias: Rico on "Hannah Montana," grows up to play gay characters and show his bum, but is he actually gay? With a hung O'Hearn

 

In 2006, the Disney channel premiered Hannah Montana, about a teenage girl who is secretly a pop star (just go with it).  Hannah was surrounded by a coterie of hunks and hunkoids, including her father Robby (Billy Ray Cyrus), her brother Jackson (Jason Earle), her buddy Oliver (Mitchell Musso), her crush Jake (Cody Linley) -- and Rico Suave (Moises Arias), the billionaire's son, schemer, and prankster who ran Rico's Surf Shop and various other business enterprises.  




Rico's love/hate relationship with Jackson, his employee and classmate, eventually turned to love: they became best friends.  Maybe they were dating in real life, too.  Or maybe Moises was dating Ryan Ochoa, or Jaiden Smith, Will Smith's nonbinary and probably pansexual child.

By the time the series ended in 2011, Moises had become the best and brightest of the Short Guy Brigade: 5'1", muscular, cute, and "obviously" gay.







After Hannah, Moises concentrated on movies and tv shows with gay subtext buddy-bonds or even LGBTQ characters:

In The Kings of Summer (2013), two teenage boys, including Gabriel Basso (left), and their nonbinary, agendered friend Biaggio (Moises) decide to spend the summer together in the wilderness. 









I didn't see Ender's Game (2013), since it was based on a book by homophobic Orson Scott Card, but the plot synopsis suggests a love-hate relationship between far-future space captain Bonzo Madrid (Moises) and Ender (Asa Butterfield).

The Land (2016) features four teenage boys who want to be skateboard champs.





In Ben-Hur (2016), Moises plays Dismas, a Jewish zealot who tries to kill Pontius Pilate from Ben-Hur's balcony.  The guards arrest Ben-Hur, of course, but he loves Dismas too much to betray him.

In Five Feet Apart (2019), he plays a gay disabled guy who lives in a cystic fibrosis ward and facilitates his buddy's heterosexual romance.

He lives in a post-Apocalyptic vault-community and buddy-bonds with a boy in Fallout (2024).




More Moises after the break

Modern Family Episode 5.13: Jay acts girly, Mitch and Cam butt in, and Phil wants Keefe's lips on his mouth. Who doesn't?


I've been so busy checking Modern Family for homophobic subtexts with Adam Devine that I missed a gay subtext in Episode 5.13, "Three Dinners": 

Modern Family has a very large cast: closet-making tycoon Jay Pritchett; his new wife Gloria and her son;  daughter Claire and her husband and three children; and son Mitchell and his partner, eventually husband.  Episodes usually send smaller groups out on separate adventures, so I'll cover the three dinners separately.







Dinner 1:
Jay and Gloria are dining with their close friends, Shorty (Chazz Palminteri, who has appeared in four previous episodes) and his wife.  They've been taking Spanish classes, because they're moving to Costa Rica!    They expect Jay and Gloria to be happy for them, but Jay immediately becomes critical: "You hate humidity! They have mosquitos the size of your fist!"

Cut to Shorty and Jay playing pool, Jay still complaining about the move: "It's a terrible idea.  You get into things without thinking, and then you need me to come and rescue you!" They argue about a lot of things from their never-mentioned-before shared history, and finally break up.

Gloria and her son Manny advise Jay that he always pushes his friends away, so when they leave him, it doesn't hurt as much. Aww, you can't open yourself up to love, unless it involves sex.

"You're the greatest generation," Manny says, "But you can't feel."

Jay lashes out with a facetious accusation that Manny and Gloria are lovers, an incest joke playing into the homophobic slur that all gay men are in love with their mothers.  He keeps playing on it until the viewers are cringing: "Why don't you two go cuddle!"


Later, we see Jake sitting in the kitchen, getting drunk and thinking about how much Shorty means to him.  Finally he decides to drive over and apologize -- dude, you're drunk -- but Shorty beats him to it.  They hug and cry.  Gloria, eavesdropping, snits: "This is a little girlier than I thought."  Wait, first you criticize him for not displaying emotion, and now you criticize him for displaying emotion.  Make up your mind, lady!

More dinners after the break

"Teacup": Body-jumping aliens, two heterosexual romances, a gay subtext boyfriend betrayal, and Rob's knob


Probably-gay actor Jackson Kelley notes that he had a starring role in the paranormal horror Teacup, on Peacock. I figured he would be playing a gay character, so I checked it out.

The premise: On a farm full of good country folk, animals start behaving strangely, then people start trembling and speaking in riddles.  The power and WIFI go out. 

An invisible "teacup" trap marked by a blue line appears around the property; any person or animal that crosses it dies a horrible death.  A guy in a gas mask keeps patroling and gesturing.  Sound doesn't get through, so he uses a board to say things like: "Stay behind the line" and "Trust no one" 


The people trapped inside the "teacup" are divided into heterosexual nuclear families:

Family #1: James (Scott Speedman, left, from Animal Kingdom), his wife (a veterinarian), sick elderly mother, teenage daughter, and preteen son.

Family #2: Ruben (Chaske Spencer from Twilight), his wife, and his teeange son, trapped there when they brought their horse to see the veterinarian.   

Soap opera plotlines: The wife is secretly having an affair with James, and the son has been in love with James' daughter since he was in second grade, but is trapped in the Friend Zone (but not for long). 


Family #3: Donald Kelley (Boris McGiver. left) and his wife from the farm next door also happen to be there when the teacup is  put up.

The Newcomers: While everyone is dealing with the crisis and soap opera stuff, preteen Arlo (Caleb Dolden) tells his sister and her not-boyfriend that the Assassin is coming to kill them all.  The only way they can escape is with a multicolored liquid from a crashed meteor, so they gather a vial full.

Gas Mask Guy wants the vial, and crosses the blue line to get it, whereupon they stab him.  

Meanwhile, James finds the injured Travis (Jackson) hiding in the basement, worried that he's "one of them" and ready to shoot.  As they have a standoff, Travis tells his story:


Gas Mas Guy at a Bar: Flashback to Travis as the new guy working at the bar, mesmerized by Gas Mask Guy, McNab (Rob Morgan).  Wouldn't you be?


















Left: Rob Morgan having coffee n*ude.  But he doesnt' have a lot of tattoos; maybe it's his breakfast companion?

He's telling about the aliens who set force-field "teacup" traps that incinerate any complex organism that tries to get through.  They're non-corporeal, using human bodies as hosts.  They can jump from body to body.  Often the humans aren't even aware of it, so anyone could be hosting an alien.

Bartender Big Al tells Travis to pay attention to the other customers; he'll wait on McNab himself.




More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.