They have everything for you men to enjoy
You can hang out with all the boys
More than three decades before the U.S. military would openly accept gays and lesbians among their ranks, The Village People single “In The Navy” shot to #3 on the pop chart while boasting homosexual undertones. The U.S. Navy’s reaction? They embraced the song, asking for permission to use it as a recruiting tool. The band agreed, if the Navy would help them shoot a video. The Navy welcomed them to San Diego, and the band shot their video on the deck of USS Reasoner, replete with a couple of official Navy uniforms and waving semaphore flags.
But this is how the 1970s operated at times. The mainstream culture was highly repressive. There was a premium on conformity and serious consequences for transgressing norms. So the 1960s freak/counter culture, which squares had relentlessly castigated and marginalized, now remade itself into something that could deviously mingle with square culture. It hid in plain sight by going full tilt, by becoming so flashy and “weird” that its weirdness grabbed the spot light and distracted from its queerness.
As if by some intentionally clumsy slight-of-hand, 1970s pop culture would occasionally queer straight culture in ways that were so over the top that straight culture didn’t even realize it was being queered. May of the squares, so confident in the rightness of their ways, could not even envision such blatant subversiveness. And when confronted with over the top subversions, they were not only blind to the counterculture messaging, but danced right along with the song. Thus, it was not unusual, for example, for violent homophobes to buy Village People singles, not realizing The Village People were gay. And of course corporate America was fine with that if it made money.
This was the broken magic of the 1970s.
And no outcast ringleader ever waved a wicked wand quite like Rip Taylor, who passed away recently at age 84.
Born in Washington, D.C., Charles Taylor was one of those closeted gay men who joined the Army and served in the Korean War. Afterwards he worked as a standup comedian in the Jewish and Italian resorts of New York’s Catskill Mountains, just north of the city. Like many comics of the era, he also played strip clubs up and down the East Coast.
Much of Taylor’s early material was cribbed from USO shows he’d seen in the service. He also relied heavily on props. One night he bombed. No one laughed. So he pretended to cry. That cracked the audience up. His first successful act, The Crying Comedian, was born, and faux crying would remain part of his routine til the end. Showering audiences with confetti soon followed.
As the Crying Comedian, Taylor made it to The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963. During the 1970s he emerged as the brand of Hollywood B-celebrity who made regular appearances on TV game shows. More than 2.000 times he popped up on the likes of The Hollywood Squares, Match Game, The Gong Show and Super Password. His big ham cries and risque style also landed him other appearances. He was a sobbing casino manager on The Monkees. He was the maid Alice’s love interest on The Brady Bunch. He was in a movie about a talking vagina called Chatterbox (1977) and a Mr. Deeds spoof called The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977). But his star-turn came as host of The $1.98 Beauty Contest (1978-80).
This was the ultimate 1970s over-the-top/under-the-straight-radar subversion.
A panel of three B-celebrity judges never said a word as half-a-dozen women paraded through introductions, and bathing suit and talent competitions. The women looked like regular women. They were no where near to boasting that beauty pageant grace. Some of them strove hard for victory, god bless them. And some were in on the joke. The winner got a gaudy, floppy tin foil tiara, a bouquet of vegetables, and about a $1.98 that Taylor ka-chinged out of a coin dispenser on his belt while he sang her a song.
The $1.98 Beauty Contest subverted heteronormativity. It subverted gender norms. It subverted status hierarchies. It subverted capitalism. And all the while, most of the straights watching the show didn’t even realize they were being queered. They just thought it was “weird.”
But such magical suberversions come at a cost. Taylor had a beard early in his career, a Las Vegas showgirl named Rusty Rowe whom he married. Later on, not only did he never marry his long time male partner, Robert Fortney (who survives him), but he never even came out. When author Brent Hartinger called him “openly gay” as recently as 2008, the then-73 year old Taylor went into full denial mode.
“You don’t know me to summarize that I am openly gay,” Taylor shot back. “I don’t know that you’re not an openly heroin user. You see how that works? Think before you write.”
So enjoy this vintage edition of what is, in my humble opinion, the most subversive show in American history, by both laughing and crying. It’s the only honest, open thing we can do.