HENRY WILLSON - Make It On Your Back, Boys! Part Two!!

First thread.

Which single film had the most number of Willson "discoveries" in it?

I'm 581 and too many other posts on the OG thread.

[quote]Watching Laramie is like a guessing game as to how many scenes John Smith's VPL will be displayed.

[R531], I need to go back through the episodes to see if the Smith VPL episodes were filmed by the same director (Lesley Selander, Joseph Kane, or Francis Lyon, who directed the most episodes).

[quote](R582)^Have fun, and don't play a drinking game finding the scenes. You'll be drunk after the second episode!

Too late! Brought my old Dad back from a barber's appointment, got him settled, fixed a nice stiff cocktail, and started my scholarly research on [italic]Laramie[/italic] VPL. 2-1/2 drinks in, I wanna know how you knew I'd be drinking gamely as I re-watched, feeling sad I couldn't do... ahem, *original* oral history research.

What a tragedy for academe.

Ooh, great question R2.

Someone mentioned James Drury in the last thread. He was hot as hell

Z is for...

Chad will have to be the first pic.

So many of the cowboy actors have been mentioned but I haven't seen anything on Will Hutchins, star of "Sugarfoot." I thought he was impossibly cute and his character's shyness was very appealing. Anyone know anything about him? He'd have been around the same time as Ty Hardin, Clint Walker and some of the others already discussed.

I also liked John Russell, star of "Lawman." Strikingly, darkly handsome. Very intense actor. Fairly extensive filmography, primarily movies.

Will Hutchins is still alive at 90+ years old

John Russell was gorgeous

[quote]I wanna know how you knew I'd be drinking gamely as I re-watched, feeling sad I couldn't do... ahem, *original* oral history research.

Wild guess, LOL. Something to aid in your continuation…

[quote]Someone mentioned James Drury in the last thread. He was hot as hell

That was me, and yes he was!

What baffles me is how Barbara Eden’s belly button was considered too hot for tv back then, but a man’s clearly visible junk was able to make it past the censors over and over.

John Russell and Michael Moriarty are the best things about Eastwood's classic [italic]Pale Rider.[/italic]

Russell isn't even in 1/3 of the film, yet steals the whole damn thing, imo. So intense and semi-cadaverous, as though he's a spectre dressed in the nattiest longcoat EVER.

Those cheekbones could slice up a bitch.

I still have my Lawman lunchbox (and thermos), r8. I didn't pick it out, I think my mom liked John Russell.

Did Russell have some Native American ancestry? Lawman still airs nightly on Starz, and his high cheekbones are hard not to notice (although I mainly tune in for that sexy rascal Peter Brown). John Russell looked amazing as the shirtless trouble maker in Yellow Sky with Gregory Peck.

I first saw John Russell in Forever Amber, with Linda Darnell

He was so striking

Will "Sugarfoot" Hutchins was married to Carol Burnett's younger half sister, Chris, for a time. They had one daughter.

James Garner's first job, or one of them, was as a member of the court in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (play), starring Henry Fonda (and John Hodiak, Lloyd Nolan). Garner had no lines in the play. He said he learned a lot about acting watching Fonda every night.

William Smith

Will Hutchins a couple years ago.

The lawmen of Warner Bros television.

It really is astounding how many Western series were on weekly TV back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially considering how similar most of the plots and characters were in all of them. Of course, what only really distinguished them were the hot leading men.

^That's a whole lotta testosterone. John Kelly (between Peter Brown and Ty Hardin) was one of the Maverick brothers. Watching Maverick reruns every night, I'm noticing that he, like Garner, had a pretty thick butt and thighs.

Amazing it took a second thread and more than 600 posts before sexy William Smith was mentioned. He had the distinction of being the hottest villain of the Westerns and probably appeared as one on every single series back then. Lots of shirtless brawling as I remember.

Wanted Dead or Alive plays on Starz every night, and I watch with lust as Steve McQueen nabs the bad guys showing off his tight, pert butt in skintight tan pants.

Clint Walker, Hugh O'Brian, John Lupton

[quote]Amazing it took a second thread and more than 600 posts before sexy William Smith was mentioned. He had the distinction of being the hottest villain of the Westerns and probably appeared as one on every single series back then.

He was one of the good guys on the short-lived series Laredo (which also starred Peter Brown, Neville Brand, Philp Carey and Robert Wolders). That man had quite a bod on him.

Hugh O'Brian was gorgeous. For some odd reason, he always strikes me as having gayface. I believe there were rumors...

Neville Brand, Peter Brown, Robert Wolders, William Smith

Mr. Garner looks rather pained, r21.

[quote]r24 = He had the distinction of being the hottest villain of the Westerns

He also has the distinction of raping Miss Kitty and shooting her in the back.

R30 he’s thinking about the cable knit diaper he was wearing in the last thread

My favorite western as a kid other than Rifleman was have Gun, Will Travel, with Richard Boone.

The gorgeous Robert Wolders wound up being a boytoy companion to both Merle Oberon and then after she died, he took up with Audrey Hepburn until she died.

Wolders with Hepburn.

I think it's fair to say probably most of DLrs owe their taste in men, and possibly their orientation, to Henry Willson

r14 What a prize. btw, your mom has good taste.

R36 um, I was born this way. Mr Willson was a living, breathing self loathing asshole.

R34, and then to Henry Fonda's widow, Shirlee, until he died.

[quote]Mr. Garner looks rather pained, [R21].

Probably because he was the only liberal Democrat amongst all those republicans.

I really liked the private investigators shows more than the westerns. Surfside Six - in Miami BEACH, Hawaiian Eye, and 77 Sunset Strip.....

John Lupton, the hottie somewhat outshone in r26 can be seen as a young blonde chorus boy (or maybe the assistant stage manager) in the rehearsal and cast party scenes in the musical film THE BANDWAGON. It's fun tracking his character there. But I've forgotten the name of the Western in which he starred.

I love watching Hugh O'Brian in anything he did back then but somehow, I wasn't too aware of him when I was kid. Maybe Wyatt Earp was earlier than some of the other Westerns I used to watch (just for the beefcake).

Hugh had it all as his bright yellow speedo in Love Has Many Faces showed us.

[quote]That's a whole lotta testosterone. John Kelly (between Peter Brown and Ty Hardin) was one of the Maverick brothers. Watching Maverick reruns every night, I'm noticing that he, like Garner, had a pretty thick butt and thighs.

JACK Kelly, not John.

[quote]JACK Kelly, not John.

Right! Oops!

Jack Kelly, smoldering...

Jack Kelly looks far sexier in that photo at r46 than he ever looked on Maverick.

R34 r35 he was bad luck.

I think Hugh O’Brian finally married in his 60’s or later. He finally found the right woman. George Nader, mentioned earlier, was indeed hot, gay and not particularly closeted for the time. He was a lifelong friend, confidante and heir of Rock Hudson.

R49 Nancy Sinatra, Sr bearded for Hugh for 30 seconds

R34 After Audrey, Wolders moved on to Henry Fonda's much younger widow, Shirlee.

William Smith posed for Bob Mizer at one point. Most of Mizer's models posed full-frontal for him. I wonder if there are nudes of Smith out there.

Nice McQueen bulge in the season 3 opening credits of WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE...

[quote]William Smith posed for Bob Mizer at one point. Most of Mizer's models posed full-frontal for him. I wonder if there are nudes of Smith out there.

There are some nice posing strap pics of him online.

R49, according to one blogger site:

[quote][Hugh] married for the first time in 2006, at the age of 81, but according to close friend Debbie Reynolds, he was straight. He just wasn't ready to settle down yet.

Hugh O'Brian and Debbie Reynolds in "The King and I" costume.

^Is he smelling chocolate chip or sugar cookies?

If Debbie Reynolds said it, then it must be true?

Absofuckinglutely.

And who can ever forget the pictorial of Hugh, Scott Brady, Tony Curris, and Rock Hudson at the Finlandia Baths?

carnivore

/Curtis

R56 methinks Debbie was making a ha-ha

Why were they in those costumes?

R61, I wonder how much sucking and fucking went on after the shoot ended...

Rock on top.

(Hudson, Curtis, Wagner)

R24, same for L.Q. Jones, imo, who pops up on virtually every TV Western and many films.

I guess he didn't have the right "look" to become a star, but I love watching him any time he shows up on my TV, never knowing whether his character will be slyly good (rare but enjoyable), or slyly bad (usually, but enjoyable). There's just something sexy and a bit menacing about him.

His small part in [italic]Casino[/italic] encapsulates the essence of L.Q. Jones: we're never quite sure he's slightly good or slightly bad, but still damned enjoyable as a rakish silver daddy.

R28, Hugh O'Brian and Raymond Burr were the first two men who triggered my gaydar, way back when I was a kid in the early 70s before I even knew what "gay" was.

Justus Ellis McQueen Jr.

Someone in the previous thread alluded to LQ not being good-looking, but I, too, disagree. There was something sexy about him, and he was so rascally in his recurring guest role on The Virginian.

R48 makes Wolders sound like Oscar the Nursing Home Cat.

R68 R70 and R71 and anyone else interested in LQ Jones, look for his interviews with Rob Word, A Word on Westerns on YouTube.

Jones was a guest several times, telling stories about everything from Gunsmoke and The Virginian to The Wild Bunch.

Even in his 90s he was quite the character. He died in 2022 at the ripe old age of 94.

^This is a good one...

R42 Lupton starred in the short-lived TV series, Broken Arrow. I think Michael Ansara played Cochise (James Stewart and Jeff Chandler in the movie.)

Lupton was also in Battle Cry (with Tab Hunter and others, dir. Raoul Walsh). He played a serious, naive young Marine who falls in love with a young prostitute (Anne Francis). Also in The Story of Three Loves for MGM.

[quote]young Marine who falls in love with a young prostitute (Anne Francis)

beauty mark = prostitute

Battle Cry (1955) trailer:

^Lupton in glasses, with Francis, and Van Heflin, Dorothy Malone, Aldo Ray, Tab Hunter, Nancy Olson, Mona Freeman, Raymond Massey.

^L. Q. Jones, also. James Whitmore, William Campbell.

Presenting...

Mr. Stuart Whitman

The hot Daddy appeal of Scott Brady should not be overlooked. Here, he faces off with the aforementioned John Russell for the affections of Whyvonne DeCarlo way back in 1949. Scott also had a TV series in which he wore a very tight sheriff's uniform. He filled out the pants extremely nicely, front and back.

Scott Brady was the brother of Lawrence Tierney, who was also hot but CRAZY

R80, Stuart Whitman was Oscar-nominated for "The Mark" (1961), in which he played a convicted child molester. Controversial stuff for its time. The movie also starred Rod Steiger and Maria Schell. He lost the Best Actor Oscar race to Maria's brother, Maximilian Schell.

[quote]Scott also had a TV series in which he wore a very tight sheriff's uniform. He filled out the pants extremely nicely, front and back.

Could it be "Shotgun Slade?"

*Whoops, not a sheriff's uniform, but still hot nonetheless.

BATTLE CRY features not only John Lupton, Tab Hunter and Anne Francis, but also Dorothy Malone and Aldo Ray! A DL Delight of a film.

The Mark

I liked James Best.....He did a lot of Westerns when he was young and hot and ended up as Sheriff Coltrane on Smoky and the Bandit.

[quote]when he was young and hot and ended up as Sheriff Coltrane on Smoky and the Bandit

He played that character on The Dukes of Hazard.

Ah tks R89. I was confusing him with this guy - Mike Henry. He acted in westerns after Tarzan. What a hunk

This thread has me thinking a lot about the cultural dominance of the Western in mid-century entertainment and its need for a steady supply of good-looking men who could ride a horse and convincingly wear a gun belt and cowboy boots. Seems like a lot of the men mentioned here strayed into acting because they fit the bill.

When the Western faded, what happened to the hunk? Do these kinds of men no longer get into acting? Is that why Hollywood imports so many Australian actors? Is Glen Powell the only current actor in this lineage?

Did soaps and CW-type shows, targeted at women, require only pretty boys who looked good in close-ups? Will future DL eldergays be rhapsodizing about 2nd leads on bygone cable vampire shows?

[quote]When the Western faded, what happened to the hunk?

Good question. It wasn't only on Westerns that hunks reigned. They were in swimsuits like in shows like 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Surfside Six, Adventures in Paradise etc.

We seem to have grown tired of the hunks and the audience was skewing younger. We wanted funny shows like The Monkees, Batman, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and That Girl. The hunks were left by the wayside except on the long running popular Westerns. Maybe we grew tired of gorgeous but wooden acting. Dark Shadows introduced us to hunky vampires but nothing like Henry Willson's boys. Maybe that's what we need -- another Henry Wilson.

R92 we got nothing to compare to Henry's men now and I feel sorry for today's gaylings. The occasional Marvel hunk? Chris Hemsworth? Alan Ritchson? Henry Cavill ?Jason Mamoa? Brad Pitt with all his peels?

R93

Whitman spends most of SANDS OF THE KALAHARI wearing only short shorts and desert boots. And he looks damn fine. He plays a proto-MAGA survivalist shithead.

Big crush on Christopher George.

Dale Robertson (“Tales of Wells Fargo”) kind of fell into acting, I believe. He wasn’t a Willson boy, but he was a fine specimen nonetheless.

Dale had a great ass in “Tales…”. He also showed it off nicely in the movie “Son of Sinbad.”

James Best was a cousin of Phil and Don the Everly Brothers.

Henry Willson told Jonathan Gilmore that Scott Brady was an easy lay if he had a couple of drinks.

And here is the story of Rad Fulton.....pretty much tells how Henry Willson worked......

Michael Craig - starred in Mysterious Island in the early 60's. Very handsome with nice features. He also co-starred w/Susan Hayward in 'Stolen Hours' - with a story line similar to 'Dark Victory'.

I wonder if Doug McClure was ever propositioned by Willson. With his blonde, hunky good looks, you can only imagine what went through Willson’s mind when he spotted him.

McClure, Drury and Fuller, just hanging around being brahs.

Michael Craig, still standing, turned 96 last month. At his most lovely in Visconti's SANDRA (65).

Wasn't Michael Craig Barbra Streisand's Nicky Arnstein the post-Broadway West End London FUNNY GIRL?

The success of these threads convinces me that Datalounge is > 90% Eldergays > 80 years old.

^Well, I’m 48, so…

Suffice it to say, this continuing thread about actors from yesteryear, many who are long gone, is leaps and bounds more interesting than any of the myriad of threads about [insert any of today’s so-called hunks name here].

When the Western faded, what happened to the hunk?

Of the male ideal on TV or in the movies is boy-like, now. Those old-time guys were manly-looking. Maybe a few like Robert Wagner or Dean were boyish. But more were manly. Now you have the sort of regressive, eternal-teenager type.

^ Even some of the hunky guys now are boyish-looking in the face.

Younger Than Springtime! And Twice As Exciting!

The modern equivalent of Henry Willson is Jeff Davis, the Teen Wolf guy. He ALLEGEDLY has quite the casting couch

He played Gertie's beau as well, r104.

Have we spoken yet of the Reason brothers? Both were incredibly hot, but Rex is a notch above his brother on the heat-o-meter. Also, add him to the deep, sonorous-voiced actors in these threads.

Tks for posting that article R99. I really enjoyed it.

The other Reason brother, Rhodes...

Was Peter Breck (THE BIG VALLEY) a Willson boy? He never wore underwear on that show, which resulted in some primo VPL in many episodes.

I think they wore drawers as underwear which has no crotch support thus the VPL.

Jim Westmoreland was in with the Gay Crowd in Hollywood. I wonder who had him. HIs wiki says he was only married once to Kim Darby for a few months.

I don't think I could stand Kim Darby loinger than a few months.

[quote]r118 = Jim Westmoreland was in with the Gay Crowd in Hollywood.

I haven't finished the article at r99 yet, but you wouldn't guess that from what I've read so far:

[quote]We were on a plane within the next few hours and we landed in Acapulco a couple of hours later. Rock made reservations for us at the Roosevelt Hotel. We had a large suite that was divided by a wall partition…one side for him, and the other side for me. Rock told me not to worry about paying for a thing as the company would cover the entire cost of the trip. Upon arriving at the hotel, we had lunch, and two hours later, Rock rented a speedboat driven by a very good water-skier. Both of us skied on only one ski, and we had a ball crisscrossing each other and jumping the wake from the boat. For the next several days, we did this daily for at least two hours a day. Man, we had a blast. One day, Rock and I were sitting on the beach drinking margaritas and I noticed two beautiful ladies sitting a few yards from us. “Hey, Rock,” I said, “there are two beauties sitting a few yards from us, and one is a real knockout.” He looked at them and said, “Well, what are you waiting for? Invite them over to join us for some drinks.” I walked over and introduced myself to the girls and one of them asked, “Is that Rock Hudson with you?” I told her it was and that he and I wanted them to join us.

*

[quote] The girls were Erica Carlson (a blonde looker), and Jill Franks (an equally fine looker with dark hair). Rock waved his hand for the waiter, who was quickly on his way back to us with our drinks. Right away, I could feel real sparks flying between Rock and Erica. She moved closer to him and they got into their own private conversation. I got lucky with Jill as she was very sweet and friendly, and we got along just great. After a few more drinks, Rock suggested that we all have dinner together in our suite. They agreed to meet us at the hotel at around six thirty.

*

[quote] When they arrived that evening, we had a few cocktails and some fun conversation. Rock was very good at telling jokes and that helped to relax both of the girls. The suite had a cozy dining area, and a waiter served us a delicious meal of all kinds of fish, vegetables, and fruit, along with a several bottles of chilled white wine. After dinner, Rock grabbed one of the bottles of wine and he and Erica moved to his private suite. Jill and I had a couple more drinks, and then we moved to my suite. I am certain that all four of us had a wonderful time that night.

Jom Westmorelands bio that he wrote is all about how many chicks he slept with. He was constantly around gay Hollywood but I guess he didn't notice

It's the people he hung with R120. Bob Conrad, Rock Hudson and so on, all well known among the lavender crowd in the 1950s Hollywood.

R119 I’ve never understood the Kim Darby/James Stacey marriage.

I know plenty of gorgeous women marry average men, but the reverse? Not hardly.

My late first husband was a boy toy in the Hollywood of the era. He had a thing with Earl Holliman for a while. He was a Mel Roberts boy.

That long Westmoreland narrative is odd. The only allusion to gayness is the Jack Elam / Neville Brand part, with them teasing him about being "light in his loafers, like Rock" and then parting with "Have a good evening, now, sweetie," before going off to stay in Rock's villa. But then Westmoreland goes on and give us a heterosexual portrait of Rock. And, there's absolutely no insight into the Henry Willson rumors. It seems to be a whitewash of real events.

Rock might have had sex with women on occasion. He had sex with his wife (according to her) so it's not like he didn't know how.

Yup....lots to read between the lines in what Rad wrote.....but quite a bit of insight on what seemed to be going on....

R118. Kim Darby was more butch than John Wayne…just sayin’

R126 it’s not that hard…so long as you’re hard

Jr. division: Johnny Crawford puts Timotee to shame.

The boys of the Valley of the Giants have it over any Teen Wolf or any “Dylan.”

*Village ⚡️

It's interesting that the Western and the "Boys Adventure Stories" genre was so dominant for so long; in novel form starting in the 19th century then seguing into films then tv in the 20th then pretty much ground to a halt by the early 70s when sci fi/fantasy/horror became dominant.

I think it was partly due to over saturation...the Western was over programmed on TV by the early 60s and people finally were burnt out seeing the same old stories filmed on one of 6 or 7 Hollywood backlots. Plus, it was so male focused....not much for women to get into other than the sight of a hunky man in tight pants. Sci fi offered similar stories but a new setting and gave more opportunities to women. It seemed modern and future forward where the western seemed dated and backward. Fantasy and horror grew in popularity too and it definitely offered more opportunities to tell stories with women and non white characters.

And, then comic book heroes started taking over and we've come full cycle...over saturation and people starting to become bored by that.

Speaking of VPLs, Gary Clarke showed an even bigger hog on "The Virginian" than Michael Landon did on "Bonanza." You can clearly make out his dick and balls on several episodes.

Chuck Connors definitely wasn't a Willson client, but the longstanding rumor that he did a gay porn reel pre-fame still persists. I've seen it, and one of the guys in it does resemble him.

Were the censors back then all gay men? Rob and Laura Petrie were still sleeping in separate beds in the mid 60s. The lengths they went to cover Jeannie's bellybutton. (I vaguely remember something about filling it with clay and covering it up wit makeup) But this? Was America so naive it didn't notice?

R128 I just watched an interview with Kim Darby from 2023 before a creening of True Grit. I'm linking to it so people can see what she looks like, if they're curious.

She was married to both James Stacy AND Rad Fulton (James Westmoreland)!

James Stacy turned out to be a creepy pedo

Oh I'd forgotten all about the Mike Henry. I don't know what retro channel or what he was in when I saw him but he was hot. It must have been a lot of fun making those westerns. Sort of like adult recess and getting paid.I loved watching a few of them after school. Big Valley was my favorite. Western or not that was a good show for any genre. Then at 7 at night I'd watch Gunsmoke with my dad. They had Monster from Bewitched on for a season or two. I remember him from Bewitched and when he hijacked some other retro show not to long ago.

Monster from Betwitched?

Mel Roberts Boys in the link.

Thanks, R124, please share more!

His model name was Sonny Adams - he's in the lower right corner of the 'Untitled Four Works' at the link with the Huck Finn hat on.

Wow, r142, he was a cutie

You are a lucky man, R142, R124.

Unfortunately, I lost him to pulmonary fibrosis in 2001. He was 53 at the time.

R136 Being honest, I never checked out a guy's bulge on a TV show until I started coming here and read about so many people doing it. I was into a show, a story--it never even occurred to me.

Who raised you? Did you not watch TV as a young man?!

R116, thanks for reminding me of Peter Breck. I was always drawn to his dark good looks, broody character, and all that leather.

r148 = Breck girl

R138 wasn't he married to Connie Stevens?

R147 Maybe because I'm more of a top, penises held no particular attraction for me, as a child? I don't think grown men did, either. I guess I didn't get into the habit of looking below the waist at every guy on TV. If they had a handsome face, I noticed.

The kind of guy I had a crush on on TV was another kid, like Jack Wild, on H R Pufnstuf, or Mitch Vodel on Bonanza.

Sorry not sorry

(Vogel)

James S was in line for the Ironside reboot. He had Hot Wheels, but he couldn’t live forever.

R151 Weak! Do better.

Was Stephen Boyd considered a hunk? He sure was handsome -- that cleft chin and those bright blue eyes. I believe he was closeted for most of his life. Big Career. Fox signed him to a 10-year-contract and he was in just about every Bible epic. He died way too young at 45 on a golf course.

Biggest/most famous role was in Ben-Hur. I was watching hium the other night in Island in the Sun (1957), the film about interracial relationships on a Caribbean island. He and Joan Collins were lovers, who later learn she has black blood. His body in that (which was seen in a beach scene) was less built up than in the photo above. He was pretty good. Collins was so emtionless in everything. She could fake it, at best.

R156 ask Gore Vidal!

R150 yes he was

[quote]Now, people sometimes get confused and think that Stephen Boyd was himself gay, which he was NOT. (Stephen fell in love and married his wife Mariella di Sarzana while filming Ben-Hur!)

Um, yeah and they stayed married for three whole weeks.

R156, Stephen Boyd looked better in moving pictures than in print. In a lot of his portraits the lighting seems to hit his face at all the wrong angles, giving him a Cro-Magnon-like appearance.

It sounds like he was hit on by every major actress out there.

Raquel Welch made Fantastic Voyage with him. “He was so hot with his cleft chin and he was so not interested in me. I tried to seduce him one time. I was so smitten with him and I was so excited every time I would come on the set I would see Stephen, and think, ‘Oh God, he’s so cute.’ He had what sounded like a Welsh brogue that was so charming.”

He was gay gay gay gay gay.

Matt Damon thought so.

[quote]Stephen Boyd looked better in moving pictures than in print. In a lot of his portraits the lighting seems to hit his face at all the wrong angles, giving him a Cro-Magnon-like appearance.

I know right? If he was lit well he could look so handsome.

Racquel finished her story with them back at the Plaza:

“For my first trip to New York, when we opened the movie, we were both staying at the Plaza Hotel, so I thought, ‘Here’s my chance!’ So Darryl Zanuck took us all out to dinner at 21 and on the way back to the hotel we shared a cab. I said to him as we were going up in the lift, ‘So Stephen, would you like to come in for a drink?’

“We got out of the lift and he walked me to my room and he said, ‘I’d like to tell you a little story that was told to me by John Gielgud when I was working with the National Theatre. You’ll have to think about it for a moment but I hope you get my drift: An actress is a little bit more than a woman, but an actor is a little bit less than a man.’

“I thought, ‘Oh! He’s not interested in me; I am the wrong sex!’

21 was a three minute walk from the Plaza🤷🏻‍♂️

Maybe it was raining.

Maybe?!

Google maps says The Plaza was an 11 to 14 minute walk from "21".

No it was less than 10 minutes. …unless you’re slow, and, don’t get how one-way streets work in Manhattan if you’re driving,

Um, it's Raquel Welch we're talking about. She didn't walk anywhere.

R169 is an IA TROLL who cannot look back six weeks—much less 60 years.

Cute Couple Alert

AI** 😎

Errol Flynn's son Sean was even better looking than his daddy. Then he went missing.

Yum!

R172 Wtf? I just looked up the walking distance by entering the two addresses on Google maps. They're easy to find.

These two were not New Yorkers. So I'm sure they just grabbed a cab outside 21. They weren't going to walk when they probably didn't even know how to get back to the plaza.

Don't be so dumb.

As dumb as someone who doesn’t live in Manhattan, and who relies on Google maps for something that occurred over 60 years ago.

Ha!

Well, I've been to 21 for lunch (when it existed) and I've been to the Plaza for drinks, so I'm not a complete nonentity. R178.

Maybe the walking distance was somehow different 60 years ago than it is now. Okay then.

Stephen Boyd was at his absolutely best in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING.

The upthread description of Peter Breck reminded me of another dark and surly hunk, Pernell Roberts who was by far my favorite Bonanza boy. He only got hotter with age as he shed his toupees as daddy Trapper John, MD.

Boyd had a short-ish starring career. He first received notice in the WWII picture The Man Who Never Was (1955 or '56) (Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame).

The Oscar (1966) is of course the nadir. I wish more people here would see that one.

Bringing us back to topic...

...Ty Hardin in THE CHAPMAN REPORT

I saw The Chapman Report once when I was home sick from junior high. Haha. Why were all these English chicks in it? Bloom, Johns. It was in LA.

I think Stephen Boyd suffered from being too good-looking in an old-fashioned sort of way, like a silent movie star.

Boyd was rather intense. he was good at playing the bad guy, like in Ben-Hur. He gave parts like that dimension. he was not a laid back leading man like Paul Newman could be, though. He wasn't all that natural.

Boyd is actually quite laid back in The Best of Everything.

R187 I think he still has a slightly menacing quality. He would have been good in the Robert Evans part (anyone would have been better than Evans). He is a lot more relaxed in that, though--you're right. I don't think the American public bought him as a leading man, though.

He was also in Jumbo, with Doris Day, a movie that opened big in New York and the cities, then died.

A regulah Rhett Butler, r181!

^Just something she saw hanging in the window.

R179 quit while you’re this far behind. TIA

Having worked with a lot of diva actresses over many decades I can assure you it wouldn't have been unusual for Raquel Welch, probably wearing 4" stilettos, to take a cab a few blocks. It still wouldn't be.

What do you wear under shorts as short as Ty Hardin’s at R183?

They're swim trunks, r193, so...nothing.

I am trying to fit Gregory Harrison into this worldview. Well, anyway, folks, I give you Gregory Harrison. Do with it as you will.

He came a generation later. Duh.

Bathing trunks like Ty Hardin's were made with an inner lining not unlike a soft tightie whitie.

Though I adored Gregory Harrison, he was already of a softer and prettier ilk than the manly hunks of the 50s and early 60s.

Stephen Boyd was the poor man's Rod Taylor

Oh, Rod Taylor was far sexier than Stephen Boyd. Actually, far sexier than just about anyone already mentioned in these 2 threads.

Though it's true he wasn't quite a Henry Willson type.

R192 And besides, she said she and Boyd took the cab. The End.

No similarity between Stephen Boyd and Rod Taylor as far as I could tell.

Boyd was closer to the poor man's Richard Burton. In fact he was cast in the original Cleopatra as Marc Antony (with Peter Finch as Caesar) that Elizabeth Taylor started filming in England before that version was abandoned.

R201 because R Welch never, ever made a up a story for effect. Never.

R204 I have no doubt Raquel Welch would never have taken a taxi from 21 to the Plaza. And Stephen Boyd would not be caught dead taking a cab with Raquel from 21 to the Plaza. They both surely would have walked. So her story about feeling attracted to him in the cab they took is a COMPLETE fabrication. You have debunked it. It was all a pack of LIES.

This makes me want to go and spit on Raquel's grave.

She's lying scum.

Why would she lie about a mostly forgotten actor? Y'all are weird

Only one person is claiming that.

And also, Raquel's story is rather self-deprecating. For her.

Sort of, but it has the "it wasn't that I wasn't hot, it's that he was gay" angle.

If Raquel was still alive I'd stick a turd in her mailbox...

Raquel was humble bragging, basically saying "the only man I couldn't attract turned out to be gay!" And in effect, outing a fellow actor who was no longer around to confirm or deny her story.

Well, as long as she didn't take a cab when she could have walked, that's all that matters.

🤙🏼^

Enough of the Raquel shit.

Bye thread.

Chuck Connors, in the flesh!

The best of Agent James West

Gregory Peck, college student. Rowing for Cal.

Peck’s origin story—he wasn’t a model as mentioned somewhere upthread.

Tony Perkins in Tall Story. He had great legs.

R221 How does that prove he was never a model?

R196 on the cusp

Gregory Peck was so pretty as a young man, he was lucky everyone seemed to take him seriously as an actor.

The aforementioned Van Williams was in Tall Story, too.

How did I miss Wild Wild West? Did it not have enough seasons to get syndication?

If you haven't been following the What's My Line thread then you need to watch Boyd's guest shot on it. He is hotter on this than any movie or pictorial. He's laughing and has his guard down and speaks in his natural voice which, as Raquel noted, is very sexy.

p.s. of course the real voice doesn't come until after the reveal.

R227 it was in endless reruns through the 80s, at least.

Stephen Boyd had the most beautiful chin ever.

I saw endless returns of Big Valley and Bonanza in the 70s, and some High Chaparral when I was really young.

IIRC the only thing Van Williams does in TALL STORY is emerge all wet and glistening out of the locker room shower. No words. Not much more than that screenshot at r226 shows us.

And yet it's quite enough to make a lasting impression.

Van Williams was offered the role of Chase in Falcon Crest. Obviously he turned it down. I guess his reasoning was something along the lines of too much work for me I'm lazy. He came from a wealthy ranching family in Texas and really didn't need the work.

Per Van during an early ‘90s Entertainment Tonight interview, he liked to work and got tired of waiting around for the phone to ring as an actor.

Tall Story was like tv porn to a young gayling watching the Million Dollar Movie or similar.

In the What's My Line segment Boyd is dead sexy. And he exudes real class. I wonder who the lucky man was with whom he spent his life. He seems like the type who'd have someone special tucked away. Assuming his thinly veiled disdain for the English and England itself was because of the "troubles" in Ireland.

He was born in Northern Ireland—Antrim. He was Canadian Scots-Irish. The Troubles had nothing to do with it…(the modern Troubles started several years after this clip).

Perkins was kind of hot in Tall Story, too. Not as hot as Van, but he was cute.

Wild Wild West did 4 seasons and was syndicated. It only got cancelled because the "concerned mom brigade" raised a fuss because it was so violent.

If you didn't see it as a kid in the 70s, maybe none of your local tv stations bought it.

I loved it. It had cool animated credits and bumpers and it was fun and scary!

Raquel's story about Boyd sounds similar to what Kathleen Turner was quoted as saying in the 1980s, "When I walk into a room and a man doesn't look at me he's gay."

Yea, because Kathleen and Raquel have do much in common🤔

Uh, they were both gorgeous sexy women (in their prime).

Um you’re insane. Apple meet orange—not.

Geez, she was gorgeous (and so was Michael York).

R245, Apologies! Wrong thread (sort of).

No straight man would walk Raquel Welch back to her hotel room and refuse the offer of a "drink." That was a classy way for Boyd to let her down easy, and a non-classy way of Welch to mention it.

Damn that was a gorgeous man.

[quote]Wild Wild West did 4 seasons and was syndicated. It only got cancelled because the "concerned mom brigade" raised a fuss because it was so violent.

I never knew that. It was a good show so it figures they'd want to kill it.

I would love a pairing Stephen Boyd and Van Williams.

[quote]I would love a pairing Stephen Boyd and Van Williams.

Would you like fries with that?

[quote]Would you like fries with that?

No, but you could pour the oil the fries would’ve been cooked in over their naked bodies.

I'd like to supersize it. Please add a large Gardner McKay to my order.

Van Williams played a soldier suitor for MTM in the old Dick Van Dyke Show. Laura had to choose between Dick and Van and somehow she chose Dick over Van even though Van looked like this in his uniform.

Also, I can't get over how much Mike Henry looks like Gardner McKay in the pic at r90.

r247 What a dumb thing to say. Turning down Raquel Welch doesn't mean you're gay. Maybe they're happily married/partnered and don't cheat. Maybe they're not attracted to Raquel or her type. It's like saying "well, no gay man would ever turn down Chris Evans". Uh, I would. He seems nice and yes he's very attractive but...not my type.

Well, I would never turn down Chris Evans.

R255 Well, you ARE a whore, Blanche!

Watching the Stephen Boyd What's my Line video brought up the linked video of him singing/dancing with DL fave Dinah Shore.

You all are right, he's much better in motion. Very cheesy here, but extremely charming nevertheless.

JUMBO

Is this now a Stephen Boyd thread?

I’d pay to see young Willson boy Clint Walker destroy a young Van Williams.

Raquel was attractive until she opened her big mouth.....what a screechy annoying voice.....and as for her acting - she always made the WRONG choice......

This ain’t a Raquel Welch thread. Start a new one and stop derailing.

The Wild Wild West was very popular with all my male friends as a kid but for some reason I never liked it. I didn't like 'secret agent' stuff and it was a western version of it with gadgets, and things like that and I was really a purist about westerns and liked the ones that seemed authentic.

IMDB on Boyd: He blamed the massive commercial failure of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) for ruining his movie career.

While others blamed his performance in The Fall of the Roman Empire for ruining the film.

Bitch.

The Oscar is campier than a row of tents

When I was a young teen, I busted a nut hands-free when I saw this picture of Van Williams. That torso and thighs, oh my!

The Oscar!

[quote]When I was a young teen, I busted a nut hands-free when I saw this picture of Van Williams. That torso and thighs, oh my!

😓 🔥

*

Fall of the Roman Empire is a great movie. I love that Commodus.

The trailer is a laugh-riot. OTT is an understatement.

[quote][R247] What a dumb thing to say. Turning down Raquel Welch doesn't mean you're gay. Maybe they're happily married/partnered and don't cheat. Maybe they're not attracted to Raquel or her type.

I'm gay and I would've slept with her. She was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. In the mid-60s if you were a straight man, out to dinner, drinking and celebrating your starring roles in a film, with THE sex symbol of the Western World you were not passing up the opportunity to go to bed with Raquel Welch.

Wasn't it the advent of late 1960s "ethnic" stars like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Elliott Gould, Robert de Niro, James Caan and those of their ilk that sealed the doom on the Henry Willson stable?

Even those new stars who were not "ethnic" types like Robert Redford, Jon Voight and Robert Duvall weren't sold as pin-up boys.

The advent of Hollywood's sense of self-importance. Fun hunks were out, gloomy nerds were IN

James Caan was sometimes cast as an ethnic type, sometimes not.

The late '60s was all about social changes. It was turbulent.

Except for Pacino and De Niro, most of those actors were rarely cast as ethnic types. But they all had an ethnic look.

I don't think Caan did.

Howard Hawks cast him in a western.

Francis Ford Coppola cast him as an Italian mobster.

Barbra cast him as a short Jew.

Coppola also cast him as "a strapping young man, Jimmy "Killer" Kilgannon, who had been a college football star but had sustained a serious head injury and was given one thousand dollars to leave the school." The Rain People, 1969

Irish.

There was so much going on in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies. The Willson-style guys were seen as bland and old-fashioned. And, at some point, there was going to be a demand for actors who could act.

Gary Lockwood was an actor who came up in the late '60s, and he was hunky and good looking. He was in 2001 (1968), then in Jacques Demy's only American film, Model Shop (1969). He made his film debut 10 years earlier, in the Andy Griffith comedy, Onionhead (1958). First wife was Stephanie Powers (who still looks great, at 82) Lockwood is also still alive (88). His career never really went anywhere.

With Anouk Aimee in Model Shop:

[quote]First wife was Stephanie Powers

Oh dear.

I'm sorry that Gary Lockwood never hit it bigger. He was hunky but had a sort of edge.

After lots of cheesy TV and film roles in the early 60s I'd have hoped Kubrick's 2001 might have led him to better quality projects. But then in retrospect I wonder what attracted Kubrick.

R288 I don't know what attracted Kubrick, but maybe in casting Lockwood and Keir Dullea he was looking for a certain type that was the opposite of individual or unique. Kind of, generically good looking.

I wonder how Willson would have packaged this beauty. Changed his name? Keep him locked up in the basement? Dye his hair blond and send him to Rock Hudson's house as a gift?

John Eric Hexum?

R288 Gary Lockwood looked great in MODEL SHOP!

It's a very interesting thread but it's morphed from HENRY WILLSON'S BOYS to good looking mostly forgettable quasi-actors.

Did we run out of Henry Wilson proteges?

R293n You know what they say:

If you got 'em, post 'em.

R293^

Jon-Eric Hexum really is in the Guy Madison world of Henry Willson's ideal man.

R293 but we made it to Part Two!!!

Henry Willson clients are a fintie group.

I hope people feel free to post whatever they want, that they consider adjacent to the theme of the thread.

Sorry, I meant: I finite group.

I just figured you were British, r299.

Monster gets another pic.

Bisexual actor/director John Derek was known more for the beautiful women he married (Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, Bo Derek) than for the boys he slept with. He was one of Willson's boys (renamed Dare Harris (!!)) but he didn't care for acting, preferring directing.

Derek was rumored to have had an affair with both Spencer Tracy and Paul Newman. The caption to the photo below is "Paul Newman finds John Derek hung. (From Exodus)

[quote]Wasn't it the advent of late 1960s "ethnic" stars like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Elliott Gould, Robert de Niro, James Caan and those of their ilk that sealed the doom on the Henry Willson stable?

Save for Rock, and maybe Tab and Troy, Willson's boys never really made a lasting impact in the world of cinema. They were mostly tv stars playing the same role each week. So the arrival of Hoffman, Pacino, De Niro, etc., is irrelevant, since they weren't competing for the same parts.

What sealed the fate for many of Willson's boys was the collapse of the studio system. These boys were on seven-year contracts with Warner Bros, Fox, etc., and when they were let go, they had a tough time competing with "real" actors, like the Actors Studio pretty boys like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen & Warren Beatty, and the Swinging London/British invasion guys like Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Laurence Harvey, Terence Stamp, Richard Harris, etc.

Derek liked to make porn. He did one with 15-year-old Dean Paul Martin called A Boy and a Girl, which was rumored to have been bought and destroyed by Dean Martin Sr. He also made a straight porn in 1979 with DL fave Dennis Park aka Wade Nichols

John Derek was bi and directed porn? That explains the casting of super hot Miles O’Keefe in Tarzan The Ape Man and the soft porn nature of the film.

[quote]I hope people feel free to post whatever they want

NOT A CHANCE!

Yes, and Bo Derek produced those flicks. LOL

R306, and lingering butt shots of Andrea Occhipinti in Bolero.

Flat, by modern DL standards^

But well worth a lingering butt shot or two.

Willson Boy John Derek was beautiful. He probably got plenty of head and man ass in his day.

R303 I'm sure he did.

Never found Derek sexy. He was smaller and didn't have the body of Henry's other hunks.

No kind words about blond, hunky Jeremy Slate, who worked a great deal in TV series of the early and mid-1960s?

He had a radiant, adorable smile, a snub nose, and had a relaxed, easy masculinity about him and considerable warmth and humor.

He was married to actress Tammy Grimes, but only for about a year 1966-‘67. Wonder what that was about? His first marriage lasted about 18 years and he had five kids. But he never married again after Grimes, though he was only about 40 when they divorced.

He died in 2006 at the age of 80.

Correction re Jeremy Slate: According to Wikipedia,

“In the 1970s, Slate was involved with feminist archaeologist Sally Binford . Their adventures in the sexual freedom movement were chronicled in Gay Talese’s 1980 book, Thy Neighbor’s Wife.

In 2000, he married Denise Mellinger Slate, a writer and film producer.”

Jeremy

Another Willson client who has sorely been neglected in this thread is beautiful block of wood, John Gavin, whom Willson signed as a client to keep Rock Hudson in check.

Here's Mr. Gavin being fancied by Lord Olivier.

John in "OSS 117 - Double Agent."

John Gavin was the Jacob Elordi of his day.

I saw him up close at my brother’s h.s. graduation in 1976—still hot as hell.

Gorgeous couple. Up there with Brad & Suzy and John & Gena.

Is it odd that Sal Mineo's name hasn't come up?

I wonder if he or his reps ever thought he should change his name to something less ethnic? Or did he simply look too Italian for that?

And Roddy MacDowell! He was certainly in there with all the Willson boys even Henry never repped him.

John Gavin was indeed a tall drink of water. His shitty politics aside (a hardcore republican), he was really a beaut.

I always get a kick out of scarred George Macready sneeringly call John Derek "pretty boy" in Nicholas Ray's KNOCK ON ANY DOOR (49). He does it several times, amping up the nastiness.

take it to a Trump thread. There's plenty of them. No need to ruin our thread here.

Golden Globe winners: John Gavin (Most Promising Newcomer - Male), Susan Kohner (Most Promising Newcomer - Female), Linda Cristal (Most Promising Newcomer - Female), and Rock Hudson (World Film Favorite - Male).

Too bad there's no pictures of it but Rock made one of his first big splashes at the Oscars. For publicity Henri had him in a loin cloth painted gold from head to toe and had him walk around as an oscar statue.

Rock's best picture. It showed off how tall he was.

R328, Rock and Vera-Ellen dressed up as Oscar statuettes in '49. Both wore swimsuits.

Rock Hudson and boytoy meeting Michael Jackson on the set of "Thriller."

Rock was a prolific customer of NYC rentboys.

R414 John Derek was not small. I saw him and Bo in Century City back in 1980 and he was tall and dashingly handsome with silver grey hair and a trim figure.

R324 wrong. He was a most typical California Republican of his time, not a Bircher or anywhere close to that.

Who the fuck cares? You politics all the time queens are so annoying.

Those Gavin nips…mmm good.

There was a "blind" item in Joyce Haber's column in the late sixties that Rock liked to go up to San Francisco and pick up military men.......

This book tells the story of Rock's adventures with the 1962 U of Kentucky football squad.

If only there were videos.

Football player coming home to the Frat house: "Hey, I just got a blow job from Rock Hudson......"

MJ had everyone on that set — Rock, Brando, Fred Astaire, Jackie O, Brooke Shields. Amazing.

R337 he had all the men he needed, coming to him. There might as well have been a shuttle bus headed across Sunset from the Ucla campus.

R338 same tired old tale, with no evidence. As if Lexingtom were the goal when Westwood was right there in front of him.

Lexington*

Instagram page dedicated to Willsons Boys...

This book, I mean.

So many assertions, with little back-up.

The Ucla stories are well documented. I’m only one degree of separation, by several men, in that regard.

R344's post has a couple of Willson clients we haven't mentioned yet. Like Trax Colton (né Louis Morelli), a used car salesman that Willson spotted and immediately had him signed to 20th Century Fox. His sole headliner role was the male lead, opposite Jayne Mansfield, in "It Happened in Athens," then promptly disappeared.

Time Magazine, March 1962:

[quote]One afternoon last year, a young actor named Louis Morelli walked into an office in Hollywood. When he walked out, his name was Trax Colton. No one had ever heard of him before, and no one has heard of him since.

Trax was hot! I wonder what happened to him?

Trax has a Wikipedia page that lists him as still alive at 95, whether from accurate information or just a lack of any obituary who's to say. They say nothing about his life after his brief film career in the early 60s.

DL fave Dorothy Kilgallen apparently thought that Trax "may be our next matinee idol"!

Trax Colton was a tall, handsome fellow that 20th Century Fox was banking on being their next Rock Hudson. But by '62, Fox was nearly bankrupt because of overblown and overbudgeted "Cleopatra." So Fox purged their roster of underperforming contract players, and the flop of "It Happened in Athens" resulted in Trax and Jayne being kicked to the curb.

Geez, literally two films and that’s it. No episodic tv appearances. No appearances on game shows. Nothing.

He was a lousy lay

John Gavin's daughter Cristina and I were theater buds in college so I met him a few times in the early 80s. Drool. Handsome man.

Another Willson client and 20th Century Fox contract players, Clint Ritchie.

/player

"Trax Colton"? Jesus.

Another Henry Willson find, Italian-American John Papiro, whom Willson rebranded as Race Gentry, and promptly got signed to Rock Hudson's studio Universal-International, where he made his debut playing younger Rock in "The Lawless Breed" (1952). Unlike Trax, Race worked steadily in film and television, then changed his stage name to John Gentry sometime in the early '60s.

Such short, little fingers, r357.

I'm gonna be Colton Lansing

R353 her stepbrother was in my brother’s class at Loyola High

Willson gave them gay pornish names.

So Willson gave all these guys porny names and "tutored" them when they got to Hollywood, erased all traces of stereotypical gay behavior. I would have loved to be in that classroom.

No one yet has mentioned the gorgeous hunky Jeff Richards who played Buck Winston in THE OPPOSITE SEX, MGM's remake of THE WOMEN. He also played the non-dancing 7th Brother in 7 BRIDES FOR 7 BROTHERS. And there wasn't much else though he had a lot of charisma.

Any info out there on his sexual leanings?

B-Movie Beefcake.

Jeff Richards was sexy R363. First known as a baseball player. I don't remember him but he's another one of this era who had a couple of short marriages.

Interesting that Jeff Richard's second wife left him and married Van Williams!

Here's the team Rock was getting off with. Allegedly.

An early Datalounger, R366?

This is the reason the word swoon was invented.

I'll take the guy in the center of the top row R367!

Poor Jeff, ending up alone, living in a trailer park in San Bernardino, dying at 64. And he did a bunch of movies.

So many lovely pics of him.

Ohhhh...he got Dorcas.

Bros being bros...

Nobody was blonder or hunkier than the somewhat petite Richard Jaekel. Never failed to stir my loins when he was on screen. I have no idea where he fit into the boy toy scenario back in the day.

Jaeckel was very short, but stocky as fuck.

He was...diminutive.

He played a lot of meanies with a Napoleonic complex.

He was hot in Come Back, Little Sheba

Willson boy Robert Fuller was an extra in Come Back, Little Sheba.

Trax Colton is like the most perfect gay porn name ever.

How about Track Marx?

How could we neglect John Gavin? His Julius Caesar awakend my Gayling.

R366 She had a type.

John Gavin was born Juan Vincent Apablasa Jr to the wealthy Chilean-Mexican Apablasa family of landowners in Alta California. The fertile Apablasa land is where the the Los Angeles Plaza, Union Station, and Chinatown now sit.

At the age of two, Juan's parents divorced and his mother married Herald Ray Golenor, who adopted Juan and renamed him John Anthony Golenor.

In 1956, John did his first picture with Universal-International, "Raw Edge," under the name John Gilmore. But for his next picture that same year, "Behind the High Wall," his name changed yet again, to John Gavin.

Yes—that’s all old news in LA… yada yada

From Juan to John...

The Americanized version of the name.

Rock & Race

I would love to know how much cock Rock pulled during his life.

^^^Took that to his grave

R389, that perm on Rock is distressing.

Did no photos of Rock in the act ever surface? He must have made them.

Richard Jaeckel was in COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA as Terry Moore’s hunky boyfriend who was always hanging around the house. Moore actually snagged an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress in that (Shirley Booth won the Oscar for Best Actress for that movie).

Meanwhile Jaeckel snagged a late career Oscar nomination for SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION in 1971. Must have been nice for him, after decades slogging it in unsung character roles.

John Gavin is the hottest man referenced in these threads. Perfection.

I have had a fetish for bare-chested men in dark dress pants and a leather belt since watching that scene with John Gavin as a child in PSYCHO.

Cock Rock.

He’s hot, R395, but the hottest? Mmyyeahh…I dunno.

There was a pretty good TV movie in the early ‘90s where Thomas Ian Griffith played Rock and Thom Mathews (Jason Lives; Return of the Living Dead) played his live in lover.

^Willson was played by character actor Andrew Robinson in that movie.

R304: Tab and Troy had little impact on cinema. Troy spent much of his career in Warner's formulaic tv shows. He couldn't act and his best film, "A Summer Place" is notable for pairing him with non-0acting Sandra Dee. Anytime one of them has a major speech, Max Steiner gives us a crescendo to compensate for their limp delivery. Tab's screen career really just lasted a few years, unless you count the films with Divine and his drive-in fare.

Willson's often interchangeable guys were perfect for the transition from m film to tv as studios tried to follow the models they used in the early days of film--putting cheaply paid contract players in formulaic tv shows. Warner was the most obvious example, regularly recycling actors and scripts among their detective shows and doing the same with their westerns. If an actor balked, they'd find someone else or run the show without him.

Movies were changing and studios didn't know how to adapt beyond becoming distribution outlets or providing infrastructure. The most successful studios in this transition period were United Artists and Columbia were the most successful studios of this period and they relied on the independent producer model (UA entirely, Columbia primarily for its A-pictures)

R316: Interesting about Slate and his sexual liberation. He must have had contacts, because he did most of the Screen Gems sitcoms and all of the Universal dramas.

I watched The Last Sunset last night and Rad Fulton looked very nice.

Jon Hall was an early Willson client, whom Willson represented back when he was with Zeppo Marx's talent agency. Hall did several films under his birth name, Charles Locher, then did a couple more under the name Lloyd Crane, before permanently settling on Jon Hall after his breakthrough film, "The Hurricane" (1937), with Dorothy Lamour.

Not just a pretty face, Hall was also an inventor and held patents on an underwater camera, optivision lenses, and the design of PT boat hulls for the US Navy.

Jon waxing his ski.

R404 he also directed and starred in The Beach Girls And The Monster. And shot it in his house.

[quote]r399 = ...focuses on his struggle with his homosexuality

It doesn't strike me that he struggled much at all.

Jon Hall, as an actor, once was described as the" male Maria Montez"

[quote]Jon Hall, as an actor, once was described as the" male Maria Montez"

Fitting.

Maria Montez was no Magdalena Montezuma.

Jon Hall and Maria Montez did six films together for Universal-International. They were like the Tracy and Hepburn of Universal Pictures.

Now you know why Universal was considered the bottom of the barrel among major studios.

Those Jon Hall/Maria Montez movies are super campy

[quote]Those Jon Hall/Maria Montez movies are super campy

I find them searingly trenchant, r413.

Sledge Hammer

Probably already mentioned, but Gavin was Ambassador to Mexico under Reagan. He had a pretty good life.

^and President of Screen Actors Guild for a while.

R411 or maybe the Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd......

David Rasche was hot, but what does Sledge Hammer have to do with Willson’s boys?

Merely the name, r419.

OMG here is a 1965 comedy pilot starring Gary Lockwood and Cynthia Pepper.....it's kind of funny. Of course we're also stuck with Bernie Kopell.

[quote]Of course we're also stuck with Bernie Kopell.

I always thought Bernie was hot in a nerdy way. He had a great ass in "That Girl" and showed his nice legs in those shorts in "The Love Boat."

For the Gary Lockwood fans, please know that he does a brief shirtless scene in that r421 pilot at 19:19, though the camera is shy about panning down to his nipples.

I love Jon Hall and did a deep dive on him in 2023. He actually was part-Tahitian so came by all those island movies legitimately.

In 1944 he got into a huge fistfight with Tommy Dorsey who was a notorious asshole.

His father Felix Locher became a somewhat familiar character actor in his 70s

I liked Jon Hall and Maria Montez in The Cobra Woman.

Stop trying to make Cynthia Pepper happen!

David Hasche was the guy in An Unmarried Woman who tried to hit on Jill Clayburgh in the bar.

[quote]Stop trying to make Cynthia Pepper happen!

She was Margie! Not to be confused with My Little Margie, which people actually watched.

Cynthia Pepper was a failed nepo baby. Her father was once Mr. Ginger Rogers.

[quote]r430 = Her father was once Mr. Ginger Rogers

I thought her father was a doctor.

But I can confuse David Hasche with Richard Lynch.

^No way!

I prefer Barbara Pepper.

Willson client James Westmoreland aka Rad Fulton. Gorgeous. Married once, briefly, to Kim Darby for 47 days in 1970.

Kim Darby! Goodness, he wasn't even trying

I don't particularly like characterizing lavender marriages as gross, but here I am... Ick on both!

R435, R436, R437 All already mentioned upthread.

R428 Wasn't that Cliff Gorman?

R434 = Hank Patterson

Cynthia Pepper's sitcom Margie and The Roaring Twenties were both unsuccessful attempts at capturing the over 50 crowd who were teens in the 1920s.

Sorry, just wanted to add Steve Cochran in with the lads. Rumored to be huge of cock and just look at those hairy arms. Surely, some high placed movie exec called him into his private orifice for some consultation about something or other.

Now THAT was one sexy man

[quote]Cynthia Pepper's sitcom Margie and The Roaring Twenties were both unsuccessful attempts at capturing the over 50 crowd who were teens in the 1920s.

The "Margie" opening credits are supposed to evoke the '20s, but come off as looking very '60s.

I remember that "Margie" co-starred Penney Parker, the second actress to play daughter Terry on "The Danny Thomas Show." They brought the character back and married her off to Pat Harrington Jr. (Schneider on DL icon Bonnie Franklin's "One Day at a Time") after the original Terry, Sherry Jackson, had left the show.

I'm also old enough and gay enough to remember the old Sherry Jackson/Penney Parker switcheroo. As a gayling I thought it was incredible how much the two actresses actually resembled each other.

I wonder WHET Sherry Jackson.

If only you knew a place to find that out?

Actor Tom Irish was a Willson client, but there's not much we know about him.

I just watched a 1958 movie In Love And War. The stars were Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, and Bradford Dillman. It was of course a 20th Century-Fox CinemaScope picture.

But way down in the credits was a young man named Buck Class......he HAD to be a Willson client.

"Buck Class was born on April 26, 1930 in Orange, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for South Pacific (1958), Thundering Jets (1958) and Blue Denim (1959). He was married to Carol A. Eichelberger. He died on February 3, 2018." IMDB bio.

I’m convinced that the campy names gay porn stars give themselves are a derivative of the names Willson gave his clients.

The real question is, how many of his clients DIDN’T he sleep with.

James Caan costarred with Jack Lord and series star Robert Fuller on a late episode of "Wagon Train," playing a Bruce Dern-type sociopath helping Lord, Diane Brewster and several others fleeing to Mexico with about $40,000 of a bank's money they'd robbed. Fuller was cannily throwing roadblocks in their way.

Fuller, Caan and Bewster were terrific in the episode, while Jack Lord was... Jack Lord.

R448, Buck Class was most definitely a Willson client.

[quote]Henry Willson groomed a myriad of young hopefuls, developing the "beefcake craze" of the 1950s and handing out names such as Ty Hardin, Race Gentry, Guy Madison, Buck Class, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, and yes, Rock Hudson...

Can you imagine how ludicrous the name "Rock" would have seemed to everyone in the very early 1950s?

It's a testament to Rock Hudson that he was taken seriously at all.

Buck would have never called himself "Buck Class"

R450: The bio of Willson mentioned far upthread was coy, saying only that he had sex with some of his straight clients and didn't have sex with all of his gay clients.

R453, "Rock" is an okay name for a physique model, but not for someone to be taken seriously as an actor. I think even as a popular leading man, Hudson still struggled to be taken seriously as an actor.

"Tab" is another ludicrous name, however appropriate. The name conjures up a blond preppy boy who plays tennis and goes steady with a girl named Brynn or Bunny.

Or a diet cola.

[quote]I wonder WHET Sherry Jackson.

I saw her recently on an episode of "Dobie Gillis." She popped up occasionally on other TV shows of the period. As I recall, she returned to the role of Terry in the first episode of the short-lived "Make Room for Granddaddy."

I was also struck by how much Penney Parker resembled Sherry Jackson, R445.

Recasting a TV role with someone who resembled the original actor was rare in television.

Not that anyone thought so, but Rock could be short for Rocco.

I remember the day girls were named Sherry.

Jack Kelly (mentioned upthread) dressed left. Watching Maverick as I type and it looks like he had low-hangers.

[quote]I remember the day girls were named Sherry.

Now it's mostly a drag queen name.

Gary Conway - not a Willson client.

He needs a smaller facecloth.

Ms. Gary Conway—she kept him on the straight & narrow.

They became successful winemakers in Paso Robles.

John Smith plays a boxer in the 1957 pre-Laramie flick "The Crooked Circle."

*

I think there was a competition between Smith and Fuller to see who could wear the tightest trousers.

Robert Fuller

Smith clearly won in the crotch division, but Fuller took the prize with his backside.

As an eldergay who was a teen in the 1960s I'd just like to point out that VERY TIGHT was how we all wore our chinos back then. It was the style and the way casual trousers were tailored for young men. They were also cut a tad on the short side, showing just a little more of the white sock we'd wear with our loafers.

At least in suburban New Jersey.

I'll add that the tightness of those chinos was what created the mass popularity of tighty whities. One couldn't very well wear boxer shorts comfortably in those sculpted crotches.

[quote] I’m convinced that the campy names gay porn stars give themselves are a derivative of the names Willson gave his clients.

You mean "used to". Now they name themselves something out of Hip Hop: Hunnypaint, Mr. Twunk, ItapapiXXL, etc. etc.

Race Gentry is showing a bit of VPL in R357's photo.

Well, I guess a lot of Henry Willson's clients show a bit of VPLL in their photos as well...

441 Margie was a popular movie about a high school girl in the 1920s that came out in the '40s (with Jeanne Crain). Somebody must have thought it would make the basis of a sitcom.

R441^^

Ya think that’s were they got it? 🤔

My first boyfriend, Gary Keeper, worked on the Broadway production of Seesaw and met John Gavin when he replaced Ken Howard. Gavin worked opposite Michelle Lee and later, Lucie Arnaz. Gary said what others have said in this thread - Gavin was tall and handsome, very nice and easy to work with, and just a fair actor (and straight). No gossip, unfortunately. Gavin married actress Constance Towers around that time, and they stayed married until his death in 2018

She was the trophy wife. He already had kids by the first.

I've never been wild about Kander and Ebb as songwriters.

[quote]r481 = I've never been wild about Kander and Ebb as songwriters.

I think when you're pretty it doesn't matter how you wear your hair.

R482 Could you explain that?

I know I posted in the wrong thread, I just don't get the comment!

Merely a non sequitur for a non sequitur, r484.

R485 Haha. Okay.

Upon thought, r486, my post could be considered on-topic.

When you’ve got pecs and VPL, you’re a Star!

[quote]Fuller took the prize with his backside.

I'LL say!

I bet Robert Fuller has a lot of stories that he could tell us, but maybe too much of a gentleman to spill the tea. I'm glad he is still alive and able to make appearances at some cons.

I don't know how Robert Fuller could move in those jeans.

He gets bashful at the cons whenever someone mentions the jeans at the Q&As.

Jeez, what an absolute unexpected delight reading these threads. So many really handsome men with real masculine bodies and wearing tight clothes. No wonder westerns were so popular back in the day. I know I sound older than dust, but I wish men still looked like this.

[quote]I wish men still looked like this.

Me too.

Richard Jaeckel is in an episode of The Virginian as I type and, my gawd, what a bod and tight muscle ass that man had.

Very few of these men are my type, they're almost a cartoonist's idea of a square-jawed, beefy, masc man.

My dad alwys thought Richard Jaeckel was gay.

^The boys would’ve had a field day with that ass.

Jaeckel has played gay on a couple of shows in the seventies.

When he wasn’t raping Little Girls on the Prairie.

[quote]When he wasn’t raping Little Girls on the Prairie.

Well, William Smith raped Miss Kitty *and* shot her in the back.

Jess shows tenderness toward an injured Slim

Robert Fuller and John Smith in a scene from the Laramie episode “The Mountain Men." BROKEBACK Mountain, perhaps?

Slim freeballing.

^DROOL^

It's so...pronounced.

Imagine him sticking that thing in Fuller’s bubble butt.

I don't know how we got this far without at least one picture of the delectable John Bromfield. Here is one picture from a whole day of photos with Willson boyo Tab Hunter. I am not sure if John was a Willson client or not. Maybe not with a boring first name like "John." Surely, he used that massive weapon to his advantage, which probably resulted in some shock and "ahh."

(Double click the image to get up close and personal.)

Both Chad Everett and Ty Hardin look gorgeous in THE CHAPMAN REPORT, but Hardin's scenes in the movie are played mostly for comedy, so they're not that hot. Whereas Chad Everett's one scene is smoking hot, even if Claire Bloom goes a bit over-the-top in it.

[quote]r510 = even if Claire Bloom goes a bit over-the-top in it

Claire described her character as...louche.

Were the original Laramie episodes in color?

R512, the first two seasons were in b&w. It went color on the third, penultimate season.

Slim's little brother Andy went off to boarding school at the end of the first season, made a couple of guest appearances the next season, then was written out entirely. Maybe so the show could concentrate on the burgeoning romance between Slim and Jess.

Andy had a schoolboy crush on Jess and even got close to that bubble butt.

He got pricked, r513.

The Laramie pilot, "Stage Stop," is also shown in color.

Hunky John Bromfield was the son of popular novelist Louis Bromfield (THE RAINS CAME, which made an entertaining movie) and Bogart and Bacall were married at Louis Bromfield’s farm.

John Bromfield was not the son of Louis Bromfield

OMG R516.....I didn't know that. Louis Bromfield also wrote Leave Her To Heaven!

Hmmmm......I can only find that Louis had three daughters......but the internet could be wrong.

There are other Bromfield families in the world.

Does that mean..... Oh no!

[quote] Louis Bromfield also wrote Leave Her To Heaven!

R518 John Bromfield isn't the son of Louis Bromfield, and Louis Bromfield didn't write Leave Her To Heaven.

The author was Ben Ames Williams.

And Louis Bromfield's real last name was Brumfield.

Per John Gilmore, we have a first-hand account of what it was really like being one of "Henry's Boys" from Gilmore's book, "Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip." John (sometimes "Jonathan") was a Hollywood hanger-on who was good looking and James Dean's lover, but couldn't seem to get a leg up (to coin a phrase) in Hollywood. He was working on Rory Calhoun's ranch when he was discovered by Willson:

"One night Henry asked me to his Bel-Air house to look over photographs of Natalie (Wood) and myself on one of our dates. He told me to make myself a drink, then called me into another room where I found him laying naked on a little towel. He looked like a skinned seal and wanted me to rub Johnson's Baby Oil on his fat body. His stomach was bigger around than any other part of him, and his legs looked short and bent. His face was red and swollen with booze. I was reluctant to even touch him, and he said, "What's the matter? You don't get excited by a naked man?" I said no, I wasn't excited and I didn't think I could get excited even if I tried to talk myself into it. Henry sat up, "Well you can't talk yourself into it . . ." he said. "You CAN jack me off as a favor to me. You can put some oil on your hand and jack me off." I said no. His cock was small and he couldn't get himself hard. He said it was because he'd had too much gin. He sat there pulling on himself like a monkey.

"I didn't want to offend him or make him feel worse, because it was obvious he'd been humiliated, and I looked away as he pulled the corner of the towel over his crotch. "You know what your trouble is?" he said. "You're not gay. You're not gay and that presents a whole bunch of problems. I don't want to push myself on you, and if you're not attracted to me there's nothing you or I can do about it,."

"But, he said, he was not a "queer" who gets his kicks by just going down on some straight guy that didn't give a shit for him. "So you see where this leaves us," he said. "Tab and Rock and Guy and R.J. Wagner have cared for me personally, you understand? You see where it led them." He said, "I mean, it makes for a difficult relationship because of my being attracted to you. It may be possible to keep this on a strictly professional level, but that's not my way of doing things . . . "

"I went on one last interview at MGM that Henry set up, and was invited onto the set of a picture. I saw the actor John Hodiak talking to some people . . . " Hodiak was one of Gilmore's idols and listened to his story of working with Willson. He invited him to a bbq where he met a new agent, John Darrow, but Hodiak explained that he may be asked to sleep with him.

"Darrow was a diminutive but masculine man and he became Gilmore's sugar daddy for a while, though no pictures were forthcoming."

Thanks R523. I wonder what John Hodiak had to do to get into movies. I always thought he was so hot

Isn't that the lovely Perennial Starlet/Hollywood Astrologist Susan Oliver with John Gilmore?

John Hodiak got married once to Anne Baxter for a few years but the rumor is that Wendell Corey was his longtime lover. Hodiak warned Gilmore that he'd probably have to put out for the agent he was going to introduce him to but Gilmore went for it.

[quote]Isn't that the lovely Perennial Starlet/Hollywood Astrologist Susan Oliver with John Gilmore?

It sure is. They starred in a segment of a series called The Lineup.

R526, John Hodiak and Wendell Corey? That's a new one for me. Not a pairing I would've expected.

Katrina Hodiak Lunore, daughter of Baxter and Hodiak. Great-granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Is there anyone straight in r528's photo??

Agent Darrow had been a very stiff leading man in the early 30s (out of the "Arrow Collar Ad" school of acting), but was a more successful agent. Wikipedia tells us he was DL fave Charles Walter's partner in life.

They play a gay couple in Desert Fury (a stunning piece of Technicolor) but I’ve never heard they were a real life match, do tell us more R52

Poor dead John Hodiak

Johnny Darrow discovered Tab Hunter who was mucking out a horse stall (I think it was Darrow, anyhow)...Darrow and Ann Blyth were there to go horseback riding (some horse stable). Hunter was very into horses and later was a prize-winning rider, so it makes sense.

Tab said Darrow never made a move on him, he also claimed he never responded to Willson's advances (but then, neither did Gilmore, according to Gilmore. So it's not far-fetched. The fact that Hunter did a lot better than Gilmore may be attributable to the fact that Hunter had a great personality and was much better looking, as well as probably having more drive to be a good actor, and taking things seriously.

I don't believe every extremely handsome actor had to endure the casting couch--after all, the better ones had enough going for them that most agents would want to represent them strictly because they were likely to be successful, and the agent was likely to make a lot of money off them.

Gilmore wrote several very prurient books about Hollywood's more scandalos figures and aspects. No way to know if they were true, but it's possible he saw a way to make money by writing revealing tell-all material and juiced it up when he could.

r528 Did they gangbang Lizabeth Scott or Burt Lancaster?

I always take "verbatim" conversations in memoirs with a grain of salt.

Except Marilú Henner’s

Chad's ass in the Chapman Report was so finely directed. Tight tight khakis. Sprinkled with a bit of his typical anger issues. Just a tiny bit though.

:-) R538. But I don't see the anger issues in that scene. On the contrary, Claire Bloom does everything possible to seduce Chad, get him all hot and bothered, actually starts making out with him -- and then she pulls away and tells him to leave. Under the circumstances, I think it would be understandable if he became VERY angry, but instead he sort of meekly leaves in frustration.

In DESERT FURY, Scott and Mary Astor had a Lesbionic mother-daughter relationship that is, as my mother used to say, "something else."

Chad just had this underlying sense of irritation in sirliness and everything he did. It made him so sexy LOL

I see what you mean, R541, but I don't think that quality comes across in that particular performance.

That scene with Chad is online and man, he really was sexy in that tight khaki water delivery man outfit.

Hey, Culligan man!

Chad Everett and Claire Bloom in The Chapman Report.

Only in a movie directed by a gay man would a water delivery guy look like that :-) Strange, though, that the two actors are in such dim lighting when they start to make out that they're basically silhouettes.

Also, wasn't it very unusual in those days for people to have bottled water delivered to private homes?

[quote]Also, wasn't it very unusual in those days for people to have bottled water delivered to private homes?

I don't think it was. We had water delivered and, no, they rarely if ever looked like Chad.

If the delivery man was supposed to be a young, hot guy I would think a straight director would also have cast someone who looks like Chad. But it was Cukor's original idea to cast Claire Bloom as a nympho.

Also, wasn't it very unusual in those days for people to have bottled water delivered to private homes?

Not if people had a water cooler in their house. Also LA was not knwn to have great tasting tap water.

And not if you're Claire Bloom, r546.

Oooh, his walk at the top of that scene is LETHAL.

Damn, Ty Hardin might as well have been naked in his scenes! Those tiny trunks do little to hide the goods.

So, basically, if his actors were working that meant Henry Willson was slobbering over their dicks. Definitely Ty. Maybe not Clint though.

Young Guns: Packin' Heat

Maybe that's the key, R549, and it depended on the city. I really don't think bottled water and water coolers in homes was common in NYC in the 1960s, and probably not even today.

blub blub

R546 it was very common in LA/Southern California. We had a water cooler in our kitchen. There were two large rivals in the business: Sparkletts and Arrowhead. Histotically, local drinkng water was thought not to taste very good.

Huell Howser even did one of his programs about it.

Ty didn't even have room to fart in those trunks in The Chapman Report. Imagine the smell when he peeled them off at the end of a day's filming...

R553 in an interview in Scarlet Magazine, stuntman David Hennesy said that he was doing stunt work for Van Johnson in The Caine Mutiny. His hair was dyed red to match Van's hair. At the end of the day, Van put his arm around David and invited him to dinner. He said he could introduce him to Henry Willson and David would get a contract. David said he had a date....

Later David said Van saw Clint Walker working as a doorman in Las Vegas in some casino. Clint was dressed up as a Mountie. Van approached him and gave him the same talk talk. Clint quit his job and moved his wife and kid to LA. Willson got him a 6-month contract at Paramount [Clint appeared in one scene in the Ten Commandments] which was not renewed. He later worked as a gate man at Warner Bros. before being asked to audition for Cheyenne.

The interviewer asked David what he had against Clint that he would tell such a story. David replied the he had become Clint's stuntman/double on the show. Six months later, David's wife asked for a divorce and six months later married Clint.

David said: "Just wanted everyone to know how he got started."

"He said he could introduce him to Henry Willson and David would get a contract."

Hmmmm.....did Van and Henry have some kind of a deal worked out?

Water coolers and delivered bottled water was very popular in Manhattan apartments in the 1990s. We had that then....before we realized Manhattan tap water was as healthy and tasty.

But back to Chad and Ty and Clint.....

Clint divorced his first wife in 1968, five years after Cheyenne ended. He didn’t marry Giselle Hennessy until 1974.

Perhaps water delivery was so popular because of the men who delivered it?

[quote]John Hodiak and Wendell Corey? That's a new one for me. Not a pairing I would've expected.

Was this while John Hodiak was married to Anne Baxter?

561 but isn’t about NY.

It’s about West LA in the 60s—when water delivery was everywhere.

[quote]—I never saw a single home water cooler in NY in the 90s

Because of bottled water and Brita, r565.

That’s not the same at all —but I see you.

Obviously if someone wrote a scene where there's a water delivery guy delivering water to Claire Bloom's home, then there were probably water deliveries to people's homes. Why would they make it up for a movie? They'd just make him another kid of delivery guy.

I wonder what David Ehrenstein thinks about this Black head-singing Gypsy?

Oops—sorry

That he was delivering water to her dried-up pussy was symbolic, bitches!

It's a pretty sorry post, r570.

Thank you, peanut gallery.

My sister-in-law in Brooklyn had seltzer water delivered for their cooler through the late 1990s, then she had a baby and said “fuck that fussiness.”

[quote]Obviously if someone wrote a scene where there's a water delivery guy delivering water to Claire Bloom's home, then there were probably water deliveries to people's homes. Why would they make it up for a movie? They'd just make him another kid of delivery guy.

Understood, and agreed. I guess the idea of people having water coolers in their homes is completely foreign to me because I live in New York City, where I have never seen a water cooler in anyone's private home or apartment, not even decades ago. But it makes sense that it is and/or was common in L.A., for the reason mentioned above -- that the tap water there is not really considered drinkable.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: I didn't realize Clint Walker is in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, even in a bit part. I'll have to look for him the next time I watch the movie :-)

Just look up thread— it’s there.

R575, Clint Walker was one of the guards at the Egyptian palace. Standing on the left in this shot:

Mike "Touch" Connors was one of the Amalekite herders at the well.

I hope the water in L.A. is drinkable now because I do it all the time...

They sure used a lot of highly-polished linoleum in the first part of that movie.

R579 it was always drinkable, it was just more heavily treated water IIRC

Thanks, R577. Also, for those who are unaware, Henry Brandon -- aka Mr. Barnaby in MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS/BABES IN TOYLAND, an Apache chief in THE SEARCHERS, Acacius page in AUNTIE MAME, etc. -- appears as a guard in a few scenes in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, including the very first one in which dialogue is spoken, and if I recall, he actually speaks maybe the second or third or fourth line in the movie. Henry wasn't maybe quite the hunk or sex symbol as the others we're discussing here, but he was pretty close :-)

I'm just realizing that the title of this thread is kind of strange. If it refers to guys getting f&#ked by Henry Willson, then I imagine the guys would more likely be on their stomachs than their backs. If it refers to BJs, then they might be lying on their backs, but it's also very likely they'd be standing or kneeling, depending on whether they were giving or receiving.

OCD is a terrible thing, R583.

Put down the coffee.

[quote]The Laramie pilot, "Stage Stop," is also shown in color.

Yes, R516, and it is in my Top 5 of perfect pilots; each of the four main cast members is introduced in a way that perfectly limns their characters. Baddie Dan Duryea (of whom I've also read gay rumors) plays a sadistic gang leader, "Bud Carlin" who avers " I like to watch," then for his enjoyment repeatedly demands Jess cold-cock Slim upon pain of death. Later on in the episode a reluctant Jess must go and rescue damsel in distress Slim and they turn the tables on Mr. "I like to watch" Bud Carlin.

Well, DAMN, R545!

[quote]He looked like a skinned seal and wanted me to rub Johnson's Baby Oil on his fat body

R523, I expect to see a modern version of that scene play out in Diddy's trial.

R582, Michael Ansara also makes a brief appearance in The Ten Commandments.

So does Woody Strode.

The 10 Commandments and all those Hollywood Bible epics must have kept every young unknown hunk in Hollywood employed for weeks at a time.

Somehow I can't imagine Charlton Heston exchanging sex for career advancement.

Woody Strode (sounds almost Willson-esque, right?) was a hot piece of ass who aged exceptionally well.

R591, Before he became an NRA gun nut, Chuck Heston participated in the March on Washington. He was a complex figure.

R591, I don't know. Heston was an artist's model who wasn't shy about appearing next-to-nude in his early films. I get the feeling that he might have been willing to do whatever for a price or a good role.

Everybody here seems to be secretly envious of Henry Wilson, you leeches!

If nothing else, Charlton Heston was supremely aware of his rocking hot body, as seen on display in Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes, both far into his middle age.

He was hottest as John the Baptist in "Greatest Story Ever Told".

R594, what is the source of those images of Heston?

He’s fairly tubby there, compared to later years. He did Julius Caesar early on, but I doubt that was this.

Sure that’s him?

PEER GYNT