The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (22 page)

According to the press release from the Columbia Pictures Television publicity department, the film aimed to take a “sincere, serious and non-sensational look at lesbianism and how it affects the lives of several people.” Yet not all critics agreed. Writing in
NewsWest,
Terry deCrescenzo lambasted the film for depicting lesbian life as all about “murder, blackmail, violence, sick relationships, victimization, despair, prison, disaffected homes, insanity and, of course, bars and drugs.”
¹¹

In the
Dynasty
Decade, the threatening lesbian characters that inhabited the television movies of the 1970s were replaced by their more chic, stylish sisters. These women posed a different kind of danger, particularly to inexperienced young women who were trying to find themselves in the cruel, cold world. The 1981 television miniseries version of Jacqueline Susann’s
Valley of the Dolls
(which unfortunately lacked the camp quality of the original 1967 film), featured a Parisian lesbian artist, Vivienne Moray (Camilla Sparv), who befriends a down-on-her-luck Jennifer North (Veronica Hamel). Poor Jennifer has no man, no job, no friends, and a drug problem. Vivienne paints her portrait and the two become lovers just long enough for Jennifer to be “rehabilitated” back to a “normal” (meaning heterosexual) life. Jennifer is grateful to Vivienne, who she describes as an “incredible woman.” Keith Howes describes the lesbian love in the film “as a glamorous retreat, a cleansing, a halfway house, a necessary but temporary stopping-off point before returning to the basics of everyday life.”
¹²
But not all women are rescued from the clutches of their lesbian benefactors. In
Scruples
(1980), fashion editor Harriet Toppingham (Gene Tierney) keeps a tight leash around ambitious actress Melanie Adam (Kim Cattrall), as she introduces her to fame, alcohol, and drugs.

Lesbianism was also presented as an option for lonely heterosexual women in search of some companionship. In the made-for-TV movie,
My Two Loves,
widow and single mother Gail Springer (Mariette Hartley) befriends an executive, Marjorie (Lynn Redgrave), who she later discovers is a lesbian. Gail said she had no idea because Marjorie doesn’t look gay. “We don’t all wear black leather and ride a Harley Davidson,” Marjorie explains. Their friendship turns into an affair, much to the dismay of Gail’s mother (Sada Thompson) and her old friend, Ben (Barry Newman), a male chauvinist who is romantically pursuing her. The premise of this 1986 made-for-TV movie, co-written by lesbian author Rita Mae Brown
(Rubyfruit Jungle),
bears a striking resemblance to the 1972 “Very Strange Triangle” episode of
The Bold Ones
. They also share a similar ending. Gail, who must decide between Marjorie and Ben, chooses neither. Again, her choice seems to be between lifestyles, not individuals. Like Gail, television was still not ready to commit either way.

While most attempts to imitate
Dallas
and
Dynasty
were short-lived, producer Aaron Spelling successfully adapted
Hotel,
Arthur Hailey’s best-selling novel, for the small screen. Like two other successful Spelling series,
The Love Boat
(1977-1986) and
Fantasy Island
(1978-1984),
Hotel
(1983-1988) featured a new batch of guest stars each week that checked into the St. Regis Hotel with their suitcases and emotional baggage. They were greeted by the staff and the hotel’s owner, Mrs. Victoria Cabot (Anne Baxter), who took over the St. Regis when her sister-in-law, Laura Trent (Bette Davis) took an extended vacation that lasted the entire run of the series (any resemblance to
All About
Eve was most likely intentional). When they were not busy dealing with their own mini-dramas, Mrs. Cabot and her staff never hesitated to get involved with their guests.

For a swanky hotel located in the heart of San Francisco, the St. Regis ironically played host to a steady stream of homophobic and “gay-nervous” guests. The gay-themed stories featured early in the show’s five-season run were conventional “coming out” plotlines. In “Faith, Hope, and Charity,” a playwright, Zan Elliot (Carol Lynley) invites her best friend, Eileen Weston (Barbara Parkins) to town for the premiere of her new play. Eileen freaks out when she finds out Zan is a lesbian, but once she reads what she has to say about friendship in her play, all is well. In “Transitions,” Maggie (Deirdre Hall), wife of TV sportscaster Larry Dawson (Robert Reed), gets an even bigger shock when she finds her husband in the arms of another man, his director, Biff Henry (Granville van Dusen). In “Mistaken Identities,” Ed Curwin (Steve Kanaly) tries to get closer to his introverted son, Ron (Lance Kerwin), whom he fears is gay. But when Ron’s plan to set his son up with a hooker is foiled by a vice-cop, it drives them even farther apart.

These stories were neither original nor groundbreaking in their approach to topics like bisexuality and homophobia. Yet, just as the new crop of television dramas that debuted in the mid-1980s
(St. Elsewhere, Hill Streets Blues,
and
L.A. Law)
were zeroing in on more specific gay-related issues (like gay bashing, discrimination, and AIDS),
Hotel
started to feature more issue-oriented story lines.

For example, a 1986 episode (“Scapegoats”) examined the relationship between a gay hotel waiter, Joel (Leigh McCloskey) and a homophobic bartender, Frank (Ken Kercheval). When Frank discovers he has AIDS, he’s convinced he contracted the disease from Joel, who is actually HIV negative. Upon hearing the news, Frank’s ex-wife, Sheila (Rita Taggart), is horrified because in her mind, if he has AIDS, he must be gay. “How could you do that to us, Frank?” Sheila asks, “You have a son! What are you going to tell him? That his father is a character out
of Boys in the Band?”
But when his son Elliot
(Melrose Place’s
Doug Savant) hears the news, he assumes his father is a member of another high risk group — IV drug users.

When Frank collapses from pneumonia, it’s the understanding Joel who rushes to his side and manages to reunite his sick friend with his family. The “mystery” surrounding Frank’s HIV status is solved (he contracted the virus through a blood transfusion), but as Joel explains to Sheila, “even if he had been fooling around with guys, no one deserves a disease like this. It’s not God’s punishment, Sheila. It’s a virus! It kills little kids too!” The thought that it kills gay men alone was apparently still not enough to elicit sympathy from viewers in 1986.

“Scapegoats” also raises some important questions about AIDS and the workplace. When the hotel management staff learns Frank is in the early stages of AIDS, they wonder what action they should take, if any. They agree not to get caught up in the AIDS hysteria, yet General Manager Peter McDermott (James Brolin) suggests asking Frank to take a medical leave. But as his assistant Christine (Connie Sellecca) points out, that would be the same as asking him to quit. The management never has to take any action because Frank is suddenly hospitalized with pneumonia. Upon hearing the news, Mrs. Cabot takes a personal interest in Frank’s welfare and decides to put him on medical leave with full salary and benefits. As she explains, it’s not out of kindness, but what any loyal employee deserves.

The three remaining episodes touch slightly on issues that would receive national attention in the 1990s. In “Undercurrents,” a U.S. Army officer, Nick Hauser (Jan-Michael Vincent) gets a much-needed lesson in tolerance when he discovers best friend and fellow officer, Roger Gage (Boyd Gaines), is gay. The truth comes out when Roger is gay-bashed by a gang, but he can’t report it for fear it will end his military career. The St. Regis’s bellhop, Dave Kendall (Michael Spound), who coincidentally happens to be Roger’s old friend, tries to talk some sense into Nick. The same gang of gay-bashers, who mistake Nick and Dave for a gay couple, interrupts their conversation. Doing his part to keep the streets of San Francisco safe, Nick kicks their homophobic butts. Afterwards, Nick commends Roger for his courage, but tells him he has to end their friendship because he can’t accept his homosexuality (“It’s how I was brought up”). Roger decides to come out and press charges against the bashers, even if it means a dishonorable discharge.

Hotel
also tackled the issue of gay parenting. In “Rallying Cry,” 11-year-old Jodi Abbott (Missy Francis) is left by her late mother to a gay couple, Dr. Michael Vaughn (Doug Barr) and his lover, Alex Halpern (Michael Sabatino). Jodi wants to live with Michael and Alex, but her aunt and uncle, Nora (Marion Ross) and Cameron Wheeler (Lloyd Bochner), don’t believe homosexuals should raise a child. So they take Michael and Alex to court and are granted custody. When an unhappy Jodi runs away to be with Michael and Alex, Mrs. Cabot intervenes and brings both couples together. Nora, who’s concerned for her niece’s happiness, manages to convince Cameron to let them live with Alex and Peter. Cameron gives in, but he is still unhappy.

The final gay episode also revolves around a legal matter. In “Contest of Wills,” a young woman named Joanne Lambert is killed in an accident. When Joanne’s father (Dick O’Neill) arrives to claim the body and her belongings, he discovers his daughter was a lesbian and had been living with Carol Bowman (Christopher Norris), the hotel’s catering manager. Mr. Lambert tries to get Carol fired from the St. Regis and then demands she return a family heirloom Joanne gave to Carol. But when the two start going through Joanne’s possessions, they start to bond. In the end, Carol accompanies her “father-in-law” back to Maine for the funeral.

Gay-bashing, gays in the military, and custody suits are complex issues. While there is certainly limited time an hour episode to give them the attention they warrant (especially when an episode contains not one, but two or three plots), the producers of
Hotel
deserve credit for addressing topical issues that are important to the gay community. Of course the basic conflict is always resolved in the end, thanks to a meddling member of the hotel staff, yet the writers demonstrate some restraint and never completely sugarcoat the resolution. For example, although his wife has a change of heart, Cameron Wheeler still disapproves of his niece being raised by two gays. After going a few rounds with gay bashers, Nick admits no one deserves to be victimized, but he still ends his friendship with Roger.

For the 1984-1985 television season,
Hotel
ranked twelfth in the overall ratings.
Dynasty
and
Dallas
were, respectively, first and second in prime time, while
Knot’s Landing
came in ninth. The following season,
Dynasty
and
Dallas
lost their top slots to a pair of situation comedies —
The Cosby Show
(#1) and
Family
Ties (#2) — and dropped down, respectively, to seventh and sixth. The ratings of the other prime time soaps, though still respectable, were slipping (
Knot’s Landing
#17, Hotel #22, Falcon Crest #24). Meanwhile, the highly publicized
Dynasty,
spin-off,
The Colbys,
which debuted in November of 1985, didn’t even make the top thirty. Although the series was renewed for another season, the spin-off never found an audience, so ABC spun it off for good in March of 1987.

Why the sudden, steady decline in the popularity of prime time soaps? Perhaps viewers had had enough of the increasingly ridiculous plots:
Dynasty’s
violent royal wedding massacre in Moldavia; Bobby Ewing’s return from the dead via the shower, which meant the entire 1985-1986 season was his wife Pam’s (Victoria Principal) bad dream; Fallon’s abduction by aliens in
The Colbys’s
second season finale and her return to earth in the Mojave Desert in the Fall 1987
Dynasty
season opener. Or maybe the American public was no longer impressed with the lifestyles of the rich and overly dressed, particularly when greed became a dirty word following the stock market nosedive of October 1987.

The Carringtons did survive through the 1988-1989 season, when it sunk to 71 in the ratings during its final months. The cast was reassembled one last time for a four-hour miniseries, not surprisingly entitled
Dynasty: The Reunion,
in November of 1991. Al Corley resumed the role of Steven Carrington, who is now living happily ever after in Washington D.C. with Bart Fallmont (Cameron Watson). In the miniseries, Steven’s relationship with his father has greatly improved. He even helps Blake get his company back after a hostile takeover by an international business consortium that brainwashes Krystle and orders her to shoot Blake.

It was only a matter of time before a prime time soap as sensationalistic and trashy (but in a fun way) as
Dynasty
would sneak back onto the prime-time schedule. During its seven season run (1992-1999),
Melrose Place
was never a ratings success, but it did develop a cult following. In the 1990s, it was the show everyone was watching, though most fans were too embarrassed to admit it (including Jerry Seinfeld, who, on a memorable
Seinfeld
episode, fails a polygraph test he is forced to take when he tells the female cop he’s dating that he’s never watched the show).

Created by Darren Star, who spun the show off his other series,
Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place
follows a group of twentysomethings living in the trendy Melrose district of Los Angeles. The original eight residents included a medical student and his wife, an aspiring actress, a motorcycle mechanic, a receptionist, a writer, and a handsome gay social worker named Matt Fielding (Doug Savant). Despite its over-hyped premiere in the summer of 1992, the show failed to find an audience, but was saved from cancellation by switching to a serial format (in the early episodes, the plot lines didn’t continue). The other major change was the addition of three new bad girls: advertising executive Amanda Woodward (played by
Dynasty’s
Heather Locklear), the devious Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton), and the resident psychopath, Dr. Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross).

There was more partner switching at
Melrose Place
than at a square dance, yet the writers and producers had no idea what to do with their lone homosexual. Like Steven Carrington, Matt has a moral conscience, which is dangerous in soap opera land because it makes you an easy target for blackmailers, homophobic employers, abusive boyfriends, and psychos (see page 127 for a comprehensive comparison of Steven Carrington and Matt Fielding). It’s not just that bad things happen to Matt. Whenever he appeared to have found Mr. Right, the Fox Network immediately put the brakes on any display of physical affection between the two men. Meanwhile, the heterosexual characters were free to play musical beds.

The network’s hypocrisy was challenged when Fox insisted the producers cut a scene of Matt and another guy kissing. In “Till Death Do Us Part,” Matt discovers he has something in common with Billy’s (Andrew Shue) best man, Rob (Ty Miller). Billy doesn’t know Rob is gay until he sees his two friends locking lips in the courtyard. Unfortunately, the audience doesn’t get to see the kiss because Fox, concerned about the loss of advertising revenue, forced the producers to cut away before their lips touch. GLAAD criticized the decision and asked, “What are the censors afraid of in a simple kiss? Why can’t Matt be a full human being like the rest of his heterosexual couterparts?”
¹³
GLAAD also took a full page ad out in
Daily Variety
(May 10, 1994) which read: “Fox — Censorship Is Un-American. Don’t Censor the Creative Community and Don’t Censor Our Lives.” Co-creator/producer Darren Star also voiced his objections and insisted the producers received letters from both gay and non-gay viewers urging them to further develop Matt’s character. “The viewers are more sophisticated,” said Star, “than advertisers, or than advertisers...give them credit for.”
¹⁴

GLAAD raised the issue once again when in a November 1996 episode Matt asks his current squeeze, Dan (Greg Evigan), to spend the night (“Farewell Mike’s Concubine”). Dan wants to take it slow, so slow that the scene ends with the couple giving each other a goodnight
bug.
GLAAD offered Matt some good advice: “If you don’t feel comfortable kissing someone good night you probably shouldn’t invite them in for a sleepover.”
¹⁵
At a time when gay characters are so visible in films and on television, it’s no longer sufficient to simply
tell
us Matt is gay. We expect him to have some semblance of a gay life on screen. The double standard is blatant, particularly on a hyper-hetero show like
Melrose Place
that requires a flow chart to keep track of who is sleeping with whom.

In the sixth season opener (“Brand New Day”), Matt gets custody of his late brother’s daughter, Chelsea (Katie Wright) and moves north to San Francisco. But the producers were not content with letting Matt live happily ever after. One year later, the residents of Melrose Place learn Matt was killed in a car crash (“The World According to Matt”) while visiting Los Angeles. Matt’s mom gives Amanda her son’s diary, which is chock full of gossip about his former neighbors. Amanda begins reading (“It’s like reading a trashy novel, except you know all the people.”) and discovers Kyle (Rob Estes) has a brother, Michael (Thomas Calabro), who works as a male stripper in a Chicago club, Jane (Josie Bisset) slept with her college friend on the eve of her wedding, etc. (Of course Matt’s journal revealed little about its author because he was never allowed to have a life.) In the end, his death was nothing more than a cheap plot device used to put some spark back into a series that was on its last legs. Ironically, it seemed an appropriate farewell for a character that never got his fair due.

Matt and his string of troubled boyfriends were not the only gay characters on the show. When Matt departs, the series’s “gay slot” is filled by a lesbian named Connie Rexroth (Megan Ward), a friend of Billy’s fiancée, Samantha Reilly (Brooke Langton). Connie tries to create friction between the couple by getting a drunk Billy to kiss her. Only Billy gets a tip from Samantha’s ex that it’s really Connie who Samantha is after. GLAAD acknowledged that many viewers might welcome a “wild gay character,” especially on a show full of “hypersexual heterosexual psychos.” But they were also concerned that people might see “this portrayal of a scheming psycho lesbian in the tradition of
Basic Instinct”
problematic.
¹⁶
Fortunately, the situation never goes that far because when Billy confronts Connie, she apologizes and scrams.

Melrose Place
was a cult hit in the 1990s, yet it was the only
post-Dynasty
soap done in the same “over the top” 1980s style to enjoy a long, healthy run. In fact,
Melrose’s
many imitators, including a cheesy spin-off,
Models, Inc.
(1994-1995), and Darren Star’s more “upscale”
Central Park West
(1995-1996), barely lasted a season each. Even Aaron Spelling, one of the most successful television producers of all time, made several ill-fated attempts to revive the prime time soap. His list of casualties include
2000 Malibu Road
(1992),
Savannah
(1996-1997),
Malibu
Shores
(1996), and
Titans
(2000).

The failures of these and other
Dynasty/Melrose Place
clones were due in part to a shift in the viewing publics sensibility in the 1990s toward dramatic series with less glitz and more grit, like
ER, Law and Order,
and
N.Y.P.D. Blue.
The character-driven dramas of the 1990s, including those not set in a high school, hospital, or police station, were also more, for want of a better word, realistic. Like their prime time predecessors, they did retain some of the elements of daytime serials: continuing story lines; characters dealing with family, relationships, and work-related problems; and the occasional tragedy or crisis. Yet, the characters were not, like the Carringtons and the Ewings, in the top income bracket, but rather, in the tradition of daytime serials, white collar professionals from middle or working class families. Furthermore, every conflict was not reduced to a battle between good and evil. Instead, prime time dramas in the 1990s, shows like
thirtysomething, Sisters,
and
Relativity,
emphasized their characters’ emotional struggles.