The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (4 page)

In June of 1969, the Stonewall Riots in New York ushered in the beginning of the modern gay-liberation movement, which made the homosexual community a more visible and viable political force. The initial strategy employed by the homophile organizations to gain acceptance through assimilation was replaced by a more in-your-face demand for equal rights and social justice.

Once the movement increased in size and gained political momentum, there were signs of progress. In 1973, the American Bar Association passed a resolution supporting the repeal of state sodomy laws, which had begun with Illinois in 1961 and resumed ten years later with Connecticut. The following year, homosexuality was finally removed (by a 54 percent majority) from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. In 1974, a federal anti-gay discrimination bill (HR-14752) was introduced into the House of Representatives. Although it was ultimately defeated, similar measures passed in cities and counties around the country. Most importantly, gays and lesbians were building their own communities, complete with bookstores, community centers, music and publishing companies, synagogues, churches, and gay pride parades and celebrations in major cities across America.

The television medical drama, which gained a new popularity in the early 1970s with programs like
The Bold Ones, Medical Center,
and
Marcus Welby, M.D.,
“treated” homosexuality during this transitional period with a generally liberal, though ultimately misguided, attitude. Pity was advocated over condemnation, tolerance over total acceptance. Just as the discussion of homosexuality on early TV talk shows was a response to the viewers’ presumed concern over the homosexual’s increased visibility, the treatment of homosexuality by the medical dramas of the 1970s was a response to the burgeoning gay rights movement. By presenting the medical “facts” about homosexuality, medical shows took over the role of TV talk shows in alleviating the public’s fears.

To avoid classifying homosexuality as a disease, 1970s medical dramas linked sexual confusion — or more specifically, “homosexual panic” — to a specific condition (ulcers, diabetes, a heart condition, etc.). Before a patient’s condition could be treated, the confusion surrounding the patient’s sexual orientation needed to be resolved. At the same time, television doctors battled a new, rapidly spreading disease: homophobia, the irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals brought on by scores of gay and lesbian doctors and nurses coming out of the closets. Once their sexual orientation was made public, these characters, generally confined to a single episode, found themselves in the center of a controversy. The homophobia they encountered from patients, the medical staff, and the hospital administration not only put their jobs in jeopardy, but also, inevitably, the lives of their own patients.

A 1972 episode of the NBC drama
The Bold Ones
entitled “Discovery at Fourteen” features child star and future Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard as Cory Melino, a troubled teenager suffering from a bleeding ulcer. His pediatrician, Dr. Amanda Fallon (guest star Jane Wyman), knows that something is bothering the boy.

“He mopes around like the weight of the world is on those 14-year-old shoulders,” the doctor observes. “Cory’s mask of indifference frightens me.”

Dr. Fallon tries to find out what is wrong, but Cory’s family isn’t much help. His mother Dee (Lynnette Mettey), a divorcee, refuses to take her son to a psychiatrist because she believes it will only make matters worse. When Dr. Fallon questions her about Cory’s father, Dee explains both Cory and his brother have no contact with him. The doctor becomes suspicious, however, when the boy’s paternal grandfather, Peter Melino (
Dallas’s
Jim Davis), who lives with Dee and Cory, reveals he also never talks to his son.

When Cory purposely goes off his prescribed diet, making his ulcer bleed, Dr. Fallon decides to locate the boy’s father. She tracks him to a neighborhood bar, “The Monanthous,” a name derived from a botanical term meaning “one flower.” Upon entering the dimly lit establishment, the good doctor doesn’t find one “flower,” but an entire garden of gay men, who silently exchange stares with the female intruder.

“May I help you, Miss?” the bartender politely asks.

The former Mrs. Ronald Reagan, looking as if she is recreating a moment from her Oscar-winning performance as a deaf-mute in
Johnny Belinda,
is speechless.

Dr. Fallon eventually finds Cory’s father, Jack (Robert Hogan), at a nearby tennis court. After convincing him she is only there to discuss his son’s health, Jack lets her in on Cory’s secret. One night while Jack was entertaining some friends, Cory paid his father a surprise visit. “They [Jack’s friends] were, I guess you would use the word
obvious,”
Jack explains. “Kids aren’t naive about homosexuals these days. I’m sure Cory knows about the whole gay scene.” When Dr. Fallon later confronts Dee and Peter, they admit to hiding Jack’s homosexuality from Cory.

“You’d think he [Jack] had two heads and warts on all four eyeballs,” the doctor scolds, “Now we’re not going to get any place until you crawl out of your Victorian caves! These are enlightened times!”

Realizing Cory is afraid he will grow up to be like his father, Peter, Dee and Dr. Fallon set him
straight.
After reading some books Dr. Fallon recommended, Peter decides to reconcile with his gay son because, as he explains to Cory, Jack’s “attitude toward sex and marriage isn’t something hereditary.” Dee assures Cory that just because she compares him to his father, it doesn’t mean he’ll be exactly like him. Dr. Fallon also persuades Cory that although he and his father may have similar interests (like tennis), it is only a coincidence and not “some kind of genetic legacy.”

In the final scene, Cory is clearly on the road to recovery. As Dee and Peter watch him play tennis, Dr. Fallon observes that “he doesn’t see the game as something he inherited from his father. He’s playing all his own.”

Although she never actually utters the “H” word, Dr. Fallon’s attitude toward homosexuality is, on the surface, generally progressive. The episode’s gay-positive message is undermined, however, by the so-called medical “fact” that cures Cory’s ulcer and Peter’s attitude toward his gay son: homosexuality isn’t genetic or environmental, it’s a lifestyle, a
choice.
Peter earns points for reconciling with Jack, but isn’t it suspicious he doesn’t accept his son’s homosexuality until he learns it’s
not
genetic, but a personal choice? Perhaps he’s just relieved that his genes are not to blame.

Dr. Fallon is one of the few TV doctors to take a position on the “nature vs. nurture” debate surrounding the origins of homosexuality. Her explanation is, however, puzzling, because she suggests homosexuality is ultimately an individual choice, yet downplays the influence of outside factors, like environment and child-parent relationships. Perhaps placing the emphasis on choice was a strategy — not only to alleviate parents’ fears but make Dr. Fallon’s gay-friendly attitude an easier pill to swallow.

This approach was not typical of late 1960s to early 1970s medical series, which, like
The Eleventh Hour,
usually linked a patient’s homosexual tendencies to his/her dysfunctional relationship with one or both parents. Such is the case in “The Other Martin Loring,” a controversial 1973 episode of the popular ABC series
Marcus Welby, M.D.
When Martin Loring (Mark Miller), an alcoholic and a diabetic, goes to Dr. Welby (Robert Young) for a checkup, the good doctor is concerned about Martin’s weight gain and high sugar count. Martin assures Dr. Welby he’s just under tremendous pressure at work. What he fails to mention is that his marriage is falling apart.

That evening, Martin’s wife Margaret (Sharon Acker) informs her husband she’s divorcing him and suing for full custody of their teenage son, Billy (played by Scott Jacoby, who won an Emmy for playing a homosexual’s son in
That Certain Summer).
“The fact is you are not a fit parent,” she sneers. “Now you ought to be the first one to admit that.”

When he threatens to counter sue, Margaret vows not to hold
anything
back in court. Later that evening, after finishing his nightcap, Martin collapses. Dr. Welby arrives at the house, puts Martin to bed, and has a heart-to-heart with Margaret, who tells him their 20-year marriage is over. “It doesn’t do much for a woman’s self-esteem when she realizes her husband finds her undesirable,” she admits. Assuming there’s another woman, Dr. Welby suggests that infidelity can happen in the best of marriages. “I almost wish it were another woman!” she wails.

On the following day, Margaret serves her husband with preliminary divorce papers. After a quick drink and a shot of insulin, Martin goes for a drive, and smashes his car. He’s charged with drunk driving, but Dr. Welby convinces the police that Martin was not intoxicated, just having a reaction to the mixture of insulin and alcohol.

Trying to understand why his patient is on a self-destructive path, Dr. Welby speaks to Martin’s mother (Martha Scott), who characterizes her son as an excruciatingly shy child who never discussed his personal feelings. Mrs. Loring attributes Martin’s unhappy marriage to the lack of love he received from his cold, unaffectionate, authoritarian father. “How could Martin be close to a wife or any woman when he never saw anything but distance between his two parents?” she asks. “How could he know what love is when he saw his own mother denied love?”

Dr. Welby does the arithmetic: one sensitive, lonely boy + one cold, distant father = one homosexual. He confronts Martin, who at first denies he has a “problem,” but then finally confesses all:

Martin admits his homosexuality “has always been there.
And that makes my whole life a cheap, hollow fraud.”

Dr. Welby obviously doesn’t always know best when he tells Martin he’s not homosexual “in the true sense of the term.”

Dr. Welby’s diagnosis only plummets his patient deeper into depression. Finally, after a failed suicide attempt, Martin reluctantly agrees to see a shrink. “Give it a try,” Dr. Welby encourages him. “Perhaps if you can get rid of your self-hatred and repression, you can still learn to enjoy a
normal
marital relationship.” Most importantly, Dr. Welby adds, he needs to do it for his son. “I think you are going to do it, Martin,” adds Dr. Welby, “I think you are going to
win that fight.”

Like Cory Melino, Martin is suffering from homosexual panic, but while Cory is just another confused, uninformed, heterosexual adolescent, the “other” Martin Loring is a repressed, self-hating, latent homosexual. The possibility that Martin is gay and
could
live a happy, healthy life is never considered. Instead, in his infinite wisdom, Dr. Welby pushes Martin deeper into the closet by suggesting that his
fear
of homosexuality, rather than his repressed homosexual feelings, is at the root of his neurosis. The homosexual desires of the “other” Martin are not something acceptable, let alone real, but a deep manifestation of his unresolved oedipal issues. Consequently, Dr. Welby, like Dr. Fallon, advises his patient to confront his fears. But while Cory’s anxiety is alleviated by answering a few basic questions, Martin Loring will most likely be spending some quality time on his psychiatrist’s couch.

“The Other Martin Loring” sparked a protest by gay advocacy groups who, in the early 1970s, “were beginning to see prime-time television as critical symbolic territory in their struggle to gain acceptance in the wider society.”
³⁷
In an effort to influence the portrayal of homosexuals on television, the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), a group of activists at the forefront of the New York gay political movement since 1970, organized a protest against ABC to stop the network from airing the episode.

After reading the teleplay and attending an advanced screening, GAA news and media relations chief Ronald Gold publicly denounced the episode as “medically unsound, filled with quackery...defaming to homosexuals” and in violation of “ABC’s own standards for dealing with minorities.”
³⁸
More specifically, the GAA objected to Martin’s description of his feelings as “loathsome and degrading” and his life as a “cheap and hollow fraud.” They also took issue with Dr. Welby’s diagnosis of homosexuality as an illness and his advice to seek psychiatric help to repress his sexuality so he’ll “deserve” his son’s respect.
³⁹
Interestingly, there never was any mention of the connection between Martin’s latent homosexuality and his dysfunctional relationship with his father, probably because it was a generally accepted view at the time.

On February 13, 1973, Gold met with Grace Johnson, vice president in charge of standards and practices at ABC. Two days later, the network announced no changes would be made. On Friday, February 17, protesters picketed outside ABC’s New York headquarters, while the GAA members inside occupied the 39th floor offices of ABC president Elton Rule and chairman of the board Leonard Goldenson. Network executives offered to meet with two members of the Alliance, but they declined, insisting all protesters must be present. Gold later remarked it was one of their biggest mistakes, but they “were afraid that we were going to get screwed over so we said no. That was foolish because we didn’t get to talk to anybody. They thought we were crazy — and to a certain extent we were. But we were also justifiably paranoid.”
⁴⁰
Six members who refused to leave peacefully were arrested, but charges were later dropped when a judge ruled an ABC security guard had failed to identify himself properly to the protesters as someone authorized to toss them off the premises.
⁴¹

In response to the protest, a spokesperson for ABC described the episode, which aired as scheduled, as:

When the episode aired in February of 1973, the network reportedly did eliminate Martin’s description of his homosexuality as something “degrading and loathsome” that made his “whole life a cheap and hollow fraud.”
⁴³
Although the deletions were made for the first-run telecast, the syndicated version of the episode, still running today in some markets, contains both statements.

The following year,
Marcus Welby, M.D.
was again a hotbed of controversy when it devoted an episode to the subject of child molestation. In “The Outrage,” Ted Blakely (Sean Kelly) is sexually molested by his teacher, Bill Swanson (Edward Winter) while on a camping trip with his science class. Ted tries to hide the incident from his mother, Marian (Marla Adams), but when she finds blood on his bed sheets, she rushes her son to Dr. Welby. He examines the bruises and lacerations all over the teenager’s body, but, ashamed and scared, Ted refuses to tell Dr. Welby what happened.