This is our second in a continuing series about gay and bisexual actors from classic television. Our previous entry was about Richard Deacon.
PAUL WINFIELD
Lifelong member of The Actors Studio, deeply-voiced narrator of City Confidential on the A&E network, and unwilling host to something nobody EVER EVER EVER wants placed in their ear by Ricardo Montalban, gentlemanly actor Paul Winfield was only one of a few African-American Hollywood stars to rise to prominence during the 1960’s.
His work in film and television lasted nearly 40 years, with a charismatic presence and enigmatic voice that brought him lead roles in the feature films Sounder and the hamfisted Reader’s Digest musical Huckleberry Finn. Winfield’s credits are exceptionally varied, but television roles in the ground-breaking, controversial sitcom Julia, and as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the miniseries King, and Roots: The Next Generations, cement his place as an icon of the rising visibility of blacks on television.
However, Winfield was, like many of his generation, necessarily discrete about his personal life, so there’s not much publicly shared information. He was partnered for 30 years to architect Charles Gillan, Jr., outliving him by about 2 years. A magnificent legacy to be proud of.
WILL GEER
Professional mustache-wearer, Overall-trendsetter, and cuddly Grampa to the whole wholesome Walton brood, in real life TV’s Zebulon Tyler Walton was a committed radical. He’s described as a “lover” of Harry Hay, founder of the Radical Faeries, though I suspect that the term “lover” doesn’t really do justice to their unique relationship.
As a registered communist and outspoken supporter of labor rights beginning in the 1930’s, by the 1950’s when Geer was eventually blacklisted, his acting career fizzled. Forced to find an income to support his family, Geer and his wife Herta Ware, along with friends like folk singer Pete Seeger, developed the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, which combined live theater with active horticulture. Yes, you read that right. Planting every flora mentioned by Shakespeare while simultaneously founding a theatrical troupe, Geer and company created a sustainable working community of artists, actors and writers that continues (as a capitalist enterprise) to this day.
Eventually he was accepted back into Hollywood, and worked steadily doing one-offs on tons of TV series like Mission: Impossible, Bonanza, Medical Center and Love, American Style. Pretty impressive for an openly queer actor in that time period. He also worked sporadically on Broadway, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1964.
Geer was actually not the first actor to play Grandpa Walton. The character originated in Earl Hamner, Jr.’s novel Spencer’s Mountain, which in 1963 was made into a film of the same name, with James MacArthur as Clayboy Spencer (yikes—glad he got a name change), and Donald Crisp as Grandpa Spencer.
Later, in The Homecoming: A Christmas Story holiday TV movie (far superior to the series) starring Patricia Neal, ventriloquist and Charlie McCarthy intimate Edgar Bergen played Grandpa Walton, sans puppets. The movie was such a hit that CBS got rid of most of the actors and rebooted it as The Waltons, a weekly dollop of homespun syrup to soak up the rotten pancakes of political reality during the Watergate Follies.
But it was Geer who made the family patriarch shine as TV’s most lovable and iconic non-Walmart Walton granddaddy. Doling out his sweet mountain wisdom and winsome folksy parables while the Great Depression passed him by, Geer was exactly the kind of audio-animatronic Grampa we all wish we’d had rocking on our front porch.
Soon after completing his sixth season of The Waltons, Geer passed away while his family sang This Land Is Your Land at his bedside, and along with him, Grandpa Walton’s character died as well. TV lost its Grandpa and America lost an outspoken queer son. But thankfully, in reruns on the Hallmark Channel, nobody living in a prairie or mountain home ever really goes to heaven.
Today, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is still around and continues to foster the arts and cultural community in Southern California. It’s a lasting legacy to the man who spent his life looking out for others.
LGBTQ or Sexual orientation just a politically correct way of saying it is okay to be a homosexual.
What they do in their own bedrooms is their business. But when they want to have their parades and showing off how homosexual they are and demanding people kiss their rears because they are homosexuals. Maybe it is time for Prostitute parades as well.
They are perverting the biological function of their bodies. No man’s erect penis belongs in another man’s rectum or mouth, or a woman’s either. Many heterosexuals do anal sex and oral sex so they are just as guilty of violating the biological function of their bodies as homosexuals are, but at least they do it with members of the opposite sex!
There is nothing in the mouth or rectum to be fertilized by sperm. It is a violation of the biological function of the penis, mouth and rectum. The rectum is full of feces and not for sticking your penis in. Same analogy for women that are homosexuals as well for what they do to each other. Bunch of sickofantic perverts. Abnormal and they should be seeing a shrink to find out why they are so screwed up.
Notice I said not one word about the Bible or religion!
You got to the direct point n it’s so true.
Yes, I completely agree with what you said Craig. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about homosexuals and the LGBTQ community.