The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (14 page)

In “From San Francisco With Love,” Hunter assists an attractive San Francisco detective, Valerie Foster (Laura Johnson), in her investigation of the murder of a millionaire and the subsequent murder of his son. After sleeping with Valerie, Hunter becomes suspicious — she seems too preoccupied with the case and suspects she faked her orgasm during sex (the possibility that Hunter may have been the cause is never considered).

Once again, Hunter’s instincts are right on the money. He and McCall discover that Valerie plotted both murders with her lesbian lover, Casey (Philece Sampler), the millionaire’s young wife. Now that her husband and stepson are dead, Casey stands to inherit $80 million. Hunter and McCall foster friction between the lesbian couple, which culminates with a little face slapping before Casey turns Valerie over to the police. Once again, lesbianism is reduced to something cheap and tawdry — the dirty little secret which needs to be uncovered in order to catch the killer.

Deception, greed, and murder are also in ample supply in an episode of
The Rockford Files.
In “The Empty Frame,” a wealthy gay man, John (Richard Seff) and his lover Jeffrey (Paul Carr), hire Jim Rockford (James Garner) to retrieve their entire art collection, which has been stolen from their seaside mansion by an armed group of ex-Berkeley radicals (!?!). When Jeffrey is murdered shortly after the heist, Rockford discovers he was actually the thieves’ inside man. Despite his lover’s betrayal, John still pays for his funeral.

“I don’t know why he did what he did,” he explains to Rockford. “I probably will never understand that. But for fifteen years, he was my devoted friend. I can’t forget that. And I won’t.”

Rockford understands his reasons and respects his decision. The 1978 show is noteworthy because the couple’s gayness is never an issue. More remarkably, none of the usual homophobic jokes, quips, or comments are tossed off by the other characters at their expense.

Heterosexuals have also been known to commit a murder or two in their quest for financial security. On
Kate Loves a Mystery
(“Feelings Can Be Murder”), newspaper reporter Kate Callahan (Kate Mulgrew) investigates the murder of a bisexual married woman, Claire (Shannon Wilcox), who belonged to a sexual consciousness raising encounter group. The list of suspects includes the psychologist with fake credentials, the group’s self-proclaimed ladies man, and the victim’s closeted (and married) lesbian lover. In the end, Kate discovers the killer is the deceased’s own husband, Peter (Rudy Solari), who admits to bumping off his bride because she was planning to divorce him and run off with half his business.

A similar motive is behind the murder of a wealthy gay couple on an episode of the delightfully cheesy
Silk Stalkings.
In “Compulsion,” Det. Sgt. Tom (Chris Potter) and Det. Sgt. Cassy (Janet Gunn) suspect the deceased’s business partner, Rikki Rivers (Erika Anderson). But the murderer turns out to be Rikki’s ex-husband, Chance
(The Blue Lagoon’s
Chris Atkins), who, before killing the couple, cuts a deal with them that would bequeath to him their portion of the business.

Another
Silk Stalkings
mystery (“Pumped Up”) involves a bisexual vixen named Roxy (Kimberly Patton) murdered in her own health club after a session of hot, steamy lesbian sex (no doubt for the benefit of the series’s male heterosexual viewers). Once again, there are the usual suspects: Roxy’s fiancée Harmon Lange (Patrick Wayne), who recently caught her with another woman; her ex-business partner, Nino Cunetto (Anthony Addabbo); and her sexual playmate, a mystery woman named Angel who Roxy picked up in a sex club. The whodunit reaches a rather anti-climactic climax when we discover Angel is actually Harmon’s daughter, Taylor (Belinda Waymouth). Apparently Taylor was afraid she would lose her portion of her father’s business to Roxy, so she pretended to be a lesbian to seduce and kill her. (“It was more fun than I thought,” Taylor admits.)

The Practice
featured a gay psychopath named Joey Heric (John Larroquette) who, on two separate episodes, kills his ex-lover and his current lover in exactly the same fashion (a knife through the chest). The smug, narcissistic Heric knows he is the smartest person in the room, so he has no trouble getting his lawyer, Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott), to help him get away with murder. (Isn’t that a lawyer’s job anyway?).

In “Betrayal,” Heric accuses his current lover, Marty Adleman (Stephen Caffrey) of murdering his ex-boyfriend. Heric is given immunity in exchange for his testimony, but when he takes the stand, he shocks everyone by confessing to the crime. His immunity thus prevents him from being prosecuted.

The following spring, Heric murders Marty (“Another Day”) and is once again not guilty. He initially claims it was self-defense, but when assistant district attorney Helen Gamble (Lara Flynn Boyle) manages to unnerve him on the stand, he testifies that Marty committed suicide. A psychiatrist expert witness for the defense claims Heric took credit for the crime because he suffers from an acute narcissistic disorder which drives him to come out on top in any situation (including the trial, as Helen so rightfully points out). The jury buys the psychiatrist’s testimony and Heric gets off, even though Helen, Bobby, and the viewer
know
he is guilty.

Like the gay-coded killers who graced the silver screen in Hitchcock’s
Rope
(1949) and
Strangers On a Train
(1951), Heric revels in his intellectual superiority. He demonstrates no remorse for committing murder and is proud he can manipulate the legal system. But unlike Robert Walker in
Strangers
or Farley Granger in
Rope,
he is able to get away with committing not one, but two murders. Although characters such as Heric don’t exactly give homosexuals a good name, when played so deliciously by character actors like Larroquette, who won an Emmy for his performance, they’re undeniably entertaining.

Far more disturbing than Heric is a pair of killers in an episode of the short-lived American version of the British crime series,
Cracker
. In “Best Boys,” a homeless teenager named Bill (Jared Rushton), on probation for car theft, befriends his boss, Mitchell Brady (Peter Firth). When Brady’s landlady thinks something is fishy about her tenant’s relationship with Bill, she threatens to call the police. Afraid of getting the police involved, Bill, with Brady’s help, kills her. But there’s more trouble for the duo when Bill begins to terrorize his former foster parents and then kills his social worker when he threatens to turn him into the authorities.

Fitz (Robert Pastorelli), a psychiatrist who works as a consultant for the L.A. Police Department, discovers both Bill and Brady have abandonment issues. Brady’s a suicidal ex-Marine who lost his “friend” while serving in the Middle East. Bill was emotionally scarred by his foster family’s decision not to adopt him when the couple got pregnant after years of trying. With Fitz’s help, Brady gets Bill to surrender by telling him he loves him. But what kind of love is it exactly? Their relationship is ambiguous because there is a homoerotic subtext (at one point they almost kiss, but are interrupted), yet there is also a definite father-son dynamic. Brady is clearly gay. Bill seems willing to do anything to be loved.

In 1972,
Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law,
opened its second season with a provocative segment about a champion college diver accused of molesting a young girl. In “Words of Summer,” athlete Ann Glover (Meredith Baxter) seeks help from Owen Marshall (Arthur Hill) when she is stripped of her amateur diving status. Ann discovers Louise Carpenter (Barbara Rush) told the International Diving Committee she accepted cash for giving her daughter Ardis (Denise Nickerson) diving lessons the previous summer. The money, which was forced onto her by Ardis’s father, Julian (Craig Stevens), becomes a secondary issue when Louise’s real motive for writing the letter is revealed: Ardis claims Ann sexually molested her. As evidence, Louise shows Marshall photographs of Ann being affectionate with Ardis and a letter Ann wrote to her daughter containing a suggestive quote from Lord Byron: “Come lay thy head upon my breast and I will kiss thee into rest.”

Proving Ann’s innocence becomes more challenging for Marshall when her former roommate for two years, Meg (Kristina Holland), is forced by the prosecution to take the witness stand and admit she is a lesbian. Meg is a soft-spoken young woman who writes for a lesbian publication under a pseudonym because she is not out to her family. The prosecutor (played by
Gilligan
‘
s Island
’
s
Professor, Russell Johnson) points out the publication is entitled
The 12th Letter,
as in the letter L, for Lesbos. But Meg isn’t ashamed of being a lesbian. “I am what I am...” she testifies, “I guess I always have been.”

During her testimony, Meg states under oath that her relationship with Ann has always been platonic. She also offers a sympathetic account of how Ann stuck by her and insisted she not move out when rumors began to circulate the two were lovers. The sensationalistic nature of the case aside, the scene is important for two reasons. First, viewers are introduced, perhaps for the first time on television, to a stable, self-identified, politically minded lesbian secure in her sexual identity. Second, and equally rare for early 1970s television, is the characterization of a heterosexual as a supportive ally of her gay friend.

“Words of Summer” was clearly going for something bold and daring, but as
Variety
points out, the theme of false accusations around lesbianism was handled more effectively in Lillian Hellman’s play (and film),
The Children’s Hour.
(Of course, one major difference is one of the women commits suicide at the end of Hellman’s play.)
Variety
was also not terribly impressed by Meg’s testimony, which they unfairly dismissed as “the expected speech about how hard it is to be out of step with community sexual mores.”
²⁸
The review concludes that the term “the new daring,” which was being tossed around at the time in reference to the mature themes currently being addressed on television, is “a proclamation that looks increasingly more exploitative than informative or sensitive.”
²⁹

What
Variety’s
cynical critic failed to recognize is that the episode’s real problem lies not in Meg’s testimony, but in the implication, at least from the prosecution’s perspective, that there is a correlation between lesbianism and child molestation. By implying Ann is a lesbian, even if only by association with Meg, the prosecution is suggesting Ann is more likely to be guilty. Even Meg is aware of this when she testifies they were never more than close friends, then adds, “either way, it doesn’t do much for Ann, does it?” Fortunately, Ardis finally admits she lied because she felt abandoned when Ann returned to school and resented her younger sibling for getting all her mother’s attention.

Lesbianism and molestation are once again equated in several episodes involving female police officers who are falsely accused of molesting female prisoners. Law enforcement is a male-dominated field, particularly on 1970s television, so most episodes dealing with homophobia on the police force concern gay male police officers. The few exceptions involve female police officers forced to prove they’re not lesbians, and, therefore, innocent of molestation. Whether the episode, in total or in part, is promoting or critiquing the feminist movement and its support of women working in traditionally male occupations is not always clear.

In the mid-1970s, two series,
Bronk and Police Woman,
featured episodes about female police officers accused of molesting female prisoners. In
Bronk
(“The Deadlier Sex”), a 1975-76 series created by Carroll O’Connor, the first police woman assigned to Lt. Alex “Bronk” Bronkov’s (Jack Palance) department of Ocean City, California, is accused of attacking a female prisoner, Eleanor (Jaime Lyn Bauer). According to a story that appeared in
The Advocate,
“the policewoman [Sara, played by Julie Sommars] is horrified at the accusation, but eventually her heterosexual reputation and good name are restored.”
³⁰
To protest the airing of the episode, in which, according to National Gay and Lesbian Task Force media director Ginny Vida, “negative implications about lesbianism abound,” a list of the show’s advertisers was published.
³¹

A year after the “Flowers of Evil” debacle,
Police Woman
featured yet another lesbian-themed episode. This time around, the producers were smart enough to consult the Gay Media Task Force on the script. In “Trial By Prejudice,” Pepper is falsely accused of molesting Nina Daniels (Carol Lynley), a warehouse-robbery suspect. While sitting alone with Pepper in a squad car, a screaming Nina jumps on Pepper and pretends to resist her sexual advances. The robbery charges are dropped due to lack of evidence, but internal affairs is forced to investigate Nina’s accusations against Pepper.

One name that comes up during the investigation is Marlena Simpson (Pat Crowley), an ex-police officer who was Pepper’s police academy roommate. (Marlena is the “college roommate” Pepper referred to in her speech to Janet at the end of “Flowers of Evil.”) When her superiors begin to question Pepper about her relationship with Marlena, she refuses to answer and turns in her gun and badge. Meanwhile, two more female prisoners arrested by Pepper come forward to accuse her of propositioning them.

In an attempt to clear Pepper’s name, Lt. Crowley speaks to Marlena, who reveals Pepper is trying to protect her. When she and Pepper roomed together at the academy, Marlena came out to her. Pepper thought it would be best for both of them if she moved out. (While never stated, the implication is Marlena had feelings for Pepper.) Marlena was later forced to resign from the police force when they discovered she was living with a woman. Now a successful businesswoman, Marlena knows if she comes to Pepper’s defense, she could jeopardize her professional reputation.

The case gets even more complicated when Pepper follows Nina to her accomplices’ hideout. There is a struggle, during which she accidentally shoots and kills Nina. On the day of Pepper’s hearing, Crowley and his fellow officers prove the two female prisoners are lying about Pepper’s advances. They also find one of Nina’s accomplices, who vouches for Pepper’s innocence. Just as Marlena is about to testify, Pepper hands her resignation in to the board. When Crowley produces his witness, Pepper gets her job back and Marlena doesn’t have to testify. Marlena thanks Pepper for her willingness to sacrifice her career to protect her. “You know something Pepper,” Marlena says, “you are one special friend.”

Speculation surrounding a female cop’s sexual orientation was acceptable as long as it was limited to the
other
characters on the series. This theory was put to the test when CBS decided to recast the role of Chris Cagney on the feminist-oriented crime drama,
Cagney and Lacey.
The two female detectives were first introduced in a highly rated 1981 made-for-television movie starring Loretta Swit and Tyne Daly. Swit was still appearing on M*A*S*H, so the network cast Meg Foster.

According to a
TV Guide
article, Foster was then replaced because, in the words of one unnamed CBS programmer, the characters on the show are “too tough, too hard and not feminine.”
³²
(Daly would remain in the role of Mary Beth Lacey “because she was less threatening.”) As the CBS executive explained further, CBS wanted to make them less aggressive because they feared the duo would be seen as feminists and dykes:

Even Richard Rosenblum, one of the series’s producers, admitted the women could be perceived as gay because they were working in a male-dominated profession. He believed the stigma is “unfair and unfortunate and had absolutely nothing to do with show...” especially because “two guys, Starsky and Hutch, or Redford or Newman, aren’t considered fags or homos.”
³⁴

In response to the
Cagney and Lacey
controversy, Lucia Valeska, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, stated that if
TV Guide’s
story is accurate, CBS is “once again guilty of perpetrating an unseemly and damaging view of both women.”
³⁵
Valeska also points out that the firing of Foster violates CBS’s own internal hiring practices which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. More specifically, she found CBS’s actions objectionable on several grounds, including:

Apparently, the Gay Media Task Force were also displeased with Foster’s replacement, actress Sharon Gless. Quoting a line from
All About Eve,
the Task Force snidely described her as “from the ‘Copacabana School of acting,’ very kittenish and feminine.”
³⁷
They must have been surprised when Gless, who’d later go on to star in Showtime’s gay miniseries,
Queer as Folk,
received two consecutive Emmys (1985-1986, 1986-1987) for her performance as Chris Cagney.

In all,
Cagney and Lacey
was no doubt a casualty of the wave of conservatism ushered in by Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980. With the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment by Congress in the Spring of 1982, the Reagan administration was also responsible for the renewal of time-honored, God-honest, old-fashioned, traditional American values, like patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia. Yet, even though CBS canceled the series after the 1982-1983 season due to low ratings, the record number of letters CBS received, coupled by Tyne Daly’s Emmy (her first of four) in September 1983, convinced the network to give it a second chance. The series returned in March of 1984 and managed to retain some of the pilot’s feminist edge, as well as tackle many controversial issues during its healthy seven-season run.

The late 1980s exhibited definite signs of progress when
Hill Street Blues
featured an episode reminiscent of
Bronk
and
Police Woman.
In “Look Homeward Ninja,” a female officer, Kate McBride (Lindsay Crouse), is falsely accused of sexual harassment by a prostitute, Jackie (Ren Woods). Jackie is lying to protect her pimp, Maurice (Larry Fishburne), who is accused of shaking down her johns. McBride’s partner, Sgt. Lucy Bates (Betty Thomas), defends her partner’s heterosexuality to Captain Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti). But when McBride admits she is a lesbian and did, as Jackie charges, sit alone with the suspect in the squad car, Bates doesn’t know what to think. McBride still maintains her innocence, claiming she was only questioning her witness.

As in
Police Woman,
McBride and Bates produce a witness to the shakedown operation. This allows them to bargain with Maurice, who admits he told Jackie to lie about McBride molesting her. McBride’s lesbianism is only raised as an issue within the context of the false accusations. More importantly, when McBride comes out to Bates, the sergeant turns out to have a “different strokes for different folks” attitude about her partner’s sexual orientation.

In the 1990s,
N.Y.P.D. Blue
featured two lesbian story lines, the first involving Det. Adrienne Lesniak (Justine Miceli) and the second, Officer Abby Sullivan (Paige Turco). Both women are forced to disclose their sexual orientation when one of their co-workers takes a romantic interest in them.