Gymnosophy 4: Oh Yes They Call it the Streak (Boogity, Boogity)

Streaker Michael O'Brien being escorted from the field at Twickenham

Photo by Ian Bradshaw (20 April 1974)

I. Don't Look Ethel

Released in the late-spring of 1974, The Streak was a smash hit single written and performed by the country western singer Ray Stevens, that comically cashed in on the then popular craze of streaking; i.e. the act of running naked through a public place - usually as a prank, although sometimes as an act of protest - and often chased by officials or policemen lending it Keystone Cops appeal.

The Streak sold over five million copies and topped the charts in both the US and UK. I didn't buy it, but I remember it with a certain fondness as one of the tunes of my childhood - probably due to the fact the record features a slide whistle - even if I found the phenomenon to which it referred somewhat disturbing.   

II.  A Brief History of Streaking

Like most things, streaking isn't without a longer and more complex history than people imagine ...

One might, for example, discuss it in relation to the behaviour of the Neo-Adamites in medieval Europe, who passed naked through towns and villages; or, indeed, the 17th-century Quaker Solomon Eagle, mentioned by both Daniel Defoe and Samuel Pepys, who would run naked through the streets of London with a burning brazier upon his head (à la Arthur Brown), crying Repent! Repent!   

Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced of the legitimacy of attempting to tie streaking in the modern sense to Christian asceticism; nor even to place it within the context of naturism. It's also distinct from flashing in the pervy sense, in that the intent is generally not to cause shock or outrage.* Ultimately, it makes more sense to see it as something that has its origins within American campus culture, with incidents of (male) college students running around naked beginning in the early 19th-century.  

It wasn't until the 1960s and '70s, however, that streaking became a much wider cultural phenomenon; suddenly everyone wanted to get naked and exhibit themselves to the world and its cameras. Even supposedly uptight Brits were throwing caution - and their clothes - to the wind and you could hardly turn on the TV without having to see some idiot interrupt the rugby or cricket.

Whilst many streakers seem to have a penchant for running naked in front of cheering and/or jeering crowds at sporting events, perhaps the most widely seen streaker in history was Robert Opel who ran across the stage at the Oscars in 1974 - an event broadcast on live tv and so witnessed by millions of viewers around the world.

Bemused host David Niven quipped: 'Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and revealing his shortcomings.' Which is funny, but not quite the amusing ad-lib that people at the time took it to be; for there's evidence to suggest that the whole thing was a stunt that had been arranged by the show's producer and that Niven's line was scripted.      

In Hollywood, even nudity is a game of artifice and spontaneity well rehearsed ...

Notes

* It should be noted, however, that unlike in the '70s, anybody now arrested for streaking in the United States risks being charged with indecent exposure and consequently branded a  sex offender upon conviction. Just one more example of the neo-puritanism that blights our times ... 

Play: Ray Stevens, 'The Streak', single release from the album Boogity Boogity (Barnaby, 1974): click here. 

Gymnosophy 1: naked philosophers: click here.

Gymnosophy 2: naked Germans: click here.

Gymnosophy 3: naked witches: click here. 

Betty Boop Versus the Censor-Morons

Betty Boop: before and after introducion of the Hays Code

I.

The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of moral guidelines applied to US films released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. Often known as the Hays Code, after William Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (1922-1945), it clearly set out what was and was not acceptable content for movies produced for the American public.

Whilst it obviously restricted filmmaking, it coincidently overlapped with the Golden Age of Hollywood, demonstrating that explicit sex and graphic violence are not essential elements of great movies.

Just to be clear: I'm not advocating censorship. As a Lawrentian, I'm instinctively hostile to the censor-morons who heavy-handedly enforce the letter of the law and I believe that ultimately censorship helps nobody and harms many; arresting and circumscribing the development of vital human consciousness.*

All I'm doing, rather, is reminding readers that whilst numerous aspects of the Code now seem ridiculous and reprehensible, many great directors made many great films whilst working within its framework. (Of course, it could be argued that these films were made in spite of the Code and that there are at least an equal number of films weakened by cuts insisted upon by the censors.)  

One star whose career was certainly impacted negatively by the Code, was animated favourite Betty Boop ...

II.

Created by Max Fleischer, Betty Boop made her first appearance in the six-minute adventure Dizzy Dishes (1930). At this stage, she appeared as a neotenous-looking half-woman, half-poodle, though still with her distinctive features including a large round baby face, big eyes, and a carefully styled coiffure - and still dressed like a Jazz Age flapper, with a short skirt and stockings.

Within a year, Betty became fully human and her floppy ears were replaced with signature hoop earrings. She soon dumped her original canine boyfriend - the tubby black-and-white dog known as Bimbo - and began to flirt with human love interests, including Popeye the sailor.**

In 1932, thanks to her popularity amongst adult audiences as a two-dimensional sex symbol, she was given her own series and crowned queen of the animated screen. However, after 1934, when the Hays Code began to be more rigorously enforced and the Catholic Legion of Decency also jumped on her case, Betty's overt sexuality became problematic. 

Joseph Breen - the head film censor appointed by Hays - ordered the removal of the saucy openings to Betty's short films, deeming her winks and wiggles suggestive of immorality. Her animators were also obliged to provide her with a more demure appearance.

Personally, I prefer this new look. But most critics seem to agree that Betty's best days were already behind her by 1935. No longer the carefree adolescent boop-oop-a-dooping her way through one risqué adventure after another, Betty was reinvented as a housewife or a career girl. No more garter on display; no more gold bracelets or hoop earrings; even the curls in her hair gradually softened and decreased as the years passed.

Betty was now a little more mature and a little more responsible: in a word, boring. And her films, now aimed at a much younger audience, were disappointingly tame compared to her earlier adventures; their self-conscious wholesomeness contributing to the waning of her star. 

Further, by 1938 the Jazz Age was well and truly over, having been superseded by the era of swing and the big band sound. Desperate attempts to have Betty move with the times were doomed to failure. However, eighty years on, and Miss Boop has retained her iconic status within popular culture and the pornographic imagination (second only to Jessica Rabbit as the sexiest cartoon character of all time).

Notes

* See Lawrence's letter to Morris Ernest of 10 November 1928, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI (1927-28), ed. James and Margaret Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 613. 

** Amusingly, there is even supposed to exist a pornographic short featuring Betty and Popeye. According to Jim Hill, in 1938 Max Fleischer wished to thank animators who had moved from New York to a new studio in Florida by throwing a party at which he screened a one-reel film in which Popeye requires his spinach in order to satisfy a sexually insatiable Betty. It's unknown what became of the film (if in fact it ever existed). See Jim Hill, Why For? (10 April 2003): click here.   

See also an interesting article by Heather Hendershot, 'Secretary, Homemaker, and 'White' Woman: Industrial Censorship and Betty Boop's Shifting Design', in the Journal of Design History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 117-130. Click here for a link via which the essay can be purchased and downloaded.

Hollywood Tales: Notes on the Relationship between Kirk Douglas and John Wayne

John Wayne as Taw Jackson and Kirk Douglas as Lomax in

The War Wagon (dir. Burt Kennedy, 1967)

I.

Commenting on a recent post illustrated with a photo of Kirk Douglas playing Vincent van Gogh in the 1956 movie Lust for Life, someone wrote to ask if I was aware of John Wayne's homophobic - though somewhat touching - reaction to his friend taking on this role.

Well, as a matter of fact, I did know of this comical exchange between Wayne and Douglas, that the latter recounted thirty-odd years later in his memoir The Ragman's Son (1988) ...


II.

According to Douglas, Wayne attended a private screening of the film and was horrified:

"Christ, Kirk! How can you play a part like that? There's so few of us left. We've got to play strong, tough characters. Not those weak queers."

Somewhat taken aback - though more amused than angered or insulted - Douglas explained that, as an actor, he enjoyed taking on challenging roles, before adding: "It's all make-believe, John. It isn't real. You're not really John Wayne, you know."

It's an intriguing response that seems to suggest Douglas's relaxed attitude towards acting and the fact that he didn't take himself or his on-screen persona too seriously - nor that of others, including The Duke.

However, when playing the role of the emotionally intense Dutch painter, Douglas would later admit he came very close to losing his sense of professional detachment. In his autobiography, for example, he confessed:   

"I felt myself going over the line, into the skin of Van Gogh. Not only did I look like him, I was the same age he had been when he committed suicide. Sometimes I had to stop myself from reaching my hand up and touching my ear to find out if it was actually there. It was a frightening experience. That way lies madness . . . The memory makes me wince. I could never play him again.''

It should also be noted that whilst Douglas wasn't fooled by Wayne's hardman image, he nevertheless thought very highly (and very fondly) of him, describing Wayne as the perfect movie star who could get away with any line, no matter how corny, in any script, no matter how poor.

Not because he was an excellent actor, but because he had the courage to play every part in his own inimitable manner: "It wasn't John Wayne who served the roles; the roles served John Wayne."

Further - and slightly dispappointingly - Douglas expresses his preference for a John Wayne action movie, or any good, honest picture with balls, over more sophisticated art-house films. 

III.

At the end of his life, when lying in a hospital bed and dying of cancer, Wayne exchanged several mailgrams with Douglas. In one such, he jokes that he's been admitted to the hospital in order to have a cleft added to his chin so that he might look more like his friend, who replied:

"Dear John, Have you ever noticed that I never call you Duke? If I were going to use a title, it would be no less than King. Please get your ass back here soon. Love, Kirk."

It's not quite Brokeback Mountain, but it does reveal a delightful degree of playful tenderness between these two Hollywood tough guys. 

Note: Kirk Douglas and John Wayne worked together on several movies, including: In Harms Way (1965); Cast a Giant Shadow (1966); and The War Wagon (1967).   

See: Kirk Douglas, The Ragman's Son: An Autobiography, (Simon and Schuster, 1988).

Women in Trousers 1: The Case of Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003)

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt (1939)

One of the things that Roland Barthes doesn't like is women wearing trousers.

Obviously, he's not alone in this. Indeed, I prefer to see women in skirts myself. But it depends on the woman. And it depends on the skirt or slacks in question ...

For some skirts are very ugly. Whilst some trousers - such as a classic cut pair of Capri pants as worn by Grace Kelly - are very beautiful. And some women look so sexy and stylish in trousers that this is how they are best remembered within the cultural imagination. Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn are very obvious examples.*

And let's be clear, when these women pulled on a pair of pants it took real courage. For in the twenties and thirties clothing was regarded as an outward sign of gender rooted naturally and essentially in biology. Crazy as it seems in our gender fluid non-binary times, women could be arrested for wearing trousers in public back then as it was illegal to masquerade as a man (particularly for the purposes of deception).**

Further, many medical professionals were convinced that if a woman persisted in her desire to wear trousers it was clear evidence of lesbianism or mental illness, both of which were stigmatised as conditions betraying some kind of moral failing or weakness.

Hepburn in particular took a lot of criticism for her provocative appearance and prickly personality. Intelligent, outspoken, and fiercely independent, she refused to conform to society's narrow definition of womanhood and was equally contemptuous of the Hollywood lifestyle. One article, written in 1934, accused her of being a strutting revolutionary who aimed to destroy models of traditional (and cinematic) femininity - which, of course, was true.      

My favourite story concerning Hepburn, however, comes from the time she was still under contract at RKO: Studio heads decided they didn't like her turning up to work wearing blue jeans, so one day had them removed from her dressing room whilst she was on set filming. Far from persuading her to toe the line and put on a skirt, however, she returned to the set in just her knickers and refused to cover up until her jeans were returned.

As Dewey Finn would say, that is so punk rock ...


* The argument has been made by her biographer that Hepburn's androgyny was angular and sexless in comparison to the undeniably erotic allure projected by Garbo and Dietrich. Whilst I agree that for Hepburn her dress sense was more about personal freedom and comfort, rather than cultivating a seductive queer style, I find it hard to ever think of her as sexless - in or out of trousers. See William J. Mann; Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Henry Holt and Company, 2006). 

** Various US cities passed legislation barring women from wearing trousers in the 19th and 20th centuries, including San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston. But before any Europeans smile at their American cousins and congratulate themselves on their own sophisticated liberalism, it's worth noting that it was only in 2013 that the French finally revoked a 200-year-old law forbidding women to wear trousers in Paris (unless riding a bicycle or on horseback). If interested in this subject, see Clare Sears, Arresting Dress (Duke University Press, 2015). 

To read part 2 of this post - a brief history of Capri pants (featuring Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn) - click here.     

Capnolagnia (Fragment from an Illicit Lover's Discourse)

Jennifer Lawrence in an ad for Dior Addict Lipstick (2015)

Prior to the 20th century, smoking cigarettes was not something that respectable women did. And, even now, there's still an association within the pornographic imagination between women smoking and vice. For whilst there's nothing sexy about lung cancer, there is something erotic and aesthetically pleasing about a beautiful woman holding a cigarette and blowing smoke in your face (and I say that as a non-smoker).

I'm not sure this is due to advertising by the tobacco companies, who preferred female smokers to be perceived as modern independent women, rather than prone to immoral behaviour; a cigarette was meant to be a sign of freedom and equality, not deviance and depravity. 

Probably Hollywood is more responsible for advancing the idea that sex and smoking belong in dangerous combination and for creating the seductive figure of a femme fatale who is always looking for some poor sap to provide her with a light.

Of course, the golden age of smoking in movies belongs to the distant past. In the puritanical 21st century, studios have surrendered to pressure from anti-smoking groups and the health lobby. In 2015, for example, Disney - the studio that gave us one of the silver screen's great female smokers, Cruella De Vil - issued a total ban on smoking imagery in all its films.

Nevertheless, despite censorship and campaigns to stub out smoking once and for all - campaigns based upon overwhelming medical evidence showing a clear link between tobacco and a whole host of horrible diseases - the mythology of cigarettes and their sexiness refuses to die. 

Thus it is that, in the same year as the Disney ban, Dior launched a campaign for its new range of Addict lipstick (available in 35 shades), featuring the American actress Jennifer Lawrence as seen above. Smoking in public may no longer be socially sanctioned behaviour, but I have to admit that even the suggestion of a woman holding a cigarette is still enough to excite my fetishistic interest.       

When Jayne Met Anton

Mansfield and LaVey performing a Satanic ritual
Photo by Walter Fischer (1966/67)

The bizarre relationship between blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield and bald-headed Satanist Anton LaVey was not, as some journalists liked to insist, a match made in Hell; it was, rather, a match made in Hollywood. For only in California during the sixties could such a queer romance blossom between a fame-obsessed actress whose star, sadly, was on the wane and a publicity-seeking occultist eager to attract new followers.    

Mansfield and LaVey met for the first time while she was on a drug-and-drink fuelled visit to the San Francisco Film Festival in 1966. According to some accounts, Mansfield formerly requested a meeting with LaVey; but other witnesses insist she simply showed up on his doorstep, uninvited, having been evicted from the festival by the organisers for lowering the tone of the event by wearing a revealing pink dress sans underwear.

Whatever the facts, after this initial encounter she and LaVey continued to correspond and to meet right up until Mansfield's untimely but spectacular death in the summer of the following year. This oddest of odd couples had found in each other a kindred spirit and they developed an intense and intimate relationship that set tongues wagging with excitement and heads shaking in disapproval.

And, on hand to document their relationship, was a German photographer, Walter Fischer, who had emigrated to the States ten years ealier with nothing but a 60-year-old pet parrot on his shoulder and a desire to make a name for himself as a paparazzo.

How Fischer managed to end up as the go-to guy whenever Mansfield and LaVey wanted their picture snapped, I don't know. But he was the one responsible for a fascinating series of images taken at Anton's creepy sanctuary in San Francisco known as the Black House and Jayne's lavish home in Los Angeles - complete with a heart-shaped pool - known as the Pink Palace.

Fischer was also first on the scene whenever the couple dined out in public, as seen here, for example, outside La Scala (Beverley Hills), accompanied by Sam Brody, Mansfield's divorce lawyer and official boyfriend at the time (despite the fact he was married):       

Brody was overly-protective of Mansfield and acutely jealous of LaVey, whom he mocked as a charlatan at every opportunity; something that would have fatal consequences - both for himself and Mansfield - after LaVey placed an irrevocable curse upon his head, telling him he would die a violent death within the year.

Was Jayne Mansfield, then, a practicing occultist and a devotee of the Prince of Darkness? The answer is ... probably not.

For whilst LaVey liked to tell everyone that Mansfield was a priestess in his Church of Satan, she herself confessed to being a good Catholic girl at heart. Despite this, after her death on June 29th, 1967 - killed in a car crash alongside the accursed Sam Brody - LaVey rather sweetly (or cynically, if you think he played a diabolical role in the tragic events of that day) conducted a dark memorial service.

Swedish writer, Carl Abrahamsson, provides a fitting comment with which to close: 

"As the truth [...] about their complex and ever-fascinating relationship will never be fully known, perhaps we should just be content with joyfully taking part in these larger-than-life space-time intersections and the individual legacies of these two true American icons."

See: California Infernal: Anton LaVey and Jayne Mansfield as Portrayed by Walter Fischer, with an introduction by Kenneth Anger and forewords by Carl Abrahamsson and Alf Wahlgren, (Trapart Books, 2017). 

And see also the entertaining documentary Mansfield 66/67, dir. P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes (2017): click here to watch the trailer on Youtube. 

To read a sister post to this one - When Jayne Met Sophia Loren - please click here. 

Unravelling the Mystery of the Sweater Girls

Lana Turner as Mary Clay in They Won't Forget 

(dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1937): the original Sweater Girl

When fondly recalling those busty beauties of the 1940s and 50s, in their tight cashmere sweaters worn over highly structured, conically shaped bullet-bras designed to lift and separate, we often think of movie stars such as Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell, and - of course - Lana Turner (described by one critic as the most glamorous woman in the history of cinema).

But the Sweater Girl was by no means merely a figment of the Hollywood imagination.

In fact, the above actresses were merely adopting what was already a popular look amongst bobby-soxers who desired maximum projection; a youthful fashion trend viewed with alarm by those who saw aggressively pointed breasts as a sure sign of moral decline. As a concerned police chief famously asked: What kind of wives and mothers would these girls become? 

Of course, no one thought to ask at the time what kind of husbands and fathers breast fetishizing men might make; they were allowed and encouraged to indulge their culturally sanctioned mazophilia and carry on ogling young women in the streets, in the pages of pin-up magazines, and on screen.

Indeed, this all-American obsession and national pastime wasn't to peak until the autumn of 1968, when a young office worker named Francine Gottfried briefly achieved celebrity status as Wall Street's Sweater Girl ...


Click here to go to part two of this post on the strange case of Francine Gottfried.