FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Loretta
Ramos Terry
The Museum of Television & Radio
Presents
“Not That There’s Anything Wrong with That”:
The History of Gay
and Lesbian Images on Television
March 26 to
New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA— The Museum of Television & Radio presents “Not
That There’s Anything Wrong with That”: The History of Gay and Lesbian
Images on Television, a comprehensive look at how gays and lesbians, in
both drama and comedy programming, have made the journey from invisibility to
mainstream prominence over the past forty years. The screening series will run from March 26
to
Once a forbidden subject that was suggested only in the
most coded of terms, homosexuality has become not only an allowable topic on
television—as so neatly summed up in the classic line from Seinfeld—but a ubiquitous
part of it. “Not
That There’s Anything Wrong With That”: The History of Gay and Lesbian Images
on Television, a thirteen-package screening series, will look at
daring early attempts to approach the subject in such dramas as N.Y.P.D. and
Medical Center, both of which spoke against discrimination, as well as
more misguided and insensitive portrayals including those on Marcus Welby, M.D. and the notorious “Flowers of Evil” episode
from Police Woman. Once adult
situation comedies like All in the Family and Maude showed that
stereotyping and prejudice could be exposed and criticized with humor, the
1970s saw the first efforts to add gay characters to weekly series. This evolution is shown in the screening package
Gay on a Weekly Basis, which includes scenes from the
long-forgotten The Corner Bar, which featured the first gay regular,
albeit a stereotypical one; the controversial Hot L Baltimore, which
included a gay couple among its cast; and the popular Soap, with Billy
Crystal as the first successfully incorporated gay character, Jodie Dallas.
Further milestones that can be seen in this series include
both the original pilot, Sidney Shorr: A Girl’s
Best Friend, and an episode from the subsequent series, Love, Sidney, the
latter notable because the gay aspects of Tony Randall’s character were
virtually eliminated by the nervous networks in the transition; Brothers,
cable’s first attempt at a sitcom with a gay lead; St. Elsewhere, the
first weekly series to feature an episode dealing with homosexuality and the
AIDS crisis; and Ryan Phillippe as daytime’s first
gay teen, on One Life to Live.
Even as it became more common in the 1980s and ‘90s to
explore gay life, television found that advertisers and the networks still
imposed boundaries. Controversial moments in the struggle to allow a same-sex
kiss are explored in the package Kiss the Boy/Kiss the Girl, with scenes
of censored and uncensored kisses from such shows as Picket Fences, Roseanne,
The screening schedule follows:
·Friday, March 26 to Thursday, April 1
Unlocking
the Closet: The Early Years
One of prime time television’s first known storyline to
involve male homosexuality was presented in Espionage (1964), where a diplomat is investigated because
someone implies that he’s gay; the first self-identified gay character is
featured in an N.Y.P.D. episode (1967) about a blackmail ring; and
·Friday, April 2 to Thursday, April 8
Some of
My Best Friends Are …: ‘70s Sitcoms
The
short-lived Sirota’s Court (1976; segments) features television’s first same sex
wedding; Archie (Carroll O’Connor) finds his stereotypes turned upside down
when his macho friend (Philip Carey) is revealed to be gay in All
in the Family (1971); Hawkeye (Alan Alda)
discovers that a patient’s bruises are the result of a gay bashing incident in M*A*S*H (1976); and Beatrice Arthur, as Maude (1977), challenges
Arthur (Conrad Bain) who objects to the opening of a gay bar in the
neighborhood. (85 minutes)
·Friday, April 9 to Thursday, April 15
Time to
Act Up: Controversy and Outrage
Protests
broke out over these two episodes: Police Woman (1974), in which Pepper
(Angie Dickinson) goes undercover to catch killers who turn out to be lesbians,
and Marcus
Welby, M.D. (1973), in which the good doctor
(Robert Young) gives some questionable advice to a patient (Mark Miller)
struggling with his sexual identity. (100 minutes)
·Friday, April 16 to Thursday, April 22
Gay on
a Weekly Basis: Series Regulars
The Corner Bar (1972;
segments) with Vincent Schiavelli as primetime’s very
first gay character; Soap (1977; segments) with Billy
Crystal as the first gay main character to be successfully incorporated into a
weekly series; Hot L Baltimore (1975) with the small screen’s first cast to
include a gay couple (Lee Bergere and Henry Calvert);
the unaired Snip (1976) with Walter Wanderman as
the shop’s homosexual hairdresser; and cable’s Brothers (1984) with Paul
Regina as the sibling who happens to prefer men. (115 minutes)
·Friday, April 23 to Thursday, April 29
Word Is
Out: ‘70s Dramas
Gays
hoping to keep their lifestyles to themselves are forced to come out in
episodes of Family (1977), in which the PTA tries to fire a teacher (Blair
Brown) when they learn she is a lesbian; and Lou Grant (1979), where a
closeted cop’s (Joe Penny) special knowledge while helping to solve a gay
murder makes his patrol partner suspect the truth. (105 minutes)
·Friday, April 30 to Thursday, May 6
Not
Ready for Primetime?
Sidney Shorr: A Girl’s Best Friend (1981) stars Tony Randall as a lonely gay New
Yorker who takes in a young woman who then becomes an unwed mother. It served
as a pilot for Love,
·Friday, May 7 to Thursday, May 13
The
Crisis
On St. Elsewhere (1983) a popular
councilman (Michael Brandon) is told he has AIDS, in weekly television’s first
examination of the crisis; Harvey Fierstein stars in
an HBO adaptation of his short play, Tidy
Endings (1988), in which
he and the ex-wife (Stockard Channing)
of his recently deceased lover confront each other. (105 minutes)
·Friday, May 14 to Thursday, May 20
Young
and Restless: Gay Teens
Wilson Cruz, as primetime’s first regular gay teen
character, is confronted by a girl who has a crush on him in My
So-Called Life (1995; segments); Ryan Phillippe,
as daytime drama’s first gay teenager, comes to the aide of a priest who is
displaying the Names Project AIDS quilt in One Life to Live (1992); Scott Baio plays a high school quarterback whose loyalty is
tested when his best friend (Peter Spence) comes out, in the HBO special The Truth About Alex (1986). (100 minutes)
·Friday, May 21 to Thursday, May 27
History
Is Made at Night
The sight of two men (David Marshall Grant and Peter Frechette) in bed together was so unprecedented that this
episode of thirtysomething (1989) caused an uproar; Northern
Exposure (1992) offers a rare gay-themed episode to be set in the past,
in this story of how two lesbians (Yvonne Suhor and
Jo Anderson) brought civility (and a name) to Cicely, Alaska. (95 minutes)
·Friday, May 28 to Thursday, June 3
Not
That There’s Anything Wrong with That: ‘80s and ‘90s
Sitcoms
A friend (Lois Nettleton) of Dorothy’s falls in love with
Rose (Betty White) in The Golden Girls (1986); Jerry
(Jerry Seinfeld) and George (Jason Alexander) are “outed”
by a reporter in Seinfeld (1993); Kelsey Grammer, as Frasier (1994), is shocked to realize that the man he’s trying to
fix up with Daphne has a crush on him; and Hank’s gay assistant Brian (Scott
Thompson) threatens legal action because of sexual harassment on The
Larry Sanders Show (1998). (100 minutes)
·Friday, June 4 to Thursday, June 10
Outing
Space … and Beyond: The Fantasy Genre
Sam (Scott Bakula) leaps into
the body of a naval cadet whose gay roommate has been expelled and whose life
is in danger in Quantum Leap (1992); a member of a species with no gender
(Melinda Culea) is put on trial for falling in love
with Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) in Star Trek: The Next
Generation (1992). (95 minutes)
·Friday, June 11 to Thursday, June 17
Kiss
the Boy/Kiss the Girl
Mariette Hartley and Lynn Redgrave
had to make do with a compromised peck on the forehead in the movie My Two
Loves (1986;
segments); Amanda Donohoe expresses her feelings towards fellow lawyer
Michele Greene on L.A. Law (1991; segments);
darkness helped placate nervous
network execs when two teenage girls experimented in Picket
Fences (1993; segments); Doug
Savant’s long-anticipated first smooch is censored by some cautious editing in Melrose
Place (1994; segments); Kerr
Smith gives one unexpected kiss and has one reciprocated in these two episodes
of Dawson’s
Creek (2000, 2001; segments); Roseanne and Mariel
Hemingway lock lips in this controversial Roseanne (1994) episode; and Topher Grace finds out just how close new buddy Joseph
Gordon-Levitt wants to be in That ‘70s Show (1999). (110
minutes)
·Friday, June 18 to Sunday, June 27
Gay Like Me: Leading Roles
Ellen DeGeneres becomes prime
time’s first gay leading character in this milestone Ellen (1997) episode;
the pilot of Will & Grace (1998), contains two male principals (Eric
McCormack and Sean Hayes) who are gay; the U.S. adaptation of Britain’s Queer
as Folk (2001) became the first series set predominantly in the gay
community; while The L Word (2004) centers around a group of lesbian friends. (165
minutes)
Partial
funding for this series has been provided by E. Blake Byrne and the David
Geffen Foundation.
Admission to “Not
That There’s Anything Wrong with That”: The
History of Gay and Lesbian Images on Television is included with the Museum’s suggested contribution: Members free; $10.00 for adults; $8.00 for senior
citizens and students; and $5.00 for children under fourteen. Admission is free in
The Museum of Television & Radio, with
locations in
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The Museum of Television &
Radio in New York, located at 25 West 52 Street in Manhattan, is open Tuesdays
through Sundays from noon to 6:00 p.m. and until 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays. The
Museum of Television & Radio in
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