Oh give me a break. Does every buddy movie/TV show actually portray a gay relationship? I don't think so. I'm all for gay relationships being shown in realistic or even idealistic manner, but don't assume that every pair of buddies is covertly gay.

WWW was not nearly as gay as Batman. You wanna talk about tight costumes, gimme a break! And then there were any number of shows featuring Charles Nelson Riley or Paul Lynde. Come to think of it, the 60's may have been the apex of gay TV programming.

The 60's shows were way gay. Just watch a few episodes of Bewitched - the hand motions alone are a tell. Of course my favorite character is the big drag queen played by a woman - Endora.

I also agree that not all buddy pics are gay in disguise. For so many men after the war their old service buddies were their best friends. My father is still in touch with many that are on this earth.

It's Nehemiah PERsoff not Parsoff....some of us remember....

And articles like this amply demonstrate the perils of over-analysis.

...of the syndicated National Lampoon Radio Hour (which was really only a half-hour long) in the 70's that reminds me of the premise of this article. There was an interview with somebody who was supposed to be gay-- and the interviewee kept dropping the names of all sorts of celebrities, actors and sports figures... all of whom were supposed to be gay. The only name I recall from the preposterous litany of closet cases was Casey Stengel.

Your an idiot.

I don't want to over analyse my candy.

Also remember that the 60s was an era still steeped in the notion that only guys ran around and had adventures while the gals stayed home and tended to their knitting. (This notion has not quite had a stake driven all the way through its heart even as I write.) It was only as the decade advanced that this was challenged in any discernible way, but even a decade further on it was still a shock to see a woman as any kind of action hero (I speak, of course, of the immortal Ripley in "Alien").

Robert Conrad was also very proud of his physique and wanted it shown to its best advantage at every opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in Ross Martin's contract to display admiration for the manly manliness that Conrad so conspicuously paraded.

Godfrey Freaking Daniels!

I watched shows like Batman and WWW as a little kid, and even at the time was struck by just how weird, campy, and surreal they were. In my kid mind, I thought Jim West was a preening, narcissistic womanizer, not gay. Kind of like James T. Kirk. But now that I think about it, those tight pants and bolero jacket were pretty fab.

Not only did they manage to strip Jim in almost every episode, they usually put him in very, very S/M situations. Plus, he shaved his body hair. And U.S. Grant got the funniest lines. I was 15 when the show first came on and even backward me new that the show was gay.

Even though pickleking (pickleking?) beat me to it, I'll say it anyway:

I guess Nehemiah Parsoff, Actors' Studio colleague of Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger before a long stage, film and TV career, then a second one as an artist, really is forgotten. His name is Persoff.

I would also suggest WWW's contemporary, The Avengers, as the show that broke the Gentlemen Adventurers mode. Now THERE was a gay show, except....

Just goes to show that you can find what you want to find anywhere you look!

Who cares that the author thinks that the WWW was "gay"? The whole idea that this was published in national media is really silly. It's also silly that I took the time to read it.

Maybe the suspicion that newspapers sometimes published silly stories just because they needed to fill-up empty space on a page somehow applies to electronic media.

Folks are raking the poor author for his presumed projection.

But the simple fact is that he may have had feelings at the time that he couldn't quite ID; and later came to understand a dawning homosexual desire.

I had a work buddy years ago who suggested the same stuff about Holmes and Watson. I was a big fan at the time, but it never occurred to me that there was ever anything more than occasional expressions of professional respect bordering on worship. And, of course Holmes repeatedly pointed out his view that the softer passions had a weakening effect on the "higher" facilities.

Oh yeah, one other thing.

We should be fair. Personally, I'm all for this kind of analysis; like those guys in "Slacker," plowing thru beers and cigs at some dive in Austin, talking about the symbolism of Smurfs. Viva...all that.

But we need to let "them" do this, too. You know, like Falwell saying Tinky-Winky was gay.

The point is not that Falwell wasn't a hateful, small-minded little blighter. The point is that a lot of the invective heaped on him approached the matter by deriding him for, essentially, doing what this writer is doing in this piece about WWW.

It's the War of the Aethers, baby!

the writer of this piece realises that if Robert Conrad ever reads this article that he, the writer, is likely to be the recipient of one of this century's most massive beat downs.

Is as gay as a parade.

Gay, gay, gay.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Gays see gays everywhere; straights see straights everywhere; fibromyalgics see fibromyalgics everywhere, . . . ad infinitum.

We all want to be part of a club, to be accepted and to find fellow travelers where none might exist, to see ourselves - and our troubles, traits, idiosyncrasies, neuroses, fears, strengths, illnesses, quirks and habits - in glorified, positive, normal, exalted, accepted, popular, wholesome, notorious, or honored contexts. We want to find heroes who are like us.

Sometimes buddy stories can be read as "gay," but just as often, as the saying goes, a cigar is just a cigar.