March Madness: Baskets of Balls

Now you know that even with the title “March Madness” and even though I occasionally throw out a sports figure such as Jim Brown, Frank Gifford or Joe Namath (and they’re all formerly from football, my game of choice), that I’m not really going to blog about basketball! We celebrate March Madness (and most other occasions, as regular visitors know) in an entirely different way in The Underworld. Oh, there will be some baskets and perhaps a few balls, but not of the Sweet Sixteen/Final Four variety. Posts here that concern TV bulges are far and away the most popular. Today, I’m going to toss a few more out to you, but I’m not even going to limit it to TV. We have a couple from the music industry, movies and even a stage play! This post is more brief than I would like, but I am still nose-deep in work and home concerns. I didn’t want to go too long without trying for a shot.

To continue with the shot I presented above featuring Tony Perkins in 1960’s Tall Story, there are a couple of times when alert viewers can make out Tony Jr. He wears a pair of chinos in one scene that are rather revealing as he walks through a porch on campus, but his short little basketball togs are perhaps a bit more revealing. (If players wore their uniforms like this these days, I might be more apt to stay awake and watch!) Incidentally, player number 45 on the opposing team is none other than Gary Lockwood, at the time quite a hunky young fellow and looking great in his shorts, too!

At one point in the movie, the climax actually, so to speak, Perkins has been banned from playing in the big game and is trying to convince the coaching staff to let him in. While “hiding” behind Anne Jackson, who plays the wife of one of his teachers, he proceeds to strip out of his street clothes and hop into his uniform. This allows the viewer to see him in his tighty-whities and even get a bit of an outline of that which he shared with several actors and actresses over the course of his career, Tab Hunter included.

His costar in the film was Miss Jane Fonda, making her big screen debut. The movie was directed by Joshua Logan who was noted for keeping a plethora of healthy and handsome young men on hand in his films (he directed South Pacific, whose number “There is Nothin’ Like a Dame,” filled with tan, burly, hairy hunks, makes one wonder why any of them care!) This same year, Perkins starred in Psycho and from then on, he faced typecasting as twitchy, nervous, potentially-dangerous types.

One of the cinema’s most popular and handsome leading men ever was Mr. Paul Newman. In 1963, for the anti-hero drama Hud (in which audiences nevertheless found themselves drawn to Newman‘s character!), Newman struck a pose for the still photographer that was quite an eye-(and mouth-)opener. I have yet to profile Mr. Newman in The Underworld because I try to focus on lesser-known performers who may not have received their due, but the fact remains that he is one of my all-time favorite performers and I almost always enjoy watching him (and watching him!) in practically anything.

One of Newman’s friends and three-time costars (in 1966’s Harper, 1969’s Winning and 1974’s The Towering Inferno) was Robert Wagner. There was a pretty revealing photo of RJ not too long ago here that I wondered might be just a fluke, a shadow or something unusual in his pocket. Now, here we are again and I must say I think it must have been the real deal! No wonder Nat married him twice. Newman had to direct Wagner in Winning and one of the scenes was tutoring him through a love scene with Newman’s real-life wife Joanne Woodward. Lucky Joanne, both at work and at home!Do you know who belongs to the crotch above? Astute filmgoers probably recognize it. It’s from a 1967 film that really put its neophyte leading man on the map. He’s been a star ever since. He’d made one brief movie appearance before this, but after this movie, he was a major Hollywood hitter for many years and still commands substantial attention in the industry.

The crotch in question belongs to Dustin Hoffman and the shot is from The Graduate, a smash hit that earned him an Oscar nomination as Best Actor (the award went to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night.) He later won for both Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988.) More recent popular success came with Meet the Fockers in 2004 and the various incarnations of the animated Kung Fu Panda.

Let’s make some music for a moment. First up is mid-’70s singing sensation Rex Smith. Smith was the front man for a band called REX before heading to Broadway where he played Danny Zukko in Grease. He starred in the 1979 music business-oriented TV-movie Sooner or Later, one song of which, “You Take My Breath Away” proved to be his biggest his as a vocalist. Andy Warhol, in his famous published diaries, made mention of Rex and his impressively large member. We don’t know how he knew that, but if Smith turned up at a party in this get-up, it wouldn’t have been hard to figure things out. Smith later worked in a revival of The Pirates of Penzance and filmed a movie version of it with Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt and Miss Angela Lansbury. Then came a stint as the host of Solid Gold, a temporary role on Darryl Crawford and the role of Joe Gillis in the Canadian production of Sunset Boulevard opposite Miss Diahann Carroll. Marrying for the first time in 1987 at age thirty-two, he’s currently with his third wife.

I posted a shot of The Bee Gees in an earlier bulge-filled posts, their hairy bods covered in gold lame, with jackets unzipped and pants taut. Even that photo can’t hold a candle to this one of Barry and some very distressed blue jeans. For me, Barry was always the most handsome of the Gibb brothers, including little Andy, but he tended to stick with his family and not too a tremendous amount apart from them (though there was that album with Barbra Streisand, for which he co-wrote all the songs and contributed vocals on the title duet, “Guilty.”)

Turning to television, always a fertile place for spotting bulges, at least in the ‘60s through the ‘80s, we have a shot of hunkalicious Robert Conrad of Hawaiian Eye and The Wild Wild West. A little guy, but one who packed a major punch and was in astonishing shape for the time, he occasionally showed his basket on The Wild Wild West (or in shots from the gym like this one), but his bigger claims to fame were his chest and his unbelievably round bubble butt. He's one of those guys who, when watching West, you sometimes just have to halt and say out loud, "God, he's gorgeous..."

King of the outlined penis on TV was Michael “Little Joe Cartwright” Landon of Bonanza. His revealing taupe pants of the mid-to-late seasons belong in some sort of VPL Hall of Fame. Thus, I have to include yet another shot of him in a publicity photo from the show, this one close to the end of its run. Alison Arngrim has spoken of his penchant for going commando at times during Little House on the Prairie, but I was never able to see anything during that show (and, truth to tell, haven’t seen any of it in ages.)

I do not know this actor, but his name was Mitch Litrofsky. A brief career consisted of a role on Search for Tomorrow in the early 1980s and roles in 1989’s Music Box with Jessica Lange and the 1992 exploitation drama Eyes of the Prey. His career in TV and films ended soon after, though he remained a devotee of the theatre along with his business interests. Now in his fifties, he’s rather handsome minus the curls. He’s included here today because this portrait fits the bulge bill!

One of my friends here at The Underworld, Kirgissfair, recently mentioned Robert Fuller of Laramie and the final season of Wagon Train (and later Emergency!) Though he sported some really tight pants on Laramie, still photos are not in wide supply. Though you can’t see a lot in this one, you can tell that there was plenty happening downstairs. This next one isn’t really any more revealing, but he still cuts a nice figure in his cowboy gear.When I did a recent post about Stuart Whitman, I spotted him in the Barbara Eden TV-movie thriller The Woman Hunter. In it, he is not only shirtless a few times, but also shows off his package in some of the era’s polyester slacks. (If only there was a better print in existence that could depict it a bit better.)

Likewise, when I was viewing Hotel for my recent tribute to that show, I couldn’t help but notice something budding in the establishment’s flower shop. Floral clerk Terrence McNally had a rather obvious outline through his three-piece suit. It had to have been a happy place to work. McNally was a bit player in many of the most popular 1980s series including Dallas and Dynasty (and occasional movies like 1980’s Nine to Five and 1981’s Looker.) His career petered out in the mid-’90s after stints on The Young and the Restless, Models, Inc and Baywatch. He also had a role on one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Speaking of Star Trek, this next man was a guest on a memorable episode of the original series. Does he look at all familiar? He played Lt. Uhura’s combat trainer in the installment The Gamesters of Triskelion, the one that had Kirk, Chekov and her competing in the ring for their lives. His name is Steve Sandor and he was a very prominent presence in 1970s and ‘80s TV. A burly, brawny, 6’4” hunk of man, he appeared on practically all of the hit shows from that time. This series of photos is from an appearance he made on Charlie’s Angels in 1976. True, his fluffy hair is more than a tad campy, but that meaty, hairy, tan chest melts my butter and is just the type of guy I grew up adoring on television. Back then, it was utterly commonplace to see an apartment groundskeeper roaming around with no shirt on. What a disappointment when my first apartment building didn’t even HAVE a groundskeeper, just an old couple, the man who did maintenance and the wife who took in the money…

I came upon this snap of David Hasselhoff, posed for some sort of ad or bit of publicity. Talk about a guy who inspires just as many admirers as detractors! Sometimes, he comes off so handsome and appealing and then others he is a campy, hot mess. Unfortunately, it seems to be the latter that occurs more often than not. At least he seems in on the joke most of the time. Hasselhoff had two tiny bit roles on TV in 1973 and 1975 before making his movie debut in a trashy, low-rent comedy called Revenge of the Cheerleaders. His character’s name was Boner and he even had a split-second frontal nude scene, though I do not recommend sitting through the film to catch it unless you’re a true fan of his. It would seem that the only way to go from there was up, but he’s had more of an up and down career.

NotFelixUnger, a true friend of The Underworld, recently asked for something on Gordon Thomson (slithery Adam Carrington of Dynasty fame.) These shots were the best I could come up with on such short notice, but I wanted to include him in this post. You can’t see, too, too much happening in this first set of shots, but as I’ve said before bulges and VPL (visible penis line) canbe very hard to capture. It’s always more obvious in motion, so to speak.

Thomson and his on-screen mother Joan “Alexis” Collins had a very strong working relationship and their characters were often shown together. Here, Gordon is shown just after a morning workout in his old Yale sweatshirt and an abbreviated pair of black, satin workout shorts (practically all workout shorts were small like this back then… as All in the Family’s Edith warbled, “Those were the DAYS!”) Good luck finding a regular guy being caught dead in something like these today.

Even though this is a bulge posting, I went ahead and added a shot of Mr. Thomson from the rear, thinking it might make a nice early Easter present for NFU. (Why didn’t I just wait for a week or two and have a post called “Easter Baskets”?? Maybe next year…)

This next pic was probably the most revealing one I could find of Thomson on the fly (pun intended!) He performed most of the scene behind a railing, but could be caught briefly on the way up the stairs for a better view. When the series was cancelled in 1999, Thomson went on to work on the daytime soap Santa Barbara. The 1991 reunion movie posed something of a conflict for him and in a startling move, no one seemed to even try to work it out! So to both his and Collins’ dismay, the part of Adam went to a completely inappropriate actor who bore no relation in the slightest to the character. Thomson did sue Aaron Spelling productions over this ignominious slight as he had become a major part of the series soon after having joined it in 1982. Soaps have been his calling ever since from Sunset Beach to Passions to Days of Our Lives, though he did have a role as Richard Dreyfus’ lover in that ghastly 2006 film Poseidon. Most of his footage was cut out prior to the film’s release (along with practically any scene that wasn‘t action oriented…)

I always feel that bulges on TV are practically dead and buried now that people seem to make more of an effort to be discreet and men’s clothes are much looser in general. Imagine my surprise lately when seeing the new series GCB (which is a rarity for me in that I never watch scripted network programs!) and the camera took its place directly beneath the proud crotch of costar David James Elliot! The 6’4” former Canadian citizen is still looking amazing, now at age fifty-one! Amusingly, the tall drink of water (of which I’d gladly sip!) is paired with the diminutive (4’11”) Kristin Chenoweth on the (terrific) series.For our final two presentations, I hope I saved the best for last. First up is staggeringly hunky actor Marc Singer. Famous for the miniseries V (along with the resultant series) and for playing The Beastmaster in a fur loincloth, he had been working on TV since the early ‘70s and acting on stage before that. In 1976, he appeared in a filmed presentation of one of his stage successes, The Taming of the Shrew. Just like I might watch more basketball if the uniforms were shorter, I might watch more Shakespeare if the costumes were this tight!

I’d like to know how anyone can look at these snaps of Singer in the THE tightest tights ever created and not simply gasp. What a body (and the face ain’t bad, either!) Mr. Singer has never stopped working, though his fame dissipated considerably as the 1990s dawned and he began to appear in a large number of straight-to-video movies. In 2001 and 2002, he made appearances on the new TV version of The Beastmaster and as recently as 2011, he had a guest role on the new rendition of V. Today, at age sixty-four, he still works in movies, they just tend to be straight-to-video and, thus, don’t get the same type of viewership or attention that features (or even TV work, really) would bring.

My final photo of the day is from the 1982 German film Querelle. The provocative, overtly-stylized movie starred Midnight Express star Brad Davis as a sailor desired by many people around him, most importantly his repressed commanding officer Franco Nero. The movie is one long phallic symbol and bulgefest, but someone opted to take this picture of Davis (center) and two of his well-endowed shipmates. The photo gives new meaning to the term half-mast! I hope you got a kick out of this return to a popular subject. I’ll be back asap with more movie and TV profiles.