A little amusement about Oil Can Harry's...
When I lived in Studio City (late 70's/early 80's) one night while eating dinner I had the Richard Dawson version of Family Feud on. He was introducing and talking to one of the families who had come in to L.A. to appear on the program. Part of the conversation went something like this.
Dawson: So, you've never been in Hollywood before? What have you been doing? Have you visited any of the attractions here.
Family: Not really. Not yet anyway.
Dawson: Not even Disneyland?
Family: No...
Dawson: Universal Studios?
Family. No...
Dawson: Oil Can Harry's?
There then was a scant few people in the audience (or studio) who laughed. Richard, enjoying his private joke laughed as well as the mother of the family tentatively said..."I don't know what that is." Richard, composing himself said, "Oh it's a nightclub here in the valley"...and then proceeded on.
This occurred around the time that a born and bred Angeleno, a gay man named Christopher Wooley, that I worked with...we'd been talking something about if he knew any celebrities that were gay and one thing he said was that he thought Richard Dawson could be from a lot of things he'd heard him say...little coded inside things that most people wouldn't know, and I probably wouldn't even had remembered that if this Richard Dawson conversation hadn't occurred in my purview only a short time later.
Was he? Who knows. I think my generation of gay guys was quite familiar with an older generation of gay men who we knew were gay, but they still talked in code and worried about direct conversation or whatever...and even wouldn't say they were out loud. I mean, it was understandable, they'd grown up and learned to be so careful. Like that paragraph I posted above about the place with the siren that would inform you to, in actuality, hide who you are NOW, if you heard it in the establishment. And many gay men for whatever reason, linked themselves to women. Famous cases are those who partnered up with Martha Raye and Vivian Vance, among dozens of others. GSN and Buzzr show old game shows and if you watch Match Game, it's hard to not think about this when you hear some of the things that Richard Dawson says. I mean, Gene Rayburn, Brett Sommers, Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly often were saying things we really didn't know what they were talking about. Making references and inside jokes that you wonder what they were talking about. And Brett Sommers kept making inside jokes about Betty White and her husband Allen Ludden, which many believe was a marriage of convenience and that both Betty & Allen were LGBT.
SIDEBAR 1: Christopher Wooley that I mentioned was almost a decade older than I, which at that time meant he was 30! He had done a stint in the Air Force and while he was there a lesbian woman was under investigation (for that) and he arranged to marry her to thwart the investigation so she wouldn't get in more trouble and they'd drop the investigation. I don't think they ever got divorced, though they went their separate ways later on.
SIDEBAR 2: Scotty Bowers, at a Q&A for the documentary based on his book Full Service, told a story about going to Allen Ludden's place to trick with him one time while Betty White was out. She returned early and said to Allen: "What is Scotty doing here?" Allen said to her: "He's here to do some landscaping and tree trimming." Bowers said that Betty replied, "Well there aren't any trees in the bedroom."
In the video establishment I worked in, Charles Nelson Reilly was a customer for quite a long time and I never thought then to ask him anything. Would it have been rude to ask him if Richard Dawson was gay or even Gene Rayburn or something? Would he have answered truthfully. I mean, showbiz is another barrier to truth and/or misinformation about gay celebrities. Their jobs could depend on it.
Since I'd heard that Oil Can Harry's remark from Dawson way back when and mentioned it to others on occasion, over the years I kept wondering if I'd been exaggerating or altering what I remembered. It doesn't seem that long ago, but it could be longer than I think, but not so long ago (!) I was house/pet sitting for my friend Mark T. and I had a retro game show network on and Family Feud reruns were on and lo & behold to my utter surprise, it was that same episode and I wished I could have recorded it. And, no, it was quite exactly as I had remembered it! Only this time I was seeing it in color.
Poll
