Those cute and cunning, young and beautiful boys

Archive: Gay ThemedArchive: Watching

Who's a Pretty Boy Then?: One Hundred & Fifty Years of Gay Life in Pictures

What do you go for,
Go see a show for?
Tell the truth, you go to see those beautiful boys.
You spend your dough for
Bouquets that grow for
All those cute and cunning, young and beautiful boys.
Oh, boys are temporary flames to you,
boys, you don't recall their names, do you?
But their caresses
And home addresses,
Linger in your mem'ry of those beautiful boys.

Happily once I cut off all cable television I had a small batch of old 1930s musicals around the house. Yeah, what a faggy thing to watch. From some dim corner of kidhood I remembered thinking Busby Berkeley's movies were pretty neat. I've never made a list of favorite movies but 42nd Street would probably be on it.

42nd Street

My taste in musicals is very narrow. Mostly RKO, Warner Brothers musical comedies. I can watch some MGM musicals but too many veer off into bad pop opera and the heavy production cloys rather than charms. If a musical isn't funny, before 1960 I'm not apt to watch it. If it wasn't made into a movie for me it doesn't exist.

When I was watching Dames I thought it a shame that there was never the equivalent Boys. Busby Berkeley's musicals make women into eye candy in what at this remove in time and sensibility seems only charming. Wouldn't it be neat to be able to watch the young men of long ago in skimpy attire or cartoonish getup prance their way into kaleidoscopic formations?