Which bewitched character was gay

But it was also the middle of the civil rights era, and many TV shows were using wacky high-concept premises to explore social issues through metaphor without actually addressing them. Bewitched managed to put a queer allegory in front of viewers by leaning heavily on the metaphor of the closet.

And of course, the show had plenty of queer cast members. Even one of the twins who played a little girl on the show grew up to be a queer business leader. But one of the most touching scenes is between Samantha and her TV-daughter, Tabitha.

Or at least, they did , back before public attitudes improved. Long after Bewitched went off the air, one of the actors who played Darren found himself back in the headlines when he came out as gay. Dick Sargent was prompted to come out by a predatory tabloid that had threatened to expose his secret, but he managed to get ahead of them by delivering the news himself in That might seem a little odd; the witches were the ones who were hiding, so why would mortals get a Pride Day?

Gay love is meant to be celebrated and expressed. He asked Ms. We talked about it on the set certainly not in production meetings that this was about people not being allowed to be what they really are. If you think about it, Bewitched is about repression in general and all the frustration and trouble it can cause. It was a neat message to get across to people at that time in a subtle way. The list of gay or bi-sexual actors on the show was extensive.

Boze Hadleigh, in his book Hollywood Lesbians, also said Moorehead was a lesbian, and even asked the star herself about this, comparing her to Marlene Deitrich, Greta Garbo and others. Can you talk about the rumors that Agnes Moorehead was a lesbian? To be blunt: as a barely closeted gay man, this was the role Lynde was literally born to play. Now, it has to be said that gay actors can play straight characters.

There is absolutely nothing that prohibits that, or prevents those performances from being successful. He was so successful in that role that people kept wanting to see him repeat it.

But as great as Lynde is at playing a cantankerous patriarch, he was even better playing a character that is so clearly close to his own heart and, quite frankly, his lived experience. Uncle Arthur is never explicitly labeled as gay. For those unfamiliar, yeah, all of Bewitched is a metaphor for clashing cultures, with the central marriage between a mortal and a witch allowing the show to address topics like bigotry head on… with jokes. And these are the circumstances under which viewers—specifically out or closeted viewers—were introduced to Uncle Arthur.

He is a fussy, stylish cutup who is quick with quips. This word carries extra weight in the gay community—so much weight that my generation felt the need to come up with another term, guncle, to lighten the load.

Laws prevented and still prevent! Gays have often focused all their affection on their nieces and nephews, and having Uncle Arthur have that relationship with Samantha? Arthur was a joker and a card, after all. Of course there had been actual practicing homosexuals on TV before They were just treated like perverts, psychological oddities, or criminals. And Lynde was far from the first gay man to get a recurring role on a TV show.