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Randomly channel surfing on a blissfully quiet evening as I attempted to escape from the current political mudslinging, I came across a movie on Turner Classic Movies, Hollywood Canteen, from 1944. Yes, the supposedly good ole days, America's greatest generation, depicted in Norman Rockwell pictures. The movie definitely evokes a show (in more ways than one) of unity, in its context, a unity of the free world against the dictatorships of Germany and Japan. 
 

Two soldiers on leave spend three nights at the Hollywood Canteen (an actual place founded by Bette Davis) before returning to active duty in the South Pacific. Slim Green (Robert Hutton) is the millionth G.I. to enjoy the Canteen, and consequently wins a date with starlet Joan Leslie. The other G.I., Sergeant Nolan (Dane Clark) gets to dance with Joan Crawford and in a really funny scene, faints when she tells him she doesn't just look like Joan Crawford, but is Joan herself. (At that time, Joan had left MGM and had signed on with Warners, where Betty was queen; she didn't like the scripts her new studio offered her, and bascially went on suspension, only making a cameo in this piece as part of her support for the war effort.) 

Canteen founders Bette Davis and John Garfield give talks on the history of the Canteen. The soldiers enjoy a variety of musical numbers performed by a host of Hollywood stars, and also comedians, such as Jack Benny and his violin. Jack Benny actually does a “violin play off” against the really famous Hungarian violinist, Josef Szigeti. Soprano (later mezzo-soprano) Kitty Carlisle of Marx Brothers and later What's My Line fame sings Joan and Slim Green's theme song, “Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart.” 

Not much of a plot, but in the days before the 24/7 culture of celebrity, the parade of movie stars doing cameos seems unusual, but they do so not to build their own images, but to, like the country did at that time, present a united front during WWII. Looking back in retrospect, these were the days right before the Cold War hysteria, where Hollywood became the enemy, filled with Communists and Jews (pretty much stereotyped as being synonymous). 

A couple of other points that I found quite telling in retrospect. Eddie Cantor (he was Jewish, by the way) and Nora Martin sing “We're Having a Baby.” It takes Nora a while to tell Eddy she is pregnant (she can't say that word, of course). One can see that postwar baby boom essentially being advertised. The soldier will come home to a now stay-at-home wife in an apron and produce more little soldiers (as part of the banter, the possibility of a girl seems almost an afterthought). 

And those who make those babies are of course heterosexual. In this film, soldier boys Hutton and Clark are rewarded with girl kisses. In one scene, one of the comedians, whose name escapes me, jokingly kisses a sailor guy on the cheek. Of course, the sailor wipes off the cheek. It's a joke, of course. Boys don't kiss other boys. Boys are your pals. Hutton and Clark one could say are kind of in the bromance phase, but the separate twin beds and pajamas that could wake the dead in one scene reveal a world of male-male relationships far from today's sexually fluid, bi-curious bros. 

I also discovered that Bette Davis insisted the canteen be integrated, quite revolutionary for theat time period. In the movie, a quartet of African-Americans, The Golden Gate Quarter do a number (not as cringeworthy as some during that period), but they are an act, and they don't mingle with the guests and the movie stars. Still, the actual place was open to African-Americans and another significant ethnic minority in Los Angeles during that period, Filipino-Americans. 

Bette was always a risk-taker, and if she lacked Joan Crawford's glamour and charm, she never lacked for the sincerity of her convictions (which some people interpreted as abrasiveness). When she says at the end of the film that our hearts are with the soldiers, and that connection transcends, at least in that case, segregation, it isn't mawkish sentiment. She means it with certainty of Immanuel Kant's “starry heavens above and moral law within.” 
 

 

“We kiss in a shadow,” sings Tuptim, slave-concubine in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and later movie The King and I, and her forbidden lover, Lun Tha. Both pay for their love. Lun Tha is found dead, and I'm not sure what happens to Tuptim. 
 

In the book Anna and the King of Siam and the movie of that title (not a musical) with Rex Harrison as the King and Irene Dunne as Anna (more fatihful to the book, by the way), Tuptim and her lover are both burned to death. 

Kissing in a shadow is how many LGBTQ persons have lived their lives, and in less enlightened countries, still do. 

Now so much is involved, physically, culturally, and psychologically, in the act of kissing, and it's not necessarily something overtly sexual. In fact, people of the same gender kissing, especially on the lips, for any reason, was and is not an abhorrent act in many cultures. 

In the Bible, the blind patriarch Isaac asks Jacob (disguised as Esau to obtain the blessing) to kiss him, almost in this case a ritualistic act as well as an act that shows both obeisance and affection. 

In Ancient Greece, the kiss on the lips was used to express that two people of the same rank were equal (which in Greece, especially Athens, was probably two men, as women were not considered equal and pretty much did not participate in public life). 

The Catholic Church (not exactly LGBTQ-friendly in its history) in the Middle Ages recommended a kiss of peace, yes, on the lips, with no sexual connotation, of course. 

Kissing became more of an erotic act more recently in Western culture, but during the time when Victorian norms tended to keep all overt sexuality in the shadows, the first movie that showed a heterosexual kiss created quite a stir, in 1896, the film The Kiss. 
 

The kiss lasted 30 seconds and caused many to rail against decadence in the new medium of silent film. Writer Louis Blackwrite wrote that "it was the United States that brought kissing out of the Dark Ages." 

However, it met with severe disapproval by defenders of public morality, especially in New York. One critic proclaimed that "it is absolutely disgusting. Such things call for police interference." 

If that movie created quite a stir, imagine the premier of the opera Salome where Salome kisses the “cold, dead lips” (quoting Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond) of John the Baptist! 
 

Imagine then, the reaction of the audience many, many years later after the gay liberation movement when Michael Caine passionately kisses Christopher Reeve on the lips in the murder mystery Deathtrap. I was there; the whole theater gasped. 

In modern Eastern culture, the etiquette of kissing varies depending on the region. In West Asia, kissing on the lips between both men and women is a common form of greeting.

In South and Eastern Asia, it might often be a greeting between women; however, between men, it is unusual. Kissing a baby on the cheeks is a common form of affection. Most kisses between men and women are on the cheeks and not on the lips unless they are romantically involved. 
 

In his book The Kiss and its History, Kristoffer Nyrop describes the kiss of love as an "exultant message of the longing of love, love eternally young, the burning prayer of hot desire, which is born on the lovers' lips, and 'rises,' as Charles Fuster has said, 'up to the blue sky from the green plains,' like a tender, trembling thank-offering.” 
 

Nyrop's rather florid language about the dynamic of kissing (when I was young, I used to think when you kissed someone romantically would make you see fireworks, a cliched image which appeared on an episode of The Brady Bunch) doesn't really jive with my prepubescent and adolescent kissing experiences. 

First, I thought the act of kissing itself would produce a baby (I saw my young parents making out, and then my mother was pregnant with my youngest brother). Then I found out what really happened, from a nun. I was horrified. 

Secondly, my experiences kissing girls (on the lips and also French kissing) gave me an uncomfortable wet and sloppy feeling, and one girl even smelled like lemons (only when we kissed). I hate to say this, but in one case, the feeling resembled more our family dog doing her usual routine to get attention: slurp, slurp. I was not turned on. The fireworks only happened at the local park on July 4th. 

Then, much later, too much later, I kissed a man. Passionately. We made out on the couch. I remember saying, “I have waited so long for this.” I was 26. I got hard without having to play with myself in the shadows. 

That man and I did kiss in the shadows, because, sadly, he was already taken. 

But to this day, I can't imagine any sexual contact with someone without a kiss. For me, if a kiss happens, it's like there is always more. You are satisfied paradoxically by always being hungry. 
 

 

Cumshots, climaxes, orgasms: they are an end. Orgasm, the petit mort. The little death. Yes, death. What's beyond that end is unknown, even unthinkable. 

Every day for breakfast, except on weekends: a bowl of cold cereal. For me, the thrill of themed sugar cereals wore off quickly, even the Halloween-themed ones Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry (let's dump sugar and colored marshmallows in milk, yum!). 
 

For a brief while I enjoyed eating Captain Crunch dry, out of the box, as a snack, even as a young adult, especially during a hangover.

I briefly toyed with Golden Grahams and granola-based cereals in high school, but my aversion really developed when I had to empty a bowl of half-eaten milk-sodden Cheerios into the kitchen sink when I was babysitting my youngest brother. The family dog at that time got Cheerios for breakfast too, and that dog would eat anything, even her own poop. 
 

Let's just say I have developed an aversion to this staple of the breakfast menu, and it's not just an American phenomenon. The traditional English breakfast of eggs, bacon, kippers, tomatoes, beans, and fried bread (hello, cholesterol attack) didn't appear on the household table when I studied in London in the early eighties except when I stayed at bread and breakfast establishments (so, maybe it is strictly for tourists, perhaps). Guess what? We ate cold cereal with milk. 

Sometimes Muesli, a breakfast and brunch dish based on raw rolled oats and other ingredients like grains, fresh or dried fruits, seeds and nuts, that may be mixed with milk,was available, apparently very popular in Europe. I thought it resembled vomit. 
 

Even Dame Joan Sutherland, the late great Australian soprano, asked a house guest what type of cold cereal he wanted with breakfast. She was taken aback when he responded that he never ate cereal in the morning. 
 

The anti-masturbation crusader John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg's Corn Flakes fame pretty much started this whole breakfast-cereal-in-the-morning fad which soon became a tradition. His “granula” treat was produced to prove that a healthy diet with plenty of fiber could keep one's hands off one's wanker. At that time, in the late nineteenth century, processed foods were becoming prevalent in American diets, especially in urban areas, and consumers embraced the convenience perhaps more than the health benefits. 
 

Well, John Harvey, I find it quite interesting another name for the now traditional image of the rooster on a box of Corn Flakes that evokes images of the sun rising on amber waves of grain on the fruited plains of American the beautiful is cock. Ha! 

And John Harvey would probably collapse if he found out about an idiosyncratic genre of gay porn, cereal porn. Yep, guys get off on watching hot guys eating cereal, like Dave Daniels in our title Morning, Noon and Night!
 

 

 

Maybe the fetish has got something to do with the guy's mouth, and maybe the act of eating cold cereal, because it involves ingesting something both solid and liquid. And of course, cum is often compared to milk. De gustibus. 

If you get excited by someone eating smoked salmon and spinach for breakfast, come over to my house. You can have all you want!

I date from the times when people could smoke in bars, or, in at least one place I worked, in the building. 

Yes, no one was exiled outside for furtive puffs. (But being a nonsmoker, I didn't think it was quite fair that the smokers could take smoke breaks. No one at that oppressive institution was allowed any official 15-minute breaks.) 
 

Two of my friends used to smoke, until quite recently, but their respective doctors ordered them to quit. (One of those persons gained weight after he quit.) 

I live in a building that used to forbid smoking (I used to sneak a cigar now and then). And where I currently work full-time, one cannot even smoke outside anywhere on the official boundaries of the institution. 

Yet persons still do it, and I'm not here to get into the health issues. I understand the cigar fetish, given that I move in BDSM circles, and I've also encountered in those circles the Marlboro cigarette fetish, with its obvious iconic macho male image connections.

You know, that mustached hunk, the Marlboro Man himself … 
 

No, I'm thinking of casual, social smoking, which was assumed well into the 1970s and 1980s. It seemed like everyone lit up, and not just Bette Davis (a notorious chain smoker) and Joan Crawford. 
 

I remember proto-hipster parties I attended in the 1980s where all kinds of smoking occurred, legal and illegal. And usually in kitchens! 
 

And smoking in bed after sex was de rigeur as well, and not just in the movies. 
 

 

And I've often thought that some intimate interactions, which don't always end in sex, seem to need a cigarette or two. In those smoke-filled kitchens, I've made mind and soul connections with all sexes (alcohol helped too, of course) on topics ranging from Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics to Nietzsche to retro roosters to Finno-Ugric languages. 

I don't know, there's something je ne sai quoi about a guy holding a cigarette, when he is not trying to be seductive. And it's not the phallic connection (I get that more from a cigar). It's sexy because it isn't necessarily trying to be sexy. 
 

He stimulates desire by claiming to be more interested in that cigarette. And the next one. He knows I'll hold out for that last one.

I, Madam Bubby, the author of practically all these blogs,  like to think not only our movies not just as “classics,” but some of our reviews.

One twitter follower recently complimented us on our movie descriptions, and in this more visually-oriented age, our reviews show the power of the word to give some in-depth insight into really groundbreaking porn movies.

Many of our films date from the heady, trippy days of 1970s gay liberation, and the gay pornography of that period probed for the first time gay men's sexual identity and expression. 

Sometimes it's even more exciting (and educational) to read the reviews of these movies in particular (of course we want you to buy and watch them too!).

Remember the late great Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert? I might consider these reviews close to their level; just click on the hyper links and enjoy. 
 

Check out the reviews of Born to Raise Hell, the uber-gay-leather-BDSM movie, from 1974 with the legendary Val Martin. Note we've got two approaches to this movie (which still both disturbs and excites viewers with its brutal edginess), almost like Siskel and Ebert sparring. 

 

The review of Jack alludes to the famous Continental Baths, where Bette Midler got her start, because guess what? That's where the movie takes place! 

 

The review of Adam and Yves is stunning in its detail and intensity (like the movie), and the author also ties  it deftly into the French New Wave movement. And there's a surprise guest appearance by a legendary actress of the silver screen. 

 

Attack of the Amazing Colossal Latino is in some ways so bad it is good, and reading the review itself a real camp fest like the movie itself, which clumsily attempts to do some genre crossing. Science fiction meets gay porn! 

 

All these movies stream at www.bijougayporn.com!

Watch now!