It was Annie, if there were five Annies (six in the premiere). It was Glee, in the 60s. It was Rags to Riches, and it ran on NBC for two glorious seasons in the late 80s. Every Sunday night, you’d find me and my brother and sister glued to the TV watching – and recording it on VHS to watch the episodes over and over again. A Beverly Hills millionaire named Nick Foley adopts a handful of orphan girls to rehabilitate his image, and they sing… about everything… all the time.
But Rob, you might be asking, its all girls. How did this make you gay? Was it simply because of the presence of the iconic Tisha Campbell of Little Shop of Horrors fame? You’d think so, but no. For me, it was the beautiful blonde Diane, played perfectly by Bridget Michele. Every gay boy finds a diva to fall in love with and for me, it was her. She was, simply, stunning, and absolutely heart-wrenching for ten-year-old me as I watched her quest for love and get her heart broken.
That resonated. At the time, my heart was being broken nearly daily. I was only ten, eleven, twelve, but I had already mastered the dramatics of the adolescent gay. Ironically, or perhaps just not-so-coincidentally, the girl in charge of breaking my heart consistently at the time was also a sparkling blonde (shout out to Cori!).
Diane Foley collected many a man in the short run of the show, including the handsome lifeguard Sean played by Ken Olandt, and the Duke, played by Sasha Mitchell shown below, long before his time on Step by Step or the spousal abuse that followed.
I’m a sucker for a handsome face, as much now as I apparently was in the fall of 1987, but even still, I’m not sure it was Diane’s teenager in love that pushed me towards the closet door. Sure, my fascination with her bevy of beautiful beaus definitely should have been an inkling that I was not like other boys. But I think the part of Rags to Riches that really made me a big old gay was the musical numbers. These weren’t Broadway ballads like tomorrow. These were huge pop hits of the 50s and 60s, often with lyrics changed to suit the plot. They were catchy and costumed and choreographed.
Angst? Check. Drama? Check. Hot men? Double check. Add on show-stopping performances, and this show was a recipe for delight for a small prairies gay boy like me.
Do you remember this show? What media made you gay? Do you understand why Diane’s fashion was giving 80s realness in a show set in 1963? Chime in, in the comments.