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Inadvertently Gay, but funny


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13 hours ago, Mancunian said:

I still think this is funny, John-boy Walton laughing at what could painful 

 

 Well, we couldn't see what he was doing, so maybe he was hanging him by his balls and John Boy just found it funny.  

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On 7/21/2022 at 8:54 AM, Zombie said:

the staple of UK comedy routines has always been double meanings - pantos are basically just a succession of very rude double entendres and audiences love ‘em :gikkle:

BBC radio comedy shows in the 50s and 60s were outrageous* :funny: with jokes that would never have been allowed but wrapped up in seemingly innocuous words they got away with sheer filth :lol:

One long running radio show started in 1972 called I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is still going 50 years later. Two of the fictional characters called Samantha and Sven are always doing various things which on one level are perfectly innocent but those with a dirty mind (that’s everyone :P) knows they’re not… 
 

 

The golden age of American Radio did not have to evade your Kingdom's Orwellian censorship via les doubles entrandre 😜 lol. Thank goodness! 

However befuddled Hollywood movies were with showing Gay people did not exist anywhere in the world, expect in mental institutions and prisons, American comedians on the airwaves were openly, teasingly -- perhaps one could say, lovingly -- riffing on queer men and women all the time. 

I was just listening to NBC's The Big Show while doing the dishes, a program that reveled in long-running jokes on the host's -- Tallulah Bankhead, darhling -- open, Bi nature. Like this, from Episode 21, broadcast on March 3rd, 1951:

Tallulah Bankhead: "Men, again. All roads lead to men."

Judy Holliday: "Yeah, so why'd you take a detour?"   

 

(Another gem I don't have time to look up the episode number and date has a jaw-dropping adlib by Bankhead about her marrying one of Eddie Cantor's five daughters. There is palpable shock that Tallulah went there, and after the laughter died down, Bob Hope adlibbed in reply: "Tallulah, why don't you get a crew cut [a clear Lesbian reference] so you can read the script." )  

 

And the amount of references in the Jack Benny Program are mind-blowing. Like the time Jack got a letter from his doctor saying "Good news; you're not pregnant." Which turns out was for another patient. So, ten minutes later in the episode, Kenny Baker tells him "Good thing that letter wasn't for you." Jack Benny: "whoo. I know!" lol

The queer content of American radio should be documented in a well-researched and cited book; it would make revealing reading and show in black and white that Gay people's lives were accepted far more readily that the people who use the "H-word" about us would ever want us to know ;) 

Edited by AC Benus
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3 hours ago, AC Benus said:

The golden age of American Radio did not have to evade your Kingdom's Orwellian censorship via les doubles entrandre 😜 lol. Thank goodness!

It wasn’t Orwellian censorship it was a way of telling filthy jokes :lol: 

It’s a cliche that British humour doesn’t travel well but it’s true, and I think the reason is because so much of it is about playing tricks with words (puns, innuendo, double meanings etc) so the audience hears one thing but understands another. And that’s a big part of the pleasure - decoding the gags as they’re being told.

The BBC radio show Round The Horn (RTH) ran from 1965-68 and was basically 30 minutes of prime time family-listening filth and innuendo every week and was probably the most popular comedy show :P 

As well as puns, innuendos and double entendres RTH also used Polari gay slang which began to be used in the British and Irish gay subcultures from the 19th century onwards with secret code words (because gay sex was a crime) and continued until around the time of partial decriminalisation in 1967. For example “cottage” in Polari doesn’t mean a charming little home with a thatched roof but a public toilet used for gay sex a la George Michael, and “upright” isn’t a type of piano but an erect penis :funny:

RTH had two gay characters called Julian and Sandy and in one gag Sandy is telling Kenneth Horne (who fronted the show) that Julian is a brilliant pianist: "a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright". So the audience hears that Julian is a good pianist - not very funny - but listeners who understood Polari (that’s all the gay listeners in the studio audience and listening at home, and probably quite a few straight ones too) would laugh because they instantly translated Sandy's line as a proud announcement that his boyfriend Julian is particularly skilled at manipulating his own and other men's erect penises in locales often raided by police in search of prosecutions for what was then legally deemed to be 'gross indecency'.

So would American radio in 1965 have broadcast:

”Julian is very talented at wanking and bringing off guys with hardons”? 

Frankly, even if they would have done, the “straight” translated version just isn’t very funny.

 

 

Edited by Zombie
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13 hours ago, AC Benus said:

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As U.S.A. as apple pie

and Chevrolet :yes: 

There's nothing like being recognized as having the biggest wiener, oops... I mean eating the most wieners.  

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15 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Remember Susan from way back? Well, she dumped her hubbie with his weenimobile fascination and found Mable -- who has other fascinations ;)

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Put the hot dog trophy in the front passenger set and you have the universal signs for a male and female.   A wiener and a nice pair of headlights.  

Edited by Bill W
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On 8/10/2022 at 4:16 PM, AC Benus said:

after all, she's still waiting for her prince to come . . .

He may be waiting for her to come first, no?

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