A classic game show from the 1950’s has recently received a big gay makeover care of GSN, the network for games. You may recall I’ve Got a Secret in one of its previous incarnations (1952-1967, 1972, 1976, 2000) when celebrity panelists included Jayne Meadows, Kitty Carlisle, Richard Dawson, Teri Garr, and even gay icon Jim J. Bullock. The original 1952 version was the longest running and most popular game show in the history of the genre.
The 2006 version of I’ve Got a Secret, which premieres April 17, just happens to boast an all-gay panel, consisting of comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer, Sirius Radio host and humorist Frank DeCaro (author of A Boy Named Phyllis: A Suburban Memoir), former Major League baseball player Billy Bean, and Broadway dancer and actor Jermaine Taylor.
Despite the make-up of the panel, this isn’t a gay show aimed at gay audiences. I’ve Got a Secret is a straight show (or a show for “everyone”) that just happens to have a gay cast–a quietly revolutionary concept.
The secret of each contestant is revealed to home and studio audiences as well as to host Bil Dwyer, who announces a vague description of the secret to the panel. Then each panelist is given 40 seconds to ask the contestants yes or no questions that will reveal the secret. If the panelists are stumped, the contestants win cash and prizes, as well as some additional ribbing at the hands of the panelists.
Promotional materials state that host Bil Dwyer is charged with “keeping the panelists in line” but the group is mostly well-behaved. In the first two episodes of the program, DeCaro and Taylor toss about some light sexual humor, but nothing that straight America hasn’t already heard and processed via Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Time will tell if the game show format offers an unexpected opportunity for the gay envelope to be pushed, or simply ripped open outright.
Westenhoefer and DeCaro keep the sharpest of the wisecracks coming at a good clip, and DeCaro’s clever flirtations with even the straightest male contestants provide a subversive edge. At one point in his line of questioning, DeCaro says to a male contestant, “You have ‘an extremely unique physical talent’? Is it of a sexual nature? (I hope, I hope, I hope.) It’s not? Well then who cares?”
For queer viewers, watching presumably straight contestants react to the collective gay banter may be the best part of the show, particularly when some contestants are more game than others.
The schoolteacher from Texas (his secret: record number of self-inflicted kicks to the head in one minute) seems delighted to dish with the panel, while the identical twins married to identical twins look more than a little uncomfortable when Westenhoefer gleefully asks them the inevitable question regarding partner swapping.
The sight of an out lesbian comic suggesting that two heterosexual couples (decked out in traditional wedding attire) might be kinky is surprisingly thrilling at a time when anti-gay marriage initiatives are regularly passed in various states across the nation.
Most members of the panel already have reputations for forwarding the cause of GLBT visibility. Suzanne Westenhoefer was one of the first openly gay comics to perform gay material before straight audiences in the conventional club circuit. And say what you will about her appearance on The Sally Jesse Raphael Show in January of 1991 (in the episode “Lesbians Who Don’t Look Like Lesbians”) but it broke stereotypes and formally introduced straight America to the concept of the Femme Lesbian.
For seven years Frank DeCaro’s sassy movie reviews brought a decidedly gay sensibility to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and his Newsday column (“Frank’s Place”) was one of the first by an openly gay writer to regularly appear in a mainstream newspaper. And even the stoic Billy Bean made a splash in 1999 when he became the second former major league player ever to publicly come out as gay.
Each show typically includes the performance of one of the contestant’s secrets. This is not terribly controversial when it involves hula-hooping or lizard training, but when the secret is “I can break pencils with my butt cheeks,” the opportunity for ribald gay humor is undeniable. When said contestant’s posterior secret is revealed, Jermaine Taylor quips, “So you have a really tight ass?” to which DeCaro retorts, “Jermaine! He didn’t say he could sharpen the pencils!”
Watching DeCaro clutch invisible pearls and fan himself while the contestant then breaks a ruler with his wood-shattering glutes is enough to make all sorts of people shriek, “You Can’t Do That on Television!” But, luckily, you can do that television. Particularly when the program in question is not being marketed specifically as a “gay” show.
Secret Producer Burt Dubrow recently said of the show to journalist Herndon Davis, “It is not a gay anything….it’s not a heterosexual anything. This is not something that we talk about or find overly significant. We felt we’d turn the volume up a bit. It’s not an integral part of the show. It’s never even brought up. It’s there and it’s not there. Our feeling is that there was no reason to put a label on it”
Even if it’s not promoted as the next big gay thing, the official Secret website does play up the gayness of the panelists. All but Taylor’s bio openly states that the panelists are gay, and the even the gimmick of revealing some of the panelists’ own secrets is played for gay laughs.
DeCaro’s bio states that he once had a secret crush on Partridge Family crooner David Cassidy and that he aspires to play Bat Girl on the big screen. Westenhoefer’s biographical statement professes her obsession with actress Susan Hayward and pointedly states that Westenhoefer has a “tongue of many talents. She can tie a cherry stem knot and touch her nose.” You do the math.
There is ample television precedent of edgy gay humor getting big laughs without doing any damage to the heterosexual status quo–think Paul Lynde on the Hollywood Squares. But Lynde wasn’t out, and the swinging 1970s was decidedly more gay-friendly than Bush-era America.
It’s a clever twist on the original I’ve Got a Secret to have un-closeted gay celebrities try to expose the not-so-crucial “secrets” of ordinary contestants. And luckily for the GSN, the show will probably appeal to those viewers who don’t appreciate the irony just as much as it appeals to those who do.
