Wholesome Lads

I think the last decade that could be called wholesome was the 1950s.  We've drifted away from that every decade since and even by 1970 it seemed like an anachronism.  And yet... and yet at least three actors tried to make careers out of that very trait.  Good looks, a sense of decency, a touch of innocence, a knack for tackling emotions and they were ready to go.  And even in the hard core 70s they were able to pull it off.  And then one day they no longer could.  Their first names all start with an R. Any idea who they might be?

Robby Benson was the clean-cut teen heartthrob of the 70s.  He says he went into show business from the womb.  That belonged to his singer-actress-business promoter mother and his father is a writer. The family's real last name is Segal.  Benson was born in 1956 in Dallas, Texas.

The 1967 Audrey Hepburn-starrer, Wait Until Dark, was his movie debut in an uncredited role as a boy tossing a ball .  He made his Broadway debut in 1970 in The Rothschilds and did a turn on soaps the following year. His soft, melodic voice, piercing blue eyes and good looks made him a natural for the movies and he soon starred in coming-of-age films that made teenage girls swoon. Jory and Jeremy, both 1973, got him on the road.    The latter co-starred Glynnis O'Connor, with whom he would work four times while they enjoyed a romance.

Television occupied most of his time in those days but his film career took off with Ode to Billy Joe (1976) in which we got some answers to questions raised by Bobbie Gentry's haunting country song.  He was a basketball phenom opposite Annette O'Toole in One on One (1977), a priest in Burt Reynolds' The End (1978) and the boyfriend of an ice skater in Ice Castles (1978).  He was marvelous as American Indian Olympic runner Billy Mills in Running Brave (1983) and as cranky Paul Newman's cheery progeny in Harry and Son (1984).

For some time Benson had gone to great lengths to keep a secret from Hollywood and the world... he had serious heart issues. Knowledge of it could have cost him his career for insurance reasons.  In 1984 he had the first of four open heart surgeries.

His movie career slacked off some since then.  In 1991 he was the voice of the beast in the animated Beauty and the Beast.  He worked a great deal in television and did voices in a number of
videos.  He's only acted in one film since 1994 but has written books and has been a professor at several universities.  Actress Karla DeVito has been Mrs. Benson since 1982. 

Robert Logan was a looker... he probably still is at age 76.  The first time I saw him was as a valet parking attendant on the popular Warner Bros television series, 77 Sunset Strip in the early 60s.  He replaced Edd Byrnes who famously played Kookie. 

Logan was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children of a bank executive and a housewife.  The family moved to Los Angeles when Logan was still quite young.  He was a jock in high school and good enough to earn a baseball scholarship to the University of Arizona. While there he was discovered by a WB talent scout and added to the studio's ever-expanding stable of handsome young men. He bore a striking resemblance to Robert Wagner which may have hampered his long-term success.

He was used most effectively as one of the young tomcats prowling around Diane McBain in the tawdry Claudelle Inglish (1961).  He seemed quite at home playing Jericho Jones in a dozen episodes of Daniel Boone, opposite Fess Parker, in the mid-60s. He was far down in the all-star cast of 1969's war drama, The Bridge at Remagen, and had a small role in the 1971 Yul Brynner comedy- western, Catlow, which few saw.

He's included in this piece because of the fans he amassed from five outdoor family dramas he starred in from 1975-79.  Most everyone, I suspect, who saw these films was inexorably drawn to them.  Wholesome was in again and the Disney name was nowhere to be found.  The most popular, The Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1975) spawned two sequels, The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1978) and Adventures of the Wilderness 
Family 3 (1979).  All concerned a family that gives up city dwelling in favor of an uncertain rural life.  The films were interspersed with two more that were equally popular, Across the Great Divide (1976) about two orphans who come across a wary drifter in the Rocky Mountains, and The Sea Gypsies (1978), this time about a family sailing around the world.  

His handsome looks, ready smile, sense of derring-do and a great command of light comedy should have propelled him into a more varied career but he has worked in films very little since the big five.  I'd love to know what's become of him.  I've wondered if he's gay without having any specific knowledge of it but he fits a certain Hollywood profile... very handsome, married once briefly, eschews the limelight, works very little and then disappears.

Richard Thomas, of course, will forever be remembered as John-Boy in television's 1970's mega-hit, The Waltons.  Did that experience ruin any future career, for all intents and purposes?  I think it did.  So indelible is his wholesome, earnest, alert, respected, bespectacled John-Boy, budding writer, that Richard Thomas could probably be arrested as a serial killer and folks would cry out... oh no, not John-Boy.  No way.

He was born in Manhattan in 1951 to ballet dancers who would become owners of their own ballet company.  Having been born into an artistic world, it's no surprise that at age seven he was on Broadway playing one of FDR's sons in Sunrise at Campobello. A year or so later he began appearing in TV soaps and in prestigious productions alongside such heavyweights as Julie Harris, Christopher Plummer, Jason Robards and Hume Cronyn.

In 1969 he starred as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's anxious son in the race car drama, Winning.  Later that year he was winning in the Fire Island teen drama, Last Summer, opposite Barbara Hershey.  In 1971 he starred in Red Sky at Morning about a sensitive youth in New Mexico coping with a father away at war and an unfaithful mother.  I thought it had something to say and said it well but the public stayed away. His most unusual role was as a rapist and murderer opposite Patty Duke in You'll Like My Mother (1972).

With The Waltons as his centerpiece, he returned to television.  His theatrical films were not big grossers.  He stayed with the series for five seasons and then went on to do made-for-television movies, many of them quite noteworthy.  He ultimately returned to The Waltons for those later TV movie specials.

Through all this he managed to attend Columbia University for a while, act in plays and become a published writer.  He went public years ago with his hearing disorder. He's been married twice and has five children, including triplets, and is a grandfather.  John-Boy is a grandfather! Through it all, he's managed to maintain his boyish good looks and sunny disposition.



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Movie Review (tomorrow)