Perfectly Unclear -- On LGBTQ, what did the President 'understand' and when did he understand it?

Someone who in 1971 referred to Archie Bunker as “a stupid old fellow” may not sound like a Nixon person, but it was in fact Richard Nixon himself who called his greatest fictional ally those words.

A White House tape reveals that as well as much that is more vintage reactionary Nixon, but also a mystery -- call it the “other” gap in the White House Tapes.

On this recording, Nixon tells H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman of a recent evening when, after watching a televised baseball game, he stumbled upon what he thought was a movie.

Nixon describes how in this broadcast he saw a “stupid old fellow” named Archie, two intelligent young men and a “nice girl” sitting in a living room. The characters are talking in a manner the 37^th President believed was “glorifying homosexuality.”

Haldeman explains to his boss that this was a weekly show, not a movie, though he never gets the name “All In The Family” out before Nixon cuts him off and launches into a detailed description of the plot.

In this episode, called “Judging Books by Covers,” an ascot wearing intellectual friend of Mike’s named Roger is presumed to be gay, or as the leader of the free world puts it in that tape, “queer.” At the episode’s conclusion, however, a virile, bulked up former pro football player, who is an acquaintance of Archie’s and a regular at the bar down the street, comes out to a disbelieving Archie as gay.

Nixon is appalled by this TV show and his strong reaction to it is part of a long Nixon-esque rant in this tape against gays (whom he calls “fags”) and the emerging movement for LGBTQ equality. The president asserts gay rights will weaken the United States, absurdly claiming that France and Britain fell from world superpower status because homosexuals became more visible in those nations.

Though he acknowledges gays likely include Aristotle, Socrates, and the wedding planner setting up Tricia’s upcoming nuptials, a hateful Nixon mixes up homosexual with pedophile during his tirade, and lumps the new visibility of gay Americans in with drug abuse as measures of moral decline.

Though statements like those coming from Richard Nixon would seem unsurprising, one thing about the president’s diatribe on this tape gives pause.

Though history remembers there was an 18-minute gap in a crucial 1972 tape three days after the Watergate break in, let us talk about an obscure 14-second gap in this tape. It includes a beep tone lasting that long, and its precise timing hints at the Chief Executive covering something up. Yeah, Nixon and cover ups go back a long way, though I concede the evidence is far from perfectly clear.

And since there’s no pardon in the works for me if I get in trouble over this, I’ll say that this is just unfounded crazy speculation.

But there has to be some reason why the White House tape has 14 seconds missing. Here’s how the tape goes:

NIXON: “But the point is, I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it.... (14 second beep tone)... But nevertheless, the point that I make is that, God damn it, I do not think you glorify, on public television, homosexuality.”

One can’t imagine the beep's purpose being to cover up excessive anti-gay statements, because of the level of vitriol in what we have already heard. Was the language just too foul? C’mon, these are the Nixon tapes.

So that would leave the possibility that what’s blocked just after Nixon says he understands the homosexuality is an elaboration on just how he understands it.

                   ABOVE, listen to the TV Critic and Homophobe-in-chief

 

Could Nixon have said:

“I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. I mean from San Clemente to Key Biscayne, nobody decorates better than I do!”

Or…. “I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Why do you think I was sweating so much in the ‘60 debate? Standing that close to Kennedy -- hubba hubba!”

Or… “I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. The day someone fixed me up with a blind date named ‘Pat,’ I spent the week looking forward to some cute Irish guy!”

Or not. But this is a man who built his political career on a string of illogical insinuations that his opponents were communist-leaning, so Tricky Dickey may have earned a little innuendo.

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Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, where he never missed All in the Family while growing up.  He turned out just fine, despite Richard Nixon's warning that the kids of America could be harmed by this episode:

CLICK to go to "Judging Books By Covers" from 1971, via Daily Motion

Mister, we could use a man like WHO again?

All right, dummy up, all ‘o youz!

Here’s the story of the other U.S. presidential campaign scandal from 1972, though this one really was nothing more than third-rate.

And it’s about a transgression not by that bigoted vindictive liar Richard Nixon, who had treasonously sabotaged a peace agreement in 1968 to get in the White House in the first place, then obstructed justice four years later to stay there. Nope, this lapse in integrity was by the progressive George McGovern.

It was so tiny a lapse it is historically irrelevant -- forgotten by all but the most hardcore political history wonks. Which is why I am the person writing about it.

If a burglary and cover-up didn’t prevent President Nixon from trouncing the liberal senator from South Dakota by 22 percentage points in the popular vote, a little identity sleight of hand by a popular actor on behalf of the McGovern campaign didn’t stave off the resounding 1972 landslide loss either.

For context, consider the landscape of McGovern’s race in the autumn of that year: much of his own Democratic party is not with him, the AFL-CIO under the powerful George Meany has declined to endorse him, his central issue the Vietnam War has been wound down (and the Nixon campaign’s 1968 sabotage is still secret).

                                     
The '72 Race on the Airwaves: Each side defines Senator McGovern: He says he will make things fairer for the average American. Nixon says he would leave us defenseless.

As though his problems weren't enough, McGovern had to eat an unprecedented amount of crow days after the Democratic Convention by replacing his vice-presidential running mate Tom Eagleton with Sargent Shriver. As the fall campaign went on, the voters were not terribly concerned about the Watergate break-in, instead fearing McGovern’s perceived “radicalism.”

Now, addressing this r-word label, comes perhaps candidate George McGovern’s last hope: a TV ad featuring the very face of meat-and-potatoes American conservatism.

The ad opens with Carroll O’Connor striking exactly the seated pose of his signature character Archie Bunker when Archie would be in his iconic living room chair, the spot from which he would launch brusque and uninformed conservative salvos weekly to TV audiences.

In this ad for McGovern, O’Connor decries, “the radicalism of the present administration.”

Nothing misleading about that. But O’Connor then says:

 

“Radicalism is what any conservative must try to remove from authority, and that is why I, as a conservative man, am going to vote with confidence for Senator George McGovern.”

 

Calling Nixon radical makes perfect sense; his war on drugs is a radical right purge of minorities, his invasion of Cambodia opened the way for Pol Pot, and his agricultural policies would soon enable corporations to obliterate the small family farm. That’s the stuff of Juan Peron or Mussolini.

Whereas the “radicalism” label is correct, just who is the labeler? Carroll O’Connor is recognized on sight as the snarling bigot Archie, but off the set of the wildly popular and influential CBS show “All in the Family,” he is an eclectic and educated liberal.

O’Connor, who would go on to do TV ads for Senator Ted Kennedy’s 1980 runs in presidential primaries, is not the man who continually lauded “Richard E. Nixon,” in debates with his “pinko” and “Polack” son-in-law Mike. That was Archie Bunker.

It wasn’t O’Connor who tore into his wife’s cousin Maude’s pieties by declaring, “This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt!” – or, for that matter, who started each show by harmonizing that, “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again!”

All that, as well, was Archie.

So just who is it who is telling the voters he is “a conservative man” in this ad for the most liberal Democrat to run for president?

Deceptive, or at least pandering though it may have been to represent Carroll O’Connor to the voters as Archie Bunker, the normally hyper-ethical Senator McGovern could read his dismal poll numbers during the fall of 1972. After the ad ran, McGovern talked it up, and did nothing to disabuse viewers who weren’t up on the fact that O’Connor was no Archie Bunker.

In a broadcast appearance by the candidate in Los Angeles featuring live phone calls from average voters, McGovern, as reported by the L.A. Times, said:

 

“I want to thank Carroll O’Connor for his endorsement…. Carroll O’Connor is known to most of you as Archie Bunker. The only thing we ask is that all of you who like Archie Bunker vote for George McGovern and Sargent Shriver.”

 

Those who liked Archie Bunker were in large part what demographers would shortly call “Nixon-crats.” These were blue collar working families who celebrated the clichéd social conservatism trumpeted each Saturday evening by the fictional Queens loading dock worker. Archie’s full-voiced pronouncements demonstrated no awareness of how his family’s comfortable life at 704 Houser St. was possible because of FHA mortgage guarantees, the G.I. Bill, minimum wage laws, farm subsidies, and the right to form unions – all given to him by the FDR he calls the ruin of America.

This array of once cherished New Deal reforms, obscure to the voting public by the 1970s, wasn’t working as a rallying call any longer for the Democratic Party. The liberal O’Connor seemed to realize this, never alluding in the ad to the traditional Democrat economic egalitarian ideal, content to fashion himself a conservative.

And George McGovern, for all his idealism and 2 am-acceptance-speech devotion to principle, also was a politician. Playing to that tendency of the American public (or as his endorser might call them, “dingbats”) to confuse TV actors with their characters is the kind of thing to which politicians will resort when they’re down by 22 points.

Brian Arbenz enthusiastically backed George McGovern in 1972, even to the point of welcoming the endorsement of "a conservative man" who appeared to be named Archie. Hey, in elections ya do what ya gotta do. 

Allan Melvin - Always in Character, Often in Uniform

 

Rob Petrie had four old Army pals who were tall, had deep voices and wavy blonde hair.

Three were shown in flashbacks (a Dick Van Dyke Show innovation) and were perhaps the same person – the trio were named Sam Pomerantz, Sam Pomeroy, and Sol Pomerantz, depending on the episode. (The blog Toobworld calls them the "Pom-Poms.")

The fourth, a distinctly different character who visits Rob and Laura's New Rochelle home in the present, was an immaculately dressed, pleasant but mysterious jeweler named Harrison B. Harding.

All four (or both, if the Pom-Poms are to be regarded as one fellow) were played by the same person – the consummate TV character actor Allan Melvin.

Melvin also played a prison guard in a Dick Dan Dyke episode, and in another, a gun salesman in the old west in a dream Rob has (dream sequences were another Van Dyke Show innovation).

To further complicate the Pom-Pom legacy, another actor also played an Army buddy of Rob’s named Sam Pomerantz, proving that no one in the ‘60s foresaw home video or the Internet someday enabling sitcom devotees to quibble.

To clear up which Pom is Allan Melvin, behold his familiar face and voice in this Dick Van Dyke Show link as Sol Pomerantz:

As Sgt. Charlie Hacker on Gomer Pyle USMC:

.
And, in one of a series of Liquid Plumber ads he did in the 1970s and ‘80s:

(as though plumbers wear their uniforms to parties)

Now  you know who Allan Melvin was -- if telling Sam from Sol is still a little tricky. Melvin was born in Kansas City, Mo., the son of a New York City-based distributor of silent films to amusement arcades in the Midwest. A young Allan moved with his family to New York City, where he grew up, then was educated at Columbia University.

Before the Dick Van Dyke or Gomer Pyle series, Melvin donned a military uniform as Army Corporal Steve Henshaw in The Phil Silvers Show in the 1950s. But he wasn’t just a screen serviceman; Melvin joined the Navy during World War II, helping build naval vessels at the Port Newark Shipyard in New Jersey, the website philsilversshow.com said.

But entertainment was Melvin's avocation during the war.

"He learned to do voices and he practiced doing impressions of all kinds of people and things," The Phil Silvers website said. "Some College acting friends, Frank Campanella, Thomas McDermott and a young actress called Amalia Sestero had started a theatrical group, The Unicorn Players. Frank invited Allan to one of their meetings -- the die was cast. Allan and Amalia started dating, fell in love..."

In 1944 Allan John Melvin and Amalia Faustina Sestero wed in New York City.  In a pattern of stability that seems to typify character actors, they stayed married until Allan Melvin died in 2008 at age 84. They had two daughters.

        Allan Melvin's debt to the great Phil Silvers:

 

Before going into television, Melvin did superb voice impressions of legends like James Stewart and Cary Grant while he performed with stage comedy ensembles, and won acclaim for his role in the Broadway play "Stalag 17" as an American POW who amid the misery of the camp entertains co-prisoners using similar talents.

Melvin worked in NBC's sound effects department, creating radio show sounds using devices, recordings and sometimes his own voice.

The forceful yet soothing Allan Melvin vocal style had a career of its own, as he also did cartoon voices of Magilla Gorilla, Sergeant Snorkel, Bumbler, Barney Google and Bristol Hound.

Melvin had a small role in the 1968 Doris Day movie "With Six You Get Eggroll," in which he plays a police sergeant who is confronted by hippies played by future M*A*S*H cast members Jamie Farr and William Christopher (yep, the Father played a hippie)

                       Allan experiences the '60s,

                                                         but he "ain't groovy."

 

Other than being in that oddly cast scene, Melvin's on-screen work was entirely through television, unlike character actor icons such as Edward Andrews, Reta Shaw and Whit Bissell, who also intermittently acted in movies. That made Allan Melvin probably the top "Household Face," if not name, in TV.

And every generation of TV viewers has its Allan Melvin peg. For some, it’s Henshaw or Charlie Hacker. Seventies kids knew him as Sam the butcher, Alice’s love interest on The Brady Bunch. There was also Barney Hefner, the Bunkers’ neighbor on All in the Family who was just as blue-collar as Archie, but never expressed bigotry.

Published obituaries of Allan in 2008 tended to reveal the generation of the writer based on which of those characters he was described as "best known for playing."

In several of the obits, Amalia Sestero Melvin said her husband's favorite role had been in The Phil Silvers Show. "I think the camaraderie of all those guys made it such a pleasant way to work. They were so relaxed," said Amalia, who lived to age 100, dying in December 2020.

Just as with playing the rotating Army buddy of Rob, Melvin pulled off a switcheroo on All in the Family, too.

Before being the semi-regular Barney Hefner, he appeared as New York City police officer Pulaski in an episode’s final scene where Archie gets his comeuppance for his characteristic use of an anti-Polish slur:

 

One of the foundations of the character actor profession -- the subliminal semi-recognition viewers have of them – is what enabled Melvin to play two people in one program.

"I went in the same season from Pulaski to Barney Hefner. I think they make allowances for the fact that the audience will accept certain changes,” Melvin said in an early 1970s interview. “I guess they figure since it was a one-shot, I wasn't that established. I've been Barney ever since." This was from a British blog on Phil Silvers Show stars; that great 1950s military comedy had Melvin in the cast as Henshaw, an army cohort of the irrepressible Sgt. Ernie Bilko.

Melvin was recalled to duty as Marine Sergeant Charlie Hacker on Gomer Pyle USMC during the same decade he played the Army "Pom-Poms."

If playing two characters each in New Rochelle and Astoria, N.Y. was a task, Allan Melvin’s work in Mayberry, N.C, was a high-wire juggling act.

On The Andy Griffith Show, he played eight different people, reported the web site fans-pages.com, which labeled Melvin’s constant work on the show: “Mayberry’s Multiple Personality Disorder.”

Among his Andy Griffith Show roles were a jailed suspect whom Barney tries to trick into giving evidence, a roadside vendor who disses the deputy only to learn what authority really means, and a recruiting sergeant who struggles with the not-exactly G.I Ernest T. Bass.

In another roughneck role, Melvin played local bully Fred Plummer, who bedevils Deputy Fife. Barney is impersonated by his judo instructor who overpowers Plummer into respect for the undersized deputy he thinks has clobbered him.

Switching to the right side of the law, Melvin played an eagle-eyed hotel detective in an Andy Griffith Show episode in which Andy and Barney make an out-of-town trip.

Melvin described nearly every TV show he was in as fun more so than work. He regularly praised the entertainment stars he worked with, including Phil Silvers, Frank Sutton, Andy Griffith, and producer Aaron Ruben.

Particularly satisfying to Allan Melvin was the Dick Van Dyke Show:

"It was marvelous, exhilarating," he said. "It was so well written and conceived and the working conditions were so great, working with Carl Reiner and Dick and Mary and the whole crowd. And it was just a joy because it was a very creative show. It was an early kind of a watershed ensemble comedy show."

Those words were posted on Philsilversshow.com, on which Melvin also fondly recalled The Phil Silvers Show -- originally called "You'll Never Get Rich," and also often referred to as "Bilko" -- for timeless TV quality.

"A Bilko show could be funny 50 years from now. Funny is funny. It's as simple as that."

 

            __________________________________________

  

Brian Arbenz, of Louisville, Ky. USA, has throughout his life loved watching Sams, Sols, Plumbers and Plummers, Marines and Soldiers, Barney adversaries and Barney Hefners named Allan Melvin.

 

And for a closing act, a few minutes of a rare suit-and-tie clad civilian Allan Melvin as the mysterious old friend (or crook?) Harrison B. Harding:

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For even more on Allan Melvin, CLICK HERE to go to KJ Ricardo's YouTube
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