Who Killed Teddy Bear?

It’s a must see. I found it on YouTube for free, which just tells you there is magic, and as a corollary, gold in them there hills. Starring — are you ready ? — Sal Mineo, Juliet Prowse, and ELAINE STRITCH. It is a document of a time, (1965) when everything changed, as we plunged into an era of feminism, sexual liberation and gay liberation. My era, in other words. That is — I kinda missed it as I was a teenager and a good boy — but I kinda knew what was happening. I knew that there were beatniks and then hippies and I couldn’t hang out in the schoolyard because there were ‘rumbles’ there. (Thugs with knives, apparently?) I missed out on the drugs and the sex in 1965 when I was 13 (though I made up for it in the 80s). Who Killed Teddy Bear has been praised as a precursor to Taxi Driver cuz it’s about a serial killer who works out a lot — but there the resemblance ends. Whereas Scorcese captured the heart and soul of the incel even before incel was ‘a thing,’ ‘Teddy Bear’ features a beautiful young man — who spends most of his time writhing around on his bed in his underwear, — tortured by his hatred for women because —you guessed it — he is a homosexual. It all has to do with his mother who incested him (maybe)? Hard to tell, as the trauma (which also involves his sister) is so badly represented in befuddling memory sequences that we kinda have to laugh. Sal Mineo’s sister is retarded (back when the term was okey dokey to use) because she hit her head when she fell down the stairs — because Sal Mineo and his mother were (I think) incesting and were therefore preoccupied? Are you are still with me on this? You might be getting some idea how crazy this movie is. The retarded sister is so badly written and acted that it raises this flic’s camp value by 100%. The only other truly camp stuff are the shots of people ‘disco’ dancing (I guess you’d have to call it ‘nightclub dancing’ back then). Basically there are far too many shots of crazy 60s young people earnestly letting loose and doing the frug, and the swim, and yes the good old- fashioned twist. But they are all just having too much fun and trying much too hard to do so. Eventually when Sal Mineo tries to murder Juliet Prowse, we learn (sorry, spoiler) that he is turned on by women dancing but hates himself for it, as he is gay and hates women (obviously), so he and Prowse do a crazy final dance (everyone in this movie kinda dances like Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld if you catch my drift) and he almost kills her, until she is saved by Jan Murray (yes Jan Murray host of Hollywood Squares) who rushes in and maybe kills Sal Mineo (hard to tell, very confusing ending). But we must talk about Elaine Stritch. OMG Jesus — if you are straight you’ve probably never heard of her, but but we fags love her to death. She is our forever idol. I’ll never forget when I went to see her one woman show at where was it — The Elgin ? — I literally stumbled across this really uptight dyke I used to know who actually was sitting in my seat —and after I talked her out of it — she asked, like an anthropologist studying an African tribe — “Why is it you gay men like Elaine Stritch SO much?” I almost slugged her. I couldn’t give her the real reason because she was so goddamn condescending. “Because she’s fucking talented!” — I said, which is not quite up to Oscar Wilde standards, but I didn’t even want to give her that. Anyway we fags love Elaine Stritch. If you meet a young man who is 13 years old and you’re not sure of his sexuality ask him if he’s heard of Elaine Stritch. If he has, he’s gay. What to say about her, well yes she’s fucking talented — a singer performer actress extraordinaire (trained with James Dean at Actors Studio) alcoholic, an emotional exhibitionist, tough as nails and soft as pillow inside, so tender, so vulnerable, so fucking angry. She is me. Anyway Elaine Stritch (spoiler number two) plays a dyke in ‘Teddy Bear,’ which will come as no surprise; she’s very glam but really butch — and as you know that’s 1965 code for raging bulldyke. (Watch out!) Elaine then has a tragic scene with Juliet Prowse which must not / cannot be missed in which she gradually comes to the tragic realization that a) she has been found out and b) Juliet Prowse is not going to be fucked by her (because that’s how it would go). (It almost measures up to the famous scene in which Pia Zadora is dyke-molested in a hot tub in Lonely Lady!) You must see this movie. For the shots of 42nd street alone, the strip clubs, the wanker movie palaces, the copies of ‘Tropic of Cancer’ and ‘The Homosexual Menace’ in the seedy bookstore windows, and Jan Murray, the cop caught up in it all — obssessed with all the alluring sin and depravity. He says something like “there’s sado-masochists and pedophiles and transvestites and fetishists— the list never ends” and Juliet Prowse says something like “Gee you know a lot about this don’t you.” Later another cop tells him, he’s becoming one of them, (one of us) a pervert himself, because he just can’t get sexual ‘inversion’ off his mind. Who Killed Teddy Bear? is a document of the moment when we thought maybe there could be such a thing as sexual liberation, but it just couldn’t happen, because in the west we are ultimately soul-destroying puritans at heart (if we still have hearts!) — and we must assassinate all pleasure. First came AIDS (which I know, was real), then came COVID (not quite as real) and God knows what new excuse will keep us all at home in the future, terrified to look out a window, terrifed we will catch something — a virus written on the wind — petrified even to twitch a curtain and — like the good old days, — just gossip. See the birth of ‘A Nation of Queerness’ in Who Killed Teddy Bear? — witness the homophobia that once engulfed us and is on its way back again. Who Killed Teddy Bear? was written by Arnold Drake (a veteran of Marvel Comics who apparently invented Deadman and Guardians of the Galaxy — if you need a contemporary reason to watch this movie). Turn it on now. You owe it to yourself to witness why sexual liberation failed, and to mourn for it. Have a drink and a snort of poppers for me. So much truth here — so much truth can be found even in this bad poetry than in any scientific treatise labelled as fact. And there’s certainly more truth in Who Killed Teddy Bear? than in my pathetic attempt to describe it here.

But I just had to, so I did.

Watch it, now, Please

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