That bomb that dropped in Los Angeles about a month ago? That wasn’t the LAND OF THE LOST feature film. It was the revelation that 1970’s/80’s teen idol Wesley Eure, the original “Will Marshall” from the television version, the star of DAYS OF OUR LIVES, the shower nozzle masturbation fantasy material (to quote HEATHERS) for legions of teenage girls, is gay. Perhaps I overstate. But Eure’s AfterElton.com interview was certainly a “Holy sh*t!” moment for many 40-something women whose dreams were crushed, and many 40-something men whose dreams came true.
Honestly, this one wasn’t a shocker for me. Although he wasn’t out in the press, the signs were there. His nonstop charity work with various AIDS charities (which include live theater extravaganzas featuring drag queens and muscle boys), the fact that he now lives in Palm Springs (Says Eure, “If you live here you’re either old, or you’re gay…”), and the fact that I used to see him at the Bullet, a gay bar in Burbank, many years ago. When I propose that, if one were paying attention, they would have already known he was gay before the announcement, he responds, “Of course! I’ve never been in the closet. I’ve just never been out in the press.”
Back in the 70s Eure went from living in Los Angeles without a car to starring on two TV shows simultaneously – DAYS OF OUR LIVES and LAND OF THE LOST. Suddenly magazines like TIGER BEAT couldn’t get enough of him, and teenage girls and housewives greedily ate up every morsel fed to them by the Hollywood publicity machine. But behind the scenes, it was fairly well known that Eure was gay. “I have a friend who, back in the day, was writing for SOAP OPERA DIGEST, and she told me that those ‘What Kind of Women Does Wesley Like?’ articles were the hardest things she had to write!” laughs Eure. In taking the LAND OF THE LOST gig, Eure had to turn down what would have been his Broadway debut. “I was doing DAYS, and I was offered LAND OF THE LOST. I just happened to be in New York at the time, and had been offered the lead in CANDIDE on Broadway. I talked with my manager about it for a long time, and finally decided to take LAND OF THE LOST.”
His place as part of pop culture bedrock now assured, Eure spent three years shooting both shows, sometimes on the same day. “NBC worked out a deal where I could shoot my DAYS scenes in the morning, and my LAND OF THE LOST scenes in the afternoon. Which meant I was crying over my wife, or not being able to get it up, or whatever all morning, and then after lunch I was running away from dinosaurs.”
I tell Eure that, no offense, I was actually more into Spencer Milligan, “Rick Marshall” on the show. Cruelly torn from his family by a pylon accident, Rick disappeared after the second season. “It was over money,” Eure explains. “Spencer wasn’t happy with the fact that they were selling lunchboxes, notebooks, other stuff with our faces on it and we weren’t getting anything out of it.” Eure says that Milligan’s replacement, Ron Harper as “Uncle Jack”, had a tough time fitting into the family, but the bright side was the larger production values for the final season. “We actually had some real plants in that jungle in the third year!”
Eure gives a special shout out to one of the LOTL writers, his friend David Gerrold. The out, gay Gerrold, who started his career on STAR TREK with the legendary “Trouble With Tribbles” episode, has been an inspiration to Eure. “David Gerrold is my hero. Back when it wasn’t fashionable, David was one of the first gay men to adopt a child. He’s been a very quiet pioneer.”When asked about the LAND OF THE LOST feature film, Eure isn’t shy about his opinion. Although he smiled on the red carpet, he’s not thrilled with the result. “If you’re a Will Ferrell fan, or a twelve-year-old boy, you’ll like it. [But] there’s no story, no heart. It was just a series of gags, although some of them are extremely funny.” He’s also disappointed that the trio of lead characters is no longer a family. “I remember when I first saw the trailer, where Will Ferrell is kissing Holly (Anna Friel), and I couldn’t believe it.”
After LOTL was canceled, Eure took his first film role in the notoriously sleazy THE TOOLBOX MURDERS. He laughs when I relate an interview I read with his costar, soon-to-be-former child actress Pamelyn Ferdin. In the interview Ferdin basically says, having been forced into acting by her mother, she took THE TOOLBOX MURDERS to ruin her career and get out of the business. Eure counters, “I loved it! I was so tired of playing the ‘goody goody’ roles. I’d been running from dinosaurs and being the perfect son for years, and now I got to be the killer!”
To help round out his murderous portrayal in a crucial scene, Eure took a cue from Dino De Laurentiis. “I had this idea during the scene where I kill Cameron Mitchell. I’d seen KING KONG right around then, and when we were filming the scene, the moment where King Kong holds Jessica Lange under the waterfall came to mind. So I said, ‘Watch this!’ and took the doll from Cameron and held it under the water in the sink.”
When I ask him about working with Mitchell, who despised the film, he replies, “Cameron was fine. He was a bit aloof. If I remember right he sort of stayed by himself. But most of his scenes were not with me. I was so busy in my world at the time – it was the first time I played a villain.”
THE TOOLBOX MURDERS oozed its way into theaters and quickly became Number One on various drive-in theater lists, including a nod from Stephen King in TV GUIDE. When I tell Eure that Siskel and Ebert took the movie to task during their infamous anti-horror campaign in the 80s, Eure couldn’t be more excited. “I’m thrilled! I had a blast doing it!”Eure laughs as he remembers taking a group of friends to see TBM. “I took them to this really sleazy theater on Hollywood Blvd, the kind of theater that’s a day away from becoming a porno house. There’s literally nobody but us in the theater. And somehow my friends thought we were going to see C.H.O.M.P.S., which I’d done and was released about the same time. It’s winter, they’re all wearing big coats, and after the first five minutes and that first murder, they’re all covering their faces. And I was howling!”
JENNIFER, the tale of a girl who could control snakes with her mind, came next. “There was really no part for me, but they wanted me in the movie. So I said, sure, I’ll do it. I had such fun!” Unfortunately, Eure had less than cordial relations with his costars. “I was holding this snake, petting like a puppy. Suddenly it reared up and went for my face. The wrangler shot his hand out and covered my face, and the snake bit him! His hands were completely scarred and gnarled from all the snake bites.“Right after this I’m called to the set for my death scene. I’m covered with tons of snakes. I’m still freaked out from the snake trying to bite me. And I start screaming, and I’m screaming so loud, the snakes start shitting all over me! I immediately ran into the shower and stripped off my clothes and rinsed of, and then the director comes in wanting to shoot more of the scene!” Sadly for the snakes, their screen time in this scene was cut short. “I’ll never forget the smell of snake shit.”
After JENNIFER and C.H.O.M.P.S, there’s an eight year gap in Eure’s IMDB.com listing. In Part Two of this interview, Eure starts to feel the negative effects of living as an openly gay man in Hollywood…
For all you kids on the Facebook interwebs, join the “Gay of the Dead” fan page by clicking here!
Comments (5)
-
|2009-08-06 22:40:45 CC
I don't care what his sexual orientation is, Wesley Eure was the best big brother in the world for a girl that only had two sisters !!!
-
|2009-07-13 13:44:04 BT
amazes me to find out that actor's or actresses back then had to keep there sexual preferences a big secret and could be fired for exposing there right to love whomever they choose , i'm glad things have changed a bit for them now adays since television shows like will & grace, ellen, and queer as folk have made gay tv more wide spread and opened the doors more then it could have ever been back in the 70's 80's for the actor/actresses from that era... kinda like horror films from 80's 90's that the mpaa had a field day on tearing and cutting almost all the graphic gore from films like tcm 3 leatherface , and nowadays films hostel, tcm remake, can show alot more gore uncut then it ever could back in the 80's 90's ....
Powered by Zombies.
...