Billy Crystal's place in gay pop culture history

Last night, Billy Crystal was honored at the Kennedy Center with the 10th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The ceremony was taped and will be broadcast on PBS on November 12th. Crystal is probably best known for hosting the Oscars, and starring in When Harry Met Sally and City Slickers. But the comedian really burst on the scene with his turn as gay son Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom, Soap, which ran from 1977 to 1981.

Jodie Dallas may not have been the first gay character on network TV (that prize goes Peter Panama, played by Vincent Schiavelli, in The Corner Bar (1972-3)) But he was certainly the first to make a substantial cultural impact. On a personal level, I remember watching the show with my family as a 12-year old and being secretly overjoyed to see someone "like me" on the small screen.

Unfortunately, the show became something of a rallying point for conservative christian groups seeking to flex their media watchdog muscles. The National Council of Churches helped to organize a boycott against sponsors of the show, ABC reportedly received 32,000 letters of complaint before the show's premiere, and eight out of 195 ABC affiliates refused to air the show. The network, to its credit, refused to bow to pressure and carried the controversial series for three years.

Always successful in the ratings, the show was arguably done in by the steep discounting ABC had to do to fill commercial slots. According to executive producer Susan Harris, ABC carried the show essentially without corporate sponorship.

In a 2002 New York Times interview, Billy Crystal admitted to some early misgivings about taking the role of Jodie Dallas:

"I was Jackie Robinson for a while.... you could feel people deal with you differently. They'd be playing to you like, 'Oh, you're the gay guy.' It was very creepy at the beginning."

"My skin would crawl sometimes,'' he said, remembering the derision studio audiences would direct at his character, Jodie, the gay son of a blue-collar Connecticut family. Like the time Jodie's ex-boyfriend told him, ''I love you and I want you back.'' ''The audience hears that and they go nuts,'' Mr. Crystal said. ''They start tittering and laughing.'' In such scenes, he said, ''If there was an isolated camera on me, you would have seen me getting red and sweaty, thinking, "What am I doing here?"

And yet, by the end of the series, audiences had warmed up significantly to Jodie Dallas. In the third season, Jodie is involved in a child custody battle. According to Crystal, "The mail was three to one that I should get the child, and I thought that was the biggest victory of all,.''

Jodie Dallas may have not been an ideal LGBT representation by modern standards. For one thing, later in the series Jodie becomes romantically involved with his lesbian roomate – thus killing two gay birds with one stone! But for its time, the show was pretty progressive. And hey, even if they neutered Jodie at the end, Billy Crystal is to be commended for giving us one of the first truly endearing gay characters on television.

Congrats to Crystal on this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.