Toying With The Stars

Alison Arngrim is in town promoting her new book. You probably know her best, as I do, as Nellie Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. If you were a child of the 70s, as I was, you watched this show. The years have not dimmed my memories of the Walnut Grove gang, nor can I shake the haunting images from the fire at the blind school. In a previous interview, Alison told us that when things were getting too sweet on the show, Michael Landon (in every sense the patriarch) would darken things up to balance it all out. I am pretty sure you can’t burn a beloved character and a newborn baby alive on a kid’s show anymore but as the ludicrous saying goes: “It was a simpler time.”

I think I speak for gay men everywhere when I say that I am as attached to my idols from childhood as Andy is to Woody and Buzz in the Toy Story movies. For us, our idols are the toys we never tire of playing with. We put them up on high shelves to proudly display. When they get knocked down and broken, we lovingly repair them. And we tend to love the ones with the most accessories best. Stars like Cher are like the Barbies we were never allowed to own: a dozen careers, a million outfits, and subtle changes to her plastic exterior as the decades wear on but still recognizably the doll we love.

Chip Duckett is the Comic Book Guy of our gay collectibles world. A local promoter known for his 1984 club night at Pyramid (now the longest running gay party in Manhattan), he has kept 80s music, Joan Rivers, Alison and others in near mint condition and on full display before the gays for years. He invited me to a small gathering to build buzz around Alison’s return to NYC and her new book. So after the show, I journeyed two blocks away to Aspen, a swanky club tucked into a classic Times Square area hotel returned to its former glory, and then some.

When I walked into the party I immediately saw Frank DeCaro and his boyfriend Jim Colucci. They were chatting with Randy Jones, the cowboy from The Village People. Porn cheerleader Will Clark was there as well. And sitting in the corner, greeting man after man with love in his eyes like The Bachelorette, was Alison. The straw blond wig is long gone, replaced by a more sensible short haircut but it is still recognizably Nellie Oleson.

While I waited for my turn, Randy started getting very excited that “Fake Jan” was on her way over. Everyone knows that in the world of collectibles, the rarer the item, the more valuable it is. And what is rarer than “Fake Jan?” We all grew up with the Brady Bunch, but when Eve Plumb, the actress who originated the role of Jan didn’t want to give up her promising acting career to appear in the ill-advised but still insanely delicious Brady Bunch Variety Hour, she was replaced. Enter Fake Jan.

Naturally, Geri Reischl has had dozens of stage and screen credits, but once you are Fake Jan, that is who you will always be. While stars like Cher and Madonna can have a collect-them-all versatility, some idols are most beloved because our interest in them is as narrow as a laser point. I suppose it is hard to break out of that once you are in it. And even Eve Plumb gave up the ghost and ended up returning to her Jan roots. Unlike Tina Louise, who could be on the top of the world as the origin of our current red-headed “Ginger” craze if she wasn’t so adamant about running in the opposite direction, Alison embraces her status in our gay idol collection. And that’s why we love her.