Tuesday Weld, Annette Funicello and Angela Cartwright. Most Americans of a certain baby-boom age remember the names of these young actresses in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The blonde-haired Weld (born in 1943) was in several television shows and movies. The fame of Funicello (1942) derives almost entirely from her membership in The Mickey Mouse Club; when Walt Disney put her front and center, her popularity mushroomed. Cartwright (1952) spent eight years on the Danny Thomas sitcom Make Room for Daddy.
What connects this trio of ladies, each of whom is still alive but now mostly retired? It is that a TV-watching boy in Texas—yours truly—was mesmerized at the sight of any of them. As I have stated before, there was never the least confusion for me about sexual orientation, identity or direction. It never occurred to me to be confused, as the elemental male-female pull was quite strong. At such an age, I could neither understand it nor verbalize it. But there it was. When Tuesday Weld, Annette Funicello or Angela Cartwright was on screen, I was powerfully drawn toward them. Actually, I am sure there were others but these three were the most alluring and charming.
Of course, I was a child then. As it says in the Bible, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways.” Well, not completely. In 1992, I was forty and well past childhood. But there was a female I saw on TV now and then who simply entranced me. Her name was Suzy Favor, and she was one of the best middle-distance runners in the world at that time. Favor won dozens of races and eight national championships while at the University of Wisconsin. She was on three U.S. Olympic teams—1992, 1996 and 2000.
Not only could Favor run, she was a looker. Blonde like Weld, she had a gorgeous face and a tight athlete’s physique. Would I have liked her as much had she been as ugly as the north end of a south-bound mule? I doubt it, but others fell just as hard. The Big 10 Conference named its female athlete-of-the-year award in her honor, and she was a popular spokeswoman for Disneyland and an agricultural association in Wisconsin. When she ran, the TV cameras seemed to linger on her face (usually featuring wrap-around sunglasses) and body.
Favor's life was not perfect. Those who knew her say she was insecure and a bit neurotic, and she dealt with an eating disorder during her days with the Badgers. Her brother Dan was mentally ill and committed suicide in 1999. In the three aforementioned Olympiads, she did not win a single medal. In fact, during the sprint to the finish line of the 1500-meter finals in 2000 in Sydney, upon realizing that she was not going to win or medal, she fell—intentionally! I did not know about this startling fact until recently because she is back in the news.
Favor, now 44, has not set some age-group record on the track or done well in 5Ks or 10Ks, nor has she moved up to the marathon and thus cemented her status. If only that were the case. Her fame has turned to notoriety because in December 2012 it was revealed that she had been leading a double life as a high-dollar call girl. Although she had a solid marriage and was the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, Favor joined an exclusive Las Vegas-based prostitution ring. She rather foolishly told some of her clients just who she was, and it was soon made public. Via social media, Favor offered some rather fuzzy explanations for having made this choice. One of them pertained to depression, although I fail to see how turning tricks is likely to lift a woman’s mood or self-esteem. There was a web site in which she, using the name “Kelly Lundy,” posed provocatively in garters and high heels and pledged to earn her $600 per hour or $3,000 for 24 hours.
Entertaining gentlemen in Vegas is far removed from me, but I did not think that hookers in their mid-40s got that kind of money. Even though Favor is blessed with good genes, she is no longer the dazzling woman I watched on my TV in the long-ago Austin days. How in the world could she have done such a sordid thing? Oh, I realize it is a “victimless crime,” and we need not crucify her. Nonetheless, it is fair to say she has suffered a mortifying descent.
Add Comment