Oddly his wiki entrymakes virtually no mention of Snagglepusses widely acknowledged adoption by the gay community as one of their own.
He is a pink lion created in 1959 whose voice mannerisms are about as fey and arch as can be. Did the creators determine ahead of time that they wanted Snagglepuss to be kinda sorta swish or did the voice actor bring the “gay” to the Snagglepuss character, or was it simply an extension of (I’m guessing per the lawsuit mentioned in the Wiki) copying Bert Lahr’s characterization of the cowardly lion, which was pretty swish itself … or what?
I don’t know, but this thread prompted me to Google “Murgatroyd,” which led to my learning that the “Heavens to Murgatroyd” catchphrase was cribbed from Bert Lahr in a non-Cowardly Lion role.
ETA: Oh, duh–that’s already mentioned in the Wikipedia entry you linked to. Never mind.
I always feel bad for ol’ Snagglepuss. He’s the ORIGINAL pink panther, created in 1959, but this smug upstart shows up in 1963 and completely takes over the niche…
I’ve never been one to think that stereotypical characters like Snagglepuss, the Cowardly Lion, the various roles Billy DeWolfe played and Uncle Arthur on *Bewitched *were supposed to be some sort of hideen shout-out to gays. I just thought they were supposed to be comedic countertypes to the All-American Boy hero image.
Of course, subtext is in the eye of the beholder, and I’ve always been pretty blind to it.
Which is kind of my question. There’s a chicken and the egg aspect to it. Now, in hindsight, the Cowardly Lion seems kind of proto-swishy fey, but was that at all intentional, or are we projecting onto the character a degree of “knowingness” it would be kind of unrealistic for them to have had at their point of origin?
Wait, we can’t paint ol’ Snaggie with the rainbow brush (not that there’s anything wrong with that), just because he’s pink; or because he wears nothing but a stringtie, starched collar, cuffs, and nothing else; or because he talks like the offspring of Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde; or because he’s constantly dropping theatrical stage references at every possible moment, or. . .
I missed the gay reference about Snagglepuss when I was a kid. But I also had no idea about Paul Lynde. I knew something was conspicuously different about Charles Nelson Reilly, but I didn’t know what. I’d still miss Paul Lynde being gay if my middle aged self were suddenly back in the 60s. He was just very damn funny. Even more so that I now get his jokes. I recently saw a PBS documentary called The Celluloid Closet. The contention of the producers was that all of these would have been very obvious to gay people what it was about, but not at all obvious to the straights.
