The premise of the 1970s hit sitcom Three’s Company (and its British predecessor, Man About the House) was that two women, Janet and Chrissy, invite a man, Jack, to share their apartment. Their old-fashioned landlord, Mr. Roper, is outraged by the idea of unmarried men and women living together, but agrees to the arrangement when he’s told that Jack is gay.
This always struck me as a bit odd; surely if someone is so socially conservative as to be opposed in principle to co-ed living arrangements, he would also be opposed in principle to homosexuality?
Just how improbable was Mr. Roper’s attitude? Can anyone here attest to knowing someone in the 1970s who was deadset against unmarried men and women living together, but relatively tolerant of homosexual relationships?
I think the idea was that Roper didn’t want any sex between unmarried tenants, and if Jack was gay and had female roommates, that made it OK. Female/female sex wasn’t considered likely. It’s a bit of a stretch, I’ll admit.
I don’t remember the show all that well; did Jack ever make any pretense of having homosexual relationships, as opposed to just being uninterested in women because he preferred men? And would this distinction have made a difference to Mr. Roper?
In any case, it’s certainly true that people of the opposite sex sharing an apartment, whether living “in sin” or as platonic roommates, used to be far less common and far more eyebrow-raising, even scandalous, than it is today.
I don’t remember if Jack ever claimed to Mr. Roper to be in a relationship, though it certainly wasn’t unusual for him to pretend to flirt with men in Mr. Roper’s presence. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for him to flirt with Mr. Roper himself whenever the latter voiced his suspicions that Jack wasn’t gay after all.
I think part of the backstory, perhaps never explicitly stated, was that gay men were considered neat, clean, tidy, etc. So that’s a plus from a landlord’s point of view. Also they were more closeted then so less likely to be visibly “outrageous” or whatever the stereotype would be.
Many TV shows have had worst premises to deal with. (E.g., stupid, out of shape, ugly guy and smart hot wife.)
During that time period in Spain there were several movies with premises such as “male hairdresser passes as gay in order to be able to do his job”: a straight man wanting to spend his day handling women’s hair would have been perceived as both threatening and weird, a gay man was ok. Two gay guys together was unacceptable, a - one - 1 - no others nearby gay man was acceptable in a context in which a straight gay would not have been.
Maybe I’m not remembering it right, but didn’t Mr. Roper allow Jack to live with the girls because he thought he would be “cured” of being gay if he lived in such tight quarters with two hot babes?
Who was Jacks male neighbor who used to come by? Did Mr. Roper wonder if he and Jack were dating? Or was the neighbor such a “ladies man” that he was obviously straight?
That was Larry Dallas. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the episodes featuring him, so I don’t remember if he was ever mistaken by the landlords for Jack’s lover.
That’s my memory. Larry was always setting Jack up on blind dates, inviting him to parties, etc… He was the swinging bachellor lifestyle incarnate. I just wondered if Mr. Roper ever wondered.
Given all the mistaken innuendo the show was famous for, I’m surprised. Surely there must have been at least one episode where Mr. Roper or Mr. Furley was listening at the door to some innocent conversation between Jack and Larry, and totally misinterpreting it out of context as being some romantic or sexual encounter…? The fact that Larry was such a ladies’ man would have made it only funnier.
The point isn’t what Mr. Roper wanted; it’s about what the audience wanted. Jack pretending to be gay was merely an excuse for Roper to allow him to live there; the idea that Jack actually having gay sex would have put the show out of business.
Actually, it wasn’t an unreasonable premise. Back in 1973 (three years before the start of Three’s Company) my college roommate and I were looking for a new place to live, as was a female friend of ours. We found a three-bedroom house, perfect for our needs. All three sets of parents flatly vetoed the idea, even though we were good Catholic kids.
I suppose the female could have claimed she was a Lesbian, but that would have caused even more complications for her than Jack Tripper had, both with her family and her boyfriend.
Relationships, as in an ongoing thing? No. But he frequently mentioned dates, casually, and if Mr Roper was present he made sure he thought they were with men.
‘Curing’ Jack was Mr Furley’s thing. Mr Roper enjoyed making gay jokes too much to want to see him straightened out.
Don Knotts guested on an episode of the short-lived John Ritter show, Eight Simple Rules For Dating My Daughter. At the end of the episode, they added a quick after-credits gag where Knotts, as Furley, woke up in the John Ritter character’s bed. Very funny bit.
