Mar 22, 2013

Danny Bonaduce

Keith (David Cassidy) was the fave rave of The Partridge Family (1970-74), the Boomer sitcom about a family of pop stars driving around on a psychedelic bus.  But Danny (right) had a following among the younger gay kids.  Played by the carrot-top, freckle-faced Danny Bonaduce, he was a fast-talking operator who kept trying to get the family into bigger and better gigs.










Here's a "Where's Waldo" scene of Danny immersed in a sea of interracial hunks when he is drafted by mistake.












Boomers with fond memories of Danny Partridge are shocked by Danny Bonaduce today, craggy, gravelly-voiced, a shock jock, celebrity wrestler, and general rabble rouser with multiple arrests on his record (including an arrest for assaulting a transvestite prostitute)  Plus a shockingly muscular physique.

The shock may come from low exposure Danny had during his adolescence and young adulthood, so we seemed to jump directly from freckle-faced operator to craggy and gravelly.






But he wasn't entirely under the radar during the 1970s.  The teenager had guest spots on Shazam!, Fantasy Island, Chips, California Fever, and Eight is Enough, and performed in Murder on Flight 501 (1975), the buddy-bonding movie Corvette Summer (1978) with Mark Hamill, and the sexploitation H.O.T.S. (1979).  By 1980, however, Former Child Star Syndrome had taken its toll, leading Danny to drug addiction and a period of homelessness.




He began re-inventing himself in the early 2000s, with a radio career, a reality tv series, and lots of well-publicized celebrity stunts (in 2003, for instance, he boxed fellow teen idol Barry Williams)..  He's not exactly gay-friendly, but then he doesn't seem to be friendly to anyone in particular.

6 comments:

  1. He was never in the least bit attractive.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not even worth listing based on looks alone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brian Forster, (Chris Partridge) always seems to be overlooked. Born in 1960 he would have been 13 in season four of The Partridge Family. I am sure there were younger gay boys at the time who found him cute.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He was my age, but I ignored him. I was busy crushing on Keith and, for some reason, their manager, Reuben.

      Delete
    2. I hear that ! I was in love with David Cassidy.

      Delete

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