Remembering when tv first promoted sexual psychopathy: It was leftwing talent on the side of evil

By RM
saturday, august 30, 2025 at 1:01:00 a.m. edt

Exactly 50 years ago, Medical Center opened its new season with an episode called "The Fourth Sex," the first TV presentation of transgenderism. Robert Reed, a real-life closet queen who eventually died of aids, portrayed a surgeon (married with children, no less) who decides he's really a woman and plans to have an operation.

Is it a good thing to have a sympathetic portrayal of a man who is certifiably insane, harming his family in the process of realizing his fantasy? Suppose he thought he was really a chicken- should he have had wings and feathers grafted on?

There are three credited writers on this "milestone"- one unknown to me, the others quite respectable and prolific. Researching this thing led me to the following, which is interesting:

https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/emmy-magazine/articles/foundation-interviews-rita-lakin

She really was a talented writer; her work on Peyton Place stood out on that series.

About Medical Center, she says:

"...the one I did with Robert Reed was world-changing. The producers of Medical Center wanted me to do a show about a transgender character. I had never before heard the word; I didn't know what it meant. Then I was told what it meant and that Robert Reed was playing the lead, which was very interesting because insiders knew that Robert was gay. For the first time, really, I did a lot of research.

"I found out all the steps that Robert's character would be going through. the producers were so thrilled, they made it into two episodes, which was astonishing to me.

"it was an amazing success, and Robert got nominated for an emmy for it."

Did you hear that? "WORLD-CHANGING." No one could have imagined what kind of world we'd end up with. [N.S.: Rita Lakin could have.] Tellingly, imdb has two reviews praising the episode, heavily upvoted, and one panning it as an early example of "woke," HEAVILY downvoted.

Personally, I'd rather re-watch Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda?, which I suppose is also sympathetic to the cause but is so utterly bizarre it seems a much more realistic portrayal of the mental state these creatures exist in.

And yes, the writers, producers, etc. who "humanized" these monsters and put them in the public spotlight also have a degree of blood on their hands.

Final note: the episode was directed by Vincent Sherman, of all people, veteran WB director who was a big-time womanizer (per his autobiography) and lived to be around 100!

-RM


By Grand Rapids Anonymous
saturday, august 30, 2025 at 8:58:00 a.m. edt

The REAL award for acting, Reed should have received then--was for EVERY episode of "The Brady Bunch"--playing a dad "with three boys of his own"--the "Rock Hudson" award--for appearing to be straight, yet as queer as a six dollar bill (inflation). Did you suspect Rock Hudson was gay, RM? As a kid, I heard jokes about Hudson and "Gomer's Pyle," but it didn't register until I got older.

Robert Reed (1932-1992) was reportedly intolerable to work with on The Brady Bunch

Rock Hudson (1925-1985), while in his late thirties or early forties

Jim Nabors (1930-2017), of Gomer Pyle fame, was supposedly one of Hudson's tens of thousands of homosexual sex partners

--GRA

Rita Lakin (1930-2023) amassed 803 credits as a scriptwriter, series creator, producer and script editor: Someone, presumably tv producer Aaron Spelling, who wanted her to write the pilot for a tv series during the late 1970s, for what would eventually become Dallas, put her in touch with some Texas oilmen. She disliked them, and rejected the offer. Presumably, she either found sexual psychopaths more simpatico, or avoided socializing with them. Speaking of which, if sexual psychopaths constitute "the fourth sex," what constitutes the third, homosexuals?

George Jorgensen (1926-1989) started the madness in America. He went to Sweden after World War II to pay to get himself butchered.