Ode to Billy Joe

Robby Benson. Swoon. I mean, LOOK at him.

I don’t know when I first became aware of one Mr. Robby Benson, but I do know he was a major crush of mine when I was a teenager–he and Jan-Michael Vincent–and I also think he’s another one of those who definitely helped create a type for me; dark hair and bright blue eyes, and that smile! Jesus Mary and Joseph!

I wasn’t alone in my teen years crushing on Robby; I think most teenaged girls of my generation all had a bit of a crush on him. For one, he was ridiculously beautiful; it kind of should be against the law to look that good. He was also photogenic and telegenic, and I loved his speaking voice. I know my teen years are also when I developed my love of jeans cut Daisy Duke short; and as you can see from the pictures above, Robby’s were cut so short they were basically speedo-sized. Years later, Daisy Dukes were my favorite shorts to wear, because all modesty aside, I’ve always had muscular legs; assets best displayed in shorts cut immodestly short.

But in looking up information on Robby Benson for this post, I realized I had never seen the movie Ode to Billy Joe, which was one of his best-known films. I knew about the movie, of course, but never saw it. It was released the summer we moved to Kansas and it never played in Emporia, and I never saw it on television, either. So, yesterday, I remedied that by watching it on Youtube, which has the entire movie uploaded for free.

The movie itself is simple. Based on the story song by Bobbie Gentry that is probably one of the biggest and best-known hits of all time, it’s ethereal and mysterious and unclear; and the lyrics themselves create an indelible image of a rural Southern lunch and the casual, unknown to anyone speaking, cruelty of the conversation. The narrator had a strong connection to Billy Joe, and his suicide affects her deeply, but nobody really notices. It’s genius in exposing that Southern mentality of “the girls don’t matter”–no one’s noticed that she is connected to him in some way, no one notices that she’s upset, and the way Gentry sings the lyrics is so matter-of-fact yet horrible as she recounts an emotionally troubling experience for herself, and paints such a powerful image of the invisible daughter, left to grieve on her own for the boy she loved, and does she know the reason he jumped? I’ve always liked the song, even if it doesn’t work for me musically (the lyrics don’t match the melody), because it tells so many truths about rural Southern girls that what actually happened isn’t the point–the point is the isolation and loneliness she feels, and the alienation from her own family.

The movie, screenplay and novelization by Herman Raucher of Summer of ’42 fame, fleshed out all those mysteries. It was from the movie and book that turned Ode to Billy Joe into a queer story and a tragedy; it’s also interesting that it wasn’t more of a scandal when the movie was released in 1976; maybe him having had a sexual encounter with another man and committing suicide took the sting and shock of the gay twist; after all, misery and suicide were the only possible outcomes for most queers in movies at the time. Watching the movie, but taking away my own quibbles about its depiction of southern rural life to talk about it as it stands as a queer film, it was really quite revolutionary. First of all, Robby Benson was a full-fledged teen heart throb with photo shoots in every magazine like 16 and Tiger Beat, and having someone who didn’t telegraph gay (or the societal images of what gay looked like then) who was also a heart throb playing the part was putting an acceptable face on a (at the very least) bisexual character. What was also interesting to me about the film was that it was produced by Max Baer (aka Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies), and the man Bobby Joe had the encounter with was played by James Best, who would go on to greater celebrity and fame as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard later on in the decade. Glynis O’Connor is fine as Billie Lee (seriously, Bobby Joe and Billie Lee? I have an army of relatives from the rural south, and out of all of them there is exactly ONE who has that stereotyped Southern two first names thing), but Benson’s appeal is clearly on display here–and I understand why girls loved him so much: he always played sensitive and vulnerable young men, which girls love.

And he is just stunningly beautiful in this movie.

Benson’s most successful role of all time was, ironically, from voice work: he voiced the Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

I also found it interesting the Bobby Joe committed suicide in the Tallahatchee River, which was also where the white supremacists dumped Emmett Till’s body…so that river is kind of hexed, wouldn’t you think?

He also aged incredibly well–Benson is still quite beautiful.