To Sir With Lust

On "Shindig" in early 1965, the singing duo Jackie and Gayle, then recently departed from the New Christie Minstrels, performed their debut single, an odd but danceable ditty voicing teenage frustration over the gorgeous but unavailable high school teacher they desired - and the monster mash-up of a faculty they were stuck with instead. "Why can't my teacher look like Mr. Novak?" ("I really want him!"), they warbled in their paean to the hottest educator then (or ever) on TV.

Decades later, I had occasion to ask myself the same question. I was skipping school, something I did a lot but might not have done so habitually if in fact any of my teachers did look like Mr. Novak ("instead of", as Jackie and Gayle put it, "like Mister Ed"). Flipping through TV channels looking for something to satisfy my teenage lust, I chanced upon re-runs of a black and white TV show featuring one of the most handsome men I had ever seen, a wiry blond stud with a ruggedly gorgeous face that practically typified masculine beauty. Now I had seen James Franciscus before, in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" (kind of an understatement actually, as he was my first male crush, and in a big way), but I didn't recognize him in this role. Maybe it was the beard he sported in "Beneath"; while it seemed really sexy in "Apes", he looked even better without it.

But more likely the reason he seemed so strikingly different- and so striking, period - was that the TV show was shot in black and white. In color, Franciscus's golden hair and intense blue eyes and luminescent white teeth and contrasting Mediterranean swarthiness were dazzling distractions; but in black and white you could see just how perfectly shaped his facial features were on their own. Whereas in the movies in which I'd seen him, Franciscus looked like a blazingly colorful comic book hero come to life, in "Mr. Novak" he looked like an archetypal 1940s matinee idol. With "Mr. Novak" reruns as an added incentive, I played hooky quite a bit that year, probably not the behavioral response the show's producers had in mind when they tried to create a series about high school that kids could supposedly "dig".

There's something really hot about authority figures - cops, coaches, Old West lawmen, military officers, even lifeguards (Sam Elliott!) - but until "Novak" I never thought of teachers, especially male teachers, in that light. Suddenly that changed. I was in those days lusting primarily for the shirtless bolero-vaquero look of James West in bondage, or the nearly naked Sam Elliott in a Speedo. But John Novak, fully dressed in his white collar-drone suit, complete with skinny tie, and brandishing a briefcase full of grammar lessons instead of cool weaponry or a surfboard, immediately beat out those semi-nude demi-gods as number one with a bullet on my Hit-That Parade. Suddenly there was nothing more attractive than a lean, clean, razor-cut dude in a suit and tie, which was a weird turnabout for a slobby anti-establishment brat like me. Of course, since I'd already seen Franciscus flaunting his wares for an entire feature film wearing nothing more than a buckskin diaper, my imagination had no trouble placing Mr. Novak in extracurricular situations that required him to set aside his suit and tie and starched BVDs. For educational purposes of course.

 

I had not seen "Mr. Novak" in many years, but recently some episodes, or clips of them, have found their way onto YouTube and confirmed for me that it wasn't just a trick of memory - Novak really was one of the all time smokin' hot heroes of the tube. It's unlikely that the show will ever be released on DVD, but if it ever is, consider it worth checking out just to see the super-tasty Mr. Franciscus at his hottest and freshest.