A fairly wretched example of Benson's later efforts was "Harry and Son" (1984), in which he plays the twee-spirited son of curmudgeonly, blue-collar Paul Newman -- a diametric switcheroo on his father-son dynamic in "Tribute." Robby plays a guy who is so ridiculously enamored of his Dad that it suggests some kind of gay Oedipal complex.

"Harry and Son" was directed, co-written and co-produced by Newman, which is the main problem -- dear Paul, while a totally engaging screen presence, was wise to focus his future energies on salad dressing. This film almost feels as if Newman, like Tom Sawyer, wanted to see his own funeral, with everyone beating their chests and weeping about what a wonderful guy he was.

He does Robby no favors, letting him turn in a wildly overwrought and cheese-baked smiling-through-the-tears performance with gagging saccharine overtones. A better director might have raised an eyebrow at Robby and hollered, "Knock it off with that Lifetime Television Housewife Emoto-Porn shit! Act like a man with testicles!"

Critics were less kind.

The hilarious Rita Kempley of the Washington Post wrote in her review that "Harry and Son" was "a love story for guys with quiche on their breath," and that Benson's oversympathetic character "makes John Denver look maladjusted." She went on:

"Benson, though he tries his durndest, is egregiously miscast as the pious young hunk. You can stuff him into a torn sweatshirt and tight jeans and put him in a sex scene with a nymphomaniac, but that don't make him Tom Cruise ... let's face it, he's about as sexy as white socks. Attractive, maybe, but sexy, el zippo. Richard Gere in a dual role as both Harry and Howie [the Newman and Benson roles] is the only way this film could work. Otherwise there's entirely too much Sensitivity going on. And as we know, Gere has none ... [The film is] like being stranded at the Friendship rack in a Hallmark card store."

Richard Schickel trashed the movie, and Robby, for Time:

"As a director, Newman has set himself two obstacles: one is his own powerful presence as an actor; the other is Robby Benson's lack of one ... Still, Newman is inevitably a force to reckon with, and that makes his casting of the feeble Benson the more surprising; surely he knows he can hold the screen against a real actor ... Benson is one of those performers who appear to be playing for the mirror instead of the camera; nothing interferes with his pleased self-contemplation."

And that, as they say, was pretty much that for Robby Benson. He lost his leading-man status after being blamed (unfairly) for the mediocrity of his later films. Robby still did a bunch of other crap (including "Modern Love," an autobiographical vehicle which he wrote and starred in with his wife, Karla DeVito, a singer who has the singular distinction of having performed with Meat Loaf), but was largely under the radar until he finally regained a certain legitimacy with his vocal role in "Beauty and the Beast." He now teaches screencraft, does the odd role now and then, and frequently directs TV shows.

I remember (I swear I remember) seeing Benson mentioned on a Web site, maybe five years ago, that was about Hollywood stars who had Bravely Come Out of the Closet. I realize now that site must have been a hoax -- Robby Benson is a married father of two -- but it said he was gay and had bravely come out and told the world he wanted to live openly as a gay man.

The announcement made sense to me, which is why I never forgot it; it made his Michael Jackson gentleness make sense. The site featured a vintage picture of Robby wearing overalls and no shirt, smiling his shy-girl smile with sunlit eyes in what I thought was a field of yellow daisies.

I had a gorgeous, baby-faced male friend who was an infantilism pinup boy in his late twenties ("infantilism," in this context, means a fetish in which adults dress up like babies and are changed and pampered by other adults, with large high chairs and other oversized, baby-centric fetish apparatus.) There would be shots taken of him in diapers or footy pajamas, sucking his thumb or a bottle. I realized that the picture of Robby Benson on this Web site looked exactly like my friend in one of his infantilism shots. His face was too innocent -- it was innocence way past the age that there should be that level of innocence in a face. It looked unsettling and perverse, like baby clothes on a grown man.

Aha, I thought -- that's why grown men hate Robby Benson, and only the little girls understand. It wasn't his acting, per se, but his act.

Robby Benson seems to be a question of values. He was from a pre-MTV era; "coolness" was unusual, then, and now it is a staunch corporate requirement of everyone from the age of 4 up. OK, Robby wasn't cool, but why is that a thought crime? He gave everything he had on the screen -- he was just one of those people whose best wasn't good enough, at least in the eyes of the adult world. His biggest flaw was an excess of cute ingenuousness, which isn't so bad when you think about it. Some people just can't help being children all their lives.

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