Wrangler

The US movie industry's coverage of homosexuality was, until recently, mostly an indie effort by documentary-makers. Several of these were gay Jewish-Americans, following the path taken by such pioneering civil rights activists as Harvey Milk.

Jeffrey Schwarz worked as an apprentice film editor in 1995 on The Celluloid Closet, the overview of homosexuality in Hollywood co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. In the same year, his other editing work (at the age of 26) included a gay murder-thriller, Frisk, and a TV documentary in four hour-long parts, Positive: Life with HIV.

Schwarz soon created a profitable Hollywood niche as the producer of DVD special features and EPKs (electronic press kits). In the decade from 1999, he churned out 269, directing 102 of them himself. By 2008 he was ready to make his own full-length documentaries, starting with Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, outlining the life and work of one of Hollywood's horror movie masters. That won him two film festival awards. His 2008 release, Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, has only earned one award, on the gay circuit.

It features the on-camera thoughts and extraordinary life of a former gay porn icon, Jack Wrangler, aka Jack Stillman, the son of a Beverly Hills couple: his father was a film and TV (Bonanza) producer, his mother a former Busby Berkeley dancer. Although of Jewish origin, they passed both as Catholic and Protestant in society.

Wrangler's other, possibly major, claim to fame, was his marriage, after a long loving friendship, at the age of 33 to the 55-year-old singer Margaret Whiting (also a "Beverly Hills brat"). It was her fourth and final marriage, and their relationship added glitter to his brief reincarnation as a straight porn actor. She'd stopped his gay porn work; when he was 40, he retired from the screen and worked with Whiting on her music projects. Their whole story is so outlandish one is glad that Schwarz was able to record Wrangler's interviews, a few years before the man died at the age of 66. Whiting is still alive (86 in 2010).

The documentary shows why Jack deserved the attention he got. He was a handsome charmer who'd started out as a typical Charles Atlas victim, a puny boy who developed his muscles and self-confidence. For a shortish man, he was well-endowed, and the versatile gay clearly led a lucky life of fun-filled self-promotion. In the interviews with Schwarz, he's an engaging silver-haired raconteur who could have passed for John Forsythe.

Inevitably, his biography reflects key features of the American gay experience. Much of the archive film material is fascinating, and Schwarz splices it all together neatly. He's reportedly working on three more feature-length documentaries focusing on other gay icons (Tab Hunter, Divine and Vito Russo). It will be good if Schwarz can stretch himself on them, as the Wrangler story doesn't add up to much more than a longer-than-usual DVD extra.