Just One of the Valley Guys

 

Not convinced the "current" photo of the "Just One of the Guys" stars here is current, as I believe Joyce Hyser will be 67 in December and William Jacoby, aka Buddy, just turned 55. (Joyce seems to have legally changed her birth year to 1960, but I know better!) 

But having it pop up on my Threads feed the same day one of my own memories about everyone's favorite gender-bending aspiring journalist appeared in my Facebook memories definitely made me smile. 

Longtime readers might remember that I have a tangential connection to this wonderful '80s teen flick: It was shot in my second hometown -- sadly I never ran into William Zabka once -- with one of my classmates scoring a supporting role (back when it was called "Lady's Man") and featured a scene at the Valley of the Sun's famed "beach," aka the wave pool known as Big Surf. 

But what I'm just learning while doing a little research for this post is that, according to Wikipedia, Hyser was in a four-year relationship in the 1980s with Bruce Springsteen and then subsequently lived with a pre-Madonna Warren Beatty for a year and a half. (She was also linked to David Geffen!) 

Bruce Springsteen and Joyce Hyser in Paris (1981) 

From "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America":

When Beatty introduced [Hyser] to his friends, he often referred to her as "Springsteen's former girlfriend." He seemed inordinately proud of her. He's say: "Look at her. Isn't she just the greatest?" Hyser recalls, "He seemed genuinely taken with everything I said or did. I had this guy who was worshipping the ground I walked on, and it was Warren Beatty. It was really great -- for a while." 

The book also gives details about Beatty's fascination with her being Jewish -- "not the self-hating type in Hollywood" -- and how she reminded him of Natalie Wood and that he used his friendship with Bob Dylan (who was in a long-term relationship with a friend of Hyser's) to get to her. 

Beatty was so secretive that Dylan thought he was a Mason.

Needless to say this is all pretty shocking to me. (I don't really understand how a man could be sexually attracted to a woman.) And now I have to wonder: Does this mean two of my generation's biggest stars are therefore queer or at the very least pan? :-)