Throwback Thursday Remembers Robert Opel, the “Oscar Streaker”

Most of you will remember the moment when a completely naked John Cena, baring pretty much all of his astoundingly structured physique, stood on stage at the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony and delivered the statuette for Outstanding Costumes award. As witnessed in the clip above, host Jimmy Kimmel introduced Cena by prefacing that it was the fiftieth anniversary of a historical streaking incident, when a then-unknown man ran naked across the Oscar Awards stage in 1974 as actor David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor. It turned out the man, Robert Ovel, was a bisexual artist and queer-rights activist who, sadly, would live only another five years, but have a bit of an impact on the LGBTQ+ movement in its nascent years.

 

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Streaking was a small fad back in the day; I remember my mother of all people wearing a "Streaker" t-shirt herself, a move rather shocking considering my mother had five children whose husband was a Lutheran minister! As a movement, it wasn't much, but nowadays, you can search "streaker" on Instagram and get a plethora of mostly men darting across all kinds of sporting fields in the buff for whatever reasons. But for Opel in 1974, it was a radical moment in openness and self-expression, cementing his artistic ideal of bucking the system as a "radical and unapologetic symbol of defiance against societal norms" as he's described at GCN.ie.

With the seventies being a time of exploding social movements, most of which being the burgeoning gay rights movement alongside the feminist movement and push for the passage of the ERA, Opel's seemingly naughty but innocuous stroll took on an air of conscious daring, drawing attention to the war in Southeast Asia as he flashes that peace sign, body autonomy, and brazen sexuality.

 

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Opel was the founder of and ran San Francisco's first openly queer art gallery, Fey-Way Studios. There, he featured not only his own work but that of gay photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe and  Tom of Finland. He used his body as a symbol of radical openness and flagrant sexuality. He was a contributor to The Advocate and, ironically, a speech writer for then-governor Ronald Reagan, as well as an English teacher in L.A. He would engage in nude demonstrations at SF's city hall, and even ran as a naked presidential candidate under the banner "Nothing To Hide."

His exuberant, dramatic, and public style which left nothing to the imagination often put him in stark contrast to the outs of such rising goals of assimilation by the gay community by such public figures as Harvey Milk who wanted more to work from the inside out. Opel, on the other hand, had no interest in taking prisoners, preferring instead to smash the status quo from the outside.

 

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It was this in-your-face sensibility to his work that might have gotten him killed. During the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade, Opel performed a mock execution of Dan White, the man who murdered Harvey Milk and SF mayor George Moscone the previous Fall. White was handed a shockingly lenient sentence. Opel, through his art, tried to right that wrong in some way. Gay justice for injustice. This brazen act created a rancor in the gay community, pitting mainstream hopefuls against fringe radicals. It also made him a target, and on July 7th, 1979, he was shot and killed in his studio by two would-be robbers. It is largely believed that this was a targeted and intentional killing. His assailants, Robert E. Kelly and Maurice Keenan were ultimately sentenced to life in prison.

His nephew, the actor and stuntman Robert Oppel (Opel dropped the second "p" early in his political career for family reasons) would direct and produce the 2010 documentary Uncle Bob about the life and death of his famous and radical relative, and his search for answers to his uncle's death. It includes rarely-seen footage of the community back in the day, with appearances by such notables as Divine and John Waters.

Check out the trailer below.

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