Bottoms Up

Monday's Man: Joseph Bottoms

There are those rare times when After Dark magazine and In Touch magazine featured the same person. Not necessarily in the same month and not necessarily in the same year, but it does happen. Lucky me, it happened with Joseph Bottoms.

In the December/January 1975 issue of In Touch, Jeremy Hughes covered Joe's story. Joseph Bottoms was 21 and didn't have many screen credits under his belt, but he did go on to win a Golden Globe for Most Promising New Comer-Male for his work in The Dove.

The Dove was the story of a young man who sailed alone around the world with his cat. During production of the film, Joseph learned to sail.

Joseph had also appeared in the Westwood Playhouse production of The Opening of a Door.

But films and stage aren't the only mediums of entertainment he had accomplished early in his career. He also starred in an ABC TV movie called Unwed Father as a teenager who fathers a child with his young girlfriend.

Reading the article, it appears Jeremy Hughes was trying to fish for information regarding Joe's sexuality. Joseph eluded many of the questions with ambiguous answers like:
"To use the name of your magazine, being 'In Touch' with someone is a wonderful thing. As I am now with someone. Things just keep getting more and more wonderful all the time. I noticed the ohter day that just holding this person's hand was incredibly satisfying."
"I welcome anybody who comes along or leads me on. And I'm meeting those people all the time, where it just connects."
It was almost like Hughes was wanting Joe to say "her" or "she", but it seems Joseph knows who reads the magazine and played it smart to cater to the audience.

Ambiguities aside, Joseph was married has two children.

For the November 1978 issue of After Dark, he was talking about his new projects which included the TV miniseries Holocaust, Crime and Passion (AKA Ace Up My Sleeve), and the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie Return Engagement with Elizabeth Taylor.

As an actor, he really likes to get to the heart of the roles and learn something while portraying the characters. Like he did in The Dove with sailing, he also learned to ski for Crime and Passion and learned to fly during the filming of Cloud Dancer.

To go along with the article written by Norma McLain Stoop, Kenn Duncan did a wonderful pictorial of Joseph which included the photo at the top and the following photos.



Duncan also did the cover shot of Joseph which I will post when I feature that issue. Until then, we have plenty more films to watch Joseph in. One of my favorites, of course, was Disney's first PG-rated film. Do you know what that was? I'll tell you later.