The David and Michael Show

I was extraordinary lucky this year to obtain tickets to two different performances of this year’s Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert featuring guest artists David Archuleta and Michael York.  The choir was good, so far as that goes, but the highlights of the concert were the performances by David Archuleta and British actor Michael York.  My personal favorite was The Cat and the Mouse Carol, a sweet new song that was sung by David with great tenderness.  (I predict this will become a new Christmas favorite.)

Now, the readers of this blog, particularly the younger ones, will likely readily agree that David Archuleta is a heartthrob – both for girls and for guys.  I have read blogs of some young MoHos, for example, where crushes on this teen idol have been frankly acknowledged.  It’s not difficult to understand why with his boyish good looks and sweet personality:

Both of these were on display at the concert, but I think it could be said that his looks are maturing quite nicely, and that he is becoming even more attractive as he ages (pictured below at the concert).

But what is almost certainly not known by our younger brethren (if they’ve even heard of him) is that Michael York (lead-in picture to post) was, in his day, another heartthrob.  Although I acknowledge that it might be difficult to believe (especially given Michael’s appearance at the concert), in the late 1960’s and throughout the 70’s, he was considered something of a sex symbol.  He was in a number of films during this period.  Here he is in Zeffirelli’s production of Romeo and Juliet as Tibalt:

Later, he appeared in Cabaret with Liza Minnelli and Joel Gray, playing the role of a young gay British student in Germany:

The following year, he played D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, opposite Raquel Welch:

And a few years later came his role in Logan’s Run, a B-grade science fiction movie.  Here he is on the cover of an entertainment magazine dating from 1976.

Why am I going on about this?  You guessed it:  because in my adolescent years, I had a crush on him.  So, as I saw him brilliantly perform his dramatic readings at the MoTab concert, I didn’t really picture the 68-year-old man, but rather the Michael York of my young teenage years when I was first awakening to my sexuality and thought he was pretty darn good-looking (or as we would say today, "hot").