masqueraded as Gainsborough's Blue Boy on stage and screen, they brought about a gradual feminization of the youth. By the early 20th century Marlene Dietrich was photographed in a Blue Boy costume and Shirley Temple appeared as Gainsborough's youth in the movie Curly Top in 1935. Shortly after the painting showed up in the main entrance of the Cleaver family residence during the third season of the Leave it to Beaver show in 1959, viewers increasingly associated feminine traits with the boy in blue leading to his connection to an emergent gay culture. In September 1970 The Blue Boy was "outed" in the pages of Mad Magazine in a strip called "Prissy Percy." In the four-panel strip, artist Jack Rickard and writer Frank Jacobs used contemporary stereotypes of homosexuality to contrast Gainsborough's boy in blue with a group of football players. Stereotypes linking The Blue Boy and homosexuality were well established when Hank Ketcham, the creator of "Dennis the Menace," cast Gainsborough's boy in blue as a "sissy" in a multi-panel strip that included a line by Dennis confusing the painter Gainsborough and the Beat poet and gay peacenik Allen Ginsberg. In 1974, former TV Guide advertising manager Don N. Embinder (a.k.a. Don Westbrook) published the first issue of Blueboy Magazine, an upscale, gay bi-monthly magazine with nude photography, slick advertisements, and articles by writers such as Christopher Isherwood and Randy Shilts. Rescuing Gainsborough's Blue Boy from sissiness, Embrinder introduced him as the embodiment of the recently liberated gay man. The premier issue featured a bright blue cover with a photograph of a young man dressed up as Gainsborough's boy in blue from the waist up. Embinder re-appropriated Gainsborough's Blue Boy from the funny pages and transformed a derogatory stereotype into an emblem of pride. Among the gay artists who have embraced The Blue Boy as a symbol of gay emancipation are Robert Lambert (a member of Les Petites Bon-Bons), Howard Kottler, and Léopold Foulem. The Blue Boy was temporarily loaned to the National Gallery, London and placed on view on January 25, 2022, a century to the day since it left the UK in 1922. It remained in the National Gallery for five months before returning to the US permanently. In October 2021, Kehinde Wiley's Portrait of a Young Gentleman was installed opposite to Gainsborough's Blue Boy in the Huntington Museum of Art. In popular culture In Quentin Tarantino's