ESSAY ONE: INTRODUCTION

This essay, 85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1968), examines Queer Film under the notorious Hays Code, spanning the years from 1934 to 1967. A second essay, entitled 85 Queer Films from the New Hollywood (1968-1980), covers Queer Cinema from the introduction of the MPAA rating system in 1968 to the end of the New Hollywood era in 1981. 

These essays reflect my perspective on the portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community on the Big Screen over two contrasting eras. A gay man who, although a medical doctor by profession, fell in love with movies at a young age. A gay man who grew up and went to college and medical school in Ireland and, by chance, got the opportunity to review movies in the mid-nineteen-eighties, first for In Dublin and then for The Irish Times. A gay man who followed his dreams to California and has lived in Los Angeles since the nineteen-nineties.

What is Queer Cinema?  It can have different meanings for different people.  If there is a gay character that is a character and not a prop for straight people to laugh at, then, in my opinion, it’s Queer Cinema.  It’s also a sensibility.  A sensibility that would bring movies like The Bride of Frankenstein, The Women, and Auntie Mame under the queer umbrella, even if they didn’t have gay supporting characters.  The fact that gay men directed all these movies completes the picture!

1934: THE HAYS CODE

The notorious Hays Code, which, although formulated in the early twenties, was only enforced in earnest with the arrival of Joseph Breen at the Hays Office in 1934. Under Breen, overt references to sexuality, particularly homosexuality, were frowned upon. As a result, gay or straight directors, writers, and actors had to be more creative in presenting while, at the same time, disguising a gay character. This dichotomy, however, led to thirty-three years of movie classics in which Queer characters were not only present in memorable supporting roles but were also featured in leading roles.

A revealing glimpse into Joseph Breen’s mindset emerges from the last pre‑Code—or more precisely, the only film that straddles the transition from the pre‑Code era to full Hays enforcement—Lloyd Bacon’s Wonder Bar. Starring Al Jolson, with songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin and musical staging by Busby Berkeley, it’s another breathless Warner Bros. revue. Blink and you’ll miss it, but tucked inside is a brief comic moment in which a man dances with another man. That tiny gag so infuriated Breen—especially because it had slipped past him just two months before he assumed office—that he successfully pressured the state censor boards in Ohio and Pennsylvania to excise the scene. What’s striking is not only the intensity of his reaction but the selectivity of it. The film’s finale, “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule,” features white performers in Blackface, including Jolson, surrounded by grotesque caricatures of Black life—watermelons included. Yet this sequence, appallingly racist by any standard, drew no comment from Breen at all. His outrage was reserved entirely for the fleeting hint of same‑sex humor.

ESSAY ONE – TABLE 1 85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code Selection of Queer Films and their relationship with the  Hays Office.
NOT SUBMITTED TO THE HAYS OFFICE/PRODUCTION CODE ADMINISTRATION (PCA)
YEAR	FILM	US DISTRIBUTOR
1955	Les Diaboliques (France)	United Motion Picture Organization (UMPO)
1960	Purple Noon (France)	Times Film Corporation
1961	A Taste of Honey (UK)	Continental Distributing
1965	My Hustler (US)	Andy Warhol Films
1967	The Fox (Canada – US)	Claridge Pictures –Warner Bros. – Seven Arts
1967	Portrait of Jason (US)	Film-Makers’ Distribution Center
SUBMITTED – RELEASED WITHOUT CUTS
1953	I Vitelloni (Italy)	Janus Films
1963	The L-Shaped Room (UK)	Columbia Pictures
1964	The Leather Boys (UK)	Columbia Pictures
1967	The Producers (US)	Embassy Pictures
1967	Reflections in a Golden Eye (US)	Warner Bros.- Seven Arts
SUBMITTED – RELEASED WITH CUTS
1949	Kins Hearts and Coronets (UK) FULLY RESTORED	Eagle-Lion Films
1957	The Strange One (US) MOSTLY RESTORED – SOME SMALL GAPS REMAIN	Columbia Pictures
1966	Persona (Sweden) RESTORED TO DIRECTOR-APPROVED VERSION WITH TINY UNAVOIDABLE GAPS	Lopert/United Artists
1967	Valley of the Dolls (US) SOME SCENES WERE CUT FOR RATING AND PACING – NOT CENSORSHIP ALONE – WHAT WE SEE TODAY IS ESSENTIALLY WHAT AUDIENCES SAW IN 1967	TCF
SUBMITTED – REFUSED A SEAL
1961	Victim (UK)	Rank Film Distributors of America

Table I shows sixteen queer films and their relationship to the Production Code Administration (PCA), that section of the Hays Office responsible for granting or withholding the precious Seal of Approval. It says something about the ingenuity of Hollywood, and other sources, that during this period, only one Queer Film – the 1961 British film Victim, directed by Basil Dearden and starring Dirk Bogarde – was denied a seal outright, due to its queer subject matter. Unfazed, Rank Film Distributors of America pressed ahead with a US release, where, thanks to some good reviews, it generated moderate box-office success. When Victim was released on VHS in the US in 1986, it received a PG-13 rating by the MPAA.

In this essay (ESSAY ONE) and the follow-up essay (ESSAY TWO), the terms HAYS CODE, HAYS OFFICE, SEAL OF APPROVAL, CODE SEAL and PRODUCTION CODE ADMINISTRATION, or PCA, are all used interchangeably.

Only three of our 85 queer films from 1934 to 1968 were released with cuts imposed by the PCA. Director Robert Hamer’s masterpiece Kind Hearts and Coronets (England, 1949) and Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Persona (Sweden, 1966), required minimal cutting before they were released in the US. As shown in Table I, these scenes have since been restored.

In 1957, producer Sam Spiegel submitted Columbia Pictures’ queer film The Strange One, starring then-unknown Ben Gazzara, to The Hays Office. The not-so-subtle queer themes and violent hazing rituals guarenteed that cuts would be mandatory and the resulting movie had less of an impact than the Calder Willingham book and play on which it was based. All of these scenes have now been restored.

In 1966 and 1967, there was a lot of back-and-forth between Twentieth Century Fox (TCF) and the Hays Office. We are talking Valley of the Dolls (1967). However, although the PCA raised questions about the dolls of the title and some queer thematics, the cuts that were decided upon had more to do with rating and pacing than censorship alone – the MPAA was just a year away. As a result, what we see today is essentially what audiences saw back in 1967.

As the fifties gave way to the sixties, American cinema audiences were becoming younger and better educated. The PCA was dying, and most of the Industry knew it. The fight had gone out of the beast and, as a result, a slew of queer films that, only a few years before, would have been censored, were given a free pass (see Table I). Boutique distribution networks were formulated specifically to manage British and Foreign-language films.

• Eagle-Lion Films: Kind Hearts and Coronets (UK, 1949)
• Janus Films:I Vitelloni (Italy, 1953)
• United Motion Picture Organization (UMPO): Les Diaboliques (France 1955)
• Times Film Corporation: Purple Noon (France/Italy 1960)
• Continental Distributing: A Taste of Honey (UK, 1961)
• Rank Film Distributors of America: Victim (UK, 1961)
• Andy Warhol Films: My Hustler (US, 1965)
• Lopert – United Artists: Persona (Sweden, 1966)
• Claridge Pictures:The Fox (Canada-US, 1967)
• Film-Makers’ Distribution Center: Portrait of Jason (US, 1967)
• Embassy Pictures: The Producers (US, 1967)

Catering to more sophisticated audiences, many of whom understood and even spoke the language of these exotic foreign movies, the boutique distribution firms couldn’t give a toss about the Hays office. Of the eleven movies listed above, six were NOT submitted to the PCA. These movies were often edgier in tone, sometimes openly queer, and naturally at home in the boutique art‑house circuit. Their success with educated urban audiences carved a path for other filmmakers to challenge, and ultimately erode, the authority of the Code.

In 1959, Billy Wilder decided not to submit his outrageous genre-bending comedy Some Like It Hot. Released with a big fuck you to the Hays Office, the Marilyn Monroe classic was an instant smash, and many regard Wilder’s decision not to submit his film as the Code’s death knell. However, it is worth noting that the first major studio movie to bypass Joseph Breen was Otto Preminger’s The Moon is Blue in 1953.

QUEER-THEMED FILMS AT THE HAYS-MPAA TRANSITION.

As the 1960s progressed, queer cinema played a crucial role in undermining the Code.

The release of two queer films with overt homosexual themes – Sidney J. Furie’s The Leather Boys in 1964 and John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye in 1967 – without any cuts, signaled to everyone in the industry that the Hays Office was now a crippled animal waiting to be put out of its misery.

In early 1966, the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque and later the Hudson Theatre in New York began showing the Andy Warhol-produced, Chuck Wein-directed film My Hustler. With screenings first advertised in The Village Voice and eventually spreading through word of mouth, the movie became an underground sensation, running continuously, despite occasional police raids, at both theaters for over two years. Public demand was high, and Regional runs were arranged between 1966 and 1969 in Los Angeles, Chicago, Tucson, San Bernardino, Albuquerque, Akron and Indianapolis. To this day, it remains the only Factory film to turn a profit and is the only Factory film to be available on digital media.

A few months later, financiers Shirley Clarke and Graeme Ferguson, along with Film-Makers Distribution, decided to release Clarke’s documentary, Portrait of Jason, independently, bypassing the Code entirely by concentrating on film festivals, college campuses, and independent cinemas. The plan worked. Although it had its detractors, the film was quickly recognized as a groundbreaking example of cinema verité.

Likewise, when producer Raymond Stross (who also produced The Leather Boys) and his wife, actress Anne Heywood, wanted to market their small, Canadian movie with an explicit lesbian theme called The Fox, based on D.H. Lawrence’s novel, they and their distributor Claridge Pictures, in conjunction with Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, decided to take the same route. Bypassing the Hays Office, the film was released independently, without a Code seal. Playing at Film Festivals, Art Houses, and College Campuses, it found an audience, and Lalo Schifrin’s Oscar-nominated score gave it a second wind in the Spring of 1969 – the movie was not shown in LA until 1968. It was subsequently submitted to the newly appointed MPAA and received an R rating.

Mel Brooks’ debut feature, The Producers, was released by Embassy Pictures in the fall of 1967. Producer Joseph E. Levine nevertheless chose to submit the film to the Hays Office, fully aware that the Production Code’s authority was rapidly eroding. He also understood that the film’s flamboyantly gay characters—written as broad comic figures—were unlikely to provoke meaningful pushback from a system that was already losing its grip on Hollywood. He was correct. The film received the seal of approval without a single cut.

ESSAY ONE – TABLE 2 85 Queer Films made Under the Hays Code Fifteen Queer‑Themed Films at the Hays → MPAA Transition

The Leatherboys British Lion-Columbia Produced by Raymond Stross 1964 Hays Code Era Submitted to the Hays Code. Approved without cuts. Released with a Code seal. Only one of two overtly queer-themed films to be screened in the US before the Code’s collapse in 1968.  An early queer cinema landmark and a sign of the Production Code’s waning power in the mid-1960s.

My Hustler Andy Warhol’s The Factory 1965 Hays Code Era Not submitted. Bypassed the Hays Code. Released independently with no seal of approval. Screened at the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque and The Hudson Theatre in New York City and in various arthouse cinemas across the country.

The Producers Embassy Pictures Produced by Joseph E. Levine 1967 (LA in 1968) Hays Code Era Submitted and approved without cuts. Released with a Code seal. The Producers arrived in late 1967 with flaming queens Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia. Producer Joseph E. Levine nevertheless chose to submit the film to the Hays Office, fully aware that the Production Code’s authority was rapidly eroding. He also understood that these flamboyantly gay characters—written as broad comic figures—were unlikely to provoke meaningful pushback from a system that was already losing its grip on Hollywood.

The Fox Claridge Pictures, in conjunction with Warner-Seven Arts  Produced by Raymond Stross 1967 (LA in 1968) Hays Code Era Not submitted. Bypassed the Hays Code. Released independently with no seal of approval.   Explicit lesbian relationship. Independent release under the Code. Marketed Adults Only.   Later retro-rated R under the MPAA.

Reflections in a Golden Eye  Warner Bros.-Seven Arts 1967 Hays Code Era Submitted and approved without cuts. Released with a Code seal. Only one of two overtly queer-themed films to be screened in the US before the Code’s collapse in 1968. An early queer cinema landmark and a sign of the Production Code’s collapse towards the end of 1967.

Portrait of Jason Film-Markers Distribution  1967 Hays Code Era Not submitted, bypassed Code. Released independently with no seal of approval. Shirley Clarke’s avant-garde documentary of Jason Holliday. Independent release, no Code seal.

The Detective   TCF 1968 MPAA Era M (Mature audiences) Frank Sinatra’s crime drama openly depicts homosexuality, which was impossible under the Code.

The Sergeant Warner Bros.- Seven Arts 1968 MPAA Era M (Mature audiences). Rod Steiger as a closeted officer. One of the first studio films to address homosexuality.

The Killing of Sister George Cinerama Releasing Corporation 1968 MPAA Era X (17 and under not admitted) Explicit lesbian relationship; one of the first films to receive an X rating.

No Way to Treat a Lady Paramount   1968 MPAA Era M (Mature audiences) Dark comedy/thriller; released with an MPAA rating.

The Boston Strangler TCF 1968 MPAA Era R (Restricted) Under-17s are only admitted with a parent or guardian in attendance.  Violence and overt references to homosexuality in the Boston demimonde. It would have been impossible under the Hays Code.

Rachel Rachel Warner Bros-Seven Arts 1968 MPAA Era M (Mature audiences) Themes of repression and sexuality – including homosexuality, carried an MPAA rating.

2001: A Space Odyssey MGM 1968 MPAA Era G (later PG) Major studio release. Carried an MPAA rating.

Midnight Cowboy United Artists 1969 MPAA Era X (later R) Male Hustler’s relationship. Won Best Picture; a landmark in the MPAA era.

The Damned Warner Bros.-Seven Arts 1969 MPAA Era X (later R) Themes of violence, incest, overt homosexuality, and Helmut Berger in drag managed to get Visconti’s film, like Midnight Cowboy, Last Summer, and The Killing of Sister George, an X-rating from the MPAA. Later, it was released as an R, after 12 minutes of offending footage were removed, leaving the eviscerated version that most of us saw for decades. Visconti’s complete 154-minute vision is now the standard for screenings, DVD/Blu-ray editions and streaming presentations.

A 2026 Translation M no longer exists.  Today’s equivalent is parental guidance suggested. PG or PG-13. PG-13 is a stronger warning to parents than PG R remains the same; Under 17 accompanied by a parent or guardian. X (17 or under, not admitted) has now been replaced by the more respectable-sounding NC-17. Today’s X signifies ADULT CONTENT or what might have been called pornography back in 1967-68-69 during the Hays → MPAA Transition.

LGBTQ+ IN HOLLYWOOD

As the years have passed and numerous biographies and memoirs have been written, more and more celebrities are now known to have been gay. So-called Lavender Marriages abounded, particularly at MGM, where the studio’s contract players had an iron-clad social clause in their contracts.

• Fred Astaire was possibly in a long-term relationship with choreographer and doppelganger, Hermes Pan. However, unlike say, Spencer Tracy, whose history of sex with men comes from numerous sources, there is not enough evidence to come down definitively on Fred Astaire as being gay.

The other LGBTQ+ Hollywood personalities mentioned in these essays are known to have had same-sex trysts and relationships going back decades.

• Jean Arthur was the most private actress in Hollywood.

• Tallulah Bankhead – her longtime lover, actress Patsy Kelly, best known as the wisecracking sidekick to Thelma Todd in a series of short comedy films produced by Hal Roach in the 1930s, and a small but memorable part in Rosemary’s Baby – posed as her personal assistant when they were on the road together. In addition to being linked with both Dietrich and Garbo, Bankhead was rumored to have had romantic liaisons with actresses Hattie McDaniel, Alla Nazimova, Blythe Daly, and Eva Le Gallienne, as well as writer Mercedes de Acosta and singer Billie Holiday.

• Marlene Dietrich

• Greta Garbo

• Barbara Stanwyck was in a lavender marriage with Robert Taylor. The marriage was arranged by Taylor’s studio, MGM, to squash rumors of his homosexuality. Stanwyck’s most enduring relationship was with her publicist and live-in companion Helen Ferguson, who was described as her Girl Friday.

• Sandy Dennis

• Kay Ballard

• Marjorie Main, who was in a long-term relationship with Spring Byington.

• Christopher Walkin

• Nick Adams

• Earl Holliman

• Paul Winfield was one of the first Black actors to come out publicly. However, during the making of Sounder in the early 1970s, he lived with his co-star, Cicely Tyson, for 18 months, so people might have thought they were a straight couple. They never publicly corrected the misconception. His partner of 30 years, the architect Charles Gillan Jr., predeceased him by two years.

• THE METHOD triumvirate of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and James Dean.

• THE TOP HAT triumvirate of Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton

• Alan Ladd, the Paramount star who hid his queerness under a career-long addiction to alcohol. He died, aged 50, in 1964, of cerebral edema caused by an acute overdose of alcohol, barbiturates and antidepressants.

• Walter Pidgeon, the man who gave famed procurer for the stars prostitute Scotty Bowers his first trick when Bowers was working as a gas station attendant on Hollywood Boulevard.

• Clifton Webb, Cole Porter and Monty Wooley were at the center of queer life in roaring twenties New York. They were lifelong close friends and all three had major Hollywood careers. Webb became a star at 50 with Laura while Wooley played himself opposite Cary Grant’s portrayal of Porter in Night and Day (1946) – a Cole Porter so scrubbed of sexuality that Grant might as well be playing a gifted mannequin – a queer icon rewritten as a heterosexual fantasy with the volume turned way down.

• Laird Cregar was a closeted gay man in the 1940s studio system. Large-bodied and coded as a cultured villain he died at 28 after crash-dieting to become a romantic lead. His death is the hinge point where queerness, body pressure, and mortality converge.

• What Laird Creger was to the 1940s, large-bodied, Oscar nominated, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane actor Victor Buono was to the 1960s – the rotund queer-coded villain.

• The large-bodied queer trope has continued to the present day thanks to such stars as Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead), James Coco, Harvey Fierstein and Bruce Vilanch.

• Cary Grant had a long-term relationship with actor Randolph Scott – they shared a home in the Los Feliz area of LA for two years (1932-1934). Grant also had an affair with Oscar-winning, costume designer Orry-Kelly.

• Laurence Olivier had a long-term relationship with Danny Kaye

• Anthony Perkins had a relationship with fellow actor Tab Hunter in the late 1950s. They double-dated some of Hollywood’s most beautiful actresses during this period.

• Husband and wife Vincent Price and Coral Browne.

• Alan Bates was romantically linked with British actors Peter Wyngarde and Nickolas Grace, as well as with British Olympic Figure Skating champion John Curry.

• Director George Cukor, probably the most famous gay man in Hollywood during this period, played a pivotal role in fostering the lavender relationship of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Hepburn and Tracy cared deeply for one another, but their relationship was a scam set up by their studio, MGM, to squash rumors of their homosexuality. The couple lived in a cottage on the Cukor estate during their time in Hollywood.

• Dirk Bogarde gradually evolved to a more OUT persona as his career developed, although he never officially broached the subject.

• Alec Guinness, Dennis Price, Charles Laughton, John Gielgud, and Laurence Harvey were all known to be gay throughout their careers. Their adoring public may have sensed something. Still, hey, they were English (by way of Lithuania and South Africa in Harvey’s case), so like Olivier, a bit of affectation came with the territory.

• Rock Hudson, the classic Hollywood closet case. Everyone in town knew the story – including the sham marriage – but the public was clueless until a diagnosis of advanced AIDS forced his hand in coming out, with only a few more weeks to live, in the summer of 1985. His case, though, was a milestone in exposing the double standards at work in Hollywood and is in no small way responsible for the strides that gay actors have made in the film world today.

• BEHIND THE CAMERA were the gay directors James Whale, George Cukor, Irving Rapper, Edmund Goulding, Mitchell Leisen, Vincente Minnelli Charles Waters and Dorothy Arzner, who showcased their gay sensibilities to varying degrees and whose careers took divergent paths.

• Arzner, the lone lesbian in the group and way ahead of her time, played a pivotal role in establishing the queer Katherine Hepburn persona with the 1933 movie Christopher Strong. However, her legacy is mostly pre-code, and she retired in 1940.

• Minnelli, who was married to gay icon Judy Garland, managed to have a stellar Hollywood career with little to no interference from his studio (MGM). The fact that he was known primarily as a director of musicals and directed what may be the greatest one of all – Meet Me in St. Louis – helped his cause. Whale and Cukor, however, suffered for their sexual preference.

• Waters, who also directed musicals at MGM, was Minnelli without the style. However, he did give Grace Kelly a nice sendoff in High Society, and he received a best director nomination for the 1953 Leslie Caron vehicle Lili.

• Cukor was fired from Gone with the Wind after a few weeks of filming. We will never know the real reason, but no matter how many times Olivia de Havilland vehemently denied it, the rumors about William Haines and Clark Gable, and Cukor’s knowledge of what happened between them, still carry an air of truth today.

• As for Whale, being the most OUT of the great Hollywood directors and being in a well-known relationship with Warner Bros. producer David Lewis didn’t help, especially when tastes changed, and his penchant for high camp lost favor with the public as the thirties progressed.

• Like George Cukor, Leisen, Goulding, and Rapper were often labeled women’s directors, a term that was both derogatory and frequently used as a coded reference to homosexuality. Goulding and Rapper each made numerous films with Bette Davis during their years at Warner Bros., while over at Paramount, Leisen—formerly a production designer for Cecil B. DeMille—brought a distinctive visual elegance to his work and directed Olivia de Havilland in two of her five Oscar‑nominated performances – she won for the second.

• Leisen was both fortunate and unfortunate in being entrusted with some of the finest original screenplays Hollywood produced during this era. Easy Living (1937) and Remember the Night (1940) were written by Preston Sturges, while Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett penned Midnight (1939). At this point in their careers, both Sturges and Wilder were eager to direct their own scripts, and they were openly critical of Leisen’s handling of their material. Sturges’ favorite complaint was that Leisen was “fussy.” At the same time, Wilder dismissed him as a “window dresser,” a jab at what he saw as Leisen’s overly precious attention to costume and art direction. Two decades later, when film critic Andrew Sarris put forward his auteur theory – where the director is king of the castle – he followed Wilder’s lead and downgraded Leisen, together with Goulding, and Rapper, to the verge of ignominy. Fortunately, in the new millennium these directors have seen their fortunes rise as younger, more enlightened and more sympathetic film historians have championed their cause.

• Director Alfred Hitchcock liked to cast queer actors such as Judith Anderson, Anthony Perkins, Farley Granger and John Dall as queer villains. Only queer actor Raymond Burr did not have a queer-coded part as the villain Lars Thorwald in Rear Window

• The 1950s and 1960s gave us gay directors such as Nicholas Ray, Tony Richardson, Andy Warhol, Chuck Wein, John Schlesinger and Lindsay Anderson. Ray directed two of the seminal 1950s (and Los Angeles) queer movies, In a Lonely Place (1950) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), the latter of which featured Sal Mineo’s Plato as Hollywood’s first adolescent gay character.

• Meanwhile, Broadway theatre director Morton DaCosta showered his meager (three) Hollywood films with a very gay theatrical style, so much so that his feature debut, Auntie Mame, is regarded by many as a camp classic.

• Gay Hollywood POWER COUPLES existed then, as they do now. Composer/arranger Roger Edens and his partner of many years, the writer, Leonard Gershe, made the deliciously urbane and witty Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire-Stanley Donen helmed, Funny Face in 1957.

• In addition to Edens, other famous gay COMPOSERS mostly thrived in their musical closets, from Aaron Copland’s Oscar-winning score for William Wyler’s The Heiress to songwriter Hugh Martin’s (with his songwriting partner Ralph Blane) timeless songs for Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, to Leonard Bernstein’s only foray into film scoring in On the Waterfront.

• During the Hays Code years, there were two branches of filmmaking where being gay, if not an advantage, was undoubtedly the norm, and a third branch, where, well, it’s difficult to know:

• COSTUME DESIGN: It may surprise you that the allure of the Costume Department to the gay sensibility applies to both sexes. Edith Head and Irene Sharaff, Hollywood’s most outstanding female costume designers, were gay. As for the men, well, you can just run through the list: Gilbert Adrian, Milo Anderson, Travis Banton, Bill Blass, Howard Greer, Charles Le Maire, Jean Louis, Moss Mabry, Anthony Mendleson (in London), Bernard Newman, Orry-Kelly, Walter Plunkett, Howard Shoup, Bill Thomas, William Travilla, Arlington Valles and many, many more. Some were in lavender marriages, but all expressed their gayness in their on-screen work.

• CHOREOGRAPHY: While Fred Astaire and his longtime companion Hermes Pan choreographed the unforgettable dance sequences in Top Hat (1935), Fred’s career was bookended by the stunning work of another gay choreographer, Eugene Loring, in Funny Face (1957). Meanwhile, gay choreographer Jack Cole’s contribution to the musical numbers Put the Blame on Mame and Amado Mio from Gilda and Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend from Gentlemen Prefer Blonds is the essential ingredient in making these movies immortal.

• PRODUCTION DESIGN – ART & SET DIRECTION. Gay historians have often found it easy to trace the sexual histories of Hollywood’s more glamorous professions — actors, writers, costume designers, composers, songwriters, and choreographers. By contrast, the behind‑the‑scenes world of production design, art direction, and set decoration, though long infused with queer sensibility, has remained more elusive. Many of its practitioners led discreet, private lives, leaving little documentation of their sexuality.

• There are notable exceptions. In 1965, three legendary art directors — Cecil Beaton, George James Hopkins, and Gene Allen — shared the Academy Award for their work on My Fair Lady (1964). All three were openly gay men -Allen towards the end of his life.
• Hopkins was in an intimate relationship with director William Desmond Taylor and was in the deceased’s apartment, for questioning, on Alvarado Street, on the morning after Taylor’s unsolved 1922 murder. He had a long career at Warner Brothers (1941-1967), his name appearing on such films as Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, A Streetcar Named Desire, Strangers on a Train, Auntie Mame, and the aforementioned My Fair Lady. He was nominated for 13 Oscars and won 4.

• Legendary British stage designer and Princess Margaret’s confidante, Oliver Messel (he designed her Caribbean island getaway in Mustique), was Oscar-nominated for one of his few forays into Film, Suddenly Last Summer. He was also responsible for the film’s costume designs, having done so on a handful of previous films, such as Romeo and Juliet (1936) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

• Likewise, it is widely acknowledged that Cedric Gibbons, despite three lavender marriages (including one to actress Dolores del Río), was queer. As head of MGM’s art department from 1924 to 1956, Gibbons not only helped define the studio’s visual identity but also co‑founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and designed the Oscar statuette itself. Fittingly, he remains — excluding Walt Disney’s short‑subject record — the most honored individual in Oscar history, with 39 nominations and 11 wins.

• Rumors have long surrounded Hans Dreier, who led Paramount’s art department from 1927 to 1950, and Van Nest Polglase, head of RKO’s art department from 1932 to 1942 and later at Columbia until 1946. Dreier, working with director Josef von Sternberg and cinematographer Lee Garmes, helped craft the iconic Marlene Dietrich look of the early 1930s, as seen in films such as Morocco (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932).

• Polglase, meanwhile, oversaw Carroll Clark’s sleek Art Deco designs for the Astaire–Rogers’s musicals (1933–1939) and supervised Perry Ferguson’s groundbreaking work on Citizen Kane (1941). His career, however, was tragically curtailed by struggles with alcoholism.

• CINEMATOGRAPHY: Among the many branches of filmmaking, cinematography has historically been dominated by straight white men. Yet examining the studio era through the lens of queer-coded films reveals intriguing patterns. For most cinematographers listed (see Table 9), their involvement with queer cinema was limited to a single movie. However, a few standouts emerge. At Warner Bros., Harry Stradling (who began his career at MGM) and Ernest Haller distinguished themselves, contributing to six and four queer-coded films, respectively. Their prominence reflects Warner Bros.’ significant role in this arena, accounting for roughly a quarter of the movies identified. Russell Metty at Universal also clocks in at 4. Other notable figures include Charles Lang at Paramount, Burnett Guffey at Columbia and William Daniels at MGM, each of whom is credited with three queer-coded works. Hitchcock’s trusted collaborator, Robert Burks’ name, also appears three times, while in England, Douglas Slocombe achieved the same tally. This distribution suggests that while queer-coded cinema was not a consistent focus for most cinematographers, specific individuals—often tied to studios with a higher output of such films—played a more sustained role in shaping its visual language.

LGBTQ+, BUT NOT READY FOR HOLLYWOOD

Finally, two movies were based on Queer material, but because of the times in which they made their respective debuts – 1934 on Broadway for Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour and 1945 for Richard Brooks’s novel The Brick Foxhole – American movie screens were not ready to hear the words homosexual, gay, queer or lesbian.

As a result, Hellman herself reworked The Children’s Hour into a heterosexual triangle. Directed by William Wyler under the title These Three for Samuel Goldwyn, it was a significant success. Wyler later reworked the material using Hellman’s original storyline in 1961 to lesser effect.

With a screenplay by John Paxton, The Brick Foxhole was adapted into the 1947 Oscar-nominated movie Crossfire by director Edward Dmytryk, featuring a stellar cast that included Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, and Sam Levene. The book’s homophobia, however, was replaced by antisemitism; the country’s ability to sympathize with certain minority groups only extended so far in the late 1940s. We will hear from Richard Brooks again. Initially, as a screenwriter for the Jules Dassin film Brute Force and then as the director of the queer films Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977), the latter being one of the most virulently homophobic bait-and-switch scenarios ever committed to film.

Germany: LGBTQ+ No Longer

Young Torless: Although this essay focuses primarily on LGBTQ+ films from Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, it also references occasional works from other countries, including Italy, France and Sweden. Two German adaptations of classic gay Bildungsromane, however, were so thoroughly stripped of their queer themes that they cannot reasonably be classified as part of Queer Cinema. The Confusions of Young Törless, a 1906 novel by Austrian writer Robert Musil, is a foundational work of early modernist literature and is often discussed in queer studies because of its exploration of adolescent desire, power, and moral ambiguity. However, Young Torless, the 1966 movie adaptation by director Volker Schlondorff strips the material of all its queer content.

Madchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform), a landmark lesbian film from 1931 – three years before the scope of this article – was based on the play by Christa Winsloe. However, the 1958 remake, with Romy Schneider, is bereft of any gay feeling.

STUDIO BREAKDOWN

85 Queer Films Made Under The Hays Code

Among the Hollywood Studios, Warner Bros. is the clear winner in producing and distributing LGBTQ+ movies under the Hays Code, accounting for 24% of the films listed. MGM comes in second with 12%, followed by Columbia in third position with 9%. Seventy-four of the movies are from the U.S. – 75, if you include the U.S.-Canadian production The Fox (total: 88%) with nine from the United Kingdom (9%), two from France, one from Sweden, and one from Italy.

• Warner Bros (including Warner-Pathé and Warner Bros. Seven Arts): 20
• MGM: 10
• Columbia (including Horizon-Sam Spiegel and British Lion) 8
• Universal (including Universal-International): 7
• Twentieth Century Fox (TCF): 6
• RKO: 6
• Paramount: 5
• United Artists (including The Mirisch Company): 3
• Allied Artists: 1
• Embassy Pictures: 1
• Film-Makers Distribution: 1
• Filmways: 1
• Internet Archive: 1
• Monterey Productions (Howard Hawks): 1
• Republic Pictures: 1
• Selznick International: 1
• Transatlantic (Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein) 1
• Rank (including Anglo Allied Pictures): 2
• Ealing: 1
• Janus Films: 1
• Joseph Janni Productions: 1
• Romulus Films: 1
• Titanus – CCFC Films: 1
• Vantage Films: 1
• Woodfall Films: 1
• Cinédis: 1
• AB Svensk Filmindustri; 1

SOURCE MATERIAL

Of the seventy-five movies listed, one is a cinema verité, and the rest are narrative features. Of these, 15 (20%) are original screenplays, while 59 (80%) were adapted from another medium.

The source material during this period came from a rich collection of gay playwrights and novelists: Carson McCullers, Gavin Lambert, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Patricia Highsmith, Oscar Wilde, Patrick Dennis, and Herman Melville.

85 QUEER FILMS MADE UNDER THE HAYS CODE

Six of the movies listed won BEST PICTURE, while a further ten were nominated in the BEST PICTURE category.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER: is the queer character in the movie and, in parentheses, the ACTOR who plays him/her.

LGBTQ+ is anyone in front of (actor) or behind (director | screenwriter | source of material, usually the novel or play on which the movie is based | production designers and costume designers – the latter two function sometimes being served by the same individual) who was known to be queer in real life.

1. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

A-

James Whale

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: James Whale

ACTOR: Ernest Thesiger

Susan Sontag: Notes on Camp: 1964: The Partisan Review

You thought it (camp) meant a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich? Yes, in queer circles they call that camping. … You can call [it] Low Camp…

Susan Sontag: The Partisan Review 1964

High Camp is the whole emotional basis for ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art … High Camp always has an underlying seriousness. You can’t camp about something you don’t take seriously. You’re not making fun of it, you’re making fun out of it. You’re expressing what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance. Baroque art is basically camp about religion. The ballet is camp about love …

Susan Sontag: The Partisan Review 1964

Director James Whale’s masterpiece is as close to Susan Sontag’s definition of high camp as the movies can deliver. Elsa Lanchester’s star is born in the title role, sporting the most creative do in cinema history. Gay actor Ernest Thesiger, whose portrait was sketched by no less than John Singer Sargent in 1911, gives his most famous performance as Dr. Frankenstein’s gay mentor, Dr. Pretorious.

Having arrived in Hollywood with R. C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, Whale was signed by Uncle Carl Laemmle to a five-year contract at Universal Studios. The result was one of the significant periods in Universal’s history, with Whale directing such classics as Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and The Bride of Frankenstein. Unfortunately, his adaptation of The Road Back (1937), Erich Maria Remarque’s follow-up to All Quiet on the Western Front, was not a success, and by 1941, his film career had come to an end.

The premise was suggested by Frankenstein, the 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and as a follow-up to the director’s 1931 film of the same name.

Cinematography: John J. Mescall

Music: Franz Waxman

Universal Pictures

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2. Top Hat (1935)

A+

Mark Sandrich

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton)

*Bates (Eric Blore)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Eric Blore

ACTOR: Edward Everett Horton

ACTOR: Erik Rhodes

CHOREOGRAPHER: Hermes Pan

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bernard Newman

More plural personalities

HORACE HARDWICK (EDWARD EVERETT HORTON) ON FIRST MEETING BATES (ERiC BLORE) in “TOP HAT”

 The Best of the Astaire-Rogers movies.

Of the nine films Astaire and Rogers made at RKO Pictures in the thirties, Top Hat is their best. It’s also their most indubitably gay, with Eric Blore doing his butler with a superior attitude and Edward Everett Horton, whose own unique variation on the double take (an actor’s reaction to something, followed by a delayed, more extreme reaction) had yet to become tiresome.

Irving Berlin’s songs are some of his best, and the dance to Cheek to Cheek, choreographed by Astaire and his longtime collaborator and alleged lover at the time, Hermes Pan, is Astaire-Rogers at their peak.

Gay actor Erik Rhodes, who had also appeared in The Gay Divorcee the previous year, makes an indelible impression as Alberto Beddini, a dandified Italian fashion designer with a penchant for malapropisms. Rhodes spent most of his life on Broadway; the rest of his Hollywood output was mainly forgettable.

The film’s production design (by Carroll Clark, with Van Nest Polglase being the head of the design department) marked the peak of the Art Deco movement in Hollywood.

The original screenplay, written by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor, is based on a story by Taylor; cinematography is by David Abel.

RKO

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

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3. Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

B-

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sylvia/Sylvester Scarlett (Katherine Hepburn)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: George Cukor

ACTOR: Cary Grant

ACTRESS: Katherine Hepburn

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bernard Newman

Depressed after his wife’s passing and plagued by mounting gambling debts, Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn) flees France for England with his teenage daughter, Sylvia (Katherine Hepburn), in tow. Since Henry plans to continue his nefarious ways by smuggling yards of lace into England to sell on the black market (and avoid import tax), Sylvia dresses as a boy, whom she christens Sylvester, to throw the police off their scent. On the Channel ferry to London, they meet charming con man Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant), and before you can say Southampton, the duo soon becomes a trio despite Jimmy turning Henry over to the authorities to avoid being accosted himself.

This was the first time Grant’s famous Cockney persona began to register on film, and he all but steals the picture. Unfortunately, the film’s themes of sexual fluidity were ahead of its time, and it was a financial disaster for RKO Studios, losing a reported $363,000. It also led to Hepburn being labeled box office poison, a moniker from which she would not recover until signing with MGM in 1940.

The film’s standing with critics and the public has gradually improved over the years, and it wears its Queerness proudly. Hepburn continues to do drag even after it is no longer necessary for the character, and in one memorable scene, she is kissed by a woman. It also marks the only time in which Hepburn, a gay actress, overtly channeled her own sexuality on screen.

The film marked the first of four Hepburn/Grant pairings—the others being Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938), the Cukor-directed Holiday (also 1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940). The latter was a triumph for all concerned, including Cukor, Hepburn and Grant.

Adapted from the 1918 novel by Compton Mackenzie, the movie also features Brian Aherne as an Englishman who shows an interest in Hepburn’s character but whose ardor quickly vanishes when Sylvester reverts to Sylvia!

Mel Berns, the head of the RKO Makeup Department, created Hepburn’s impressive makeup and hair design. Berns’s work on films such as Citizen Kane and Notorious still resonates today.

Cinematography: Joseph H. August

RKO

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4. Stage Door (1937)

A-

Gregory La Cava

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Jean (Ginger Rogers)

*Kay (Andrea Leeds)

*Linda (Gail Patrick)

*Eve (Eve Arden)

LGBTQ+

ACTRESS: Katherine Hepburn

Adapted by Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiller from the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, and directed by Gregory La Cava, Stage Door follows a group of aspiring actresses living at the Footlights Club, a shabby New York boarding house crackling with ambition and wisecracks. Among them are Katharine Hepburn’s Terry, the privileged newcomer whose arrival disrupts the house’s fragile equilibrium, and Ginger Rogers’s Jean, the sharp‑tongued, streetwise lodestar of the group—and Terry’s reluctant roommate. Andrea Leeds provides the film’s emotional center as Kay, a once‑promising actress whose career has stalled and whose hope is wearing thin.

The supporting ensemble is a delight: Constance Collier as Miss Luther, the club’s grandly outdated acting coach; Gail Patrick, sleek and sardonic; Eve Arden, forever draped in a cat; and early turns from Lucille Ball and Ann Miller, all playing young women clawing for a break.

In this intensely homosocial world, it’s easy to detect threads of queer coding—particularly in the tenderness between Rogers and Leeds, and in the wry, conspiratorial dynamic between Arden and Patrick. La Cava, fresh off My Man Godfrey (1936), directs with a light, improvisatory touch, and Hepburn and Rogers play off each other beautifully. Leeds’s performance is the only element that feels rooted in an older, more declamatory 1930s style—ironically, she was the film’s sole acting Oscar nominee, earning a Best Supporting Actress nod. Also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

With Adolph Menjou as the impresario, Anthony Powell.

Cinematography: Robert De Grasse

RKO

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5. Bringing Up Baby (1938)

A-

Howard Hawks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*David Huxley (Cary Grant)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Cary Grant

ACTRESS: Katherine Hepburn

COSTUME DESIGNER: Howard Greer

In Howard Hawks’s “Bringing Up Baby,” Cary Grant answers the front door dressed in a negligée because Katherine Hepburn has hidden all his clothes. When Hepburn’s aunt, played by May Robson, asks him to explain, he replies exasperatedly, “Because I just went gay all of a sudden” (and leaping into the air at the word gay). There are no further references to Grant’s character being Gay/Queer/homosexual in the rest of the movie. How often was gay used as a synonym in the vernacular for homosexuality in 1938?  Can I get a linguist? Can I get a linguist?

Grant plays a paleontologist who gets involved in several predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress (Hepburn) and a leopard named Baby. The film represents the peak of Hollywood’s slapstick era, with Grant taking a couple of classic tumbles.

Adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a short story by Wilde, which originally appeared in Collier’s Weekly magazine on April 10, 1937.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

RKO

REMADE WITH BARBRA STREISAND AND RYAN O’NEILL BY PETER BOGDANOVICH AS “WHAT’S UP DOC” IN 1972.

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6. The Women (1939)

A-

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Nancy Blake (Florence Nash)

 LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: George Cukor

ACTRESS: Marjorie Main

COSTUME DESIGNER: Gilbert Adrian

ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons

The Women is the first American film with an all-female cast. All the art featured in the movie was by women. The screenplay was written by two women (Anita Loos and Jane Murfin) based on a play written by a woman (The Women by Claire Booth Luce from 1936). All the animals featured were female. Unfortunately, this being 1939, everyone behind the camera was male, albeit with Hollywood’s most outstanding gay director, George Cukor, at the helm just one month after being fired from Gone with the Wind for, by some accounts, being too gay! The only apparent lesbian, an old maid who always wears slacks – no, it’s not Katherine Hepburn – is played by Florence Nash.

Cinematography:

Joseph Ruttenberg

Oliver T. Marsh

MGM

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7. The Wizard of OZ (1939)

A-

Victor Fleming

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr)

 LGBTQ+

COSTUME DESIGN: Gilbert Adrian

ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons

The Wizard of Oz (1939) tells the story of Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl who is swept away by a tornado to the magical Land of Oz. With her dog Toto and three companions—a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, and a Cowardly Lion—she journeys down the Yellow Brick Road to meet the Wizard, hoping he can help her return home. Along the way, they confront the Wicked Witch of the West, ultimately discovering that the power to go home was within Dorothy all along.

Judy Garland/Dorothy: She is the mother of all of us! Before there was Barbra, before there was Liza, before there was Madonna, before there was Lady Gaga, there was Judy.

How and why gay men came to refer to themselves as Friends of Dorothy, I don’t know. Judy Garland was not gay, but there was something glorious about her performance in The Wizard of Oz, which captured most people’s hearts, gay or straight. Something vulnerable yet confident. And there’s that incredible voice, at once innocent and knowing. She gets to sing the greatest movie song ever written, Over the Rainbow, thanks to the genius of Harold Arlen (music) and Yip Harburg (lyrics). Photographed in glorious Technicolor by Harold Rosson (bookended by black and white for Kansas) and directed by Victor Fleming, the man who took over Gone with the Wind after George Cukor was fired. Queer Cinema can be a small world. Oh, of course, Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion was gay. Almost forgot!

Adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum.

MGM

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8. Rebecca (1940)

A+

Alfred Hitchcock

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Laurence Olivier

ACTRESS: Judith Anderson

REBECCA IS ONE OF HITCHCOCK’S SEVEN PERFECT FILMS.

Hitchcock often cast gay actors in LGBTQ+ roles, such as Judith Anderson in Rebecca, Anthony Perkins in Psycho, and John Dahl and Farley Granger in Rope.

While working for Mrs.Van Hopper (Florence Bates) in Monte Carlo, a young woman (Joan Fontaine) becomes acquainted with Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), a recent widower. After a brief courtship, they become engaged. They marry and then head to his mansion in England, Manderly. Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), the head housekeeper at Manderly, is obsessed with the memory of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances, and she despises the new Mrs. de Winter, whom she belittles at every opportunity. Rebecca marked the arrival in Hollywood (courtesy of Gone with the Wind, producer David O. Selznick) of the man who was, or would eventually become, the greatest director in the history of cinema. The movie boasts a superb performance by Joan Fontaine, who demonstrated that she was also blessed with the famed talent of Olivia de Havilland. With George Sanders, Reginald Denny, and Gladys Cooper.

Selznick International

Oscar-winning cinematography by George Barnes.

Music by Franz Waxman.

Adapted from the novel by Daphne du Maurier.

Hitchcock’s cameo: 2:06:57 He is the man in a bowler hat and trenchcoat who crosses paths with George Sanders.

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9. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

A-

John Huston

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre)

*Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet)

*Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Orry-Kelly

After several years as a screenwriter, John Huston made a smashing directorial debut with his adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel. It had been adapted once before in 1931 as a pre-code starring Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels. However, Huston’s remake is now considered the definitive version. Humphrey Bogart got his big break playing Sam Spade, a San Francisco private detective dealing with three unscrupulous adventurers (Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lore), all seeking a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette. Everyone knows that Peter Lorre’s character, Joel Cairo, is gay. Even Sam knows. Sam will only slap Joel, never giving him the dignity of a punch. Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.) is referred to as Wilmer the gunzel, gunzel being an old English term for kept boy or homosexual. Since he is Kasper Gutman’s kept boy, I can only assume that Sydney Greenstreet’s Kasper is also gay. Splendid, dear boy!

Bogart would remain a star until he died in 1957.

One of the quintessential film noirs, Falcon has not stood the test of time as well as some of its contemporaries, probably because its plot doesn’t make much sense. However, the performances are there to savor, with Ms. Astor doing a superb turn as Bridget O’Shaughnessy, a Celtic Tiger, avant la lettre. Meanwhile, the gay triumvirate of Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Elisha Cook Jr. brings up the rear!

Cinematography

Arthur (Casablanca) Edeson.

Warner Bros.

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10. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)

A-

William Keighley

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Wooley)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Monty Wooley

SOURCE MATERIAL: Alexander Woollcott (The character of Whiteside is modeled on the famously acerbic gay theatre critic)

COSTUME DESIGNER: Orry-Kelly

I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on, anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross! (sic)

Nurse Preen (Mary Wickes) in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER

Monty Wooley delights himself and his audience by playing the impossibly pompous Sheridan Whiteside in William Keighley’s excellent 1941 adaptation of George Kaufman/Moss Hart’s play The Man Who Came to Dinner.

While passing through small-town Ohio during a cross-country lecture tour, Whiteside breaks his hip after slipping and falling on the icy steps of the house of the Stanleys, a prominent Ohio family with whom he’s supposed to dine as a publicity stunt. He insists on recuperating in their home during the Christmas holidays.

The character of Whiteside is based on Kauffman and Hart’s good friend, the acerbic gay theatre critic Alexander Woollcott. Bette Davis is perfection playing Whiteside’s long-suffering yet understanding secretary. It’s one of her few comedic roles, making you wonder why she didn’t do more.

The excellent supporting cast includes Ann Sheridan, nicely parodying herself, Richard Travis as Miss Davis’ love interest, the irrepressible Jimmy Durante singing Did You Ever Have the Feeling That You Wanted to Go, And Still Have the Feeling That You Wanted to Stay?, Mary Wickes as Nurse Preen who has the unenviable task of nursing Whiteside back to health, Reginald Gardiner doing a parody of Noel Coward and Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell as the unfortunate Mr. and Mrs. Stanley.

Cinematography: Tony Gaudio

Warner Bros.

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11. Casablanca (1942-1943)

A+

Michael Curtiz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Rick (Humphrey Bogart)

*Captain Renault (Claude Rains)

 LGBTQ+

COSTUME DESIGN: Orry-Kelly

ART-SET DIRECTION: George James Hopkins

This is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship

Rick to Captain Renault Casablanca

After Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Victor (Paul Henreid) are safely away on their plane and Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) is dead, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Captain Renault (Claude Rains) walk away together into the mist as Rick recites one of the movie’s most famous lines to Louis.

THREE LOVE STORIES ARE GOING ON IN CASABLANCA: ISLA-RICK AND ISLA-VICTOR, AND THEN THERE IS THE LOVE STORY BETWEEN RICK AND CAPTAIN RENAULT.

The film takes place in Casablanca, Morocco, with most of the action unfolding at Rick’s, a tavern named after the hero of the story, played by Bogart. The plot begins when an old flame, Ilsa Lund (Bergman), suddenly appears with her husband, Victor Laslow (Henreid), whom the Nazis want. Rick must decide whether to set aside his feelings for Ilsa to help Victor escape so that he can assist the Resistance.

However, three love stories happen in Casablanca: Isla-Rick, Isla-Lazlo, and then there is the love story between Rick and Captain Renault. At the end, as they walk away together in the mist and Rick utters that immortal line, we realize that the tension has been there from the beginning. And their honeymoon is going to be at Camp Brazzaville. A notorious homosexual hangout, it was the Palm Springs of its day!

With Dooley Wilson as Sam, the piano player. Herman Hupfeld’s song As Time Goes By was used to significant effect in the movie. The song’s melody was incorporated into Max Steiner’s famous score and used as a leitmotif throughout the film. However, the music was not written for the movie. It was initially written for the Broadway show Everybody’s Welcome in 1931.

Written on the fly by the fabulous Epstein twins (Philip and Julius) together with Howard Koch and directed by Curtiz with what can only be described as the hand of God, Casablanca is one of the most romantic and enjoyable of all the great Hollywood movies.

The film had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City, coinciding with the Allied invasion of North Africa. It was released in Los Angeles and nationally on January 23, 1943, to coincide with the Churchill-Roosevelt Casablanca Conference. Hence, according to the AMPAS rules, the film was eligible for the 1943 Academy Awards despite being released in New York in 1942. At the 16th Academy Awards held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Thursday, March 2, 1944, it won Best Film (Hal B. Wallis producer), Best Director (Curtiz), and Best Adapted Screenplay (the Epstein brothers and Koch).

When the Best Picture award was announced, Jack Warner rushed to the podium to accept the honor, completely ignoring Wallis, who never forgave him. The distraught Wallis subsequently resigned from Warner Bros. and formed his own production company under the Paramount banner.

Adapted from the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.

Cinematography: Arthur Edeson

Warner Bros.

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12. The Seventh Victim (1943)

C

MARK ROBSON

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Jacquiline Gibson (Jean Brooks)

*Frances Fallon a friend of Jacquiline (Isabell Jewell)

 LGBTQ+

SCREENWRITER: DeWitt Bodeen

“The Seventh Victim” (1943) is an uneven, plot-heavy, yet blessedly short noir-horror hybrid about a missing woman, a Satanic cult, and repressed identity. More so than with “Cat People”, gay writer DeWitt Bodeen manages to create a queer subtext that is subtle yet present, reflecting themes of isolation, coded desire, and existential despair.

Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter), a young woman attending a Catholic boarding school, learns that her sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), has stopped paying her tuition and gone missing. Mary travels to Greenwich Village NYC (I wonder why!), to find Jacqueline, uncovering a web of secrets involving a satanic cult called the Palladists and a bunch of strange characters, including Hugh Beaumont as Jacqueline’s mysterious husband,  Tom Conway, reprising his role as Dr. Louis Judd from “Cat People,” and Isabelle Jewell as a friend of Jacqueline’s. Jacqueline, herself, is revealed to be suicidal, estranged, and hiding from the cult, which demands her death for betraying their secrecy. In its Querness, the movie moves between the baroque and the silly.

Produced by Val Lewton for RKO with cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca and music by Roy Webb, it marked the screen debut of Hunter and the directorial debut of Robson.

Isabell Jewell took her own life in 1972, while Jean Brooks and Tom Conway both suffered from alcohol abuse disorder. Their careers cut short, they both died young.

RKO

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13. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

A+

Vincente Minnelli

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Vincente Minnelli

ACTRESS: Marjorie Main

SONGWRITER: Hugh Martin

MUSICAL ARRANGER: Roger Edens

ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons

COSTUME DESIGN: Irene Sharaff

Produced by Arthur Freed for MGM, this greatest of all movie musicals does not have any particular gay plot, but, with extraordinary stylish direction by Vincente Minnelli, three classic songs by gay songwriter Hugh Martin (with his songwriting partner Ralph Blane), and musical arrangements by the great Roger Edens, and the glorious costumes by Irene Sharaff the movie has GAY written all over it. A favorite of gay men since its opening in December 1944, it stars Judy Garland in her first adult role, and boy, does she look stunning in her Sharaff-designed costumes against a backdrop of Lemuel Ayers‘ lovingly designed early 20th-century interiors and George Folsey’s superb Technicolor cinematography.

Divided into a series of seasonal vignettes, starting with Summer 1903, it relates the story of a year in the life of the Smith family in St. Louis, leading up to the opening of the World’s Fair in the spring of 1904. Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe lovingly adapted the film from a series of short stories by Sally Benson originally published in The New Yorker magazine.  With Mary Astor and Leon Ames as the parents, Garland, Lucille Bremer, Joan Carroll and Margaret O’Brien as the children, Tom Drake as the boy next door, June Lockhart as a neighbor, Harry Davenport as the grandfather, and Marjorie Main as the family’s loyal cook.

Judy gets to sing THREE of her iconic songs, all written by Martin and Blane.

The Trolly Song

The Boy Next Door

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

The latter, sung to a marvelous Margaret O’Brien, is arguably the greatest of all Christmas songs.

Upon its release, Meet Me in St. Louis became the second-highest-grossing film of 1944 (behind Going My Way) and MGM’s most successful musical of the 1940s.

Garland and Minnelli were married in June 1945, and Liza was born in 1946. It was during this period that Garland’s struggles with depression and addiction began to affect both her marriage and her career. This, and Minnelli’s numerous affairs with men, caused the marriage to disintegrate, and they were divorced in 1951.

Cinematography: George Folsey

MGM

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14. The Uninvited (1944)

B-

Lewis Allen

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Pamela Fitzgerald (Ruth Hussey)

*The Ghost of Mary Meredith (Lynda Grey, uncredited)

*Stella Meredith (Gail Russell)

*Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner)

 LGBTQ+

ACTRESS: Cornelia Otis Skinner

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head

A Queer Ghost Story with so many lesbian characters that it’s challenging to keep count! My best guess is FOUR (three living and one dead). The Uninvited was a big hit in 1944 and remains an entertaining film to this day. The film opens with lesbian number one, Pamela Fitzgerald, played by Ruth Hussey. Pamela and her brother Rick (Ray Miland, then at the peak of his Hollywood stardom) fall in love with an old house on the Cornwall coast of England. The way director Lewis Allen introduces his film, you initially think they are newlyweds, which is quite naughty of him. Only after you notice Hussey’s very boyish hairdo do you realize this cannot be true! Heavens! Our brother and sister combo discover a room with a chill – it’s a few degrees cooler than the rest of their dream house. It turns out that the ghost of lesbian number two is haunting it. That would be Mary Meredith. Mary, like Hitchcock’s Rebecca four years earlier, died under mysterious circumstances by falling off a nearby cliff, and it seems that she wants her daughter Stella (Gail Russell, looking beautiful before the effects of her alcoholism began to show) to die in the same way. However, the communication between mother and daughter feels more erotic than maternal, and Stella likes it! Good grief, it’s lesbian number three. It also transpires that Mary, before she passed to the other side of the Sapphic divide, had a female lover, leading us to lesbian number four, Miss Holloway, played by gay writer and actress Cornelia Otis Skinner. And then there is a second, more benevolent ghost named Carmel who, like Meridith, appears to have a deep bond with Stella. This one seems more maternal. We never see Carmel; we only hear her voice. Could be lesbian number five, but I doubt it!

The movie gives you the occasional shiver, and it’s fun to see how Hussey and Skinner interpret their Queer characters – Hussey taking the comedic approach and Skinner giving us a variation on Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers. Today, what dazzles are Charles Lang’s immaculate, Oscar-nominated, black-and-white cinematography and Victor Young’s haunting theme for Stella, which was later transformed into a song with lyrics by Ned Washington entitled Stella by Starlight. The costumes are designed by the renowned gay costume designer Edith Head.

Now, as to Ray Milland’s Rick’s sexual preferences, well, he is a music critic. Hmmmm!

Adapted by Dodie Smith and Frank Partos from the novel Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardle.

PARAMOUNT

The Uninvited is unavailable for streaming. However, the DVD can be purchased at Amazon.

ESSAY ONE – TABLE 3 85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code THE FOUR GREAT FILM NOIRS OF THE MID-1940s ARE ABLAZE WITH QUEER ENERGY

LAURA   Otto Preminger   (1944)   Based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Vera Caspary   LIKE MOST OF THE GREAT FILM NOIRS FROM THE FORTIES, LAURA BEGINS WITH CLIFTON WEBB’S NARRATION, AND THE NARRATIVE UNFOLDS IN FLASHBACK   Remade by Burt Reynolds as Sharkey’s Machine in 1981

DOUBLE INDEMNITY   Billy Wilder   (1944)   The first James M. Cain masterpiece to be adapted for the screen, based on his  1943 novel of the same title, which appeared as an eight-part serial for Liberty magazine in February 1936.   LIKE MOST OF THE GREAT FILM NOIRS FROM THE FORTIES, DOUBLE INDEMNITY BEGINS WITH FRED MACMURRAY’S NARRATION, AND THE NARRATIVE UNFOLDS IN FLASHBACK   One of the quintessential LA movies   THE FIRST MOVIE TO SHOW THE SIGHTS OF LOS ANGELES The Dietrichson House in Glendale (actually in the Beachwood Canyon area) is where Walter first meets Phyllis (and her ankle bracelet) for the first time. The Market in Los Feliz, where Walter and Phyllis have clandestine meetings. Walters’s apartment on Melrose Avenue. The corner of Franklin and Vermont, where Walter drops off Lola (Jean Heather), Phyllis’s stepdaughter.  She suspects that her mother is up to no good. Walter and Lola are lying on the grass behind the Hollywood Bowl as a concert shimmers in the distance. Downtown Los Angeles, where the Pacific All-Risk insurance offices are located.   Remade as Body Heat by Lawrence Kasdan in 1981.

MURDER MY SWEET   Edward Dmytryk   (1944)   Based on Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel, Farewell My Lovely.   The second book and the first movie to feature private detective Philip Marlowe.   LIKE MOST OF THE GREAT FILM NOIRS FROM THE FORTIES, MURDER MY SWEET BEGINS WITH POWELL’S NARRATION, AND THE NARRATIVE UNFOLDS IN FLASHBACK   One of the quintessential LA movies   Remade, under the book’s original title, by director Dick Richards, with Robert Mitchum, in 1975

MILDRED PIERCE   Michael Curtiz   (1945)   The second James M. Cain masterpiece to be adapted for the screen, based on his 1941 novel of the same name.     LIKE MOST OF THE GREAT FILM NOIRS FROM THE FORTIES, MILDRED PIERCE BEGINS WITH CRAWFORD’S NARRATION, AND THE NARRATIVE UNFOLDS IN FLASHBACK   One of the quintessential LA movies   THE SECOND MOVIE TO SHOW THE SIGHTS OF LOS ANGELES Mildred’s original home, located at 1143 Corvallis Street, where all the houses looked alike, is actually 1143 North Jackson Street, at the intersection of East Stocker Street in Glendale. Next is Monty Beragon’s house on 26652 Latigo Shore Drive in Malibu.  The house was built in 1929 and, at the time of filming, was occupied by director Anatole Litvak.  Destroyed during the winter storms of 1983, a new house now sits on the site.   Remade for HBO Max by writer/director Todd Haynes in 2011, starring Kate Winslet, Evan Rachel Wood, and Guy Pierce.

15. Laura (1944)

A+

Otto Preminger

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Clifton Webb

ACTOR: Vincent Price

ACTRESS: Judith Anderson

I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For with Laura’s horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her. And I had just begun to write Laura’s story when – another of those detectives came to see me. I had him wait. I could watch him through the half-open door. I noted that his attention was fixed upon my clock. There was only one other in existence, and that was in Laura’s apartment in the very room where she was murdered

Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker in Laura.

Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is investigating the murder of a young, beautiful advertising executive, Laura Hunt (a magnificent Gene Tierney in a star-making performance), killed by a shotgun blast to the face just inside the doorway of her apartment. He first interviews newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb, who had become a Hollywood star at fifty), an imperious, effete (read: homosexual) older man who has become Laura’s mentor. McPherson also questions Laura’s parasitic playboy fiancé, Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), a kept man tethered to her wealthy socialite aunt, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). One night, the detective falls asleep in Laura’s apartment in front of her portrait. He is awakened by a woman entering with her key, and he is shocked to see that it is Laura. She finds a dress in her closet that belonged to one of her models, Diane Redfern. McPherson concludes that the body assumed to have been Laura was Redfern, drawn there for a liaison by the unfaithful Carpenter while Laura was away in the country. With Laura still alive, unmasking the killer becomes even more urgent.

One of the reasons for firing Laura’s original director, Rouben Mamoulian, was his attitude towards Webb. His less-than-stellar treatment of the seasoned theatrical actor on the set because of his sexual orientation has become the stuff of Hollywood lore. However, a more likely reason for his dismissal was the direction in which he was taking the material. Remember, Mamoulian is more famous for the films he didn’t make (for which he was fired) than those he did. In addition to Laura, he was also fired from the sets of Oklahoma and Cleopatra. The head of Twentieth Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck, handed the film over to producer Otto Preminger. It was a stroke of sheer genius that will never be forgotten.

Adapted from Vera Caspary’s novel by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt and an uncredited Ring Lardner Jr. The Oscar-winning cinematography is by Joseph LaShelle (trumping John Seitz’s equally stunning work on Double Indemnity), and the haunting score -one of the all-time greats – is by David Raksin.

TCF

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16. Double Indemnity (1944)

A+

Billy Wilder

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray)

*Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson)

LGBTQ+

ACTRESS: Barbara Stanwyck

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head

MY FAVORITE FILM NOIR OF THE FORTIES.

WERE NEFF AND KEYES QUEER FOR EACH OTHER?

Walter Neff, a successful insurance salesman for Pacific All-Risk Insurance, returns to his office building in downtown Los Angeles late one night. Clearly in pain, he sits at his desk and tells the whole story into a Dictaphone for his colleague Barton Keyes, a claims adjuster.

One of the greatest film noirs produced by Hollywood from the mid-forties to the fifties, this 1944 crime thriller was directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva. The screenplay was based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novel of the same title, which appeared as an eight-part serial for Liberty magazine in February 1936.

The film stars Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff, an insurance salesman, and Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson, the black widow who traps him in a plot to kill her husband and then claim the insurance money. Edward G. Robinson also stars as MacMurray’s boss, Barton Keyes, a claims adjuster whose job is to find phony claims. Double Indemnity refers to a clause in particular life insurance policies that doubles the payout when the death is accidental.

All three stars are superb, with Stanwyck and Robinson giving Oscar-worthy performances. At least Stanwyck was nominated, but she was unjustly outdone by Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. In contrast, neither MacMurray nor Robinson got any love from their peers.

Robinson’s absence from the Best Supporting Actor lineup that year is arguably the most egregious snub in Oscar history

Wilder stated in various interviews that he believed the real love affair was between Walter and Keyes. You can sense their deep attachment throughout the movie, particularly in their beautiful and moving final scene. The dynamic between Neff and Dietrichson (Stanwyck) seems more about power than genuine emotion. There is no love there.

John F. Seitz, who also photographed Wilder’s Oscar-winning The Last Weekend and Sunset Boulevard, did the cinematography.

Paramount Pictures

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17. Murder My Sweet (1944)

B+

Edward Dmytryk

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton)

LGBTQ+

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edward Stevenson

He smells nice!

(Elevator Boy about Marriott)

YOU’D BETTER PUT YOUR FLAPS DOWN, OR YOU’LL TAKE OFF

(Marlow to Marriott)

I’M NOT IN THE HABIT OF GIVING PEOPLE GROUNDS FOR BLACKMAIL, MR. MARLOWE

(Marriott)

Murder, My Sweet was released under its original book title, Farewell, My Lovely, in the United Kingdom, but was retitled for its United States release. It was the first film to feature author Raymond Chandler’s primary character, the hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe and here, I think, is a good time to dig a little deeper and list those actors who have played Marlowe down through the years:

ESSAY ONE- TABLE 4

85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code

PHILIP MARLOWE INTERPRETATIONS

YEAR	MOVIE TITLE	PHILIP MARLOWE
1944	Murder My Sweet	Dick Powell
1946	The Big Sleep	Humphrey Bogart
1947	Lady in the Lake	Robert Montgomery
1969	Marlowe	James Garner
1973	The Long Goodbye	Elliott Gould
1975	Farewell My Lovely	Robert Mitchum
2022	Marlowe	Liam Nesson

Powell is in excellent company, and he acquits himself admirably. He also gets props for being the first to play Marlowe and for making a successful transition from Warner Bros. crooner to hard-boiled private dick. It must not have been easy, especially since director Edward Dmytryk’s and screenwriter John Paxton’s plot lines become as confusing as Howard Hawks’s narrative twists in The Big Sleep. But while the supporting cast is fine – Esther Howard, Anne Shirley, Claire Trevor, Otto Kruger, Miles Mander and the marvelous Mike Mazurki – there is nothing here to compare with Humphrey Bogart’s bookstore dalliance with Dorothy Malone in Hawks’ masterpiece.

Which brings us to our LGBTQ+ character. His name is Lindsay Marriott, and character actor Douglas Walton plays him. He only has two scenes before he is dispatched in true Queer fashion. We even sense his Queerness before we set eyes on him – the elevator boy, who has let him up, in advance, to Marlowe’s office, thinks, He Smells Nice. And, finally, there he is, mincing around the office in his fabulous overcoat and ascot tie, as nervous as Bette Davis without a cigarette. And, despite his protestations, he is being blackmailed to make a money-for-jewels exchange. How sad!

Dmytryk and the film’s producer, Adrian Scott, were members of the Hollywood Ten and spent time in jail for being members of the Communist Party and exercising their First Amendment rights. Blacklisted from working in Hollywood, Dmytryk changed his mind and named names, including that of film director Jules Dassin, and his career recovered. But at what cost? Scott did not name names and moved to England, like many in his situation. Anne Shirley, who married Scott and retired from acting after this film, sent him a Dear John letter asking for a divorce, which she obtained in 1948 after four years of marriage. She lived the rest of her life in Los Angeles.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Harry J. Wild

RKO

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18. Mildred Pierce (1945)

A+

Michael Curtiz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:

*Ida Corwin (Eve Arden)

*Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott)

LGBTQ+

COSTUME DESIGNER: Milo Anderson

ART–SET DIRECTION: George James Hopkins

Joan Crawford plays Mildred, and Ann Blyth plays Veda, the most ungrateful daughter in Cinema history, in Mildred Pierce, director Michael Curtiz’s masterful adaptation (from an Oscar-nominated script by Ranald MacDougall and several other uncredited writers) of the 1941 novel by James M. Cain. It was Crawford’s first starring role for Warner Bros. after leaving MGM, and she deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Actress of 1945.

Pierce is the centerpiece of the mid-1940s Cain triptych, the other two movies being Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, produced at Paramount in 1944, and Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, made at MGM in 1946. All three movies are characterized by plots that hook you immediately and contain some of the best acting and directing of the 1940s, making Cain one of the best-served writers whose works have been adapted to the screen by Hollywood.

The film opens on the Malibu (or, possibly, Santa Monica) pier after the murder of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), Mildred’s second husband. The sequence ends with a magnificent close-up: a reflection of Crawford’s Mildred bathed in fur. The police tell Mildred that her first husband, Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett), is guilty of the murder because he owns the gun, has a motive, and does not deny the crime. Mildred protests that he is too kind to commit murder and begins to tell her story, in a flashback, to the officer.

Mildred and Bert Pierce are an unhappily married couple living in the LA suburb of Glendale, California. After Bert splits with his business partner, Wally Fay (Jack Carson), Mildred must sell her baked goods to support the family. Bert accuses Mildred of favoring their two daughters over him. Their quarrel intensifies after a phone call from Bert’s mistress, Maggie Biederhof (Lee Patrick), and they separate.

Mildred retains custody of sixteen-year-old Veda (Blyth), a bratty social climber, and ten-year-old Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), a genial tomboy. Because they live in working-class Glendale, as opposed to the more sophisticated, adjacent Pasadena, Veda lives her life in constant shame. She must be placated by a stream of material possessions from Mildred, who secures an additional job as a waitress, and then parleys her skills into what turns out to be a highly successful chain of chicken-and-waffle restaurants called Mildred’s, which she runs with her good friend Ida, beautifully played by Eve Arden in her only Oscar-nominated role. Although subtle, there is enough queer coding in their scenes together to suggest that Ida has feelings for Mildred that probably go beyond mere friendship. Also, because of Arden’s unique delivery, Ida becomes the film’s voice of reason, and her character contrasts with Mildred’s, whose life is consumed by ever-increasing schemes to gain the respect and love for her daughter.

Mildred meets the wealthy Pasadena playboy Monty Beragon and, although she does not love him, marries him so that he can introduce Veda into elite society. Monty, himself, is not wealthy, and Mildred begins embezzling from her own business to cover Monty’s family’s debts, in addition to Veda’s lavish lifestyle; nevertheless, all of Mildred’s Herculean efforts to please Veda amount to nothing.

Brilliantly filmed in high Germanic style by a wondrously talented bunch of ex-pat Viennese uber talents (in addition to Curtiz, we have Anton Grot’s production design and one of Max Steiner’s better scores) — plus Ernest Haller’s black-and-white cinematography and George James Hopkins’ art direction —Mildred Pierce is one of the great film noirs of the forties.

Curtiz’s presentation of high melodrama bordering on camp makes Pierce a Queer Film par excellence. In addition to Arden’s Ida there is another queer character – Zachary Scott, whose Hollywood career ran out of steam before the end of the decade, gives Monty a fey touch, constantly raising the possibility that his sexual proclivities also extended to men.

I also love Mildred Pierce for its lack of subtlety in the health department. Watching it reminds me that when a character coughs, even just a single cough, in a pre-1960 Hollywood movie, you know they will be dead in the next scene or the scene after that. Remember poor Elizabeth Taylor in Jane Eyre? From that first delicate hack, you knew she was a goner.

This scenario also features in Mildred Pierce, and involves poor Kay, the good daughter. With just one cough, we know that Kay’s fate is sealed and that her chances of surviving the trip to Lake Arrowhead with Veda and Bert are slim!

Astonishingly, she does make it back to Glendale—but in an oxygen tent! This allows Curtiz to set up one of the most memorable scenes in the movie. When poor Kay takes her last breath, even before Mildred or Veda has time to react, the nurse rushes to turn off the precious oxygen supply.

This scene never ceases to send me into paroxysms of laughter. However, I never stop caring. Like Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Mildred Pierce plays as drama and camp simultaneously, with no dichotomy between the two. And for that, I am always grateful.

With Butterfly McQueen, in a brief but peerless piece of high camp in which she plays Mildred’s maid, hired and costumed, of course, by Veda – I told you this was delicious stuff!

WARNER BROS.

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19. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

(A)

Albert Lewin

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield)

*Basil Hallward (Lowell Gilmore)

 LGBTQ+

SOURCE MATERIAL: The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel by Oscar Wilde.

ACTOR: Hurd Hatfield

ACTOR: Lowell Gilmore

COSTUME DESIGNER: Arlington Valles

ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons

We all know the story of a handsome young man, Dorian Gray, who wishes that his portrait would age instead of him. As he indulges in a life of corruption and hedonism, the picture becomes grotesque. At the same time, Dorian himself remains outwardly youthful, leading to tragedy when his sins catch up with him.

Having worked as Irving Thalberg’s closest assistant, winning an Oscar for producing Mutiny on the Bounty, Albert Lewin became a producer at Paramount after The Boy Wonder passed away at age 37 in 1936. Always a man with great literary aspirations, he went one step further and became a writer/director, debuting with a mediocre adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence. However, back at MGM, he directed his masterpiece, a superb adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with an impossibly beautiful Hurd Hatfield as Dorian – the fact that his performance was subtle to the point of understatement has always seemed suitable to me. He’s like Tyrone Power with a permanent facial mask.

Beautifully handled by Lewin, it is one of MGM’s best movies of the Forties, boasting superb production design and gorgeous black and white cinematography by Oscar winner Harry Stradling – breaking into color for the climactic closeup of Ivan Le Lorraine Albright’s infamous painting now at the Art Institute of Chicago. The superb cast includes George Sanders as Lord Henry Wotton, Wild’s heterosexual stand-in, scattering his bon mots like rose petals at a wedding, Angela Lansbury getting her second Oscar nomination in two years as Sybil Vane, the young girl that Dorian destroys, which seals his fate, Richard Fraser as her vengeful brother and Peter Lawford and Donna Reed, both looking impossibly fresh and youthful. Finally, there is Dorian’s best friend, Basil Hallward. He is played by gay actor Lowell Gilmore, who, like Hatfield, deserved much better from Hollywood.

MGM

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20. Gilda (1946)

A-

Charles Vidor

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford)

*Ballin Mundson (George Macready)

LGBTQ+

CHOREOGRAPHER: Jack Cole

COSTUME DESIGNER: Jean Louis

WERE FARRELL AND MUNDSON QUEER FOR EACH OTHER?

Feast your eyes on Charles Vidor’s stylish direction, Rudolph Mate’s lush black-and-white cinematography (unusual for a noir film), the Jean Louis gowns, and, of course, Rita Hayworth as Gilda, one of Hollywood’s most iconic heroines.

Although Glenn Ford and George Macready always insisted that they believed their characters were gay, Vidor disagreed. The plot and the characters’ motivations are hopelessly convoluted, so Gilda is a problematic film to grade on the queer spectrum. However, it’s Queer enough to have two of the most significant song numbers in the history of Cinema: Put the Blame on Mame and Amado Mio, sung in grand style by Hayworth (dubbed by Anita Ellis) and stunningly choreographed by the Father of Theatrical Jazz Dance, Jack Cole. Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts wrote both of the classic songs.

The original screenplay, written by Jo Eisinger, Marion Parsonnet, and Ben Hecht (uncredited), is based on a story by E.A. Ellington.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

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21. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

(A)

Lewis Milestone

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Martha (Barbara Stanwyck)

*Walter (Kirk Douglas)

LGBTQ+

ACTRESS: Barbara Stanwyck

ACTRESS: Lizabeth Scott

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head

One of the great film noirs, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, introduces us to three people bound together by the events of a single violent night—and then shows how that secret shapes their adult lives. In 1920s Iverstown, young Martha Ivers lives under the tyrannical rule of her wealthy aunt. One stormy night, the aunt is killed. Martha, her timid tutor‑in‑training Walter, and streetwise runaway Sam are all present—but the truth of who struck the fatal blow becomes the film’s central moral fault line. Walter’s ambitious father manipulates the situation, crafting a version of events that protects Martha and positions Walter for a future in politics. Sam, the only outsider, flees town. Years later, Sam (Van Heflin) drifts back into Iverstown by accident. He finds Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) now married to Walter, running the family empire with icy poise. Walter (Kirk Douglas, in his film debut) is now the district attorney, alcoholic, brittle, and terrified of the secret that underpins his entire life. Sam’s return destabilizes the marriage. Martha sees in him a chance at escape—or rekindled passion. Walter sees a threat that could expose everything. A fourth character—Toni (Lizabeth Scott), a vulnerable ex‑con Sam befriends—grounds the story emotionally and gives Sam a moral anchor.

Stanwyck gives one of her most controlled, lethal performances, and Douglas’s debut is astonishing – he plays Walter as a man who has been dying for years, a man whose entire identity is built around Martha—not as a heterosexual partner, but as someone who has fused his sense of self to hers in a way that feels more like a closeted emotional bond than a marriage. Barbara Stanwyck’s Martha is one of the great queer-coded femmes of the 1940s. Her attraction to Sam is less romantic than territorial—she wants him as a symbol of the freedom she was denied. She is dominant, strategic, and emotionally armored. She occupies the “masculine” role in the marriage: she controls the money, the politics, the narrative.

This is a classic queer-coded triangle where desire is displaced, redirected, and sublimated. The marriage between Martha and Walter is a façade built on a shared secret, not intimacy. Sam’s reappearance exposes the emotional truth: they are bound to each other by guilt, not love.

Directed with great style by Lewis Milestone.

Screenplay by Robert Rossen based on an original motion picture story by John Patrick

Cinematography: Victor Milner

Paramount

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22. Brute Force (1947)

B+

Jules Dassin

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn)

Brute Force was among several noir films made by director Jules Dassin during the postwar period. The others were Thieves’ Highway, The Naked City, and Night and the City. The latter is a rare film noir set in London. He had gone to London because of rumors that he was going to be investigated by HUAC, or the House Un-American Activities Committee. Shortly after his return to the US, he was named by a recanting Edward Dmytryk, and his Hollywood career was over.

Brute Force is an expertly told prison-break story with an above-average original screenplay by future director Richard Brooks, whose novel The Brick Foxhole was adapted, the same year, by writer John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryck for the movie Crossfire, changing the book’s theme of homophobia to antisemitism for the movie. Our LGBTQ+ character is the hateful Captain Munsey, a sadist who speaks in a slightly higher octave than the rest of the male cast and the prison’s lone female warden. Munsey is fastidious about his looks – there is a beautiful and lovingly choreographed shaving sequence – and he is interested in art and music. There is no doubt about it. He is a raving homosexual and a very nasty one at that! Hume Cronyn, a consummate actor, plays Munsey’s queerness to the hilt.

Cronyn has played several gay parts on stage and screen and helped gay writer Arthur Laurents adapt Rope for Hitchcock; his performance is never insulting. In fact, we are constantly on the edge of our seats in case he orders another unfortunate inmate to his office for another round of torture. But Cronyn is not the only actor who you cannot take your eyes off. A superb Burt Lancaster, who had just become a star in producer Mark Hellinger’s The Killers, is back in Hellinger territory as Joe Collins, a prisoner who cannot take the Munsey treatment and is planning a breakout. His fellow prisoners consist of such greats as Charles Bickford, Sam Levene, Jeff Corey, Whit Bissell, and Art Smith, who, as the prison’s alcoholic doctor, gets to break the fourth wall and make an appeal to the audience as the closing credits begin to roll.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

William Daniels

UNIVERSAL

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23. Red River (1948)

A-

Howard Hawks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift)

*Cherry Valance (John Ireland)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Montgomery Clift

In one of the greatest Westerns ever made, director Howard Hawks takes us along the infamous Chisholm Trail, and the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas. In one of his most emblematic roles, John Wayne is Thomas Dunson, the rancher who initiates the affair, while Montgomery Clift is Garth, his (adopted) son. Of course, they clash at every opportunity in the excellent script by Borden Chase and Charles Schnee. The year was 1948, and Clift was breaking out all over. In Red River, he held his own in his dramatic confrontations with Wayne. Meanwhile, he was equally impressive as the American soldier in Fred Zinnemann’s The Search and the unfortunate gentleman caller in William Wyler’s The Heiress.

River was his film debut, and it’s kudos all the way, particularly when you realize that he was diving in at the deep end by doing some major flirting with John Ireland’s gunslinger Cheery Valance. The two become inseparable, and, in one classic scene, Valance asks to see Garth’s gun. They compare sizes and have a shootout! It’s one of the incredible gay moments on film.

Also, with Walter Brennan, Noah Beery Jr., Joanne Dru, and Coleen Gray – Both Dru and Gray are superb, and Red River impresses as one of the few Westerns with not just one but two memorable female characters. The stunning cinematography (black and white) is by Hawks’ favorite cameraman, Russell Harlan. The rousing score is by Dimitri Tiomkin. Edited by Christian Nyby.

Adapted from the 1946 story The Chisholm Trail in The Saturday Evening Post by Borden Chase.

MONTEREY PRODUCTIONS (Howard Hawks)

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24. Rope (1948)

A-

Alfred Hitchcock

(APPROVED)

 Filmed in 8 x 10-minute takes.

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Rupert Cadell (James Stewart)

*Brandon Shaw (John Dall)

* Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: John Dall

ACTOR: Farley Granger

SCREENWRITER: Arthur Laurents

COSTUME DESIGNER: Gilbert Adrian

HITCHCOCK’S FIRST FILM IN COLOR

Hitchcock’s famous experiment could have evolved over coffee with Eisenstein. The two great directors, having mastered the language of cinema many times over, now know that it is a marriage of two separate yet complementary entities:

1) Mise-en-scene: the production design, costume design, camera position and movement and the actors’ positions and movement within a scene.
2) editing, or what you fashion from your mise-en-scene to make your movie

But Hitchcock wants to know what a movie would be like if you eliminated editing and only had mise-en-scene. Would it be like a filmed play, taken by someone in the audience with a movie camera? There was, however, a problem in that each film’s reel only lasted 10 minutes. Hitchcock overcame this by backing the camera up to an inanimate object, such as furniture, and quickly changing the film.

Adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s play by actor/writer Hume Cronyn with a screenplay by gay writer Arthur Laurents, the story is based on the famous Leopold & Loeb case from the early twenties. Farley Granger and John Dall are perfect as Phillip Morgan and Brandon Shaw, the two young aesthetes (read homosexual couple) who strangle to death their former classmate from prep school in their Manhattan penthouse apartment. They commit the crime as an intellectual exercise: they want to prove their superiority by committing the perfect murder. After hiding the body in a large antique wooden chest, Brandon and Phillip host a dinner party, using the chest as a buffet table for the food, at the apartment, which boasts a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. The guests, unaware of what has happened, include the victim’s father, Mr. Kentley (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) and his aunt (Constance Collier); his mother is unable to attend due to a cold. Also present are David’s fiancée, Janet Walker (Joan Chandler), and her former lover, Kenneth Lawrence (Douglas Dick), who was once David’s close friend. Brandon and Phillip’s idea for the murder was inspired years earlier by conversations with their prep-school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell (played by Jimmy Stewart, who is also excellent). While they were at school, Rupert had discussed with them, in an apparently approving way, the intellectual concepts of Nietzsche’s Superman to show one’s superiority over others. He, too, is among the guests at the party since Brandon, in particular, thinks that he would approve of their work of art. It is also intimated that Cadell is the boys’ former lover.

The result is an astonishing achievement and one of Hitchcock’s best films. Yet, despite the film’s overall excellence, you know that Hitch is disabled by having half of the silver screen’s vernacular off limits. It’s like he’s working with only the right (spatial) side of his brain.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Joseph Valentine and William Skall

Transatlantic Pictures (Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein)

Cameo one: 0:01:51: Just after Hitchcock’s credit towards the end of the opening sequence, walking alongside a woman.

Cameo two: 0:55:00 Through the window, we see a red flashing neon sign of his trademark profile

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25. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

A+

Director Robert Hamer

(Approved After Major Revisions, later restored).

Produced by: Michael Balcon and Michael Relph

Production Company: Ealing Studios

US Distributor: Eagle-Lion Films

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Lady Agatha D’Ascoyne (Alec Guinness)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Robert Hamer

ACTOR: Alec Guinness

ACTOR: Dennis Price

SCREENWRITER: Robert Hamer

COSTUME DESIGNER: Anthony Mendleson

MY FAVORITE BRITISH MOVIE

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) is the most delicious concoction ever produced by Michael Balcon and Michael Relph’s Ealing Studios, and it remains my favorite British film. Robert Hamer’s exquisitely intelligent and stylish direction, based on a screenplay he wrote with John Dighton (The Man in the White Suit and Roman Holiday), flows like dark chocolate over a mouthwatering sundae.

Starring the deliciously urbane Dennis Price as lowly draper’s assistant Louis Mazzini, who finds himself distantly in line for a dukedom. Infuriated by this aristocratic family’s cruel treatment of his mother – she eloped with his father, who was a lowly musician – he becomes a serial killer, setting out to systematically murder all eight of the D’Ascoynes ahead of him in line for the seat of the Duke of Chalfont, up to, and including, Ethelred, the sitting 8th Duke.

Alec Guinness has fun playing all nine D’Ascoynes. In a short flashback involving the elopement of Louis’ father and mother, we also see him as Ethelred the 7th Duke of Chalfont, Ethelred’s father. That’s three generations and both sexes, with the older generations offering a delicious tongue-in-cheek glimpse into the professions favored by the male members of the British upper classes in the Edwardian era. By the time Louis finds himself employed by the Banker, Lord Ascoyne D’Ascoyne, the first of Louis’ casualties, his son, Young Ascoyne D’Ascoyne, has already died in a boating accident. The names of Louis’s eight victims and their method of dispatch are as follows:

ESSAY ONE – TABLE5 85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code Alec Guinness plays all nine D’Ascoynes.
The House of D’Ascoyne Chalfont	Cause of Death
Ethelred D’Ascoyne, the 7th Duke of Chalfont	Death by natural causes
Ethelred D’Ascoyne, the 8th Duke of Chalfont	Hunting accident
The Reverend, Lord Henry D’Ascoyne	Poisoned
The General,   Lord Rufus D’Ascoyne	Bomb
The Admiral, Lord Horatio D’Ascoyne	Goes down with his ship
The Banker, Lord Ascoyne D’Ascoyne	Louis’s employer, and final victim, dies of shock on learning that he is the last D’Ascoyne standing.
Lady Agatha D’Ascoyne, Ethelred’s sister, a militant lesbian suffragette	Louis shoots down her hot air balloon while she is distributing leaflets over London. Death by blunt force trauma.
Young Ascoyne D’Ascoyne, a philanderer	Death by drowning – after Louis tampers with the floodgates
Young Henry D’Ascoyne, an amateur photographer and the only good egg in the basket.	Death by Explosion – after Louis tampers with his darkroom chemicals

However, Price is the star of Kind Hearts and Coronets, helped immeasurably by his two magnificent leading ladies. First, we have the plum-voiced Joan Greenwood, dazzling as that little minx Sybella whose very utterance is at once an aphrodisiac and a condemnation. And then there is the aristocratic Valerie Hobson, never better as the pure-at-heart Edith D’Ascoyne, widow of Young Henry D’Ascoyne, and the person on whom Louis sets his sights to marry. Finally, there is the great Miles Matheson, who has a few classic moments as the hangman. He cannot believe that he will be in the presence of a duke and wants to know how to behave in his company.

The screenplay was adapted from Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal. The novel’s strong anti-Semitic sentiment had to be removed.

Douglas Slocombe’s black-and-white cinematography marked a visual peak for Ealing.

POINTS OF INTEREST

Both Robert Hamer and Dennis Price suffered from alcoholism, and both of their careers peaked with this movie.

Valerie Hobson found herself in a life-imitating art scenario when she stood by her husband, the disgraced politician John Profumo, during the 1963 scandal.

Leeds Castle in Kent was used as the family home of Chalfont.

The film’s title comes from the antepenultimate stanza of the poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere by Lord Alfred Tennyson, published in 1842: However it be / it seems to me, / ‘Tis only noble to be good. / Kind hearts are more than coronets, / And simple faith than Norman blood,

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26. Adam’s Rib(1949)

(A)

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Kip Lurie (David Wayne)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: George Cukor

ACTOR: Spencer Tracy

ACTRESS: Katherine Hepburn

ACTRESS: Hope Emerson

COSTUME DESIGNER: Walter Plunkett

ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons

MY FAVORITE TRACY-HEPBURN MOVIE

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn (Adam and Amanda Bonner) are married lawyers who find themselves on opposite sides of a sensational trial involving Doris Attinger (Judy Holiday), who shoots her unfaithful husband (Tom Ewell) after catching him with his mistress. After a dramatic courtroom showdown, including a memorable moment where Amanda has a female weightlifter (Hope Emerson) hoist Adam to demonstrate female strength, the Bonners reconcile, acknowledging the complexities of equality in both law and love.

Screenwriters Ruth Gordon and husband Garson Kanin populated their court case comedy with a bunch of great supporting characters played by the likes of Holliday, Emerson, Ewell, Jean Hagen and, as Amanda’s best friend, David Wayne’s Kip Lurie. Kip is their next-door neighbor and a Broadway composer.

Gay with his closely cropped hair (so fashionable today!) and flamboyant behavior, he is the constant butt of Adam’s putdowns, such that it wouldn’t be hard to turn Kip into a woman since he is halfway there already. Kip, nevertheless, pursues Amanda with dogged determination to the point of composing a song especially for and about her entitled Farewell Amanda (written by Cole Porter, no less). Thanks to Wayne’s inspired performance, Kip is one of Hollywood’s most memorable gay characters from the Hays Code era.

Oscar-nominated original screenplay by Gordon and Kanin.

Hepburn and Cukor, Gordon and Kanin arranged for Judy Holliday’s scenes to showcase her comedic talents as a kind of audition, so that the boss of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, would relent and give her the role of Billie Dawn, which she had created on the Broadway stage. They succeeded and, two years later, Holiday picked up a Best Actress Oscar for Born Yesterday, which was also directed by Cukor.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

George Folsey

MGM

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27. All About Eve (1950)

A+

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter)

*Addison DeWitt (George Saunders)

LGBTQ+

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head

COSTUME DESIGNER: Charles LeMaire

EVERYONE’S FAVORITE BETTE DAVIS MOVIE

Anne Baxter plays the scheming understudy Eve Harrington, while George Sanders plays the influential drama critic Addison DeWitt. Both Eve and Addison are gay, and Addison blackmails Eve, letting her know how much they have in common:

That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability, but that, in itself, is probably the reason. You’re an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition – and talent. We deserve each other…and you realize, and you agree how completely you belong to me?

Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) to Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) in All About Eve

Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s masterpiece is based on one of the greatest screenplays ever written (by Mankiewicz from Mary Orr’s short story The Wisdom of Eve). It highlights the most extraordinary, cherished, quoted, and imitated performance of all time by Hollywood’s most outstanding actress, Bette Davis, as Margo Channing.

One of the best casts ever assembled for a motion picture, Left to Right, is pictured above: Gary Merrill, Bette Davis, George Sanders, Anne Baxter, Hugh Marlowe, and Celeste Holm. Also featured were Thelma Ritter (getting the first of her six best supporting actress nominations), Gregory Ratoff, Barbara Bates, and, making quite an impression in her second major part (after The Asphalt Jungle over at MGM), Marilyn Monroe.

Cinematography by Milton Krasner

TCF

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28. Caged (1950)

C-

John Cromwell

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Evelyn Harper, the sadistic matron (Hope Emerson)

*Kitty Stark, the murderous shoplifter (Betty Garde)

*Ruth Benton, the reformist prison superintendent (Agnes Moorhead)

LGBTQ+

ACTRESS: Hope Emerson

ACTRESS: Agnes Moorehead

Hype the New Fish

Betty Garde, on seeing Eleanor Parker for the first time

Marie Allen, a naïve 19‑year‑old newlywed (Eleanor Parker), enters prison after being an accessory to robbery. Over time, she is brutalized by the system, hardened by corrupt guards and inmates, and transformed from an innocent into a cynical convict, illustrating how prison destroys rather than rehabilitates.

In Hollywood’s first female prison movie, director John Cromwell presents us with the typical prison dyke tropes on both sides of the equation. Hope Emerson is the sadistic correctional officer, Agnes Moorehead is the enlightened prison warden, and Betty Garde is the inmate who gives Marie the advice she needs to survive within the prison walls. Although its heart is in the right place, like many message movies, it has not dated well.

The original screenplay, written by Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld, is based on a story by Kellogg and Schoenfeld.

Oscar nominations for Parker and Emerson.

Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie

Warner Bros.

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29. Young Man with a Horn (1950)

(B)

Michael Curtiz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Amy North (Lauren Bacall)

*Miss Carson (Katherine Kurasch, uncredited)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Milo Anderson

A LESBIAN COUPLE OUTWITS THE HAYS OFFICE

Like Mildred Pierce, this is another Michael Curtiz movie that works equally well as drama and camp. Lauren Bacall is Kirk – a young man with a horn – Douglas’ society wife, who is also a closeted lesbian. But not for long! One evening, she brings home a beautiful and sophisticated date, Miss Carson (Katherine Kurasch, uncredited). Miss Carson is an artist, and Betty has been checking out her collection! Also, when Bacall makes the introduction, This is my husband, Miss Carson, I told you about her, the placement of the three actors in the scene and the inflection in Bacall’s voice suggest that it is Miss Carson who is Bacall’s life partner, not Douglas. This time, Kirk has had enough. He clinches his teeth as only Kirk can and proclaims, YOU’RE A SICK GIRL, AMY. Turning the other cheek, he runs off with a Warner Bros-era Doris Day to presumably live happily ever after – as all straight characters who manage to get out of the clutches of a gay partner do in Hollywood (and Canada – see The Fox, below) movies.

Douglas’ character is based on trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke.

Adapted from the novel by Dorothy Baker.

Cinematography: Ted McCord

Warner Bros.

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30. In a Lonely Place (1950)

A-

Nicholas Ray

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray

COSTUME DESIGNER: Jean Louis

In a Lonely Place is one of two masterworks that gay director Nicholas Ray crafted in the first half of the 1950s, and both films bear the unmistakable imprint of a queer sensibility. Each uses the noir framework to probe the social codes and moral pressures that hem in their characters, forcing them into choices shaped less by desire than by the rigid expectations of the world around them. Ray’s cinema in this period becomes a study in how people contort themselves to survive—emotionally, romantically, and socially—within a culture that punishes deviation and vulnerability.

Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is a once‑promising Hollywood screenwriter whose career has stalled. He’s known for his temper, his cynicism, and his inability to play the studio game. One night, he invites a young hat‑check girl home to summarize a novel he’s supposed to adapt. She leaves alive—but is found murdered the next morning. Dix becomes the prime suspect. Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), Dix’s neighbor, provides him with an alibi. She’s glamorous, self‑possessed, and emotionally bruised from past relationships. Her testimony clears him, and the two fall into a passionate, almost reckless romance. For a moment, Dix seems redeemed. He writes again. He softens. He dreams of a future, but the murder investigation never fully goes away—and neither does Dix’s volatility

Ray’s uses queer-coded emotional language to examine the tragedy of people who want to connect but can’t live truthfully. Bogart is superb. Unable to be in a stable heterosexual relationship and deeply suspicious of intimacy he is terrified of being “found out”. By contrast, Gloria Graham’s Laurel is not a femme fatale; she’s a woman who slowly realizes she’s in a relationship with someone who cannot love her in the way she needs.

One of the essential movies of the 1950s.

Screenplay by Andrew P. Solt and Edmund H. North from the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Columbia Pictures

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31. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

A+

Elia Kazan

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*The Boy, Blanche’s late husband, a suicide.

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Marlon Brando

SCREENWRITER: Tennessee Williams

SOURCE MATERIAL: Tennessee Williams (adapted from his play A Streetcar Named Desire)

ART-SET DIRECTOR: George James Hopkins

HOLLYWOOD’S BEST STAGE TO SCREEN ADAPTATION

TWO OF THE GREATEST PERFORMANCES IN MOVIE HISTORY

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), directed by Elia Kazan and adapted from Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, tells the story of Blanche DuBois, a fading Southern belle who moves in with her sister, Stella, and her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans. Blanche’s fragile illusions clash with Stanley’s raw vitality, leading to psychological breakdown and tragedy.

Arguably, the best play-to-film adaptation of all time, with two outstanding performances: Vivien Leigh as Blanche and Marlon Brando as Stanley. In one of her terrific monologues, Blanche reveals that the boy she married was gay and killed himself.

But I was unlucky. Deluded. There was something about the boy. A nervousness, a tenderness……an uncertainty. And I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why this boy, who wrote poetry…. didn’t seem able to do anything else. He lost every job. He came to me for help. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything…. except that I loved him…. unendurably. At night I pretended to sleep. I heard him crying. Crying the way a lost child cries.

Blanche DuBois (VIVIEN LEIGH): A Streetcar Named Desire.

I killed him. One night…..we drove out to a place called Moon Lake Casino. We danced the Varsouviana. Suddenly, in the middle of the dance, the boy I married broke away from me…..and ran out of the casino. A few minutes later…..a shot. I ran. All did. All ran and gathered about the terrible thing at the edge of the lake. He’d stuck a revolver into his mouth…..and fired. It was because…..on the dance floor…..unable to stop myself, I’d said: “You’re weak. I’ve lost respect for you. I despise you.” And then…..the searchlight which had been turned on the world….was turned off again. And never…..for one moment since, has there been any light stronger than…Than this…..yellow lantern.

Blanche DuBois (VIVIEN LEIGH): A Streetcar Named Desire.

Cinematography: Harry Stradling

Warner Bros.

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32. Strangers on a Train (1951)

A-

Alfred Hitchcock

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Bruno Antony (Robert Walker)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Farley Granger

SOURCE MATERIAL: Patricia Highsmith (based on her novel “Strangers on a Train”)

ART–SET DIRECTOR: George James Hopkins

HITCHCOCK TACKLES HIGHSMITH

Hitchcock reverses himself here, having gay actor Farley Granger play the straight character and straight actor Robert Walker play the gay character. Unfortunately, Granger’s character finds his happy ending in the arms of the not-so-great Ruth Roman, who, together with Anne Baxter (in I Confess), is known to be Hitchcock’s least favorite actress. Walker died, aged thirty-two, a few weeks after the film’s release.

Architect Guy Haines (Granger), a professional tennis player, wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam (Kasey Rogers), so he can marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner (Roman). While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno (Walker), a psychopathic playboy who proposes an idea to exchange murders: Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno’s father (Jonathan Hale); neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy’s wife while Guy is away in Mexico. Now Bruno wants Guy to keep up his side of the bargain.

Gay writer Patricia Highsmith also wrote five novels featuring the gay sociopath character Tom Ripley, which have seen numerous TV and movie adaptations, the most famous of which is Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960) – see below – with Alain Delon, The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999) with Matt Damon and the eight-episode limited series on Netflix written and directed by Steve Zaillian, photographed in black-and-white by Robert Elswit and starring a superb Andrew Scott.

The movie was a huge success, ending a Hitchcock dry spell that included Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950), and it contains several of Hitch’s most famous sequences, such as the tennis match and the out-of-control carousel. Walker is stunning here, showing, as he did in a polar opposite role with Judy Garland in Vincente Minnelli’s “The Clock” from 1945, what a superb actor he could be, making his untimely death all the more tragic. Special mention also to Marion Lorne, who has one memorable scene as Bruno’s mother – she appears to be as crazy as her son. The movie also contains Patricia Hitchcock’s most significant film role as Roman’s younger sister, and she acquits herself nicely. However, I don’t think the movie-going public was surprised when she gradually drifted to work on the other side of the camera.

Granger is fine. However, unlike in Rope, where he is perfectly cast, here, as the straight leading man, something is lacking in his performance, hurting the movie. He is not a star. For this reason, Strangers on a Train does NOT rank among Hitchcock’s SEVEN PERFECT FILMS for all its great moments.

Cinematography: Robert Burks

This would be the first of twelve movies that Robert Burks and Alfred Hitchcock collaborated on, including Burks’ Oscar-winning film, To Catch a Thief (1955). Their partnership from 1951 to 1964 ranks as one of the most significant director-cinematographer collaborations in Hollywood history, paralleling Hitchcock’s close relationship with his gifted composer, Bernard Herrmann (eight movies from 1955 to 1964), and his skilled editor, George Tomasini (nine movies from 1954 to 1964). Only Hitchcock’s professional relationship with his wife, screenwriter Alma Reville, lasted longer (nineteen films from 1926 to 1953).

Warner Bros.

Hitchcock’s cameos:

Cameo one: 0:02:22 He’s on the book’s cover that Farley Granger is reading.Cameo two:0:10:34 He’s seen boarding a train with a double bass as Farley Granger gets off in his hometown. The double bass is no accident since Hitchcock fills the movie with doubles and criss-crosses.

REMADE AS THROW MOMMA FROM A TRAIN BY DANNY DE VITO IN 1987

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33. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

B+

Howard Hawks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*The Boys in the Gym.

LGBTQ+

CHOREOGRAPHER: Jack Cole

COSTUME DESIGNER: William Travilla

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) is a musical comedy starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell as two showgirls traveling to Paris. Lorelei Lee (Monroe) is engaged to a wealthy man but pursued by his suspicious father’s detective, while Dorothy Shaw (Russell) enjoys the attention of handsome suitors. The film blends romance, comedy, and iconic musical numbers.

In one of those numbers, Jane Russell cannot understand – but gives us the wink-wink that she does understand – why all the boys in the gym won’t give her a second look. It’s Howard Hawks again, this time adapting the Jule Stein/Leo Robin Broadway smash Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Russell is singing Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love. At the same time, the boys only have eyes for themselves and their buddies. Meanwhile, Marilyn is more interested in a particular kind of rock, leading to an even more spectacular musical number titled Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Like Gilda and its famous musical numbers, Put the Blame on Mame and Amado Mio, an essential ingredient in the magic of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Jack Cole’s choreography.

Adapted from the play by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields and the Broadway musical by Stein and Robin.

Cinematography: Harry J. Wild

TCF

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34. Calamity Jane (1953)

(B)

David Butler

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Calamity Jane (Doris Day)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Howard Shoup

BEST QUEER SONG IN A MOVIE

“MY SECRET LOVE”

(Music Sammy Fain, Lyrics Paul Francis Webster)

Calamity Jane is a Technicolor Western musical starring Doris Day as the legendary frontierswoman and Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok. Set in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, the film blends comedy, romance, and song as Jane’s brash, tomboyish persona collides with her softer side, culminating in her discovery of love and self-acceptance.

Doris Day was much more delightful in her tomboy Warner Bros. roles than she was playing all those professional virgins at Universal. And playing the famous Calamity Jane, she is at the apex of her Queerness. She has her hair cropped, she’s wearing buckskins, and she’s willing to draw a gun on anyone who makes fun of her. Although in love with Howard Keel‘s Wil Bill, she doesn’t want to give up her gender-transgressing ways. Her inner conflict is finally announced to the Universe in one of the best uses of song in the history of Cinema: Day’s spectacular delivery of the Sammy Fain-Paul Francis Webster masterpiece “Secret Love,” a cri de coeur that every gay can relate to.

Original screenplay by James O’Hanlon.

Cinematography by Wilfrid M. Cline

Warner Bros.

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35. I Vitelloni (1953)

A-

Federico Fellini

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sergio Natali (Achille Majeroni)

Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni follows five young men in their early twenties — Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi), Alberto (Alberto Sordi), Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), Leopoldo (Leopoldo Trieste), and Riccardo (Riccardo Fellini, the director’s brother). They drift through life in a provincial seaside town, caught between adolescence and adulthood.

This was Fellini’s third feature as a director, made after his screenwriting collaborations with Rossellini and just before his international breakthrough with La Strada. The film blends neorealist observation with a nostalgic tone, supported by a lush Nino Rota score. Like Fellini’s later autobiographical work, it captures a vivid sense of time and place — a town clearly inspired by his Rimini childhood, even though the movie wasn’t filmed there.

One of the film’s most striking moments involves an aging stage actor (Achille Majeroni) who makes an advance on Leopoldo during a stormy night by the beach. This scene is often cited as one of the earliest depictions of a gay character in Italian cinema, subtle but historically important.

Franco Fabrizi takes the acting honors as the newly married and shockingly unfaithful Fausto, while Alberto Sordi’s Alberto does a pre-Some Like it Hot tango in drag, and Franco Interlenghi’s brooding Moraldo (the movie’s narrator), also makes a lasting impression.

The title I Vitelloni comes from a regional Italian slang term meaning overgrown calves, used metaphorically to describe idle, immature young men who refuse to grow up. It’s a Romagnol expression Fellini knew from his youth in Rimini, and it captures the film’s blend of affection and exasperation toward its drifting protagonists.

I Vitelloni went on to become one of Fellini’s most influential works. Its portrait of restless young men shaped later films such as Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973), George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973), Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers (1979), and Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire (1985). Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982) shares its spirit as well, though Levinson said he hadn’t seen Fellini’s film before making it.

In 1963, Stanley Kubrick even listed I Vitelloni among his ten favorite films — a testament to its lasting impact.

Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Cinematography: Otello Martelli

Janus Films

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36. Johnny Guitar (1954)

(B)

Nicholas Ray

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Vienna (Joan Crawford)

*Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Nicholas Ray

A LESBIAN DUEL IN THE SUN!

On the outskirts of a wind-swept Arizona cattle town, an aggressive and strong-willed saloonkeeper named Vienna (Joan Crawford) maintains a volatile relationship with the local cattlemen and townsfolk. Not only does she support the railroad being laid nearby (the cattlemen oppose it), but she permits The Dancin’ Kid (her former lover) (Scott Brady) and his gang to frequent her saloon. The locals, led by John McIvers (Ward Bond) and egged on by Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), a one-time rival of Vienna for the Dancin’ Kid’s affections, are determined to force Vienna out of town. Vienna faces them down, aided by the mysterious and recently arrived Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a guitarist who had an interview scheduled with her that day. McIvers gives Vienna, Johnny Guitar, Dancin’ Kid, and his sidekicks 24 hours to leave. We know we are facing a showdown, but this one’s between Vienna and Emma, the first all-female duel in the history of the West!

The result is high camp on the range thanks to two of Hollywood’s most dramatic thespians. A Western with two female leads is the rarest of cinematic jewels. Although Crawford and McCambridge play to the gallery under Nicholas Ray’s mannered direction, this is essential viewing as part of the queer cinema, Western genre, and Nicholas Ray canon.

Johnny Guitar was adapted from Roy Chanslor’s novel by Philip Yordan, who acted as a front for the poet, documentarist, and screenwriter Ben Maddow. Maddow had adapted Intruder in the Dust and The Asphalt Jungle (Oscar nomination) for MGM before finding himself persona non grata at the Studios because of past left-wing affiliations.

A critical and commercial disappointment in America, the film was highly praised in Europe, most notably by then-French film critics Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut in the magazine Cahiers du Cinema. In his 1988 release Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, gay Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar paid homage to Johnny Guitar in the scene in which his lead character Pepa (Carmen Maura), a voice artist, dubs Joan Crawford’s Vienna in Spanish.

Cinematography: Harry Stradling

Republic Pictures

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37. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

A+

Nicholas Ray

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Plato (Sal Mineo)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray

ACTOR: James Dean

ACTOR: Sal Mineo

ACTOR: Nick Adams

COSTUME DESIGNER: Moss Mabry

Sal Mineo’s Plato is Hollywood’s first adolescent gay character.

ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955), directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Dean, is a landmark American film about teenage alienation. It follows Dean’s Jim Stark, a troubled youth who struggles with his parents, peers, and his own identity after moving to a new town. Alongside Judy (Natalie Wood in her first adult role) and Plato (Sal Mineo), two equally lost teenagers, Jim navigates friendship, love, and violence over the course of an evening, culminating in a tragic outcome.

Wood, Dean, and Mineo form a nuclear family under the shadow of Griffith Park Observatory. Mineo’s Plato is Hollywood’s first adolescent gay character. Dean gives his most emblematic performance under Ray’s soaring direction. Jim Backus and Ann Doran are Dean’s parents, William Hopper is Wood’s father, and future Oscar nominees Dennis Hopper and Nick Adams are part of the gang at the infamous “Chicken Run.”

The remarkable wide-screen color cinematography is by the great Ernest Haller (Gone with the Wind, Mildred Pierce, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), The original score is by Leonard Rosenman, who also scored Dean’s other 1955 movie, Elia Kazan’s East of Eden – he “invented” the Dean sound! The script, written by Stuart Stern, was based on an original treatment by Irving Shulman and story concepts developed by Shulman and Ray. It is one of the quintessential LA movies.

Warner Bros.

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38. The Big Combo (1955)

B-

Joseph H. Lewis

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

FANTE AND MINGO OUTWIT THE HAYS OFFICE

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Fante (Lee Van Cleef)

*Mingo (Earl Holliman)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Earl Holliman

The cops will be looking for us in every closet.

Fante (LEE VAN CLEEF) to Mingo (EARL HOLLIMAN) in The Big Combo

Lt. Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) has spent years trying to convict crime boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), but lacks evidence. His superiors order him to stop, but Diamond persists, driven by both justice and personal obsession. Brown maintains control through brutality, aided by his henchmen, Fante and Mingo, played by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman.

Fante and Mingo are clearly a gay couple. Everyone on screen seems to know it and respect their relationship. They sleep in the same bedroom, albeit in separate beds. How director Joseph Lewis managed to get by the Hays Office is a minor miracle. Their chosen profession adds to our fascination with them and enhances their sex appeal.

Arguably Lewis’s greatest movie and a film noir classic, it’s also worth watching for John Alton’s black-and-white cinematography and the performances of Conte,Cornel Wilde, Jean Wallace, who was married to Wilde at the time, and Brian Dunlevy. The Big Combo marked the final screen appearance of actress Helen Walker, who was so impressive oppositeTyrone Power in Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley. The memorable score is by David Raksin.

Original screenplay by Philip Yordan.

The film’s title refers to a crime syndicate run by Mr. Brown.

Allied Artists

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39. Les Diaboliques (1955)

A-

Henri-Georges Clouzot

The film was NOT submitted to the Hays Office and was distributed by UMPO WITHOUT a seal of approval.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Nicole (Simone Signoret)

*Christina (Véra Clouzot)

A second-rate boys’ boarding school in Paris is run by the tyrannical and cruel Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse). The school, however, is owned by Delassalle’s wife, Christina (Véra Clouzot, the film director’s wife), a wealthy, devout Catholic émigrée from Venezuela who works there as a Spanish teacher. The frail Christina suffers from a chronic heart condition. Despite Christina’s unstable health, Michel subjects her to significant emotional abuse, humiliating and mocking her, as well as mistreating the students. He also carries on an extramarital relationship with Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), another teacher at the school, whom he physically abuses. Rather than antagonism, Christina and Nicole have a somewhat close relationship, appartently based on their apparent mutual hatred of Michel. Unable to stand his mistreatment any longer, Nicole devises a plan to murder him. Though hesitant at first, Christina ultimately consents to help Nicole.  Using a threatened divorce to lure Michel to Nicole’s apartment building, Christina sedates him with laced wine before the two women drown him in a bathtub. Concealing his body in a trunk, the women drive back to the school, where they dump his corpse in the school’s unused swimming pool. When his corpse floats to the top, they think it will appear to have been an accident. Almost everything goes according to their plans until the body fails to surface. Michel’s corpse is nowhere to be found when the pool is drained.

Co-written and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques (released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends) won the title of Best Foreign Film of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. By late 1956, it had become the highest-grossing French film released in the United States. It is also one of the most successful queer films of all time since, although queer coded, something is clearly going on between Christina and Nicole!  

Based on the 1952 novel The One Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Clouzot, after finishing The Wages of Fear in 1953, optioned the screenplay rights, preventing Alfred Hitchcock from making the film. Nevertheless, the film helped inspire Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Robert Bloch, the author of the novel Psycho, stated in an interview that this was his all-time favorite horror film. Ironically, Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece Vertigo is also based on a novel by Boileau and Naecejac. Les Diaboliques went on to garner a reputation as a classic film with significant influence on the horror genre, particularly due to its twist ending – no spoilers here!

With Charles Vanel as the detective.

Cinematography: Armand Thirard.

Cinédis in Europe

UMPO (United Motion Picture Organization) in the US

Now streaming on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and The Criterion Collection.

40. Written on the Wind (1956)

A-

Douglas Sirk

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Rock Hudson

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind is a lush, fever‑bright melodrama about a Texas oil dynasty rotting from the inside. The Hadley family—wealthy, powerful, and emotionally stunted—spirals toward collapse as old resentments and new desires collide.

At the center is Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), a self‑destructive alcoholic terrified of his own inadequacy, and his sister Marylee (Oscar-winning Dorothy Malone), a restless, sexually frustrated wild child whose longing curdles into spite. Kyle has deeper feelings for his childhood friend Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson) than for his lovely new wife Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall). He even convinces himself that Lucy is also in love with Mitch, who is the family’s moral anchor. As Kyle unravels – he has the added misfortune of having a low sperm count – Marylee’s obsession with Mitch intensifies, pushing the siblings toward a tragic showdown.

Sirk turns the melodrama into something operatic: blazing Technicolor (the cinematographer is Russell Metty) symbolic décor, and performances pitched at the edge of hysteria. Beneath the glamour lies a sharp critique of American wealth, repression, and the emotional bankruptcy of privilege. The result is one of the great Hollywood melodramas—baroque, psychologically acute, and unforgettable in its final, iconic images.

Robert Stack received his only Oscar nomination for this role.

Adapted from the novel by Robert Wilder.

Universal

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41. The Bad Seed (1956)

B+

Nature brought her here, and nature took her away!

Mervyn LeRoy

(APPROVED: BUT WITH A NEW ENDING!)

RHODA HAD TO BE PUNISHED FOR HER ACTIONS

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Little Claude Daigle is killed off-camera as the film begins.

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Moss Mabry

Director Mervyn LeRoy’s High Wire Act

When Mervyn LeRoy first saw Maxwell Anderson’s play The Bad Seed, he instructed screenwriter John Lee Mahin to adapt it with minimal changes. Meanwhile, he worked on toning down the performances. The central character is Rhoda Penmark, a little girl in a pinafore dress and blonde pigtails who embodies evil.

LeRoy brought most of the cast from the stage to the screen intact: Nancy Kelly (Oscar Nomination for Best Actress) as Christine Penmark, Rhoda’s mother; Patty McCormack (Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) as Rhoda, the progeny from hell who kills her classmate Little Claude Daigle because he won the penmanship medal she felt she deserved – we later discover that Rhoda is a sociopath and a serial killer just like her grandmother, but the expression of the bad seed gene ended up skipping a generation; William Hopper as Col. Kenneth Penmark, Rhoda’s father who is away on business for most of the movie; Eileen Heckart (Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) as Hortense Daigle, Claude’s mother; Frank Cady as Henry Daigle, Claude’s father; Henry Jones as Leroy Jessop, the caretaker; Evelyn Varden as Monica Breedlove, the neighbor who spoils Rhoda; and Paul Fix as Christine’s father and Rhoda’s Grandfather.

In many ways, The Bad Seed is the gay movie experience. Running cartwheels around all the definitions of camp outlined by Ms. Susan Sontag in her famous essay, this theatrical classic is a high-wire act for the director and his actors. Nancy Kelly is ON 100% of the time, straddling the twin minefields of camp and drama, yet managing to accomplish both simultaneously. Her work here influenced the performances in such genre classics as Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Brian De Palma’s Carrie.

How do we know that Little Claude Daigle was gay?

• He won a medal for best penmanship.

• He let a girl beat him up.

• He let a girl beat him up a second time.

Then there is Miss Patty McCormack’s sweet-as-pie eight-year-old killer whose bratty pronouncements, such as Give me those shoes, they’re mine, have entered the gay lexicon.

And two performances work as straight drama: a heartbreaking Eileen Heckart, playing both of her big scenes drunk, as the dead boy’s mother and a beautiful turn by Henry Jones as the simple caretaker who knows Rhoda’s secret and pays dearly for his knowledge. Jones’s character was later taken, fully formed, and transported to Seattle in the form of Ernie Hudson in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.

THE HAYS CODE AT WORK

The Bad Seed is a clear example of the enduring power of the Hays Code in 1956, resulting in a change in the movie’s ending compared to the stage play.

Stage Play Ending (1954)

• Written by Maxwell Anderson, adapted from William March’s novel.
• Christine learns her biological mother was a serial killer, fueling her fear that Rhoda inherited murderous tendencies.
• In the climax, Christine attempts a murder-suicide, giving Rhoda sleeping pills and then shooting herself.
• Christine dies, but Rhoda survives because Monica Breedlove hears the gunshot and intervenes.
• The play ends with Rhoda unpunished, her father returning home unaware of her crimes.

Film Ending (1956)

• Hollywood censors (the Hays Code) required that evil must be punished.
• Christine attempts suicide but survives.
• Rhoda sneaks out during a thunderstorm to retrieve incriminating evidence (the medal she stole from Claude Daigle).
• Rhoda is struck by lightning and killed, a supernatural punishment imposed to satisfy moral guidelines.
• The film closes with a theatrical curtain-call sequence, even including a comic moment where Nancy Kelly (Christine) spanks Patty McCormack (Rhoda) to soften the tone.

Cinematography: Harold Rosson

Warner Bros.

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42. Tea and Sympathy (1956)

A-

Vincente Minnelli

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Tom Robertson Lee (John Kerr)

*Bill Reynolds (Leif Erickson)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Vincente Minnelli

“One day, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.”

Laura Reynolds (Deborah Kerr) in “Tea and Symphony”.

Both John Kerr and Deborah Kerr reprised the roles they created on the Broadway Stage.

Tom Robertson Lee (John Kerr), a sensitive young man at a boys’ prep school, is bullied for not fitting into traditional masculine norms. The only person who shows him compassion is Laura Reynolds (Deborah Kerr), the coach’s wife, whose sympathy blurs into intimacy, raising questions about gender expectations, sexuality, and emotional connection.

The consensus today is that even if Deborah, the mistress of a household of college boys, manages to save Tom from his sensitive (read homosexual) tendencies by seducing him, she cannot save herself from the fact that she married a gay man, Bill Reynolds (Leif Erickson) and is trapped in a loveless union. Bill has taken the opposite road from Tom. He is hyper-masculine, preferring the company of men to women.

In many ways, the film has aged well. What could not be said under the Hayes code (according to Deborah, the words homosexual, gay, or queer were never mentioned during the entire production, not even or especially by gay director Vincente Minnelli) gives it a beauty and delicacy, especially in Deborah’s sublime performance.

Adapted from the play by Robert Anderson.

Cinematography: John Alton

MGM

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43. Funny Face (1957)

A+

Stanley Donen

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Maggie Prescot (Kay Thompson)

LGBTQ+

PRODUCER: Roger Edens

SCREENWRITER: Leonard Gershe

SONGWRITER (COMPOSER): Roger Edens

SONGWRITER (LYRICIST): Leonard Gershe

Choreographer: Eugene Loring

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head

PHOTOGRAPHER: Richard Avedon

AUDREY’S MOST ENCHANTING PERFORMANCE

Funny Face, the 1957 musical romantic comedy directed by Stanley Donen, boasts Audrey Hepburn’s most charming screen performance. Looking fabulous in black during the movie’s first half, she plays a lowly book clerk in a Greenwich Village store who is discovered by Fred Astaire’s Avedon-inspired photographer, Fred Avery and whisked off to Paris for Fashion Week—all the photographs in the movie are by Richard Avedon.

Writer Leonard Gershe and producer Roger Edens were one of Hollywood’s A-list gay couples during the 1950s and ’60s. However, Gershe always maintained that he did not have enough closet space (literally and figuratively) during the relationship.

George and Ira Gershwin’s songs include How Long Has This Been Going On? and S’Wonderful.

Audrey does all her singing and has a lovely voice, which we should have heard more of in My Fair Lady.

The movie established Audrey’s relationship with her favorite fashion designer, Hubert de Givenchy.

The film’s two big musical numbers, both written by Edens (Music) and Gershe (Lyrics), are Think Pink, in which Kay Thompson’s Maggie Prescott, the lesbian doyenne of the New York fashion world, unveils her vision for the year ahead (immortal line: think pink…..bury the beige!) and, Bonjour, Paris, in which Audrey, Fred and Kay, individually, and in concert, celebrate their arrival in Paris (immortal line: Gershe manages to rhyme the Montmartre with Jean-Paul Sartre!)

Cinematography: Ray June

Paramount

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44. The Strange One (1957)

B+

Jack Garfein

The film was submitted to the Hays Office by Columbia Pictures and, after several cuts were made, it was released with a full Seal of Approval

The cut scenes have now been restored.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Cadet Perrin “Cockroach” McKee (Paul E. Richards)

The Strange One is a 1957 American film noir about students faced with an ethical dilemma in a military college in the Southern United States. It was directed by Jack Garfein, produced by Sam Spiegel, and was adapted from a novel and stage play by Calder Willingham called End as a Man. It marked the film debuts of Ben Gazzara, George Peppard, and Julie Wilson. Gazzara, Pat Hingle, Mark Richman and Arthur Storch reprised their roles after starring in the stage version. The film is noteworthy because the entire acting and technical staff are from the Actors Studio. It focuses on the dehumanization associated with the tradition of hazing within the college and is noteworthy for its portrayal of homoerotic themes – and at least one gay character – at a time when the Hays Code prohibited such expression. The film was released by Columbia Pictures with a Production Code Administration (PCA) Seal of Approval following numerous cuts at the insistance of the Hays Office.These cuts have now been restored.

Cadet Staff Sergeant Jocko De Paris (Gazarra) is a senior at the fictional Southern Military College. Using the authority of his own rank, his father’s connections with the school, and the college’s tradition of allowing upperclassmen to bully new cadets, De Paris effectively does what he pleases. Everyone at the school is either afraid of him or believes he is a normal, or even an exemplary, cadet.

One night, he frames George Avery (Geoffrey Horne), the son of base commander Major George Avery Sr. (Larry Gates), making it appear that he got drunk and fell unconscious on the quadrangle all by himself. Cadet Avery is expelled, and De Paris sees to it that every cadet who took part in the incident lies during the investigation to conceal his own involvement. Eventually, however, two freshmen (Peppard and Storch), along with the roommates of De Paris (Hingle and James Olson) and the regimental commander (Richman), decide to end De Paris’s manipulation of them and the school.

Gazzara is electrifying in the lead, exuding a raw, unsettling sensuality. It remains one of the great curiosities of his career that only in his very next film, Anatomy of a Murder (1959), did he manage to recapture this level of charisma. For all the fine work he delivered over decades, he was rarely this hypnotic. Good work too by Peppard, Hingle, Olson, and Richman, with Paul E. Richards managing just the right amount of pathos and menace as Cockroach, the queer cadet who aspires to be a writer and who worships at De Paris’s feet.

The director, Jack Garfein, a Holocaust survivor, was married to the actress Caroll Baker from 1955 to 1969 and is the father of actress Blanche Baker.

Photographed by the great Burnett Guffey (From Here to Eternity and Bonnie and Clyde) with a memorable Jazz score by Kenyon Hopkins.

The film contains one of the great shower scenes – horsing around naked with your buddies has rarely felt so sexy.

The only woman in the cast, Julie Wilson, playing De Paris’s date, manages to make an impression with only a few minutes of screen time, as does the always reliable Larry Gates, a decade before he was immortalized for slapping Sidney Poitier’s face and getting his face slapped in return in In the Heat of the Night (1967).

Columbia Pictures

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45. Touch of Evil (1958)

(A)

Orson Welles

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Mexican gang leader (Mercedes McCambridge)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Bill Thomas

You’re a mess, honey

Tanya (Marlene Dietrich) in A Touch of Evil

He was some kind of man

Tanya (Marlene Dietrich) in A Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil (1958), directed by Orson Welles, is set in a corrupt U.S.–Mexico border town. It follows Mexican narcotics officer Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) as he clashes with corrupt American police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles) after a car bombing. The investigation spirals into a tale of crime, corruption, and moral decay, culminating in Quinlan’s downfall.

Yes, that is an unbilled Mercedes McCambridge as the unnamed lesbian gang leader getting her kicks while watching Janet Leigh (Mrs. Vargas) getting roughed up in her motel room. Justly famous for its miraculous opening tracking shot preceding the car explosion at the US/Mexican border (lasting over three minutes) to Marlene Dietrich’s classic final line of dialogue, this magnificent film noir is the third and final of Welles’s three masterpieces after Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.

With Charlton Heston, Joseph Celleia, Akin Tamiroff, Ray Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dennis Weaver as the motel night manager and Welles as larger-than-life crooked policeman Hank Quinlan. Joseph Cotton makes a brief appearance as a coroner.

Adapted by Welles, Franklin Coen and Paul Monash from the novel by Whit Masterson

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Universal-International

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46. Auntie Mame (1958)

B-

Morton DaCosta

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Vera Charles (Coral Browne)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Morton DaCosta

ACTRESS: Coral Browne

SOURCE MATERIAL: Patrick Dennis, a pseudonym for Edward Everett Tanner III (based on his novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade)

COSTUME DESIGNER: Orry-Kelly

ART–SET DECORATION: George James Hopkins

A GAY FEAST IN FRONT AND BEHIND THE CAMERA

Auntie Mame is a Technicolor comedy about a flamboyant New York socialite who becomes guardian to her orphaned nephew. Through wild adventures, financial ups and downs, and clashes with conservative values, Mame teaches him—and everyone around her—to embrace life with humor, generosity, and open-mindedness.

I must admit that I am not a huge fan of Rosalind Russell, so I fail to see the glory in her performance as gay writer Patrick Dennis’ beloved Auntie Mame. However, most of my gay friends go into a fugue state at the very mention of her name. Gay director Morton DaCosta (given name Morton Tecovsky and known to his friends as Tec) directs like he is still in the theatre – he did better in his second and penultimate visit to Hollywood with The Music Man four years later. The film is notable for its portrayal of a chic lesbian character, Vera Charles, played by gay actress Coral Browne. We shall meet Ms. Browne again in more Queer films!

Adapted from Patrick Dennis’s 1955 novel, Auntie Mame, and the play Mame by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Russell had created the role on the Broadway stage.

Cinematography: Harry Stradling

Warner Bros.

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47. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

B+

Richard Brooks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman)

LGBTQ+

ACTRESS: Judith Anderson

SOURCE MATERIAL: Tennessee Williams (based on his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)

Written (with James Poe) and directed by Richard Brooks, this respectable adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play opens with gay ex-athlete and football player Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman in his superstar breakthrough) pining and drinking in his bedroom for the memory of his best friend (read lover) and teammate Skipper, who has recently committed suicide. So, who can blame his wife Maggie (the cat), beautifully played by Elizabeth Taylor, who isn’t getting any, and, as a result, feels like the cat in the movie’s title?

Meanwhile, downstairs, there is a party for Brick’s Daddy – that would be Big Daddy – played by Burl Ives in his most memorable movie role. Big Daddy’s hidden terminal illness and the family’s scramble for his fortune intensify the conflict. Maggie boldly claims she is pregnant—an untruth meant to secure their place in the family—leaving the film on an ambiguous but hopeful note.

With Judith Anderson as Big Mamma, Jack Carson is Brick’s brother, and Madeleine Sherwood is his awful wife and the mother of their five brats.

Cinematography: William Daniels

MGM

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48. Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

C+

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sebastian Venable – we never met him since he had already been torn to pieces and eaten alive by hordes of young men on a European beach.

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Montgomery Clift

ACTRESS: Katherine Hepburn

SCREENWRITERS: Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams

SOURCE MATERIAL: Tennessee Williams (based on his play “Suddenly Last Summer”)

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Oliver Messel

COSTUME DESIGNER: Oliver Messel

Another Southern Gothic, this time from a less-than-inspired Tennessee Williams play, Suddenly Last Summer, was adapted by Gore Vidal and the playwright himself. We never get to meet the film’s central gay character, Sebastian Venable, since he is already deceased; his body was torn to pieces and eaten by hordes of young men on a beach in Europe before the film begins. He was on vacation, accompanied by his cousin Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor). Understandably, since the horrific incident, Catherine has been mentally unstable and prone to reliving the details. Katherine Hepburn plays Sebastian’s mother, Violet Venable, who attempts to bribe a young psychosurgeon (Montgomery Clift) to lobotomize Catherine to stop her from talking.

The movie is risible; its few pleasures come from Hepburn’s regal (but very nasty) mother, who will do anything to protect her son’s memory, even if that takes turning her niece into a vegetable and for Oliver Messel’s tropical production design, complete with Venus Flytraps. The sore point for Violet is that, when her beauty faded, she was replaced by Catherine – Sebastian used both to attract the boys. Clift, post-accident, looks ill while Taylor does her worst screen work in that awful monologue where she must recall the events of that terrible summer’s day.

Hepburn, Taylor and Messel were nominated for Oscars. It was only the second time in Oscar history that two actresses from the same film were nominated for Best Actress. The first time was nine years previously, when Bette Davis and Anne Baxter became the first actresses to compete against one another for their work in All About Eve. That film, coincidentally, was also directed by a certain Mr. Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Cinematography: Jack Hildyard

Horizon Pictures |Columbia Pictures | Sam Spiegel

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49. Some Like It Hot (1959)

A+

Billy Wilder

(LANDMARK: NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Daphne (Jack Lemmon)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Orry-Kelly

MY FAVORITE QUEER COMEDY

In Chicago, 1929, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. To escape gangster Spats Colombo, they disguise themselves as women—Josephine and Daphne (Jerry doesn’t like the name Geraldine) —and join an all-female band heading to Florida.

On the train, they meet singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), who dreams of marrying a millionaire. Joe falls for her and later impersonates a wealthy oil heir (Shell Oil) to win her heart. Jerry, as Daphne, attracts the attention of eccentric millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), leading to hilarious situations. The mob discovers Joe and Jerry’s disguise in Florida, sparking a chaotic chase. Meanwhile, Osgood proposes marriage to Daphne (Jerry).

Arguably the greatest Hollywood comedy of all time, Billy Wilder’s (with I.A.L. Diamond) classic screenplay was actually adapted from twin sources: the 1935 French comedy Fanfare of Love, courtesy of screenwriters Max Bronnet, Michael Logan, Pierre Prevert, Rene Pujol and Robert Thoeren and its 1951 German remake of the same title, credited to Logan, Thoeren and Heinz Pauck. Wilder’s version has a gag every other minute, and the movie blesses us with one of the great comedic performances, Jack Lemmon’s Jerry/Daphne. Lemon took his character to a place nobody had dared to take one before. Jerry really believes that he is a woman. Even better, he has you thinking it! Tremendous work, too, from Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown, who delivers the film’s classic closing line.

Some Like It Hot was only the second production from a major Hollywood studio (following Otto Preminger’s The Moon is Blue in 1953) to be released without first getting the imprimatur of the Hays Office. Wilder thought it didn’t stand a chance. So, he released it unrated, through United Artists, and it became an instant smash! It was the beginning of the end for the Hays Office.

Monroe sings a gorgeous version of Gus Kahn’s I’m Through with Love.

Cinematography: Charles Lang

United Artists

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50. Pillow Talk (1959)

(B)

Michael Gordon

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*“Rex,” the gay Texan, Brad Allen’s alter ego (Rock Hudson)

*Tony Walters (Nick Adams)

LGBTQ+ ACTORS | COSTUME DESIGNER

ACTOR: Nick Adams

ACTOR: Rock Hudson

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

Directed by Michael Gordon, Pillow Talk was the first of three romantic comedies in which Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall starred together; the other two were Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964). An enormous success, it was the biggest BO hit of 1959. Hudson plays Brad Allen, a (supposedly straight) Broadway composer and playboy who shares a party line with Miss Day’s Jan Morrow, a successful interior decorator (and a supposed virgin) in late 1950s New York City. He’s always on the phone, talking to his latest conquests, while she cannot make a single call. Of course, it’s love, although not strictly at first sight.

To seduce Miss Day’s Jan, Hudson’s Brad invents a gay alter ego, a Texan named Rex. Rex then mercilessly teases Jan by showing an interest in effeminate things, thereby implying Rex’s homosexuality.

So, we have a gay actor playing a straight man pretending to be gay!

Gay actor Nick Adams, who died at 36 in 1968, is the butt of most of the homophobic humor in the Oscar-winning original screenplay, which is credited to Russell Rouse, Maurice Richlin, Stanley Shapiro, and Clarence Greene.

This was Miss Day’s only Oscar-nominated performance.

Cinematography: Arthur E. Arling

Universal

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51. Ben-Hur (1959)

(B)

William Wyler

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston)

*Messala (Stephen Boyd)

LGBTQ+

SCREENWRITER (UNCREDITED): Christopher Fry

SCREENWRITER (UNCREDITED): Gore Vidal

I persuaded the producer, Sam Zimbalist (this was an MGM film and the writer worked not with the director but the producer; later the director, in this case William Wyler, weighed in) that the only way one could justify several hours of hatred between two lads–and all those horses–was to establish, without saying so in words, an affair between them as boys; then, when reunited at picture’s start, the Roman, played by Stephen Boyd, wants to pick up where they left off and the Jew, Heston, spurns him.

Counterpunch: Gore Vidal responds to Charlton Heston. Los Angeles Times, June 17. 1996.

It’s the big one! William Wyler’s religious epic Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd as best friends who have a falling out and then must battle it out in a spectacular fashion to Miklos Rozsa’s pounding score, although some would argue that the chariot race in the 1925 Fred Niblo/Ramon Navarro silent version is superior. If you believe Gore Vidal, it was all because of a lover’s spat. Wyler and Boyd were in on the ruse, and Boyd played his scenes that way, but Heston was not.

The fact that two gay writers, Vidal and Christopher Fry, gave Karl Tunberg’s script its final polish (both went uncredited, with Tunberg getting sole authorship) and that Fry was at Wyler’s side through most of the filming process at Cinecitta Studios in Rome lends some credence to Vidal’s quote. But, more importantly, you feel that there is more here than just a bromance. You think that if Wyler hadn’t yelled CUT, Heston and Boyd may have become very intimate!

The final irony: of its 12 Oscar nominations, only Tunberg came away empty-handed. The Best Adapted Screenplay Award 1959 went to Neil Paterson for adapting John Braine’s Room at the Top.

Adapted from the novel by Lew Wallace.

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

MGM

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52. Compulsion (1959)

B-

RICHARD FLEISCHER

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Artie Straus (Bradford Dillman)

*Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell)

Set in 1924 Chicago, Compulsion is a fictionalized account of the real-life Leopold and Loeb case.

Artie (Bradford Dillman) and Judd (Dean Stockwell) are two wealthy law students who believe themselves intellectually superior and seek to commit the “perfect crime.” They kidnap and murder a young boy as a philosophical experiment in superiority and thrill-seeking. Despite careful planning, Judd accidentally leaves his glasses at the crime scene, which becomes the key evidence leading to their arrest. The trial becomes the centerpiece of the film, where their attorney (Orson Welles playing a fictionalized Clarence Darrow) passionately argues against the death penalty, focusing on their psychological immaturity and moral corruption rather than pure evil.

Remade as Swoon by Tom Kalin in 1992.

Leopold and Loeb were used as the basis for the lovers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (see above).

Leopold and Loeb were lovers, and both Richard Murphy’s screenplay and Richard Fleischer’s direction lend the movie a queer subtext, evident in both dialogue and body language. The film uses lingering looks, physical closeness, and Judd’s jealousy of Artie’s interactions with women to suggest suppressed desire. Dillman’s Artie is dominant while Stockwell’s Judd is submissive, and Stockwell, in particular, gives a memorable performance.

Cinematography:

William C. Mellor

TCF

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53. North by Northwest (1959)

A+

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

(APPROVED)

Titles: Saul Bass

Screenplay by: Ernest Lehman

Cinematography: Robert Burks

Edited by: George Tomasini

Original Score: Bernard Herrmann

Distributed by: MGM

Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, Jessie Royce Landis, and Leo G. Carroll

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock

Produced by Alfred Hitchcock

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Leonard (Martin Landau)

 In New York City, a waiter pages George Kaplan at the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room Restaurant after a pair of thugs presumably request him to do so. As advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) summons the same waiter, he is mistaken for Kaplan, kidnapped by the thugs, and brought to the estate of Lester Townsend, a United Nations diplomat. There, he is interrogated by a spy named Phillip Vandamn (James Mason), posing as Townsend, and his henchman, Leonard (Martin Landau). Eventually, Thornhill escapes, but when Townsend is killed by Vandamn’s men at the United Nations Building, he collapses in Thornhill’s arms just as a photograph is being taken. To prove his innocence, Thornhill has to travel north-by-northwest, first to Chicago and then to the Dakotas.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote what he liked to call The Hitchcock Picture to End All Hitchcock Pictures, and it’s another Hitchcock masterpiece. A tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man (Cary Grant in his most memorable role), pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle microfilm (the film’s MacGuffin), which contains government secrets, out of the country.

Martin Landau’s portrayal of Leonard in North by Northwest (1959) has often been discussed in queer film analysis. Both Hitchcock and Landau himself deliberately coded the character with subtle homoerotic undertones. Leonard is Vandamm’s loyal henchman, but his devotion is tinged with jealousy. He’s suspicious of Eve Kendall, Vandamm’s lover, and seems motivated as much by personal possessiveness as by professional duty. Hitchcock dressed Leonard in sharper suits than Cary Grant’s Thornhill, signaling refinement and control. This elegance, combined with his watchful demeanor, set him apart from typical brutish henchmen. Stylish and leonine, he circles Grant like a cat in their electric opening scene together in Vandamm’s office. Leonard’s line about Thornhill—He’s a well-tailored one, isn’t he?—is often cited as a sly acknowledgment of male beauty, reinforcing the queer-coded subtext.

THE GREAT HITCHCOCK TEAM of the late 1950s is at the peak of its artistic brilliance. Graphic Designer Saul Bass was the first to use kinetic typography on the film’s magnificent opening credits. Playing Eve, Eva Marie Saint gives Grace Kelly in Rear Window a run for her money as Hitchcock’s most elegant leading lady, and the chemistry between her and Grant is palpable. MGM originally chose her wardrobe for the film. Hitchcock disliked the studio’s selections, so the actress and director went to Bergdorf Goodman in New York to select what she would wear. The gentleman knew what he liked; Hitchcock had spectacular taste in everything he touched. Miss Saint’s wardrobe is one of the most memorable in Hollywood history.

Jesse Royce Landis, who played Grant’s mother (superbly) in the movie, used to cut a few years off her age, so, for many years, it was Hollywood lore that the actress was younger than the actor who played her son. Not true. She was, in fact, eight years his senior.

Leo G. Carroll has a few memorable moments as The Professor, a typical Hitchcockian bureaucrat: calm, paternal and ruthless. Although he works for the US government, he’s the one who allows Roger Thornhill to remain in danger because it serves the larger operation.

Hitchcock’s cameo: 0:02:09. 

He misses a bus just after his credit passes off-screen during the opening title sequence.

There are some thrilling set pieces.

• Grant is chased by an airplane in a cornfield on a beautiful day. Nothing is unusual until you see the white trails of plane exhaust in a clear blue sky.
• Grant and Saint escape from James Mason (a superb Hitchcock villain) and Martin Landau on top of Mount Rushmore.
• The bidding scene in the Chicago auction house.
• The gun goes off in the Mount Rushmore gift shop, and the little boy puts his hands to his ears a millisecond before the shot – a rare Tomasini miss that makes the film more fascinating today.
• Grant tries to escape through a brilliant reconstruction of the United Nations, since Hitchcock was not allowed to film there.
• The final risqué shot of the train entering the tunnel as our stars finally consummate their relationship

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54. Oscar Wilde(1960)

B-

GREGORY RATOFF

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

FRAMED AS A MORAL TRAGEDY – THE DOWNFALL OF A HOMOSEXUAL

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Oscar Wilde (Robert Morley)

*Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as “Bosie” (John Neville)

*Robbie Ross (Dennis Price)

LGBTQ+

SOURCE MATERIAL: Oscar Wilde, a gay poet, novelist, diarist, playwright and general bon vivant.

Actor: Dennis Price

1892. The opening night of Lady Windermere’s Fan. Oscar Wilde (Robert Morley), married to Constance (Phyllis Calvert), begins a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as Bosie (John Neville). Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensbury (Edward Chapman), publicly accuses Wilde of being homosexual. Wilde sues him for libel, but the case backfires when evidence of Wilde’s relationships with men is exposed. Wilde is prosecuted, convicted of gross indecency, and imprisoned, leading to his social and financial ruin.

John Neville is far too old to play Lord Douglas. However, Robert Morley is excellent as Wilde. Delivering a stream of bon mots with ease, he also captures the tragedy of the man, particularly during the trial. The back-and-forth questioning by a superb Ralph Richardson, who plays Sir Edward Carson, Queensbury’s lawyer, is the film’s high point.

The word homosexual is never mentioned. Still, we do see the word sodomite that Queensbury writes on the calling card he leaves for Wilde at Wilde’s club for all to see (actually, he misspelled it somdomite). There is enough queer coding that the nature of Wilde and Bosie’s relationship is never in doubt.

This is in contrast to the other 1960 Oscar Wilde vie, The Trials of Oscar Wilde. Directed by Ken Hughes, with Peter Finch as Wilde, John Fraser as Bosie, Lionel Jeffries as Queensbury, and James Mason as Sir Edward Carson. The film was released by Warwick Films, a partnership between Cubby Broccoli and Irving Allen, one week after Oscar Wilde. It is clearly the more expensive movie, filmed in Technicolor with a large cast. However, because the story is airbrushed to the point of uncertainty, it pales by comparison. SUBMITTED and APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS by the PCA. @TheBrownees rating: (C).

With Dennis Price as Robbie Ross, Oscar’s faithful friend and ex-lover and Alexander Knox as Wilde’s counsel Sir Edward Clarke, who realizes, mid-trial, that Wilde has not been forthcoming with him.

This was the final film directed by actor-director Gregory Ratoff, the man who directed Ingrid Bergman in her Hollywood debut, Intermezzo. He is most likely to be remembered for playing the part of impresario Max (you sly puss) Fabian in the film All About Eve.

Adapted by Jo Eisinger (Gilda) from the play Oscar Wilde by Leslie and Sewell Stokes

Cinematography: Georges Périnal

Vantage Films

TCF in the US

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ESSAY ONE – TABLE 6 85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code Oscar Wilde vs. The Trials of Oscar Wilde BOTH FILMS WERE APPROVED BY THE HAYS OFFICE BECAUSE BOTH SHOWED THE DOWNFALL OF OSCAR WILDE, THE DOWNFALL OF A HOMOSEXUAL. BOTH MOVIES WERE FRAMED AS MORAL TRAGEDIES, particularly Oscar Wilde. The Trials of Oscar Wilde suggested that Wilde may have been heterosexual and perfectly happy with Constance, only to be tempted into sexual deviancy by Bosie and other nefarious characters.
1960 movie	Oscar Wilde	The Trials of Oscar Wilde	1960 movie	Oscar Wilde	The Trials of Oscar Wilde
Hays Code Seal of Approval	SUBMITTED: YES APPROVED: YES	SUBMITTED: YES APPROVED: YES	Rating @TheBrownees	B-	(C)
SOURCE	Play OSCAR WILDE by Leslie and Sewell Stokes	Unproduced play THE STRINGED LUTE by John Furnell (the pseudonym of Phyllis Macqueen)	WILDE	Robert Morley (straight actor)	Peter Finch (straight actor)
ADAPTION	Screenplay by Jo Eisinger	Screenplay by Ken Hughes and Montgomery Hyde	BOSIE	John Neville (straight actor)	John Fraser (gay actor)
DIRECTION	Gregory Ratoff	Ken Hughes	LADY WILDE	Phyllis Calvert	Yvonne Mitchell
PRODUCTION	William Kirby	Harold Huth in conjunction with Warwick Films (Irvin Allen and Albert R. Broccoli)	ROBBIE ROSS	Dennis Price (gay actor)	Emrys Jones (straight actor)
DISTRIBUTION	Wide release in the UK, US and Europe. TCF in the US.	Wide release in the UK, US and Europe. Columbia in the US.	QUEENSBURY	Edward Chapman	Lionel Jeffries
BUDGET	$250,000 (black and white)	$400,000 (color)	Sir Edward Carson	Ralph Richardson	James Mason
Box office	Modest loss – broke even in some regions	A major flop – it almost bankrupted Warrick Films	Sir Edward Clarke	Alexander Knox	Nigel Patrick

55. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960)

A-

Delbert Mann

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sonny Flood (Robert Eyer)

LGBTQ+

SOURCE MATERIAL: William Inge (adapted from his play The Dark at the Top of the Stairs)

SET DECORATOR: George James Hopkins

Robert Eyer has a few lovely moments as Sonny Flood, the little gay boy who can’t wait to show his uncle Morris (Frank Overton) his picture book of silent movie stars in gay playwright William Inge’s play The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. This beautiful adaptation, directed by Delbert Mann in his interim period between Paddy Chayefsky’s slice-of-life realism and Doris Day’s comedy-romance, from a great script by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, boasts superb performances by Robert Preston as his dad Rubin, Dorothy McGuire as his mom Cora, Shirley Knight as his sister Reenie, Eve Arden as his aunt Lotte and, above all, Angela Lansbury as Mavis Pruitt, the owner of the local beauty salon who has always loved Rubin.

Cinematography: Harry Stradling

Warner Bros.

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is unavailable for streaming. However, the DVD can be purchased at Amazon.

56. Spartacus (1960) (B)

Stanley Kubrick

(APPROVED)

THE CUT 1960 VERSION SUBMITTED BY UNIVERSAL-INTERNATIONAL WAS APPROVED BY THE HAYS OFFICE.

A scene involving General Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) was initially cut from the 1960 version. However, it was saved from the cutting room floor when the epic of the slave revolt was restored in 1991.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Laurence Olivier

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

COSTUME DESIGNER: Arlington Valles

And taste is not the same as appetite and, therefore, not a question of morals.

Crassus (LAURENCE OLIVIER) to his boy slave Antoninus (TONY CURTIS),a singer of songs, in Spartacus

Oysters and Snails scene where General Crassus (Laurence Olivier) gently informs his boyish new slave Antoninus (played by Curtis), a singer of songs, that he likes both and will, therefore, be vigorously screwing him for the duration of his employment. As Crassus exits his bath, this news is enough to make Antoninus run for the hills and join the growing ranks of Spartacus’ army.

This scene figured prominently in Amy Heckerling’s Clueless when Cher discovers that her dreamboat Christian is gay.

The film was adapted by the formerly blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo from Howard Fast’s novel, and, although Olivier, Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov (Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) keep you watching, the film itself, although based on truth, comes across as one hoary cliche after another with poor Jean Simmons having to suffer many insults to both her person and her craft as Kirk Douglas chews the scenery in the title role. It’s no surprise that after the film’s completion, director Stanley Kubrick left Hollywood for good, relocating to England, where he went on to create a series of masterpieces.

Cinematography:

Russell Metty

Universal International

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57. Psycho (1960)

A+

Alfred Hitchcock

(APPROVED)

Hitchcock submitted Joseph Stefano’s screenplay first, which, not surprisingly, got a litany of objections from the Hays Office. He then shot the film VERY precisely, using editing, sound and montage so that almost nothing explicit was TECHNICALLY on screen. The blood swirling counter-clockwise down the drain from Janet Leigh’s lifeless body was chocolate sauce!

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Anthony Perkins

PSYCHO IS ONE OF HITCHCOCK’S SEVEN PERFECT FILMS.

IN THE FINAL SCENE, HITCHCOCK HAS PERKINS BREAK THE FOURTH WALL.

Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates made him immortal while, at the same time, ending his career in Hollywood. With this fearless performance, he had crossed a line, and there was no way back. 

During a Friday afternoon affair in a Phoenix hotel, real estate secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin) discuss their inability to get married because of Sam’s debts. Marion returns to work, steals $40,000, and drives to Sam’s home in Fairvale, California. She stops for the night at the Bates Motel, located off the main highway during a heavy rainstorm, and hides the stolen money inside a newspaper. Proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) descends from a large house overlooking the motel, registers Marion under an alias, and invites her to dine with him. After Norman returns to his house, Marion overhears him arguing with his mother about his wish to dine with Marion. Marion decides to drive back to Phoenix in the morning to return the stolen money. As she showers, a shadowy figure appears and stabs her to death. Norman cleans up the murder scene, putting Marion’s body, her belongings, and the hidden cash in her car, and sinks it in a swamp.

Hitchcock assembled a small crew from his TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, to film the movie. The most notable change was cinematographer John L. Russell handling the film’s striking black-and-white lensing, a task previously handled by Hitchcock regular Robert Burks. However, Hitchcock regulars George Tomasini, Bernard Herrmann, and Saul Bass remained in post-production. Their contributions to the editing, score, and title sequence are all essential to the film’s success.

Never was Hitchcock’s ability to manipulate an audience’s sympathies more evident than in the car in the pond scene. Within just a few minutes of her horrific death, we have forgotten about Janet Leigh. We are now rooting for her killer, Anthony Perkins, and we all breathe a massive sigh of relief when, after a gut-wrenching pause, the car containing Janet’s body (and the $40,000) finally goes under the water.

Norman may not be gay because of his sexual attraction to Marion. However, he is most assuredly queer, thus cementing the fifth letter in our LGBTQ acronym. Hitchcock liked to cast Queer actors in Queer parts. A known gay actor who had relationships with several famous male stars of the day, including Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, Perkins died from complications of AIDS in 1992 after having been married and fathering two children. Norman is a crossdresser who is smothered by an overbearing mother and displays traits associated with traditional feminine behavior, hinting that Norman is repressing his genuine desire for a same-sex partner.

Screenplay by Joseph Stefano based on the novel Psycho by Robert Bloch.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Hitchcock’s cameo: 0:06:59. Seen through an office window wearing a Stetson cowboy hat as Janet Leigh comes through the door

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58. Purple Noon (1960)

B+

Rene Clement

The film was NOT submitted to the Hays Office. Because of its queer premise, it would have been impossible to secure approval. Shown at film festivals and film societies. Delon’s star presence and positive word of mouth guaranteed an ever-expanding audience as the sixties progressed.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Tom Ripley (Alain Delon)

LGBTQ+

SOURCE MATERIAL: Patricia Highsmith (based on her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley)

Mr. Greenleaf hires Tom Ripley (an almost impossibly handsome Alain Delon) to travel to Italy and persuade his son, Philippe (Maurice Ronet), to return home to the US. Tom becomes inseparable from Philippe, enjoying his luxurious lifestyle but resenting his arrogance. Philippe’s fiancée, Marge (Marie Laforet), is wary of Tom’s presence. When Philippe mocks him, Tom kills him during a boating trip. He forges documents and impersonates Philippe to access his wealth. Tom skillfully manipulates authorities and friends, maintaining his double life while Marge grows suspicious.

The first adaptation of queer author Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley covers the same ground as the titular 1999 Anthony Minghella version starring Matt Damon and the eight-episode limited series on Netflix written and directed by Steve Zaillian and starring Andrew Scott.

Although it lacks the emotional depth and the excellent supporting cast of Minghella’s film, this version has a unique style thanks to the directorial talents of French two-time Oscar winner René Clément (Forbidden Games) and his master cinematographer Henri Decaë (The 400 Blows). Italy has never looked so beautiful. As for Delon, he is sensational. The world had no choice but to take notice. A superstar is born before our eyes.

Score by Nino Rota

CCFC Films (France)

TITANUS FILMS (Italy)

Times Film Corporation (US distribution)

Picked up by RIALTO for Revival House distribution in 1996

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59. Victim (1961)

B+

Basil Dearden

Seal of Approval denied due to its frank treatment of homosexuality. Released by Rank without a seal.

Years later, it received a PG/13 rating from the MPAA.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde)

*Boy Barrett (Peter McEnery)

*PH (Hilton Edwards)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Dirk Bogarde

ACTOR: Hilton Edwards

DIRK BOGARDE’S BRAVE PERFORMANCE

Dirk Bogarde plays a successful, happily married (to Sylvia Syms) lawyer who is being blackmailed because of a gay affair in his past with Boy Barrett (Peter McEnery).

This film did more to sway public and political opinion on homosexuality in England than any parliamentary discussion. Six years later, in 1967, homosexuality was decriminalized in Great Britain.

I first saw this film in my early teens. It was on Irish television, and I remember my mom saying how brave Dirk Bogarde was to play a gay character since he was a known gay actor (you cannot say that he was an OUT gay actor since this was not possible in 1961). She was right.

Openly gay Irish actor Hilton Edwards (born in London but immigrated to Ireland in his early twenties) has a small but memorable scene as a blind patron of a gay bar whom his younger-sighted friend feeds all the gossip. He could be the blackmailer! Edwards and his life partner, Micheál Mac Liammóire (né Alfred Wilmore, also in London), founded Dublin’s Gate Theatre, which nurtured such talents as Orson Welles, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and James Mason. When I was growing up, they were Ireland’s only homosexual couple. Although fêted by all, their union was always illegal, both actors being long dead before homosexuality was finally decriminalized in Ireland in 1993.

Janet Green and John McCormick wrote the original screenplay.

Cinematography

Otto Heller

Rank Film Distributors of America

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60. A Taste of Honey (1961)

B+

Tony Richardson

The film was NOT submitted to the Hays Office. Because of its queer premise, it would have been impossible to secure approval. Shown at film festivals and film societies. Distributed by Continental Distributing.

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Geoffrey Ingham (Murray Melvin)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Tony Richardson

ACTOR: Murray Melvin

QUEER KITCHEN SINK REALISM!

Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the Sheila Delaney play still shines. Delaney wrote the screenplay with Richardson, who directed the original Broadway production of the play in 1960. The film exemplifies a gritty British film genre known as kitchen sink realism. Rita Tushingham, who embodied the spirit of British Independent Cinema in the early through the mid-sixties, plays seventeen-year-old Jo, who lives in a run-down, post-industrial area of Salford in the British Midlands. One day, Jo meets Jimmy (Paul Danquah), a cook on a boat on the Manchester Ship Canal. After a one-night stayover, Jo discovers that she is pregnant.

Wanting to keep the baby but not wanting to marry Jimmy, Jo moves in with her best friend, Geoff (Murray Melvin), a gay man who says that he will marry Jo and take care of her and the baby. Although he was playing a teenager, gay actor Murray Melvin was almost thirty when he made A Taste of Honey. One of the first openly gay actors, Melvin often worked with Richardson and director Ken Russell. His most memorable movie moment is the card game sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, featuring natural candlelight and Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flaton the soundtrack (see Essay Two: 75 Queer Films from the New Hollywood (1968-1980)).

Dora Bryan is particularly memorable as Tushingham’s self-centered and alcoholic mother.

Cinematography

Walter Lassally

Woodfall Films

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61. The Children’s Hour (1961)

(C)

William Wyler

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine)

ITS QUEERNESS RESONATED MUCH MORE EFFECTIVELY WHEN WYLER MADE IT A THINLY DISGUISED HETEROSEXUAL DRAMA IN 1936

When William Wyler and Sam Goldwyn adapted Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour back in 1936, they changed the lesbian story to a straight triangle with Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins, and Joel McCrea and a wonderfully nasty Bonita Granville as the little brat who spreads the false rumor. And it worked beautifully. Moreover, the Queer subtext was present. Released as These Three, it was a considerable success, paving the way for a series of classic movies Wyler made under the Goldwyn banner.

Cut to 1961, fresh from his triumph with Ben-Hur, Wyler decided to remake it, keeping Hellman’s original same-sex theme. He casts two of the greatest actresses in Hollywood, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, as the school mistresses whose lives and careers are destroyed by a rumor spread by one of their vindictive students. This time, MacLaine plays the gay character Martha, who secretly loves her friend and colleague Karen (Hepburn) but can never reveal her true feelings. Meanwhile, Karen is in a stable heterosexual relationship with Joe (James Garner).

Unfortunately, Wyler was stuck between two periods. In 1961, he was unprepared for an all-out gay film, so he had to be discreet. Lacking the courage of his convictions, what started as bravery ended in cowardice. This time, it’s all text and no subtext! He might have had a triumph if he had waited another decade. There are moments, particularly from MacLaine, but they are not enough. The result is for die-hard Wyler fans only.

Playing the grandmother, whose reaction to her granddaughter’s lie sets the plot in motion, Fay Bainter was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. It was her final screen role.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Franz Planer

The Mirisch Company

United Artists

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62. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

(A)

David Lean

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:

*T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole)

*Sherif Ali (Omar Sheriff)

David Lean’s masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), examines the role of British officer T.E. Lawrence in uniting Arab tribes during World War I to fight the Ottoman Empire. The film explores his transformation from eccentric soldier to legendary leader, while also portraying the psychological toll of his journey.

Lean’s movie is rich in queer subtext through its portrayal of Lawrence’s identity and relationships.

Peter O’Toole’s androgynous portrayal of Lawrence is exceptionally introspective, sensitive, and physically delicate, contrasting sharply with traditional masculine war heroes. The film emphasizes Lawrence’s alienation from the British military, Arab allies, and even himself. Lawrence’s intense relationships with men, particularly Sherif Ali (Omar Sheriff), are emotionally charged. The characters’ gazes linger on each other in numerous scenes, creating a sense of tension and intimacy. In fact, those beautiful close-ups of Omar Sheriff’s eyes played a significant role in earning him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar Nomination.

T.E. Lawrence’s sexuality has long been debated. Biographers have speculated he may have been gay or asexual, citing his lack of romantic relationships with women and his writings about pain, submission, and identity. Lawrence’s own memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, contains passages that some scholars interpret as coded expressions of same-sex desire or masochism.

Director: David Lean

Screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, adapted from TE Lawrence’s autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Original Score: Maurice Jarre

Editing: Anne V. Coates

Cinematography: Freddie Young

Horizon Pictures (Sam Spiegel)

Columbia Pictures

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63. Advice and Consent (1962)

A-

Otto Preminger

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

ANOTHER HAYS CODE TRIUMPH FOR DIRECTOR-PRODUCER OTTO PREMINGER

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Senator Brig Anderson (Don Murray)

 LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Charles Laughton

ACTOR: Walter Pidgeon

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Blass

 THE FIRST LOOK INSIDE AN AMERICAN GAY BAR

Otto Preminger was renowned for his innovative approach to filmmaking, which he showcased in Advice and Consent, a beautifully written, acted, and directed film. It also treats its gay subplot with great tenderness and respect, with the consistently superb (and underrated) Don Murray playing a gay senator who is being blackmailed as a new Secretary of State is going through the Senate approval process. Preminger also likes to play tricks, and Anderson’s arch nemesis, a reactionary Southern senator, is played by gay actor Charles Laughton in his final film role.

Only those scenes with the lousy George Gizzard prevent Advise and Consent from becoming a classic. He gives a master class in awful acting, while luminaries such as Henry Fonda, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, Walter Pidgeon, Lew Ayers, and Franchot Tone, in addition to Murray and Laughton, deliver some of the finest work of their illustrious careers.

A minor deduction, too, for having to endure a sadly faded Gene Tierney as a Washington socialite whose sole purpose seems to be the thankless and needless task of explaining, to the ladies-who-lunch (and the viewer), the difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Adapted from the novel by Allen Drury.

Cinematography

Sam Leavitt

Columbia Pictures

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64. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

A+

Robert Aldrich

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Victor Buono

OPENING FLASHBACK: In 1917, Baby Jane Hudson is a spoiled child star of vaudeville, adored by audiences. Her sister, Blanche, grows up overshadowed but later becomes a successful Hollywood actress. Blanche is left paralyzed after a mysterious car accident. Jane, now washed-up and mentally unstable, lives with her in a decaying Hollywood mansion, clinging to delusions of a comeback. Jane psychologically and physically abuses Blanche—locking her in rooms, serving grotesque meals, and sabotaging her attempts to reach the outside world. Blanche reveals that she was actually responsible for her own accident, not Jane. This confession comes too late, as Jane’s madness has already spiraled beyond control. On the beach, in Santa Monica, Jane dances childishly while police arrive, leaving Blanche near death. The haunting ending underscores Jane’s complete detachment from reality.

DAVIS AND CRAWFORD ARE SPECTACULAR TOGETHER!

Thanks to Lukas Heller’s superb adaptation of the Henry Farrell novel, Robert Aldrich’s masterpiece works as both drama and camp. Both of Hollywood’s grande dames, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, are in top form, with Davis getting the showier role of Baby Jane.  However, Miss Crawford also performs superbly as Blanche. She is the eye at the center of Bette’s hurricane.

Gay actor Victor Buono is perfection as Bette’s date Edwin Flagg, who sees something he shouldn’t, leading to Davis’s famous pronouncement, He hates me. Cheers to Australian actress Marjorie Bennett, who plays his mother, Dehlia Flagg – she is straight out of a John Waters movie. Baby Jane is gay sensibility incarnate. Every Davis line is immortal, but some of my favorites are:

You mean all this time we could have been friends?

Because you didn’t eat your din-din,

But you are Blanche, you are in that chair!

The excellent movie score is by Frank De Vol.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Ernest Haller

Warner Bros.

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65. That Touch of Mink (1962)

C+

Delbert Mann

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Connie (Audrey Meadows)

*Roger (Gig Young)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Cary Grant

ACTOR: Richard Deacon (uncredited)

In between the Rock Hudson movies Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964), Doris Day paired up with Cary Grant in another movie co-written by Stanley Shapiro. The director is Delbert Mann, a graduate of television and the Paddy Chayefsky school of slice-of-life naturalism (Marty, The Catered Affair, The Bachelor Party), who, the previous year with Lover, showed a surprising flair for comedy.

When Philip Shayne’s (Grant) Rolls-Royce splashes Cathy Timberlake (Miss Day) while she is going to a job interview, we know this love-hate relationship can only end with a wedding ring. Unfortunately, there is minimal chemistry between the stars. This is one of Grant’s few bad performances, and he looks like he wanted to be anywhere other than with Miss Day. Their scenes together on a trip to Bermuda can only be described as creepy.

On the plus side, the film is gorgeously photographed by Russell Metty, and there is a fabulous fashion show courtesy of Bergdorf Goodman and ace costume designer Bill Thomas. Shapiro manages to give us not just one but two funny gay subplots. The first involves a perpetually soused Gig Young, playing Grant’s financial adviser, Roger, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Gruber (Alan Hewitt). Because he leaves the room as Roger relays some essential information about Cathy, Dr. Gruber thinks Roger is about to embark on an affair with Philip. This leads to the film’s famous final scene involving Roger, a baby carriage, and an astonished Gruber! Gruber is using Roger to get inside tips on the stock market.

However, when he thinks that Roger is gay, he immediately calls his broker to discard the previous purchase because Roger is now of unsound mind.

He also goes back to Vienna for a refresher course.

The second involves Audrey Meadows as Connie, Cathy’s overprotective, man-hating (read closeted lesbian) roommate who works at the automat across the street from Philip and Roger’s office. She doesn’t overdo it, though. It’s a sweet and funny performance.

Although uncredited, gay actor Richard Deacon has a memorable moment as Mr. Miller, Connie’s prissy supervisor. He virtually patented this role in numerous TV series and small movie parts throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.

The original screenplay is by Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster.

Universal

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66. Billy Budd (1962)

(C)

Peter Ustinov

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Billy Budd (Terence Stamp)

*John Claggart (Robert Ryan)

*Peter Ustinov (Edward Vere)

LGBTQ+

SOURCE MATERIAL: Herman Melville (based on his novel “Billy Budd Foretopman” )

SCREENWRITER: DeWitt Bodeen

COSTUME DESIGNER: Anthony Mendleson

Melville’s deep feelings for Nathaniel Hawthorne were immortalized in letters written between the two men from 1850 to 1852.

This historical drama-adventure film was produced, directed, and co-written (with Robert Rossen and DeWitt Bodeen) by Peter Ustinov. It was based on Coxe and Chapman’s stage play of Herman Melville’s short novel, and what many consider his second masterpiece after Moby Dick, Billy Budd.

Billy Budd is a handsome sailor who strikes and inadvertently kills his false accuser, Master-at-arms John Claggart (Robert Ryan). The ship’s Captain, Edward Vere (Ustinov), recognizes Billy’s lack of intent but claims that the law of mutiny requires him to sentence Billy to be hanged.

Ustinov cast a then-unknown Terence Stamp as beautiful Billy. He became an overnight sensation, making the otherwise unremarkable film hugely profitable. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor of 1962, losing out to Ed Begley in Sweet Bird of Youth. Of course, many, including myself, would argue that Billy is the picture, and the rest of the cast supports him.

Claggart’s jealousy of Billy is never explained, but we presume it is due to Billy’s stunning good looks and unbounded optimism. However, many, including gay composer Benjamin Britten, who wrote his famous opera based on the Melville novel, maintained that there is an undercurrent of homoeroticism between Billy, Claggart, and Vere. And Ustinov wisely brought in gay writer DeWitt Bodeen (Cat People and The Seventh Victim) to milk the gay subtext. A Queer Film, therefore, based on a Queer Novel!

Cinematography: 

Robert Krasker.

Rank | Anglo Allied Pictures

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67. Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

C-

Edward Dmytryk

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Hallie (Capucine)

*Jo (Barbra Stanwyck)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Capucine

ACTOR: Barbara Stanwyck

ACTOR: Laurence Harvey

COSTUME DESIGNER: Charles LeMaire

Laurence Harvey’s Dove Linkhorn and Jane Fonda’s Kitty Twist meet on a road in Texas during the Great Depression and decide to hitchhike together to New Orleans. Dove is searching for his lost love, Hallie (Capucine), and when they arrive in The Big Easy, he finds her working at the Doll House, an upscale French Quarter bordello where Jo (Barbara Stanwyck) is the madam. Jo and Hallie are suggested to have a lesbian relationship. However, Hallie, who is unhappy with her lot in life, still works for Jo as a prostitute, but she does not want to give up her comforts and risk married life when Dove proposes.

Stanwyck, looking butch, and Capucine, looking femme, have a few good scenes together. However, Harvey is wan, and Fonda does not have enough to do. It’s no fun.

The film also stars Anne Baxter as the owner of the diner where Harvey gets a job, as well as Joanna Moore (mother of Tatum O’Neill) and Juanita Moore (no relation).

Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Adapted by John Fante from the 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren.

Cinematography:

Joseph MacDonald

Columbia Pictures

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68. The L-Shaped Room

B+

Bryan Forbes

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Mavis (Cicely Courtneidge)

 A recording of the songTake Me Back to Dear Old Blighty, sung in the film by Mavis, is sampled at the beginning of the title track of the albumThe Queen is Dead by the Smiths.

In The L-Shaped Room, we meet Jane Fosset (Leslie Caron), a young Frenchwoman, who becomes pregnant after an affair and refuses to marry the baby’s father. Facing strict parents and social stigma, she moves into a dingy boarding house in West London. Her attic room is L-shaped, symbolic of her marginal position in society. The house is filled with outsiders: the aging actress Mavis(Cicely Courtneidge), the West Indian jazz musician Johnny (Brock Peters), and the aspiring writer Toby (Tom Bell). Initially considering abortion, Jane changes her mind after a cold encounter with Dr. Weaver (Emlyn Williams). She takes a café job, slowly adapts to her surroundings, and grows close to Toby. Jane and Toby fall in love. However, Toby feels betrayed when he learns of Jane’s pregnancy and Jane is left to face her future alone. Despite heartbreak, Jane embraces her independence and prepares to raise her child, finding strength in her community of misfits.

Writer/director Bryan Forbes’s lovely and faithful adaptation of the Lynne Reid Banks novel boasts Leslie Caron’s most outstanding performance. Equally impressive is Courtneidge as Mavis, an aging actress who is a lesbian and is mourning the loss of a companion. For Tom Bell, it was his breakthrough as a leading man in British film and TV.

Johnny, who is gay in the book, is not identified as queer in the movie.

Cinematography:

Douglas Slocombe

Romulus Films

Distributed by Columbia Pictures in the US.

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69. The Haunting (1963)

A-

Robert Wise

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Theo (Theodora) (Claire Bloom)

As a chic Greenwich Village lesbian named Theo, short for Theodora, whose couture is designed exclusively by the queen of Carnaby street, herself, Mary Quant – the movie was shot in England substituting for New England – Claire Bloom is a knockout in The Haunting, Robert Wise’s chilling 1963 movie, a clever adaptation by Nelson Gidding of the Shirley Jackson 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House. It’s one of the best, if not the best, Haunted House movies.

LESBIAN CHIC COURTESY OF CLAIRE BLOOM

Theo is one of a panel of experts in the paranormal who are invited to spend a weekend at the notorious Hill House by Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), a paranormal researcher. Hill House has stood for 90 years -and will probably stand for ninety more- marked by tragedy, insanity, and violent deaths. In addition to Theo, there is Eleanor (Julie Harris), a lonely woman with psychic sensitivity, and Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the skeptical heir to the house. The group experiences terrifying phenomena—pounding on doors, ghostly voices, and shifting architecture. Eleanor feels a deep, personal connection to the house, believing it speaks directly to her. Eleanor’s fragile psyche deteriorates as she becomes increasingly isolated and obsessed with Hill House. In a final act, Eleanor drives her car into a tree on the estate, dying in what may be a suicide or a supernatural compulsion. The film closes with the spine-chilling line:

AND WE WHO WALK HERE, WALK ALONE!

This is probably Julie Harris’ most emblematic screen performance, and nobody could play fragility mixed with a troubled mind better than she could. You can see why Theo is attracted to her. However, Theo’s moves are always subtle and done with great care and concern, making her one of the cinema’s most enlightened gay characters up to that point. Cheers Claire! You always were a class act.

As the caretaker’s wife, Rosalie Crutchley, has a great departure scene when bidding Theo and Nell goodbye on their first night in the house:

I DON’T STAY AFTER SIX.

I LEAVE BEFORE THE DARK COMES,

SO THERE WON’T BE ANYONE AROUND IF YOU NEED HELP.

NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU IF YOU SCREAM IN THE NIGHT.

NO ONE LIVES ANY NEARER THAN TOWN.

NO ONE WILL COME ANY NEARER THAN THAT.

IN THE NIGHT.

IN THE DARK!

The haunting atonal music score, one of my personal favorites, is by Humphrey Searle

Cinematography

Davis Boulton

MGM

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70. The Servant (1963)

(A)

Joseph Losey

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LIKE PSYCHO, THE SERVANT QUIETLY GUTTED THE CODE BY GETTING PAST IT!

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Hugo (Dirk Bogarde)

*Tony (James Fox)

*Older lesbian in restaurant scene (Doris Nolan – billed as Doris Knox)

*Younger lesbian in restaurant scene (Jill Melford)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Dirk Bogarde

THE SERVANT ENDURES AS ONE OF THE SHARPEST DISSECTIONS OF BRITAIN’S SOCIAL AND SEXUAL HYPOCRISIES.

Tony (James Fox), an upper-class bachelor who moves into a new London home, hires Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) to manage his household. Barrett appears efficient and devoted, but Tony’s girlfriend, Susan (Wendy Craig), distrusts him and urges Tony to dismiss him. Barrett brings Vera (Sarah Miles) into the house, claiming she is his sister. Tony begins a clandestine affair with her. Tony and Susan leave for a trip, but when they return unexpectedly, they discover Barrett and Vera together in Tony’s bedroom. Vera is revealed not to be Barrett’s sister but his lover. Tony fires Barrett and ends his relationship with Susan. However, Barrett later manipulates his way back into Tony’s life. Over time, Barrett gradually dominates Tony, reversing their roles: Tony becomes increasingly dependent, passive, and degraded, while Barrett asserts control over the house.

Adapted by Harold Pinter from Robin Maugham’s novella and directed by Joseph Losey, The Servant has a powerful current of homoeroticism emanating from its dominance-and-submission dynamic. Some of the sexual tension emanates backward in time from Donald Cammell’s and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970 – see Essay Two), a film that was greatly influenced by The Servant and stars James Fox in a similar role.

Pinter’s screenplay is a masterwork of sharp dialogue, silences, and tension and won the NYFCC award for Best Screenplay of 1964. Losey’s masterful direction created a claustrophobic atmosphere, featuring two subtle yet powerful performances and an exploration of power dynamics that mirrored the British class system, a theme he and Pinter would later investigate in Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971). A landmark of British cinema, The Servant endures as one of the sharpest dissections of Britain’s social and sexual hypocrisies. Although it falters in its final thirty minutes, it boasts Bogarde’s most extraordinary performance.

In the beautifully choreographed and edited restaurant scene, there are four couples, one of whom is obviously a lesbian couple:

• COUPLE ONE: Wendy Craig and James Fox (our leads)
• COUPLE TWO: Harold Pinter and Ann Firbank (society man and woman)
• COUPLE THREE: Doris Knox and Jill Melford (the lesbian couple)
• COUPLE FOUR: Patrick Magee and Alun Owen (the bishop and the priest)

The black-and-white cinematography is by Douglas Slocombe.

Warners-Pathe

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71. The Leather Boys (1964)

(B)

Sidney J. Furie

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS )

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Pete (Dudley Sutton)

*Reggie (Colin Campbell)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Harry Haynes

Adapted by Gillian Freeman from her novel of the same name, The Leather Boys introduces us to Reggie (Colin Campbell), a young South London mechanic and biker who marries his teenage sweetheart, Dot (Rita Tushingham). Their marriage quickly deteriorates as Dot proves to be immature and self-centered, more interested in having fun than in taking responsibility. Reggie finds solace in the camaraderie of the “ton-up boy” rocker scene, riding motorcycles and spending time with friends. Reggie grows increasingly close to fellow biker Pete (Dudley Sutton), whose eccentric personality and warmth contrast with Dot’s indifference. Their friendship deepens into an emotionally charged relationship, with queer undertones that were daring for the time. Dot drifts away, while social pressures and a revealing scene in a gay bar test Reggie and Pete’s bond. The film ends ambiguously, with Reggie caught between conformity and self-discovery.

Canadian journeyman Sidney J. Furie, who would come into his own the following year with The Ipcress File, does a nice job here getting good performances from all three leads. The final scene in the gay bar is a bit of a disappointment from a gay perspective. However, the movie’s long closing tracking shot is a beauty.

As a British production distributed in the U.S. by Columbia/British Lion, the film had to be submitted to the Production Code Administration (also known as the Hays Office) for approval. The film’s treatment of homosexuality was considered daring and in violation of the Code’s prohibition against sex perversion. Despite this, it was screened in the U.S. without cuts, making it one of the rare examples of a queer‑themed film shown before the Code’s collapse in 1968. This also underscores its importance as an early queer cinema landmark and a sign of the Production Code’s waning power in the mid‑1960s.

The Ace Cafe, located on London’s North Circular Road, the diner/meeting point featured in the film, was restored and reopened in 2001 after being used for many years as a tire depot.

The Smiths’ single Girlfriend in a Coma features Tushingham and Campbell on the cover.

The Leather Boys influenced Katherine Bigelow’s movie debut, The Loveless (1981).

Cinematography:

Gerald Gibbs

PRODUCER: Raymond Stross

British Lion-Columbia

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72. My Fair Lady (1964)

A+

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison)

*Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: George Cukor

ACTOR: Jeremy Brett

ART-SET DIRECTION: Cecil Beaton

ART-SET DIRECTION: George James Hopkins

AET-SET DIRECTION: Gene Allen

COSTUME DESIGNER: Celin Beaton

Adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Lowe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage play Pygmalion. With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor. Cecil Beaton created the costumes, and the set decoration was made by Beaton and George James Hopkins, with cinematography by Harry Stradling.

Winner of eight Oscars, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Set-Design, Best Costumes and Best Cinematography.

Why can’t a woman be more like a man

Henry Higgins to Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady (1964)

My Fair Lady, the 1964 American musical-comedy-drama, was George Cukor’s late-career triumph. It is fitting that, in his emeritus years, Hollywood’s most renowned gay director was able to deliver the screen’s most relaxed and blissfully at ease gay couple while, at the same time, reveling in the gay camp of Cecil Beaton’s magnificent set and costume designs.

The couple in question is Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison, reprising his role from the stage musical) and Colonel Hugh Pickering (a marvelous Wilfrid Hyde-White). The two actors are perfect together, practically finishing one another’s sentences and capturing the essence of a relationship that stems from a long cohabitation. Whether they are confirmed bachelors or lovers seems immaterial. As with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, they are, in many ways, the perfect gay couple.

Then, into their lives, comes a poor Cockney flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn, replacing Julie Andrews from the stage musical) who overhears Higgins, as he casually wagers with Pickering that he could teach her to speak English so well she could pass for a duchess in Edwardian London or better yet, from Eliza’s viewpoint, secure employment in a flower shop. Yet, even at the film’s denouement, when it appears that Higgins has achieved his Pygmalion goals and transformed Eliza into a Lady, we do not honestly believe the two have fallen in love. We know that in the next unshown reel, Eliza is out, and our two Edwardian gentlemen are back together in their men-only sanctuary.

The movie is a delight from beginning to end, and if Audrey seems more at ease in the latter half of the film, where she plays Eliza as a Lady, that may be because these scenes are more in keeping with the Audrey persona we have come to know and love. She had signed on to the movie thinking that she would be doing her own singing – she had accomplished this with aplomb in Funny Face – and was bitterly disappointed when the decision was made to dub her voice with Marni Nixon’s vocals.

With Stanley Holloway as Eliza’s father and Gladys Cooper as Henry’s mother (both were Oscar-nominated)

The soundtrack contains the following Lerner and Lowe classics:

Wouldn’t It Be Lovely

With a Little Bit of Luck

(Just) You Wait (Henry Higgins)

The Rain in Spain

I Could Have Danced All Night

Ascot Gavotte

On the Street Where You Live

You Did It

Show Me

Get Me to the Church on Time

I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face

Cinematography

Harry Stradling

Warner Bros.

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73. Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

C+

Robert Mulligan

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

THERE WAS A LOT OF BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE STUDIO AND THE HAYS OFFICE WITH RESPECT TO BOTH THE NATALIE WOOD AND ROBERT REDFORD CHARACTERS. THE FINAL SUBMITTED PRODUCT, HOWEVER, WAS RELEASED WITHOUT CUTS.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Wade Lewis (Robert Redford)

SOURCE MATERIAL: Gavin Lambert (novel)

SCREENWRITER: Gavin Lambert

SET DESIGNER: George James Hopkins

COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

In 1936, Angel Beach, California, Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) is a tough, chain‑smoking 15‑year‑old tomboy living with her eccentric mother, played by Ruth Gordon, in a rundown trailer. She dreams of stardom and sends a recording of her singing to Swan Studios. Studio head Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer) signs Daisy, rebrands her as America’s Valentine, and commits her mother to an institution to sanitize Daisy’s public image. Daisy marries fellow actor Wade Lewis (Robert Redford), but he abandons her during their honeymoon. She later learns Wade is bisexual and had affairs, including with Swan’s wife. Daisy retrieves her mother from the institution, but her mother dies suddenly. Daisy suffers a nervous breakdown, worsened by Swan’s manipulative control over her career. After a failed suicide attempt, Daisy decides to leave Hollywood behind. In the film’s iconic ending, she blows up her beach house and walks away, declaring, Someone declared war.

Robert Redford insisted that his character in the novel be changed from homosexual to bisexual. It was a brave role to take at the time, but it got him noticed. Natalie Wood throws herself into the part of Daisy, her singing being dubbed by Jackie Ward. However, because Gavin Lambert had to eviscerate his book in translation to the screen and Robert Mulligan’s direction is uneven, her work here does not compare to the high-water mark of Rebel Without a Cause, Splendour in the Grass, and Love with the Proper Stranger, the latter of which was also directed by Mulligan. The best performance in the film comes from Gordon in what would become a typical Ruth Gordon role – the eccentric yet sympathetic older woman. She was awarded her first Oscar nomination and would win three years later for her role in Rosemary’s Baby.

A BO and a critical failure at the time, the film has developed a cult following over the years.

The beach house that Daisy demolishes at the end of the movie once belonged to silent movie queen Barbara La Marr.

Cinematography: Charles Lang

Produced by Alan J. Pakula

Warner Bros.

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74. King Rat (1965)

(A)

BRYAN FORBES

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Corporal King (George Segal)

*Lt. Peter Marlowe (James Fox)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Denholm Elliott

Changi Prison, a Japanese POW camp, Singapore, 1945. The Allied prisoners endure starvation, disease, and despair under Japanese captivity. The traditional military hierarchies collapse as survival becomes the paramount concern. Unlike most, American Corporal King (George Segal) thrives. He runs a black market, trading with guards and manipulating resources. His cunning makes him both admired and despised. Lt. Peter Marlowe (James Fox), an upper-class British officer fluent in Malay, becomes King’s translator. He benefits from King’s schemes but wrestles with the moral cost of survival. Lt. Robin Grey (Tom Courtney), the camp provost, embodies rigid British discipline. He despises King’s corruption and becomes obsessed with exposing him, even as corruption among higher officers is ignored. King saves Marlowe’s arm with medicine, but it’s ambiguous whether this is genuine friendship or self-interest, since Marlowe knows where King’s profits are hidden. Liberation arrives with Japan’s defeat. The restored military hierarchy strips King of his influence, revealing the transactional nature of his power and relationships.

Adapted to the screen (from James Clavell’s 1962 novel, drawn from his own POW experiences) and directed by Bryan Forbes, this is one of the all-time great WWII prison camp films. Although James Fox’s Marlowe is not explicitly portrayed as gay, there is a strong homoerotic subtext in his relationship with Corporal King. Their friendship is unusually close compared to other POW interactions, and King saves Marlowe’s arm with medicine, stays by his bedside, and entrusts him with secrets. The novel by James Clavell hints at Marlowe’s sensitivity and ambiguous attachments, while the film leaves their bond open to interpretation: is this genuine affection, mutual self-interest, or a combination of both? Some have read Marlowe’s wistful gaze at King’s departure as coded longing.

An actor of unusual sensitivity, James Fox is an easy actor to queer-code, and he is mentioned twice in this essay and once in the next. No matter, his scenes with Segal have a beauty about them, a longing that every gay man can recognize. Segal was rising to stardom at this point. He was still a relative mystery, with undiscovered depths that were missing from his later performances. The British American dynamic in their relationship added another layer to our fascination with them.

Tom Courtney shows us, yet again, what a tremendous talent he is, and there is a treasure trove of acting from such British greats as John Mills, Denholm Elliott and James Donald.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Columbia Pictures

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75. The Loved One (1965)

A-

Tony Richardson

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger)

*Mr. Starker (Liberace)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: Tony Richardson

SCREENWRITER: Christopher Isherwood

ACTOR: John Gielgud

ACTOR: Tab Hunter

ACTOR: Liberace

ACTOR: Roddy McDowell

COSTUME DESIGNER: Rouben Ter-Arutnian

Everyone had great fun adapting Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 short satirical novel about the funeral business in Los Angeles. However, understandably, it was not a hit at the box office and ruined any chance of a Hollywood career for director Tony Richardson. It now has a cult following and is highly regarded in some quarters, including TheBrownees. Haskell Wexler’s black-and-white photography is impressive. Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern wrote a very witty screenplay. The fantastic cast includes:

• Robert Morse as Dennis Barlow
• Anjanette Comer as Aimée Thanatogenos**
• Jonathan Winters as both Henry Glenworthy and Wilbur Glenworthy
• Rod Steiger as Mr. Joyboy
• Dana Andrews as Gen. Buck Brinkman
• Milton Berle as Mr. Kenton
• James Coburn, as the Immigration Officer
• Ayllene Gibbons as Mr. Joyboy’s Mother
• John Gielgud as Sir Francis Hinsley
• Tab Hunter, as the Whispering Glades tour guide
• Margaret Leighton as Mrs. Helen Kenton
• Liberace as Mr. Starker
• Roddy McDowall as DJ, Jr.
• Robert Morley as Sir Ambrose Abercrombie
• Alan Napier, as the English Club’s official
• Barbara Nichols as Sadie Blodgett
• Lionel Stander, as the Guru Brahmin
• Paul Williams as Gunther Fry
• Jamie Farr as a waiter at an English Club (uncredited)

** Aimée means BELOVED, and Thanatogenos means BORN OF DEATH.

FILMWAYS

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76. Darling (1965)

B-

John Schlesinger

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Miles Brand (Dirk Bogarde)

LGBTQ+

DIRECTOR: John Schlesinger

ACTOR: Dirk Bogarde

ACTOR: Laurence Harvey

It was so fashionable in 1965, so dated today. Never has a film demonstrated how rapidly modishness withers. Still, it features a star-making and Academy Award-winning turn by the impossibly beautiful Julie Christie, even if far more people saw her as Laura in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, released the same year – she even got a theme of her own. Christie is Diana Scott, a young, successful model in swinging sixties London who plays with the affections of two older men (Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey), one of whom is married (Bogarde).

Bogarde and Harvey were both gay. The latter experienced significant career advancements due to his decade-long relationship with producer James Woolf. With his brother John, Woolf founded Romulus/Remus Films in the early ’50s and produced Harvey’s star-making performance in Room at the Top.

Director John Schlesinger would go on to direct far better Queer Films, such as Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday, which will be covered in Essay Two: 85 Queer Films from the New Hollywood, 1968-1981

The Oscar-winning Original Screenplay is by Frederic Raphael.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Kenneth Higgins

Joseph Janni Productions

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77. My Hustler (1965)

B+

Chuck Wein

(NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL)

My Hustler is the only extant Factory Film that 1) has been transferred to digital media and 2) has made a profit.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Ed – the client (Ed Hood, uncredited)

*Joe – the older hustler (Joe Campbell, uncredited)

*Paul – the younger hustler (Paul America, uncredited)

LGBTQ+

PRODUCER: Andy Warhol

DIRECTOR: Chuck Wein

ACTOR: Ed Hood (uncredited)

ACTOR: Paul America (uncredited)

ACTOR: Joe Campbell (uncredited)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Andy Warhol

Prepare to be surprised. If your only encounters with Andy Warhol’s cinema are Chelsea Girls or Empire State, don’t give up just yet. My Hustler is a very different experience: a film with a straightforward narrative, strong performances, and a sly sense of humor. Shot on Fire Island in 1965, it follows the rivalry between two men and a woman competing for the attention of a young male hustler, openly engaging with queer themes that were daring for its time.

At 76 minutes, the film is brisk and engaging. Although Warhol is often credited as a co-director, the general consensus is that this is a Chuck Wein movie, and he receives sole directorial credit in this essay. Much of its appeal comes from Ed Hood, who transforms what could have been a stock bitter old queen role into a hilarious yet sympathetic character. The cast also includes Paul America as the hustler at the center of desire, Joe Campbell (nicknamed the Sugar Plum Fairy) as an older hustler, and Genevieve Charbon/Charbin (her credit varies on publications) as a straight woman who wants her share of the action.

The Factory’s door person and Chelsea Girl, Dorothy Dean, makes a cameo appearance.

The film’s wit and energy have made it a favorite even among gay and straight audiences.

The project was conceived by Warhol and Wein, with dialogue largely improvised — hence no official screenwriting credit. Paul Morrissey served as the uncredited camera operator, while Warhol himself is credited as cinematographer. Morrissey was the first person to introduce sound and camera movement to a Factory picture.

The film premiered at the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in New York in January 1966 and then ran in alternative and art-house venues across the U.S. through 1968. At the time, the Production Code (Hays Code) still prohibited depictions of homosexuality as “sex perversion”. Mainstream studios had to submit films for approval, but Warhol’s underground productions operated outside the studio system. Because My Hustler was independently produced and distributed through non‑studio channels, it bypassed the Production Code Administration entirely. It never carried the Code seal of approval.

Joe Campbell, also known as The Sugar Plum Fairy, was immortalized in Lou Reed’s recollection of his Warhol Factory days, as featured in Walk on the Wild Side. He was also Harvey Milk’s boyfriend in New York from 1955 to 1962.

Andy Warhol Films (The Factory)

NOW AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON THE INTERNET ARCHIVE (ARCHIVE.ORG)

78. The Pawnbroker

B+

Sidney Lumet

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Rodriguez (Brock Peters)

Sol Nazerman, (Rod Steiger) once a Jewish professor in Europe, now runs a pawn shop in East Harlem. Twenty‑five years after surviving the Nazi concentration camps, he lives emotionally numb, having lost his wife, children, and faith in humanity during the Holocaust. His life is marked by recurring flashbacks of the atrocities he witnessed, which intrude on his daily routine and keep him detached from everyday life.

The film follows Sol’s gradual unraveling as he realizes how his detachment harms those around him. His inability to connect or act compassionately leads to tragic consequences, ultimately forcing him to face the depth of his trauma and the cost of shutting out the world.

Rod Steiger is exceptional in what is, arguably, his greatest performance. He received the first of his two Best Actor Oscar nominations for this movie but lost to Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. He won two years later for In the Heat of the Night (1967).

With Geraldine Fitzgerald.

THE PAWNBROKER:

• FIRST AMERICAN FILM TO FEATURE A QUEER AFRICAN AMERICAN CHARACTER – BROCK PETERS*
• FIRST AMERICAN FILM TO DEAL WITH THE HOLOCAUST FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A SURVIVOR
• FIRST PCA APPROVED FILM TO SHOW A WOMAN’S BARE BREASTS IN THE HAYS CODE ERA (1934-1968)

*Brock Peters’ character JOHNNY was neutered on his transition from book to screen in The L-Shaped Room. Peters made up for this two years later in The Pawnbroker where he plays the small but pivital role of the mob boss Rodriguez, the man who controls Sol’s businness.

Cinematography: Boris Kaufman

Screenplay by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin based on the 1961 novel by Edward Lewis Wallant.

Music: Quincy Jones

Producer: Ely Landau – The Landau Company

Distributer: American International Pictures (AIP)

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 79. Persona (1966)

A+

Ingmar Bergman

(SUBMITTED – APPROVED WITH CUTS)

Approved with two scenes edited out. These have since been restored.

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Alma (Bibi Andersson)

*Elisabet (Liv Ullmann)

My Favorite Foreign Language Film

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is a cinematic masterpiece that examines the complex and intimate relationship between two women, Elisabet (played by Liv Ullmann) and Alma (played by Bibi Andersson). Elisabet, a theatre actress, suddenly becomes mute during a performance of “Electra,” and Alma, a nurse, is assigned to care for her. They move to a cottage on Fårö (also known as Bergman) island off the coast of Sweden, where, in their isolation, the women develop a deep emotional bond that blurs the lines between reality and imagination. Elisabet’s silence and withdrawal contrast with Alma’s volubility and desire for emotional connection. Eventually, Alma begins having trouble distinguishing herself from her patient.

Bergman’s revolutionary script and direction delve into topics such as vampirism, motherhood, abortion, and the Jungian theory of persona while highlighting what is fundamentally a love story between two women. Andersson’s and Ullman’s performances rank among the greatest in movie history.

In addition, the movie gives us not just one but two supremely erotic moments. The first is Andersson’s now-famous monologue, in which Alma recounts an episode from her youth in which she and her friend Katarina engaged in a spontaneous orgy on a beach. The sensuality of the moment is centered on Alma’s memory of the intimate connection between herself and her friend as they were, in turn, penetrated by an unknown man while another watched. The second is a series of intimate compositions featuring the two women, filmed in black and white and shot in extreme close-ups by the legendary Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist. These images have become iconic.

Original screenplay by Ingmar Bergman

Lopert/United Artists

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80. The Group (1966)

(C)

Sidney Lumet

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Lakey (Candice Bergen)

*The Baroness, Lakey’s friend from Europe (Lidia Prochnicka)

Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Mary McCarthy about the lives of eight female graduates (played by Joanna Petit, Jessica Walter, Mary Robin Redd, Candice Bergen, Shirley Knight, Joan Hackett, Kathleen Widdoes, and Elizabeth Hartman) from Vassar from 1933 to 1940, director Sidney Lumet’s movie is like a microcosm of his career – biting off more than he can chew. The film meanders incessantly, with only Joan Hackett’s Dottie (at the beginning), Elizabeth Hartman’s Priss (in the middle), and Shirley Knight’s Polly (at the end) getting the respect they deserve. The other five actresses and their characters get no respect or insight whatsoever. It’s a lost opportunity. This goes double for Candice Bergen, making her movie debut as the film’s token lesbian character, Lakey. Lakey spends most of the movie in Europe, a place where rich lesbians were banished in film like this before there was a California.

At the outbreak of World War II, Lakey returned to the United States with a baroness in tow. However, said Baroness (Lidia Prochnicka) gets no dialogue. Her sole purpose is to be introduced to The Group at the railway station so we can see the shock on their faces; her queerness is not subtle! So, unlike Lauren Bacall and Katherine Kurasch in Young Man with a Horn or Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood in The Fox, no relationship is documented here. Probably just as well since, even though Bergen’s natural beauty is striking, she is so tightly coutured in a series of stiff lesbian outfits by designer Anna Hill Johnstone that it’s a wonder the poor thing could even breathe. I swear, in some of her scenes, she looks like a prototype for the Corleone brothers in The Godfather, for which Johnstone would design her landmark costumes six years later.

Cinematography

Boris Kaufman

United Artists

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81. Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Rated (C) (Solo)

High Camp at a Midnight Screening

Mark Robson

(SUBMITTED : APPROVED WITH CUTS)

SOME SCENES WERE CUT FOR RATING AND PACING – NOT CENSORSHIP ALONE – WHAT WE SEE TODAY IS ESSENTIALLY WHAT AUDIENCES SAW IN 1967

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Ted Casablanca (Alexander Davion) is a hairdresser who is often assumed to be gay by others, but his actual sexual orientation is unknown.

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

William Travilla

Based on Jacqueline Susann’s trashy but compulsively readable novel about three women (Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, and Sharon Tate) trying to forge careers in the entertainment industry, each descending into barbiturate addiction – the valley of the dolls. TCF quickly realized that they had a real turkey on their hands, but the film, coasting on the book’s popularity, was a hit. Over time, Fox also realized that, thanks to Miss Patty Duke’s Neely O’Hara and, to a lesser degree, the terrible performance of Susan Hayward as fading star Helen Lawson, they also were the proud owners of a gay kitsch cult classic – A MOVIE TO BE SCREENED AT MIDNIGHT WITH A GAY CROWD. In other words, it’s a Rocky Horror GROUP experience and should NEVER be seen alone. Duke is so bad in this movie because she thinks she is giving a shoo-in Oscar-caliber performance. Amid all the campness, Parkins and a surprisingly moving Tate survive relatively unscathed.

Andre and Dory Previn wrote the campy yet haunting theme of the film. As sung by Dionne Warwick, it reached #2 on the Hot 100 but was NOT nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category.

The two Best Quotes in the movie are, of course, courtesy of Neely:

I have to get up at five o’clock in the morning and SPARKLE, Neely, SPARKLE!

Neely O’ Hara (PATTY DUKE) in “VALLEY OF THE DOLLS”

Ted Casablanca is not a fag, and I’m the dame to prove it!

Neely O’ Hara (PATTY DUKE) in “VALLEY OF THE DOLLS”

CINEMATOGRAPHY

William Daniels

TCF

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82. The Producers (1967)

B+

Mel Brooks

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett)

*Carmen Ghia (Andreas Voutsinas)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Christopher Hewett

ACTOR: Andreas Voutsinas

Mel Brooks’s debut feature is a deliriously irreverent farce about greed, show business, and the spectacular unpredictability of audiences. It’s also one of the sharpest satires ever made about the entertainment industry’s willingness to exploit anything—even fascism—if it might turn a profit.

Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) is a washed‑up Broadway producer who finances his flops by seducing elderly women for checks. When timid accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) reviews Max’s books, he makes an offhand discovery: a producer could actually make more money with a guaranteed flop than with a hit, by overselling shares in a show that will close immediately.

SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER AND GERMANY

WINTER FOR POLAND AND FRANCE

DON’T BE STUPID BE A SMARTY

COME AND JOIN THE NAZY PARTY

They choose SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER, a neo‑Nazi playwright’s musical valentine to Adolf Hitler—an idea so tasteless it seems foolproof. They then hire LSD (short for Lorenzo St. DuBois, played by Dick Shawn), a blissed‑out hippie, to play Hitler, Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett), a flamboyant (gay) director who turns everything into a camp spectacle, and Ulla (Lee Meredith), a Swedish bombshell who becomes their “secretary”. Everything is engineered to fail. Until it doesn’t. The play becomes a comedic smash, leaving Max and Leo in the red.

Not nearly as shocking today as it was in 1967, The Producers remains wildly entertaining. A huge part of its staying power comes from Roger De Bris and his exquisitely mannered assistant Carmen Ghia (Andreas Voutsinas), who sweep into the film’s latter half and all but hijack it. Their entrance scene—Max and Bloom’s first visit to the townhouse—is pure comedic gold, a rapid‑fire cascade of quotable lines and perfectly calibrated camp that could give Carrie a run for its money. It’s the moment the film shifts from outrageous to transcendent, carried entirely by Roger and Carmen’s unapologetic theatricality.

Please enjoy!

Cinematography: Joseph Coffey

Embassy Pictures

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83. The Fox (1967)

B+

Mark Rydell

(NOT SUBMITTED)

Bypassing the Hays Office, the film was released independently, without a Code seal. Playing at Film Festivals, Art Houses, and College Campuses, it found an audience, and Lalo Schifrin’s Oscar-nominated score gave it a second wind in the Spring of 1969 – the movie was not shown in LA until 1968. It was later submitted to the MPAA retroactively and received an R rating.

.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Jill Banford (Sandy Dennis)

*Ellen March (Anne Heywood)

LGBTQ+

Sandy Dennis

Director Mark Rydell (The Rose, On Golden Pond) moves the location of D.H. Lawrence’s short story to rural Canada, where our lesbian couple, Jill Banford (Sandy Dennis) and Ellen March (Anne Heywood), support themselves by raising chickens. They are happy and content. There is genuine chemistry between the two actresses without things being overtly physical. Then, unexpectedly, in the dead of winter, merchant seaman Paul (Keir Dullea) arrives on the property in search of his grandfather.

Yes, a fox keeps killing the chickens, and there is a dying oak tree, which we begin to realize is the Canadian equivalent of Chekov’s gun. Like John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, released the same year, The Fox does interesting things with color saturation (Bill Fraker was the cinematographer), and the Lalo Schifrin score has deservedly entered the jazz canon.

All three leads are impressive, and although the ending is a disappointment from a gay perspective, the movie is well worth seeing.

PRODUCER: Raymond Stross

Warner Bros. Seven Arts

“THE FOX” IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. THE DVD CAN BE PURCHASED FROM AMAZON.

84. Portrait of Jason (1967)

(A)

Shirley Clarke

(NOT SUBMITTED)

Bypassing the Hays Office, the film was released independently, without a Code seal. Playing at Film Festivals, Art Houses and College Campuses, it found an audience and paved the way for Independent Film as we know it today.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:

*Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne, playing Himself)

Portrait of Jason director Shirley Clarke and her partner, Carl Lee, while remaining off-camera, employ cinéma vérité techniques, such as prompting, as they introduce us to hustler Jason Holliday (born Aaron Payne) as he narrates his life story. Jason holds us enraptured as he bares his soul and, directly to the camera, tells us about his relationships, his ambitions, and his struggles. For the entire movie, he is the sole presence on-screen, and his performance encompasses songs, costume changes, and theatrical monologues.

The film oscillates between comedy and tragedy, exposing Jason’s contradictions: his flamboyant self-presentation versus the pain of marginalization and the struggle for survival. Blending cabaret flair with raw confession, Jason gradually reveals the sadness underlying his theatrical, exaggerated persona.

Essential viewing.

Trivia: Director Shirley Clarke was the sister of novelist Elaine Dundy and, from 1951 to 1964, the sister-in-law of the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan.

Cinematography: Jeri Sopanen

Film-Makers’ Distributers (Original release)

Milestone Films (Re-release)

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85. Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).

A+

John Huston

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

RELEASED BY WARNER BROS. ON OCTOBER 13,1967, TWO WEEKS AFTER THE DEATH OF ITS AUTHOR, CARSON MCCULLERS, THIS FILM IS OFTEN CITED AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE WEAKENING OF THE HAYS CODE. A FEW MONTHS LATER, THE HAYS CODE WOULD CEASE TO EXIST. IT IS FITTING, THEREFORE, THAT REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE IS THE FINAL CHAPTER IN MY ESSAY ENTITLED 85 QUEER FILMS UNDER THE HAYS CODE (1934-1967).

  LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Anacleto (Zorro David)

*Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando)

LGBTQ+

ACTOR: Marlon Brando

ACTOR: Zorro David

SOURCE MATERIAL: Carson McCullers – based on her novel Reflections in a Golden Eye

AN ARMY BASE IN THE SOUTH……….

In an army garrison, somewhere in the South, we make the acquittance of Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando), a repressed, closeted officer who struggles with his masculinity and desires. His marriage to Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) is passionless and strained. Lenora openly flaunts her affair with her husband’s best friend, Col. Langdon (Brian Keith), humiliating her husband. Langdon’s wife, Alison (Julie Harris), is emotionally fragile, mutilates herself by chopping off her nipples with the garden shears, in despair, and finds solace only in her flamboyant Filipino houseboy, Anacleto. Meanwhile, a young soldier, Private Williams (Robert Foster), becomes a voyeur, secretly watching Lenora asleep in her bedroom at night and stirring Penderton’s suppressed desires. If you think that you have just entered Carson McCullers’ country, you are correct.

John Huston’s favorite of all his movies, “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” is not for everyone, but if it’s to your taste, it’s spellbinding. Marlon Brando does something unique with his closeted gay character; it’s one of his truly great performances, right up there with his Stanley Kowalski. Elizabeth Taylor gives one of her best, most relaxed performances in years. She was beginning to gain weight at this time in her life, and she used her body fearlessly, like a weapon. Harris, who made very few movies for an actress of her caliber, became a star in her portrayal of McCullers in The Member of the Wedding, and she is transcendent here. Her scenes with Anacleto (gay actor Zorro David, mesmerizing, transcending his gay archetype) are at once girly, flirtatious and unspeakably sad. And then there is Brian Keith. Always an underrated actor, he brought a great deal of strength to every role he played. Here, he underplays beautifully. His Col. Langdon is not an evil man. Yet, he is clueless to the suffering of all those surrounding him and oblivious to the multiple storylines that are rapidly converging toward a tragedy.

Finally, there is Robert Forster (Jackie Brown), making his film debut as Private Williams. In contrast to the aging physiques of the other actors, he is mighty pleasing on the eye, spending most of the movie buck naked while riding Lenora/Taylor’s prized horse! It’s a tribute to the complexity of the narrative that until the fateful closing scene, she never even knew he existed.

Reflections in a Golden Eye was initially released with a gold-tinted filter applied to all scenes. The desaturated, golden hue was a specific artistic choice by director John Huston and cinematographer Aldo Tonti. 

The intended effect was to reference a drawing made by the houseboy Anacleto, in which a golden peacock’s eye reflects the entire world, and to create a specific, dreamlike, and “heated, otherworldly quality” that matched the tone of the story. Only certain shades of red and green were allowed to show through the filter. 

However, the initial golden version puzzled audiences and performed poorly at the box office. Consequently, Warner Bros. withdrew the film within a week of release and reissued it in a standard full-color Technicolor version, which did not reflect Huston’s original vision. 

Both the original, intended golden-tinted version and the standard color version are available on some modern releases, such as the 2020 two-disc Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. 

The haunting score is by Toshiro Mayuzumi.

Adapted by Gladys Hill and Chaplin Mortimer from the novel of the same name by Carson McCullers

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Aldo Tonti

Warner Bros. Seven Arts

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QUEER CINEMA: HIGHLY RATED

Queer‑coded films often distinguish themselves through sophistication and intellectual depth. Because audiences approach them with heightened attentiveness—always searching for subtext or coded meaning—these works place significant demands on the viewer but also deliver exceptional rewards. This dynamic helps explain the consistently strong ratings, as reflected in my personal opinions, across the 75 films examined, with an average rating of

B+

ESSAY ONE – TABLE 7

85 QUEER FILMS MADE UNDER THE HAYS CODE – RATED

FILM	RATING	FILM	RATING	FILM	RATING
All About Eve	A+	The Dark at the Top of the Stairs	A-	Victim	B+
Casablanca	A+	Les Diaboliques	A-	Ben-Hur	B
Double Indemnity	A+	Gilda	A-	Calamity Jane	B
Funny Face	A+	The Haunting	A-	Johnny Guitar	B
Kind Hearts and Coronets	A+	I Vitelloni	A-	The Leather Boys	B
Laura	A+	In a Lonely Place	A-	Pillow Talk	B
Meet Me in St. Louis	A+	The Loved One	A-	Spartacus	B
Mildred Pierce	A+	The Maltese Falcon	A-	Young Man with a Horn	B
My Fair Lady	A+	The Man Who Came to Dinner	A-	Auntie Mame	B-
North By Northwest	A+	Red River	A-	The Big Combo	B-
Persona	A+	Rope	A-	Compulsion	B-
Psycho	A+	Stage Door	A-	Darling	B-
Rebecca	A+	Strangers on a Train	A-	Oscar Wilde (The Trials of Oscar Wilde)	B- (C)
Rebel Without a Cause	A+	Tea and Sympathy	A-	Sylvia Scarlett	B-
Reflections in a Golden Eye	A+	The Wizard Of OZ	A-	The Uninvited	B-
Some Like it Hot	A+	The Women	A-	That  Touch of Mink	C+
A Streetcar Named Desire	A+	Written on the Wind	A-	Inside Daisy Clover	C+
Top Hat	A+	A Taste of Honey	B+	Suddenly Last Summer	C+
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?	A+	The Bad Seed	B+	Billy Budd	C
Adam’s Rib	A	Brute Force	B+	The Children’s Hour	C
King Rat	A	Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	B+	The Group	C
Lawrence of Arabia	A	The Fox	B+	The Seventh Victim	C
The Picture of Dorian Gray	A	Gentlemen Prefer Blonds	B+	The Valley of the Dolls	C
Portrait of Jason	A	The L-Shaped Room	B+	Caged	C-
The Servant	A	Murder My Sweet	B+	Walk on the Wild Side	C-
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers	A	My Hustler	B+
Touch of Evil	A	The Pawnbroker	B+
Advice and Consent	A-	The Producers	B+
The Bride of Frankenstein	A-	Purple Noon	B+
Bringing Up Baby	A-	The Strange One	B+

MY MAJOR INFLUENCES IN WRITING THESE TWO ESSAYS

• The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies: Vito Russo’s landmark 1981 non-fiction book.

• Queer & Now & Then: Michael Koresky’s series of articles on Queer Cinema in the magazine Film Comment.

• Homosexuality in Film Noir: Richard Dyer’s seminal 1977 article on Homosexuality in Film Noir in the magazine JUMP CUT

• I Lost It at the Movies (1965), Kiss Kiss Bang (1968) and When the Lights Go Down (1980): Three essential collections of film criticism by my favorite film critic, Pauline Kael.

• Lost Gay Novels: Anthony Slide’s 2003 Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century.

ESSAY ONE – TABLE 8

85 QUEER FILMS MADE UNDER THE HAYS CODE -SUMMARY

Directors | Actors | Screenwriters| Source Material | Production Designers | Costume Designers

DIRECTORS (GAY DIRECTORS HIGHLIGHTED)	ACTORS PLAYING GAY CHARACTERS (GAY ACTORS HIGHLIGHTED)	ACTORS PLAYING GAY CHARACTERS (GAY ACTORS HIGHLIGHTED)	GAY SCREENWRITERS & GAY WRITERS OF SOURCE MATERIAL	GAY COSTUME DESIGNERS |SET DECORATORS
Alfred Hitchcock (5)	Dirk Bogarde (3) *	Andrea Leeds (1)	Tennessee Williams (3)	George James Hopkins (6)
George Cukor (4)	Eve Arden (2)	Jack Lemmon (1)	Patricia Highsmith (2)	Edith Head (5)
Michael Curtiz (3)	Humphrey Bogart (2)	Liberace  (1)	Oscar Wilde (2)	Orry-Kelly (5)
Howard Hawks (3)	James Fox (2) *	Peter Lorre (1)	Patrick Dennis (1)	Cedric Gibbons  (4)
Nicholas Ray (3)	Mercedes McCambridge (2) 	Shirley MacLaine  (1)	Leonard Gershe (1)	Bill Thomas (4)
Edward Dmytryk (2)	Barbara Stanwyck (2)	Fred MacMurray  (1)	William Inge (1)	Gilbert Adrian (3)
Bryan Forbes  (2)	Nick Adams (1)	George Macready (1)	Gavin Lambert (1)	William Travilla (3)
John Huston (2)	Judith Anderson (1)	Achille Majeroni (1)	Carson McCullers (1)	Charles Le Maire (2)
Sidney Lumet (2) *	Bibi Andersson (1)	Peter McEnery (1) *	Herman Melville (1)	Moss Mabry (2)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (2) *	Lauren Bacall (1)	Audrey Meadows (1)	Gore Vidal (1)	Anthony Mendelson (2)
Delbert Mann (2)	Anne Baxter (1)	Murray Melvin (1)	** Christopher Fry (1)  **Gore Vidal (1)	Bernard Newman (2)
Otto Preminger (2)	Candice Bergen (1)	Sal Mineo (1)		Gene Allen (1)
Tony Richardson (2)	Claire Bloom (1)	Agnes Moorhead (1)		Cecil Beaton (1)
Mark Robson (2)	Eric Blore (1)	Robert Morley  (1)		Bill Blass (1)
Billy Wilder (2)	Stephen Boyd (1)	John Neville  (1)		Howard Greer (1)
William Wyler (2)	Marlon Brando (1)	Paul Newman (1)		Harry Haynes (1)
	Jacqueline Brooks  (1)	Peter O’Toole (1)		Jean Louis (1)
Robert Aldrich (1) *	Coral Browne (1) *	Laurence Olivier (1)		Oliver Messel (1)
Lewis Allen (1)	Victor Buono (1)	Cornelia Otis Skinner (1)		Walter Plunkett (1)
Ingmar Bergman (1)	Colin Campbell (1)	Gail Patrick (1)		Howard Shoup (1)
Mel Brooks (1)	Capucine (1)	Anthony Perkins (1) *		Edward Stevenson (1)
Richard Brooks (1)	Montgomery Clift (1)	Brock Peters (1)		Rouben Ter-Arutnian (1)
David Butler (1)	Vera Clouzot (1)	Dennis Price  (1)
Shirley Clarke  (1)	Elisha Cook Jr (1)	Lidia Prochnicka (1)
Rene Clement (1)	Cicely Courtneidge  (1)	Claude Rains (1)
Henri-Georges Clouzot  (1)	Joan Crawford  (1)	Robert Redford  (1)
John Cromwell (1)	Hume Cronyn (1) *	Paul E. Richards  (1)
Morton DaCosta (1)	John Dahl (1)	Edward G. Robinson (1)
Howard Hawks (3)	Zorro David (1)	Ginger Rogers (1)
Jules Dassin (1)	Alexander Davion (1)	Gail Russell (1)
Basil Dearden (1)	Doris Day (1)	Robert Ryan (1)
Stanley Donen (1) *	James Dean (1)	George Saunders (1)
Federico Fellini (1)	Alain Delon (1)	George Segal (1)
Richard Fleischer (1) *	Sandy Dennis (1)	Omar Sheriff (1)
Victor Fleming (1)	Bradford Dillman  (1)	Simone Signoret (1)
Sidney J. Furie (1)	Kirk Douglas (1)	Robert Stack (1)
Jack Garfein (1)	Hilton Edwards (1)	Terence Stamp (1)
Michael Gordon (1)	Leif Erickson (1)	Rod Steiger (1) *
Robert Hamer  (1)	Robert Eyer (1)	James Stewart (1)
Elia Kazan (1)	Glenn Ford (1)	Dean Stockwell  (1)
William Keighley (1)	Betty Garde (1)	Dudley Sutton (1)
Stanley Kubrick (1) *	Lowell Gilmore (1)	Ernest Thesiger  (1)
Gregory La Cava (1)	Farley Granger (1)	Kay Thompson (1)
Mervin LeRoy (1)	Cary Grant (1)	Liv Ullmann (1)
David Lean (1)	Sydney Greenstreet (1)	Peter Ustinov (1)
Albert Lewin (1)	Alec Guinness (1)	Lee Van Cleef (1)
Joseph H. Lewis (1) 	Rex Harrison (1)	Andreas Voutsinas (1)
Joseph Losey (1)	Hurd Hartfield (1) *	Robert Walker (1)
Lewis Milestone (1)	Katherine Hepburn (1)	Douglas Walton (1)
Robert Mulligan  (1)	Charlton Heston (1)	David Wayne (1)
Gregory Ratoff  (1)	Christopher Hewett (1)	Clifton Webb (1)
Mark Rydell (1)	Anne Heywood (1)	Monty Wooley (1)
Mark Sandrich (1)	Jason Holliday  (1)	Gig Young (1)
John Schlesinger  (1)  *	Earl Holliman (1)	**Paul America (1) **Joe Campbell (1) **Richard Deacon (1) **Ed Hood (1) ** Lynda Grey (1) **Katherine Kurasch (1)
Douglas Sirk (1)	Edward Everett Horton (1)
Peter Ustinov (1) 	Rock Hudson (1)
Charles Vidor (1)	Ruth Hussey (1)
Chuck Wein (1) Warhol is sometimes credited as co-director	Wilfrid Hyde-White (1)
Orson Welles (1)	Isabell Jewel (1)
James Whale (1)	Bert Lahr (1)
Robert Wise (1)	Martin Landau  (1)

*This director or actor will also be discussed in Essay Number Two: 85 Queer Films of the New Hollywood (1968-1980)

** Uncredited

ESSAY ONE – TABLE 9

85 QUEER FILMS MADE UNDER THE HAYS CODE -SUMMARY

CINEMATOGRAPHERS

William Daniels	3	Tony Gaudio	1
William A. Fraker	1	Georges Perinal	1
Sven Nykvist	1	Russell Harlan	1
		Robert De Grasse	1
Otello Martelli	1	Armand Thirard	1
Nicholas Musuraca	1	Victor Milner	1
Sam Leavitt	1	Carl E. Guthrie	1
Paul Morrissey (cinematography credit to Warhol)	1	Ted McCord	1
Otto Heller	1	Russell Metty	4
Oliver T. Marsh & Joseph Ruttenberg	1	Wilfred M. Cline	1
Kenneth Higgins	1	Freddie Young	1
Joseph MacDonald	1	William C. Mellor	1
Joseph H. August	1	Arthur E. Arling	1
John L. Russell	1	Robert Surtees	1
John J. Mescall	1	Robert Burks	3
Jeri Sopanen	1	Milton Krasner	1
Haskell Wexler	1	John F. Seitz	1
Harry Stradling	6	John Alton	2
Harold Rosson	2	Henri Decae	1
Gerald Gibbs	1	Ray June	1
George Barnes	1	Davis Boulton	1
Franz Planer	1	Douglas Slocombe*	3
Ernest Haller	4	Jack Hildyard	1
David Abel	1	Walter Lassally	1
Charles Lang	3	Joseph Valentine (color consultant: William Skall)	1
Burnett Guffey	3	Robert Krasker	1
Boris Kaufman	1	George Folsey	2
Arthur Edeson	2	Joseph LaShelle	1
Aldo Tonti	1	Harry J. Wild	2

*This cinematographer will also be discussed in Essay Number Two: 85 Queer Films from the New Hollywood (1968-1980).

@TheBrownees www.thebrownees.net https://thebrownees.net

https://thebrownees.net/85-queer-films-made-under-the-hays-code-1934-1968/

https://thebrownees.net/85-queer-films-from-the-new-hollywood-1968-1980/

URL links to 85 Queer Films MADE Under the Hays Code

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Top Hat (1935) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Sylvia Scarlet (1935) Film Review B- TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/stage-door-1937-queer-film/

https://thebrownees.net/bringing-up-baby-1938-queer-film/

The Women (1939) Film Review A- TheBrownees

The Wizard of Oz (1939) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Rebecca (1940) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

The Maltese Falcon (1941) Film Review A- TheBrownees

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) Film Review A- TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/casablanca-1942-1943-heres-looking-at-you-kid/

https://thebrownees.net/the-seventh-victim-1943-queer-film/

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Minnelli’s masterpiece and Garland’s Best Film A+ – TheBrownees

Laura (1944) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Double Indemnity (1944) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Murder My Sweet (1944) Film Review. B+ – TheBrownees

The Uninvited (1944) Film Review B- TheBrownees

Mildred Pierce (1945) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Gilda (1946) Film Review A- TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/the-love-of-martha-ivers-1946-queer-film-a/

Brute Force (1947) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Red River (1948) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Rope (1948) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Adam’s Rib (1949) Film Review A – TheBrownees

All About Eve (1950) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Caged (1950) Film Review C- TheBrownees

Young Man with a Horn (1950) Film Review B – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/in-a-lonely-place-1950-queer-film-a/

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Strangers on a Train (1951) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Calamity Jane (1953) Film Review B – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/i-vitelloni-1953-queer-film/

Johnny Guitar (1954) Film Review B – TheBrownees

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

The Big Combo (1955) Film Review B- TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/les-diaboliques-1955-queer-film/

Written on the Wind (1956) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

The Bad Seed (1956) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Tea and Sympathy (1956) Film Review. A- TheBrownees

Funny Face (1957) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/the-strange-one-1957-queer-film/

A Touch of Evil (1958) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Auntie Mame (1958) Film Review C+ – TheBrownees

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Suddenly Last Summer (1959) Film Review C- TheBrownees

Some Like it Hot (1959) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Pillow Talk (1959) Film Review B – TheBrownees

Ben Hur (1959) Film Review B – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/compulsion-1959-film-review/

https://thebrownees.net/north-by-northwest-1959-film-review/

https://thebrownees.net/oscar-wilde-1960-film-review/

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Spartacus (1960) Film Review B – TheBrownees

Psycho (1960) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Purple Noon (1960) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Victim (1961) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

A Taste of Honey (1961) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

The Children’s Hour (1961) Film Review C – TheBrownees

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Queer Subtext A – TheBrownees

Advice and Consent (1962) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) – TheBrownees

That Touch of Mink (1962) Film Review C+ – TheBrownees

Billy Budd (1962) Film Review C – TheBrownees

Walk on the Wild Side (1962) Film Review C- TheBrownees

The L-Shaped Room (1963) Film Review A- TheBrownees

The Haunting (1963) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

The Servant (1963) Film Review A – TheBrownees

The Leather Boys (1964) Film Review B – TheBrownees

My Fair Lady (1964) Cukor’s Late-Career Triumph A+ – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/inside-daisy-clover-1965-film-review/

https://thebrownees.net/king-rat-1965-film-review/

The Loved One (1965) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Darling (1965) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/my-hustler-1965-film-review/

The Pawnbroker (1965) Queer Film B+ – TheBrownees

Persona (1966) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

The Group (1966) A Lost Opportunity C – TheBrownees

Valley of the Dolls (1967) Rated C (Solo) High Camp at a Midnight Screening. – TheBrownees

https://thebrownees.net/the-producers-1967-queer-film-b/

https://thebrownees.net/the-fox-1967-film-review/

https://thebrownees.net/portrait-of-jason-hustler-jason-holliday/

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees