Book One

Hidden in Plain Sight – Queer Cinema During the Hays Code Era

(1934-1968)

Patrick Browne, MD, PhD

thebrownees.net

patrickpiousbrowne@gmail.com

1 (323) 3763657

DEDICATION

To Jack

Author’s Note

            I fell in love with movies when I was six years old and my family got our first television set. On weekend nights, my mom and dad allowed to stay up late and watch old Hollywood movies. The first two names I remember hearing were Gary Cooper and “Raymond Land.” That is not a typo. I had never heard of Ray Milland, and that is simply what his name sounded like to a little boy who was completely mesmerized by the people on the screen. That little boy never really went away.

            I went to college to study medicine, but movies remained one of the great loves of my life. During those years, I made a promise to myself that I would come out when I graduated. In the summer of 1990, I kept that promise. It was not always an easy journey, but movies helped me through it. They offered comfort, hope, escape, and, sometimes, the feeling that I was not alone.

            I was fortunate enough to begin reviewing films for In Dublin and The Irish Times, and my love affair with cinema only deepened. Over time, I realized that many of the people who created the movies I cherished had stories like my own, stories that could not always be spoken aloud. This book is for them.

           It is also for the six-year-old boy sitting in front of that television set, dreaming of faraway worlds and extraordinary lives. I could not have known then that those movies would help shape my own life. But they did. And this book is my thank-you letter to all of them.

INTRODUCTION

Hidden in Plain Sight — Queer Cinema During the Hays Code Era (1934–1968) examines how queer characters, queer sensibilities, and queer artists survived — and often thrived — under the notorious Production Code. Its companion volume, Book Two: Out of the Shadows — Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood Era (1968–1980), follows queer representation from the introduction of the MPAA rating system through the end of the New Hollywood period. Together, these books trace two radically different landscapes of LGBTQ+ portrayal on the American screen.

These volumes also reflect my own trajectory as a gay man whose professional life unfolded in medicine but whose emotional and intellectual life has always been anchored in cinema. I grew up in Ireland, went to college and medical school there, and — by sheer luck — began reviewing films in the mid‑1980s, first for In Dublin and later for The Irish Times. Eventually, I followed my dreams to California, settling in Los Angeles in the 1990s, where queer film history is not an abstraction but a living, breathing archive.

What do I mean by Queer Cinema? The term has many definitions, but for me it begins with representation: if a film includes a gay character who is treated as a character — not a punchline, not a prop for straight amusement — it belongs under the queer umbrella. But queer cinema is also a sensibility, a way of seeing and feeling. It encompasses films like The Bride of Frankenstein, The Women, and Auntie Mame, which contain only minor gay characters but radiate queer aesthetics, queer humor, and queer longing. The fact that all three were directed by gay men only completes the picture.

Although the centerpiece of this book is the 88 films of the title, I felt a preamble was essential: a foundation that provides readers with the historical and cultural context needed to understand queer Hollywood during its golden years. First, I trace the evolution of the Production Code, from the creation of the MPPDA (see below) and the arrival of Will Hays in 1922 to Joseph Breen’s ascendancy in 1934, and examine why it took twelve years for the Code to become a truly effective instrument of censorship. Next, I follow the seven distinct paths a film could take in its attempt to secure the best possible release during the Code era. Twenty-eight queer films provide the case studies, revealing a system far more complicated—and sometimes more negotiable—than the simple notion of “approved” or “banned” suggests. I then segue into eight pivotal queer films that helped bring about the collapse of the Code between 1964 and 1968. Together, they chart the extraordinary speed with which a censorship system that had dominated American filmmaking for three decades finally lost its authority. Moving in front of the camera, I give you a primer on 162 definite/probable queer Hollywood actors and celebrities. Many lived within a studio system that demanded concealment, carefully manufactured public identities, and, in numerous cases, lavender marriages—pressures that fell particularly heavily on men. And finally, I move behind the camera, mapping the presence of queer artists throughout the studio system—from directors, writers and producers to designers, choreographers and other craftspeople. What emerges is a remarkable creative network, largely invisible to contemporary audiences, that helped shape the look, language and sophistication of Hollywood itself. Only then do we arrive at the centerpiece of Hidden in Plain Sight: the 88 films themselves.

Part 1.

Censorship Under the Hays Code

Joseph Breen and the Hays Code – A Timeline

88 Queer Films Made During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968)

1922-1930: Hollywood’s early-1920s scandals — Fatty Arbuckle’s manslaughter trials for the death of Virginia Rappe for which he was eventually acquitted but his reputation was ruined, the unsolved William Desmond Taylor murder (which also buried Taylor’s gay relationship with art director George James Hopkins, and derailed Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter’s careers), and Wallace Reid’s morphine death — created a reputational crisis studios feared would bring state censorship or federal regulation.  In response, studios hired Will Hays in January 1922 (leading to the foundation of the Motion Picture Producers and Directors of America: MPPDA)  as pure image management: a Postmaster General and Presbyterian elder whose résumé alone was meant to reassure the public.  His office issued informal, toothless guidelines (the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” of 1927), and in 1929-30, Catholic publisher Martin Quigley and Jesuit priest Father Daniel Lord actually wrote the Production Code, which the MPPDA adopted in 1930.

1930-1934: The Code existed but had no enforcement mechanism, so studios ignored it — this is the pre-Code window which gave us Mervyn Le Roy’s Little Caesar (1931), Bill Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931), Jack Conway’s Red-Headed Woman (1932), Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932), Alfred E. Green’s Baby Face (1933),  and the double entendres of Mae West.  That changed in 1934, when the Catholic Legion of Decency threatened a national boycott, and Hays installed Joseph Breen to run the Production Code Administration (PCA) with real teeth: fines and, more decisively, denial of the PCA seal, which cut a film off from the then studio-affiliated theater chains.  That distribution chokepoint — not moral persuasion — is what actually ended the pre-Code era and made 1934, not 1922, the year enforcement began.

Joseph Ignatius Breen (1888-1965) was a Philadelphia-born Irish Catholic, former newspaperman, briefly a U.S. consular official, then a public relations man for the National Catholic Welfare Conference.  Hays first pulled him into the MPPDA’s orbit around 1931, working as a liaison during the mounting Catholic pressure campaign, well before Breen formally took over the PCA in June 1934.

Breen wasn’t chosen for taste or cinephilia — he was chosen as a credentialed insider who could speak to the Catholic hierarchy in its own language, at the exact moment the Legion of Decency’s boycott threat was the thing Hays most needed neutralized.  A devout Catholic layman with Church-press credentials gave Hays someone the bishops would actually trust to police the industry on their behalf, converting an external threat into internal enforcement.  It is the same logic as hiring Hays himself in 1922 — borrow moral authority from outside Hollywood to manage a crisis Hollywood could not credibly manage on its own.

Hollywood was/is Jewish. MGM, Paramount, Columbia, Warner Bros., Fox and Universal were all founded by Jews. RKO was mixed Jewish/gentile.  Only Darryl Zanuck’s Twentieth Century was Protestant. But then he merged with Fox.  Breen’s own correspondence, well-documented by historians, shows him privately blaming Jewish studio executives for the “moral corruption” he was hired to police — an antisemitic framing running underneath the entire enforcement apparatus.  So the Code wasn’t just Catholic natural-law morality applied neutrally; its chief enforcer saw his job partly through the Catholic-Jewish lens, which complicates any account of the PCA as pure “religious values vs. secular content” and adds an ethnic-animus dimension that I feel is worth naming directly rather than skirting the issue.

The initials MPPDA  were changed to MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) with the arrival of Hays’ successor, Eric Johnson, in 1946 and finally, as purely a rating system, in 2019, as MPA (Motion Picture Association) as the organization unified its domestic branch with its international offices, which had already been operating under the “MPA” name since 1994.

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 a gay character, while, at the same time, disguising them.  This dichotomy, however, led to thirty-four years of movie classics in which queer characters were not only present in memorable supporting roles but also featured in leading parts.

Wonder Bar (Lloyd Bacon, 1934)

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.

Breen retired in 1954, and his successor, Geoffrey Shurlock, oversaw the Production Code Administration through a series of important revisions. The 1956 revision modestly relaxed some restrictions but did not address homosexuality. A more significant change came in 1961, when the Code was amended to permit references to homosexuality provided they were treated with “care, discretion and restraint” and were not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior. This revision proved crucial to the approval of The Children’s Hour (1961) and Advise and Consent (1962). It also enabled the PCA to grant a full seal of approval to Oscar Wilde in late 1961 after the film had been denied approval on its original submission in 1960. By the time Jack Valenti left his position as a close White House aide to President Johnson and took over the MPAA in May of 1966, becoming Sherlock’s boss, the PCA was beginning to crumble and, apart from laying the foundations for the MPAA rating system, which would come into effect on November 1, 1968, his only major contribution to the PCA was to add an interm classification of SMA (Suggested for Mature Audiences) in September of 1966. By this stage, the success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Blow Up had convinced him that the existing Code had become unworkable. The SMA stamp, however, did help a whole batch of queer movies get the Code seal in the months coming up to the transition: Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Producers, The Detective, Rachel, Rachel and The Boston Strangler.

28 Queer Films vs the Hays Office.

Seven Possible Scenarios!

88 Queer Films Made During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968)

The Pawnbroker (Sidney Lumet, 1965): Rod Steiger.

It says something about the ingenuity of Hollywood, and other sources, that during this period, only five queer films—the twin 1960 British movies about Oscar Wilde (Oscar Wilde and The Trials of Oscar Wilde), the British drama Victim (1961), directed by Basil Dearden and starring Dirk Bogarde, Sidney Lumet’s 1965 film The Pawnbroker and Billy Wilder’ Some Like It Hot (1959) were denied a seal outright.

Victim’s sympathetic treatment of an English lawyer who is being blackmailed because of a gay affair in his past, doomed it immediately. Unfazed, Pathé America pressed ahead with a US release, where, thanks to some good reviews and arthouse cinema screenings, it generated modest box-office returns. When Victim was released on VHS in the US in 1986, it received a PG-13 rating by the MPAA.

Three years later, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker was also submitted to the Hays Office and was also rejected outright. Producer Ely Landau and Allied Artists APPEALED the verdict to the MPAA – meanwhile, the film was released in New York state without a Code Seal – and the MPAA board voted 6-3 to overturn the PCA’s decision. The film was released in the US in 1965 with the Code Seal of approval. The ruling was one of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years.

SEVEN POSSIBLE SCENARIOS!

Imagine yourself as a producer sending a queer film into the American marketplace during the final years of the Hays Code: Table 1 maps the seven routes your picture might be forced to take.

88 Queer Films Made During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968) 28 QUEER FILMS vs THE HAYS OFFICE – SEVEN POSSIBLE SCENARIOS! The terms HAYS CODE, HAYS OFFICE, SEAL OF APPROVAL, CODE SEAL, PRODUCTION CODE ADMINISTRATION (PCA) and JOSEPH BREEN are all used interchangeably.
YEAR	FILM	US DISTRIBUTOR
TABLE 1 1. YOU IGNORE THE HAYS OFFICE AND DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR MOVIE- YOUR MOVIE IS RELEASED WITHOUT THE CODE’S SEAL OF APPROVAL- HOWEVER, MAINSTREAM CINEMAS MAY REFUSE TO SCREEN IT (QUEER FILMS 1-6)
1953-1956- 1957 Italy, New York, Los Angeles 1955	I Vitelloni (Italy) Les Diaboliques (France)	Associated Producers Inc.-Janus Films United Motion Picture Organization (UMPO)
1960-1961 France/Italy, US	Purple Noon (France)	Times Film Corporation
1961-1962 UK, US 1963-1964 UK, US 1964	A Taste of Honey (UK) The Servant (UK) The Servant quietly gutted the Code by simply ignoring it. The Leather Boys (UK) The second British film (after Victim) to use the word “queer” as a synonym for homosexual.	Continental Distributing Ely Landau – The Landau Company Columbia Pictures
1965	My Hustler (US)	Andy Warhol Films
1967	Portrait of Jason (US)	Film-Makers’ Distribution Center
1967-1968 Canada, US	The Fox (Canada-US)	Claridge Pictures – Warner Bros. – Seven Arts
TABLE 2 2. YOU DEFER TO THE HAYS OFFICE AND SUBMIT YOUR MOVIE – YOUR MOVIE IS APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS – (QUEER FILMS 7-14)
1962-1963 UK, US	The L-Shaped Room The lavender swap:  Johnny, who is queer in the book, is an enigma in the movie.  Mavis, who is straight in the book, is an aging lesbian in the movie. The “queer-diluted” movie was released without cuts.	Columbia Pictures
1967	Reflections in a Golden Eye (US) The only queer movie to be approved by the PCA without cuts. The SMA stamp was essential for its approval.	Warner Bros. – Seven Arts
1967-1968	The Producers (US) Benign queens Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia. One of the last films to be approved by what was then a faltering PCA, which gave it an SMA (Suggested for Mature Audiences) stamp and released it without cuts.	Embassy Pictures (Avco)
TABLE 3 3. YOU DEFER TO THE HAYS OFFICE AND SUBMIT YOUR MOVIE – YOUR MOVIE IS APPROVED WITH MINOR CUTS –
1949-1950 UK, US	Kind Hearts and Coronets (UK) Fully Restored Measured in seconds rather than minutes, there was a subtle toning down of immorality, with intimations that Louis’ crimes would not go unpunished.	Eagle-Lion Films
1957	The Strange One (US) Mostly Restored – Some Small Gaps Remain Three minutes of footage were removed to dampen the homoeroticism.	Columbia Pictures
1966-1967 Sweden, US	Persona. (Sweden) Restored to Director-Approved Version Measured in seconds rather than minutes, a few frames of nudity were removed while Bibi Andersson’s sexual monologue was left largely intact.  The final foreign-language film to be reviewed and interfered with by the PCA before the outdated Hays Code system was completely abolished and replaced by the modern MPAA letter rating system in 1968.	Lopert/United Artists
TABLE 4 4. YOU DEFER TO THE HAYS OFFICE AND SUBMIT YOUR MOVIE – TO GET THE PRECIOUS SEAL, YOU HAVE TO GIVE YOUR MOVIE AN ENTIRELY NEW ENDING!
1951	A Streetcar Named Desire (US) A rapist could not be seen to go unpunished. Stanley’s victory in the play was therefore unacceptable. The PCA demanded a rewritten ending that would punish him and redeem Stella. The film ends with Stella ascending the stairs to Eunice’s apartment — a symbolic rejection of Stanley’s power.	Warner Bros.
1956	The Bad Seed (US) Rhoda could not go unpunished for killing little Claude Daigle. As a result, a completely new ending, actually two new endings, was forced upon director/producer Mervyn Leroy.	Warner Bros.
TABLE 5 5. YOU DEFER TO THE HAYS OFFICE AND SUBMIT YOUR MOVIE – YOUR MOVIE IS REJECTED, OUTRIGHT, BECAUSE OF ITS THEME YOU DECIDE NOT TO APPEAL YOU RELEASE THE FILM ANYWAY WITHOUT A CODE
1959 1960 1961-1962UK, US	Some Like It Hot (US) Director Billy Wilder knew the film would be rejected by the PCA, and it was.  He therefore financed the movie outside of the studio system and had it distributed by UA.  It was a smash hit. The Trials of Oscar Wilde (UK) Submitted to the Hays office but refused a seal because it portrayed Oscar Wilde in a sympathetic manner.  Released without a Code Seal.  Moderate reviews, together with screenings at some boutique cinemas, generated some local business.  Overall, however, it was a financial failure.  Victim (UK) Submitted to the Hayes office but refused a seal because a queer character is redeemed. Complementary reviews and screenings at some boutique cinemas lead to modest box-office results The first British film to use the words “homosexual” and ”queer.” LANDMARK	The Mirisch Company – United Artists Columbia Pathé-America
TABLE 6 6. YOU DEFER TO THE HAYS OFFICE AND SUBMIT YOUR MOVIE – YOUR MOVIE IS REJECTED, OUTRIGHT, BUT YOU APPEAL TO THE MPAA YOU WIN THE APPEAL
1960-1961 1964-1965	Oscar Wilde (UK) Submitted to the Hays office but refused a seal because it portrayed Oscar Wilde in a sympathetic manner.    Resubmitted to PCA in October 1961 in the wake of the famous rewording – homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with “CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT”  and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior.  “Oscar Wilde” was granted a full seal of approval the second time around.  Only the word “whore” was cut. The Pawnbroker (US) Submitted to the Hayes office but refused a seal for numerous reasons. Released in New York state without a Code seal in 1964. Allied artists make an appeal to the MPAA and win the appeal (6-3). The movie goes on general release in the US in 1965 with the full seal of approval.	TCF   (20th Century Fox) Allied Artists
TABLE 7 7. AS THE PCA ENTERED ITS FINAL DECADE, SOME HOLLYWOOD MOVIES WERE GRANTED A DIALOGUE WITH THE HAYS OFFICE – THE MOVIE WAS CAREFULLY HANDLED WHILE IN PRODUCTION AND THEN SUBMITTED TO THE CODE
1955	The Big Combo (US) DIALOGUE Singled out because of its violence, rather than its queerness, the PCA was completely hoodwinked by Fante and Mingo, one of the silver screen’s great queer-coded couples.	Allied Artists
1958	Touch of Evil (US) DIALOGUE The code-approved release of Orson Welles monumentally queer masterpiece, Touch of Evil, remained true to the master’s vision.  Like Psycho, the screenplay was submitted first, and a dialogue took place between Universal and the PCA.  A few additional cuts were made to the completed film.	Universal International
1960	Spartacus (US) DIALOGUE Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas were not as lucky. The infamous Oysters and Snails scene, between Sir Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis, ended up on Universal’s cutting room floor because of the negative reaction of preview audiences. The scene was restored in 1991.	Universal
1960	Psycho (US) DIALOGUE Hitchcock submitted Joseph Stefano’s screenplay first, which, not surprisingly, got a litany of objections from the Hays Office.  He then shot the film with great precision, using editing, sound, and montage.  The result was that almost nothing explicit was technically on screen.  The blood swirling counterclockwise down the drain from Janet Leigh’s “lifeless” body was chocolate sauce!  The completed movie had to endure a few more cuts, primarily to the opening bedroom scene in Phoenix, as well as to the motel bathroom and shower sequences at the Bates Motel.  Overall, a Hitchcock triumph.	Paramount
1965	Inside Daisy Clover (US) DIALOGUE A dialogue was set up between the PCA and Warner Bros. about the Natalie Wood and Robert Redford characters.  Screenwriter Gavin Lambert eviscerated his own novel, changing Redford’s character from gay to bisexual at the actor’s insistence.  The film never completely recovered.	Warner Bros.
1967	Valley of the Dolls (US) DIALOGUE There was substantial back-and-forth between 20th Century-Fox and the Production Code Administration during 1966–67, including PCA concerns about the drug material and sexual/queer content.  Nevertheless, the film ultimately passed the Code and was released in December 1967. What we see today is essentially what people saw on the film’s original release.	TCF(20th Century Fox)

WHY THESE DECISIONS?

            You are probably asking yourself  WHY did Pathé-America submit Victim and WHY did Allied Artists submit The Pawnbroker when any overt references to homosexuality were prohibited by the PCA bylaws, and WHY did Pathé-America not appeal the PCA ruling as Allied Artists did.  Well, I think that both distributors got exactly what they wanted. Pathé-America may have been optimistic about Victim’s chances because of the newly worded 1961 Code – homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with “CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT”  and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior. Unfortunately, the entire storyline was about being queer and, therefore, the PCA seal could never be granted, no matter how many times the distributor appealed the decision. However,  rejection secured Victim’s place in Queer Cinema history. It was, and always will be, worn as a badge of PRIDE. The Pawnbroker, on the other hand, had a smaller queer footprint. Its troubles with PCA had more to do with two actresses baring their breasts on camera than with Brock Peters’ supporting part as the queer character Rodriguez. The timing was also different—it was three years later, and the Hays Office was on the verge of a cliff.  Winning an appeal seemed much more likely. Wilder and the trajectory of Some Like It Hot (see below) seem unbelievable from today’s standpoint. But he did judge the situation correctly.

Only three of our 88 queer films from 1934 to 1968 were released with PCA-imposed cuts. Two definitive masterpieces, director Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (England, 1949) and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (Sweden, 1966), both required minimal cutting before their US release. 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 almost guaranteed a showdown. And yes, the PCA did insist that three minutes of footage be removed to dampen the homoeroticism. The resulting movie had less impact than the Calder Willingham book and play on which it was based. This footage has now been restored.

THE HAYS OFFICE IN THE 1950s AND 1960S.

It is a measure of the Hays Office’s extraordinary power in the 1950s that it could demand altered endings for both Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed (1956). Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) had to be explicitly punished for the rape and psychological torment he inflicted on Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Likewise, Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) could not go unpunished for killing little Claude Daigle. In the new Hollywood ending, dictated by the PCA, she not only receives a severe spanking but is ultimately dispatched by a bolt of lightning—moral retribution delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Both movies were Warner Bros. Productions.

During this period, some Hollywood studios began engaging in dialogue with the PCA while producing films with risqué or problematic themes. Movies like Universal’s Touch of Evil (1958) and Spartacus (1960), and Allied Artists’ The Big Combo (1955) were trimmed while still in production, often at the behest of the PCA, who had received an advance copy of the script. This resulted, on the one hand, in the preservation of Orson Welles’ vision and the survival of the gay couple Fante and Mingo and, on the other, in the cutting of the famed Oysters and Snails scene from Spartacus due to negative reactions from preview audiences. The scene was later reinstated in the 1991 restoration.  Dialoguing also resulted in a triumph for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and, by contrast, the evisceration of Gavin Lambert’s novel Inside Daisy Clover. In 1966 and 1967, there was significant back-and-forth between 20th Century Fox (TCF) and the Hays Office about 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 at 20th Century Fox (TCF) had more to do with rating and pacing than censorship per se—the MPAA was less than a year away. As a result, what we see today is what audiences saw back in 1967.

BOUTIQUE DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS.

Foreign-language films were always relatively immune to the PCA because they were shown at arthouse cinemas to an elite, highly educated, upper-middle-class audience. The first foreign film to be released in America without a Code seal was Roberto Rossellini’s Open City (1945-1946). The distributors Joseph Burstyn and Arthur Mayer initially ignored the Hays Office completely. The film was, nonetheless, an enormous success, playing for almost two years in New York City and becoming the first foreign film to gross over $1 million in the U.S. alone. Two years later, Burstyn and Mayer again struck gold with Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948- 1949). Unlike Open City, this time Burstyn and Meyer decided to submit the film to the PCA. Unfortunately, the shot of the dad beginning to urinate against a wall had to go, but the director refused.  The distributors appealed and lost. Released without the Code seal, the film was, nevertheless, another huge success. As the fifties gave way to the sixties, American cinema audiences were becoming younger and better educated. The PCA was slowly dying, 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 1). At the same time, boutique distribution networks were established specifically to manage British and Foreign-language films, as well as American arthouse fare, destined for repertory cinemas. What follows is a list of some of the best-known examples and the films they distributed:

• The Red Shoes (UK 1948), EAGLE-LION (US 1948)

• Kind Hearts and Coronets (UK 1949), EAGLE-LION (US 1950)

• I Vitelloni (Italy 1953), ASSOCIATED PRODUCERS INC.-JANUS FILMS (US New York 1956) , (US Los Angeles 1957)

• The Big Combo Allied Artists (US 1955)

• Les Diaboliques (France 1955) United Motion Picture Organization (UMPO) (US 1955)

• Purple Noon (France/Italy 1960) Times Film Corporation (US 1961)

• A Taste of Honey (UK 1961) Continental Distributing (US 1962)

• Victim (UK 1961) Pathé-America (US 1962)

• Billy Bud (UK 1962) Allied Artists (US 1962)

• The Servant (UK 1963) Ely Landau – The Landau Company (US 1964)

• The Pawnbroker Ely Landau – Allied Artists (US, 1964-1965)

• Darling (UK 1965) Embassy Pictures (Joseph E. Levine) (US 1965)

• My Hustler Andy Warhol Films (The Factory) (US 1965)

• Persona (Sweden 1966) Lopert – United Artists (US 1967)

• Portrait of Jason Film-Makers’ Distribution Center (US 1967)

• The Producers Embassy Pictures (Joseph E. Levine) (US, 1967-1968)

• The Fox (Canada/US 1967-1968) Claridge Pictures – Warner Bros. – Seven Arts (US 1968)

Catering to more sophisticated audiences, the boutique distribution firms couldn’t give a toss about the Hays office. Of the 28 movies listed in Table 1, nine 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.

SOME LIKE IT HOT

In 1959, writer/director/producer Billy Wilder, following in the footsteps of director/producer *Otto Preminger’s spectacular success with The Moon is Blue (actor Maggie McNamara says the word VIRGIN)  in 1953 and The Man With the Golden Arm (Frank Sinatra as a heroin addict)in 1955, knew that his genre- and gender-bending movie Some Like It Hot would be rejected by the PCA and it was.  Like Preminger, Wilder therefore financed the movie himself (in conjunction with the Mirisch Corporation) and distributed it through United Artists.  Released with a big fuck you to the Hays Office, the Marilyn Monroe classic was an instant smash, and many regard Wilder’s decision to release his film without making any concessions to the PCA as the beginning of the end for the Code.

*Famously BANNED IN BOSTON The Moon is Blue was financed by Preminger and screenwriter F. Hugh Herbert, who also wrote the original play. The Man With the Golden Arm was also financed by Preminger through Otto Preminger Films, a production company that raised capital from private investors. Both films were distributed by United Artists, which specialized in releasing films made outside the major studio system.

UNITED ARTISTS (UA)

Founded on February 5, 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, United Artists began as a radical experiment: a company designed to let actors and filmmakers control their own artistic and financial destinies rather than remain beholden to the vertically integrated studio system.When Arthur B. Krim, Robert Benjamin, and Matty Fox took over UA in 1951, they transformed that original ideal into a new industrial model. Coming from Eagle-Lion Films, Krim and Benjamin built what became the first major Hollywood “studio” without a physical studio at all. UA owned no backlot, no soundstages, and carried none of the crushing overhead that defined MGM, Paramount, or Warner Bros. Instead, it operated as a pure distributor and financier — a nimble, low‑infrastructure company that could back independent producers and prestige filmmakers at a scale previously impossible.

This strategy reshaped postwar Hollywood. Beginning with UA’s distribution of Otto Preminger’s films — and later Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot — the company became a central force in dismantling the Production Code Administration. By the late 1950s, thanks to its deals with Preminger, the Mirisch Company, Hecht‑Hill‑Lancaster, and Stanley Kramer, UA had become one of the most powerful entities in the industry and a major catalyst in the erosion of the Hays Office itself.

The irony, of course, is that the studio born to liberate artists ultimately financed the film that ended an era. UA bankrolled Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), whose catastrophic budget overruns and box‑office failure effectively collapsed the company and brought the New Hollywood period to a close. The studio that once helped dismantle the old order became the cautionary tale that ushered in the corporate, blockbuster‑driven Hollywood of the 1980s.

NOVEMBER 1ST 1968

Although the Production Code Administration (PCA) remained in existence until October 31, 1968, it had long since ceased to operate as an effective regulatory body. The following day, Jack Valenti’s newly formulated MPAA ratings system officially took its place. The status of the five queer films released during the PCA’s final ten months, therefore, presents an interesting classification problem. I have assigned No Way to Treat a Lady, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Detective, Rachel, Rachel and The Boston Strangler to Book Two: Out of the Shadows: Queer Film from the New Hollywood, as they belong aesthetically and culturally to the New Hollywood era rather than to the world of the Production Code. Three were later assigned MPAA ratings retroactively; only No Way to Treat a Lady and The Detective remain unrated.

8 Queer Films at the
Hays Code – MPAA Transition (1964-1968)

88 Queer Films Made During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968)

Chuck Wein, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey on the set of My Hustler.

AS THE 1960S PROGRESSED, QUEER CINEMA PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE IN UNDERMINING THE CODE.

The release of two queer films, one outside of the Code and one within the Code – with overt homosexual themes—Sidney J. Furie’s The Leather Boys (British Lion-Columbia) in 1964 and John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts) in 1967—signaled to everyone in the industry that the Hays Office was now a crippled animal. The SMA stamp certainly helped the latter attain its Code seal.

Meanwhile, another UK import, Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s The Servant, distributed by Ely Landau and the Landau Company in 1964, quietly gutted the Code by simply ignoring it.

In 1964, the PCA refused outright to grant director Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, starring Rod Steiger, a seal of approval – the movie’s bleak post-Holocaust setting, two female characters’ bare breasts on camera, and a queer African American character were all too much! The film’s Producer, Ely Landau, and his distributor, Allied Artists, were having none of this. They decided on a two-pronged approach: they would make arrangements for the film to be released without Hays Code approval – it was originally released in New York state under these conditions in 1964 – and they would appeal the PCA’s verdict to the Motion Picture Association of America (the same MPAA that would take over the rating system after the PCA’s dissolution in 1968). They won. The MPAA voted 6 to 3 to reverse the PCA’s verdict. The film received the Hays Code seal of approval for its general US release in 1965. The ruling was one of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years.

In early 1966, the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque and later the Hudson Theatre in New York began showing the Andy Warhol-produced, Warhol and 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.

In 1967, producer Raymond Stross (who also produced The Leather Boys) and his wife, actress Anne Heywood, sought to market a small Canadian movie with an explicit lesbian theme, based on a D.H. Lawrence novel. Rather than risk rejection, The Fox (1967) bypassed the PCA entirely and was never submitted for a Code seal. Instead, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts slipped the movie into theaters through a subsidiary shell company, Claridge Pictures, slapped a temporary Suggested for Mature Audiences advisory sticker on the promotional materials, and let adult-only independent theaters handle the rest. Once the modern MPAA letter-rating system launched in late 1968, the film was officially brought into the fold and assigned an R rating. Playing at film festivals, arthouses, and college campuses, it found an audience, and Lalo Schifrin’s Oscar-nominated score gave the film a second wind in the Spring of 1969 – the movie was not shown in LA until 1968.

One of the last films to be approved by what was then an essentially non-functioning PCA was Mel Brooks The Producers to which granted it an SMA (Suggested for Mature Audiences) stamp.  Released without cuts.

TABLE 8 LANDMARK QUEER FILMS AT THE HAYS → MPAA TRANSITION. 88 Queer Films Made During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968)

The Servant (Joseph Losey) Produced by Joseph Losey and Norman Priggen for Springbok Productions. Distributor: Bryanston Films in the UK. Distributor: Ely Landau and the Landau Company in the US. 1963-1964 Hays Code Era Not submitted. Bypassed the Hays Code. Released independently with no seal of approval. The Servant quietly gutted the Code by simply ignoring it.

The Leatherboys (Sidney J. Furie) British Lion-Columbia Produced by Raymond Stross 1964 Hays Code Era Not submitted. Bypassed the Hays Code. Released independently with no seal of approval. The second British movie (after Victim) to use the word queer as a synonym for homosexual.

The Pawnbroker (Sidney Lumet) Allied Artists Producer: Ely Landau – The Landau Company 1964 – 1965 Hays Code Era Submitted to the Hays Code. Rejected outright by the PCA. Released in New York State without a seal in 1964 Ely Landau and Allied Artists appeal the verdict to the MPAA The MPAA board votes 6-3 to overturn the PCA’s decision. Released with a Code seal. The ruling was one of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years.

My Hustler (Andy Warhol, Chuck Wein) 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.

Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke) 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.

Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston)  Warner Bros.-Seven Arts 1967 Hays Code Era Submitted and approved without cuts. Released with a Code seal. The only PCA-approved queer-themed film to be screened in the US before the Code’s collapse in 1968. A queer cinema landmark and a sign of the Production Code’s waning power in the late 1960s. SMA stamp.

The Producers (Mel Brooks) Embassy Pictures (Avco in 1968) Produced by Joseph E. Levine 1967 – 1968 Hays Code Era Submitted and approved without cuts. Released with a Code seal. The Producers arrived in late 1967 with benign queens Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia. Nevertheless, producer Joseph E. Levine chose to submit the film to the Hays Office, fully aware that the Production Code’s authority was rapidly eroding. SMA stamp.

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

Part 2

LGBTQ+ in Hollywood

Section 1 – The Actors

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

TABLE 9. DEFINITELY AND PROBABLY* QUEER IN HOLLYWOOD 165 QUEER STARS (1910 – PRESENT).
#	ACTOR	SEXUALITY	TEXT
1	Nick Adams*	Bisexual	Gavin Lambert described Nick Adams as gay or bisexual, John Gregory Dunne explicitly called him bisexual, and Sal Mineo reportedly said Adams told him that he and James Dean had had a major affair.  The evidence is substantial but largely retrospective and disputed, so PROBABLE is the best fit.
2	Max Adrian	Gay	Max Adrian was a definitively queer figure in mid‑century British theatre, both in his life and in the unmistakably queer sensibility that shaped his performances.
3	Judith Anderson*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Anderson was repeatedly perceived as lesbian in theatrical circles.  In a late interview with Boze Hadleigh, when directly asked whether she was a lesbian, she refused to define herself, rather than denying it; however, no clearly documented female partner has been established in the stronger biographical record.
4	Jean Arthur*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Patsy Kelly identified Jean Arthur as a lesbian in a 1979 interview, and Marjorie Main reportedly said that people in Hollywood knew Arthur was gay.  Both have been documented by Boze Hadleigh.  The testimony is specific and comes from women within the same Hollywood social world, but no clearly documented long-term female sexual relationship has been established.
5	Jonathan Bailey	Gay	Publicly gay, he has spoken openly about his sexuality and relationships.
6	Kaye Ballard*	Lesbian/Bisexual	In her memoir, Kaye Ballard wrote that she found an emotional connection with women such as Liz Smith that she could never find with a man.  She did not explicitly document a sexual relationship with a woman, and reports also link her romantically with Marlon Brando, so the evidence remains strong but not conclusive.
7	Tallulah Bankhead	Bisexual	Biographical sources consistently describe Tallulah Bankhead as bisexual and document numerous relationships with both women and men.
8	Vilma Bánky*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Probably bisexual; her non‑romantic, studio‑managed marriage to Rod La Rocque and her close attachments to women suggest a queer private life, though no definitive documentation survives.
9	Alan Bates	Bisexual	Donald Spoto’s authorized biography documents long-term relationships with actor Nickolas Grace and Olympic skater John Curry, and also links Bates romantically with Peter Wyngarde.  Spoto reports that Bates privately described himself at different times as bisexual or homosexual; his documented relationships with women support a bisexual classification.
10	Helmut Berger	Bisexual	Berger had a long, documented relationship with director Luchino Visconti while also having relationships with women. His autobiography described sexual relationships with both men and women, supporting a definite bisexual classification.
11	Dirk Bogarde	Gay	Bogarde lived with Anthony Forwood in a committed relationship for almost four decades; John Fraser also recalled Bogarde acknowledging the sexual nature of their relationship.  Although Bogarde publicly maintained that the partnership was platonic, the biographical evidence supports a definite gay classification.
12	Matt Bomer	Gay	Publicly gay; married Simon Halls.
13	Gary Bond	Gay	Within the theatrical profession, Bond was openly gay.  He was Jeremy Brett’s partner from roughly 1969 to 1976 and later had a long-term relationship with E. J. Taylor.
14	Max Born*	Gay/Bisexual	Screen persona in Fellini Satyricon: queer-coded; probable gay/bisexual orientation based on casting, styling, and role function.
15	Marlon Brando	Bisexual	Acknowledged homosexual experiences
16	Jeremy Brett	Bisexual	Brett had a long romantic relationship with actor Gary Bond from roughly 1969 to 1976 and later a relationship with Paul Shenar; his marriage to Anna Massey and relationships with women support a bisexual classification.
17	Coral Browne	Bisexual	Biographical and bisexual-history sources identify Browne as bisexual; Victoria Price later said Browne’s marriage to Vincent Price was a love match but also functioned as a cover for both parents’ bisexuality.
18	Victor Buono	Gay	Biographical sources describe Buono as a closeted gay man who lived with male partners and was well known as gay within Hollywood.
19	Billie Burke*	Lesbian/Bisexual	William J. Mann reports that director Andrew Stone said Billie Burke and Dorothy Arzner were having an affair; The Hollywood Reporter also reported Burke and Arzner living together in 1936 while Arzner’s partner, Marion Morgan, was away.  Burke herself never confirmed the relationship, so the evidence is substantial but still short of definitive.
20	Raymond Burr	Gay	Long-term partnership with Robert Benevides
21	Spring Byington*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Multiple independent later sources report a long-term relationship with Marjorie Main.  The evidence is credible but not conclusive enough for a definite classification, so PROBABLY QUEER — Lesbian/Bisexual is the best fit.
22	Capucine*	Bisexual	Capucine had documented relationships with men, including Charles K. Feldman and William Holden, while later accounts report that she spoke of a preference for women.  No clearly documented female partner has been established, so PROBABLY QUEER — Bisexual is the best fit.
23	Nell Carter	Lesbian/Bisexual	Nell Carter lived openly as a lesbian/bisexual woman, and her long-term relationship with Ann Kaser is well documented in biographical and LGBTQ+ historical sources.  Her early career performing in gay bars and bathhouses, combined with her own statements about her sexuality, firmly establishes her as a queer figure in American entertainment.
24	Jack Cassidy	Bisexual	David Cassidy wrote that his father had sexual relationships with men as well as women.  Jack Cassidy’s marriages to Evelyn Ward and Shirley Jones, together with his son’s firsthand account of his relationships with men, support a definite bisexual classification.
25	Richard Chamberlain	Gay	Came out publicly and wrote openly about being gay.
26	Peter Chatel	Gay	German actor Peter Chatel was gay, closely linked to Fassbinder’s queer ensemble, and died of AIDS in 1986.
27	Margaret Cho	Bisexual	Publicly identifies as bisexual.
28	Dennis Christopher	Gay	Dennis maintained a very private personal life, but his listing here is based on my own direct relationship with him.
29	Montgomery Clift	Gay	Relationships with men are extensively documented; the strongest biographical record supports a gay classification.
30	Claudette Colbert*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Claudette Colbert was the subject of persistent lesbian and bisexual rumors and had a close relationship with lesbian artist Verna Hull, while moving within a notably queer Hollywood social circle.  The evidence suggests a strong possibility of same-sex intimacy, but no clearly documented sexual relationship with a woman has been established.
31	Gary Cooper*	Bisexual	An intimate relationship with actor Anderson Lawler has been reported in biographical accounts.  The evidence is credible but not fully documented, so PROBABLY QUEER — Bisexual is the best fit.
32	Noël Coward	Gay	His long-term partnership with Graham Payn and other relationships with men are extensively documented in biographies, diaries and correspondence.
33	Joan Crawford	Bisexual	Substantial accounts of relationships with women.

34	Laird Cregar	Gay	Biographer Gregory William Mank explicitly discusses Cregar’s homosexuality; Cregar also had a documented affair with actor David Bacon in 1943.
35	Richard Cromwell	Gay	Angela Lansbury later said that she learned after their brief marriage that Cromwell was gay.
36	Alan Cumming	Bisexual	Publicly identifies as bisexual.
37	John Dall	Gay	Relationships with men well established
38	Blyth Daly	Bisexual	Biographical sources identify Blyth Daly as bisexual and place her within the lesbian and bisexual social world surrounding Tallulah Bankhead and the Algonquin circle.
39	Zorro David	Gay	David was cast as Anacleto in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) when the production was specifically seeking an ‘Asiatic homosexual’; later queer-film scholarship and biographical accounts identify him as gay. His subsequent career as an artist and his longstanding queer historical association support a definite gay classification.
40	Brad Davis	Bisexual	Same-sex experiences documented.
41	James Dean*	Bisexual	Credible oral histories and later biographical accounts report same-sex experiences and relationships, but the evidence is largely retrospective and disputed.  PROBABLY QUEER — Bisexual is the cautious fit.
42	Ellen DeGeneres	Lesbian	Publicly came out as a lesbian in 1997.
43	Cara Delevingne	Pansexual/Queer	Publicly identifies as pansexual and queer and has had documented relationships with both women and men.
44	Dolores del Río	Bisexual	A prominent member of Hollywood’s sapphic ‘Sewing Circle,’ del Río is repeatedly linked in bisexual and queer-history sources to affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.
45	Sandy Dennis	Bisexual	Eric Roberts said Dennis told him she had many lesbian relationships; she also had well-documented relationships with men.
46	Portia de Rossi	Lesbian	Publicly lesbian; married Ellen DeGeneres.
47	Marlene Dietrich	Bisexual	Relationships with women and men.
48	Divine	Gay	Divine, born Harris Glenn Milstead, was openly gay; his sexuality and relationships with men are well documented.
49	Colman Domingo	Gay	Publicly gay; married Raúl Domingo.
50	Tom Drake	Gay	Biographical accounts identify Drake as gay; Vanity Fair’s history of Judy Garland’s circle described him as preferring men, and Rock Hudson biographical material names Drake among Hudson’s lovers.
51	Robert Drivas	Gay	His relationship with playwright Terrence McNally is documented in biographical accounts of both men.
52	Ronnie Dyson	Gay	Widely recognized in queer Black cultural history as a gay man, with multiple retrospective accounts identifying his sexuality and noting industry efforts to obscure it.  The circumstances of his death further reinforce his place as a definitively queer figure in the 1970s-1980s pop and Broadway culture.
53	Hilton Edwards	Gay	Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir were lifelong partners who lived together for decades and were described by scholar Éibhear Walshe as Ireland’s only visible gay couple of their era; Mac Liammóir also referred publicly to Edwards as his partner.
54	Denholm Elliott	Bisexual	A bisexual British actor who was married and had children, while also having relationships with men.
55	Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor	Bisexual	Publicly identifies as bisexual and has spoken openly about her sexuality.
56	Luke Evans	Gay	Publicly gay and has discussed his sexuality openly.
57	Rupert Everett	Gay	Publicly gay and has written openly about his relationships with men.
58	William Eythe	Bisexual	William J. Mann documents that Eythe lived with actor Lon McCallister as a couple; Eythe was also briefly married to Buff Cobb, supporting a bisexual classification.
59	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	Bisexual	Relationships with men and women documented.
60	Harvey Fierstein	Gay	Openly gay for decades, Fierstein has written and spoken extensively about gay life and identity.
61	Jodie Foster	Lesbian	Publicly acknowledged her same-sex relationships and is married to photographer and actress Alexandra Hedison.

62	George Furth	Gay	Biographers consistently describe George Furth as gay, with no evidence suggesting bisexuality
63	Kay Francis	Bisexual	Same-sex relationships/experiences documented
64	John Fraser	Gay	Wrote openly about his homosexuality
65	Leonard Frey	Gay	His homosexuality is well documented in biographies and accounts by contemporaries, and he was openly gay within the theatrical community.
66	Victor Garber	Gay	Openly gay, he had a long-term relationship with artist Rainer Andreesen, whom he married in 2015.
67	Greta Garbo	Bisexual	Relationships with women and men.
68	Janet Gaynor	Bisexual	Biographical and queer-history sources repeatedly link Janet Gaynor romantically with women, including Margaret Lindsay and Mary Martin; her documented relationships with men and marriages support a bisexual classification.
69	John Gielgud	Gay	Homosexuality definitively documented
70	Farley Granger	Bisexual	Relationships with men and women. documented.
71	Cary Grant	Bisexual	His long, intimate domestic relationship with Randolph Scott and multiple biographical accounts of relationships with men support a bisexual classification.
72	Michael Greer	Gay	Greer was openly gay by the mid-1960s and became one of the first openly gay actors to appear in major Hollywood films.  He performed for decades on the gay nightclub circuit and used his role in The Gay Deceivers (1969) to help make its gay characters less homophobic and more authentic.
73	Joel Grey	Gay	Grey publicly came out as gay in 2015 after a long marriage to Jo Wilder; his own public identification supports a definite gay classification.
74	Jonathan Groff	Gay	Openly gay, Groff has spoken publicly about his sexuality and relationships with men.
75	Alec Guinness	Gay/Bisexual	Same-sex experiences are documented, while Guinness was also married to Merula Salaman for decades; Gay/Bisexual best reflects the mixed historical record.
76	William Haines	Gay	Long-term partnership with Jimmie Shields
77	Neil Patrick Harris	Gay	Publicly gay; married David Burtka.
78	Laurence Harvey	Bisexual	Multiple substantial accounts of relationships with men
79	Hurd Hatfield	Gay	Later biographical sources explicitly identify Hatfield as homosexual, while studio-era publicity reportedly manufactured heterosexual romances around him.  He never married and kept his private life highly guarded; the cumulative evidence supports a definite gay classification.
80	Katharine Hepburn	Bisexual	Substantial evidence of relationships with women
81	Billie Holiday	Bisexual	Biographies and memoirs document romantic and sexual relationships with women as well as men, supporting a bisexual classification.
82	Anthony Holland	Gay	Documented partnership with Richard Amsel.  Anthony Holland was openly gay and was widely recognized as such in New York’s mid-twentieth-century theatrical world.  Immortalized as the composer-piano player in All That Jazz.
83	Earl Holliman	Gay	His husband, Craig Curtis, publicly confirmed their long-term relationship and marriage after his death.
84	Edward Everett Horton	Gay	Relationships with men
85	Jobyna Howland	Lesbian/Bisexual	Biographical accounts identify playwright Zoë Akins as Howland’s longtime female partner; the two women lived together for years, while Howland had previously been married to Arthur Stringer.
86	Rock Hudson	Gay	Numerous relationships with men are extensively documented.
87	Tom Hulce	Gay	In a 2008 interview with Seattle Gay News, Hulce said he was comfortable being included among openly gay actors and rejected false reports that he had a wife and daughter.
88	Tab Hunter	Gay	Hunter wrote openly about being gay in his memoir, and his relationships with men, including Anthony Perkins, are extensively documented.
89	Robin Johnson	Lesbian	Her performance in Times Square became a touchstone of queer punk-girl representation, aligning her personal life with her cultural image.

90	Van Johnson	Gay/Bisexual	Accounts by Eve Abbott and others describe Johnson’s MGM-arranged marriage as a cover and identify significant relationships with men, including a male dancer and the intense bond with Keenan Wynn.
91	Cherry Jones	Lesbian	Publicly lesbian; her relationships with women are well documented.
92	Hiram Keller*	Gay/Bisexual	Hiram Keller did not publicly identify as gay or bisexual, but his androgynous persona, Fellini’s descriptions of his “ambiguous sensuality,” and his deep immersion in queer‑adjacent artistic circles make him a probable gay or bisexual figure despite the absence of documented same‑sex relationships.
93	Patsy Kelly	Lesbian	Kelly spoke openly in interviews about being a lesbian and about her relationships with women in Hollywood.
94	J. Warren Kerrigan	Gay	Kerrigan lived with actor James Carroll Vincent as his longtime partner from about 1914 until Kerrigan’s death in 1947; William J. Mann also identifies Vincent as Kerrigan’s partner.
95	Udo Kier	Gay/Bisexual	Homosexuality established
96	Nathan Lane	Gay	Publicly gay; married Devlin Elliott.
97	Rod La Rocque	Bisexual	Bisexual; sustained a significant same‑sex relationship with adventurer Richard Halliburton while navigating a studio‑managed marriage to Vilma Bánky.
98	Charles Laughton	Gay	Elsa Lanchester wrote that Laughton told her he was homosexual and that she came to accept his affairs with men; later biographical studies likewise treat his homosexuality as established.
99	Eva Le Gallienne	Lesbian	Her letters, diaries and authorized biography document romantic relationships with women, including Alla Nazimova and Mercedes de Acosta.
100	Liberace	Gay	Extensive relationships with men
101	Margaret Lindsay	Lesbian	William J. Mann identifies actress Mary McCarty as Lindsay’s life partner; later film scholarship likewise treats Lindsay as a queer woman who appeared publicly with McCarty.  Their long-term partnership supports a definite lesbian classification.
102	Jane Lynch	Lesbian	Publicly lesbian and has been married to a woman.

103	Paul Lynde	Gay	His homosexuality and long-term relationships with men are extensively documented in biographies and accounts by friends and colleagues.
104	Micheál Mac Liammóir	Gay	Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards were lifelong partners who lived and worked together for decades; Mac Liammóir publicly referred to  Edwards as his partner, and the pair have been described as Ireland’s only visible gay couple of their era.
105	George Maharis	Gay	Maharis’s homosexuality is supported by queer-history accounts and by his arrests in circumstances involving male sexual encounters.
106	Marjorie Main*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Later biographical accounts report a long-term  relationship with Spring Byington and place Main within a queer Hollywood context. The evidence is credible but not fully documented, so PROBABLY QUEER — Lesbian/Bisexual is the best fit.
107	David Manners	Gay	David Manners lived with playwright Frederic William Mercer as his partner for about thirty years, from 1948 until Mercer’s death in 1978; Contemporary obituaries also describe the two men as a couple.
108	Hattie McDaniel*	Lesbian /Bisexual	Longstanding accounts describe Hattie McDaniel as bisexual and link her to the Hollywood Sewing Circle, including an alleged affair with Tallulah Bankhead. The bisexual reputation  is persistent and plausible, but the specific female relationships are not documented strongly enough to make the classification definite.
109	Roddy McDowall	Gay	Homosexuality well established
110	Ian McKellen	Gay	Publicly came out as gay in 1988 and has been a prominent gay-rights advocate.
111	Kate McKinnon	Lesbian	Publicly lesbian and has spoken openly about being gay.
112	Wentworth Miller	Gay	Publicly came out as gay in 2013; direct first-person confirmation.
113	Sal Mineo	Gay/ Bisexual	Relationships with men are extensively documented alongside earlier relationships with women, supporting a bisexual or gay-bisexual classification.
114	Ona Munson	Bisexual	Relationships with women
115	Jim Nabors	Gay	Married his long-term male partner, Stan Cadwallader, in 2013.
116	George Nader	Gay	Long-term partnership with Mark Miller is extensively documented.

117	Alla Nazimova	Lesbian/Bisexual	Her relationships with women, including Mercedes de Acosta, are extensively documented in biographies, memoirs and correspondence.
118	Kenneth Nelson	Gay	Contemporaneous obituary material names Justin Caldwell as Kenneth Nelson’s companion; Nelson was also a central figure in the original stage and film versions of The Boys in the Band.
119	Cynthia Nixon	Bisexual/Queer	Publicly queer/bisexual; married Christine Marinoni.
120	Ramon Novarro	Gay	Biographer André Soares documents Novarro’s hidden romances with men, including reporter and publicist Herbert Howe; Hollywood insiders knew him to be gay, and later accounts confirm that he sought male companionship.
121	Rosie O’Donnell	Lesbian	Publicly lesbian and has had openly documented relationships with women.
122	Laurence Olivier	Bisexual	Affair with Henry Ainley supported by biographical research
123	Franklin Pangborn	Gay	His homosexuality is widely documented, and his recurring effeminate comic persona made him one of classic Hollywood’s most recognizable queer-coded character actors.
124	Jim Parsons	Gay	Publicly gay; married Todd Spiewak.
125	Sarah Paulson	Lesbian/Bisexual	Publicly discusses her relationships with women and has resisted a rigid single-word label while describing herself as attracted to women.
126	Anthony Perkins	Bisexual	Long-term relationships with men, including Tab Hunter and Grover Dale, are well documented, as is his later marriage to Berry Berenson.
127	Been Platt	Gay	He has spoken openly about his sexuality for years.
128	Billy Porter	Gay	Publicly gay and has spoken extensively about his sexuality.
129	Eric Porter	Gay	Relationships with men
130	Eric Portman	Gay	Homosexuality well established
131	Tyrone Power	Bisexual	Hector Arce’s biography reports relationships with men as well as women; Bob Wagner and other Hollywood accounts also describe Power as bisexual.
132	Dennis Price	Bisexual	Price was long and repeatedly described in British theatrical and film circles as queer, gay or bisexual; the Dictionary of National Biography states that his marriage was undermined by his homosexual predilections. The cumulative historical record supports a definite bisexual classification.
133	Vincent Price	Bisexual	Victoria Price said she was as close to certain as possible that her father had physically intimate relationships with men, and later said he had confided in her about intimate relationships with men. His three marriages to women support a bisexual classification.
134	Richard Pryor	Bisexual	Richard Pryor was openly bisexual, acknowledging his relationships with men and speaking candidly about his queer experiences throughout his life.

135	Gene Anthony Ray	Gay	Lived openly as a gay man within New York’s dance and performance world. His public persona and the circumstances of his later life firmly situate him within definitively queer cultural history.
136	Johnnie Ray	Bisexual	Biographers identify Ray as bisexual; he was arrested in 1951 for soliciting an undercover male vice officer, and relationships with men have been reported alongside his relationships with women.
137	Charles Nelson Reilly	Gay	Openly gay later in life, his long-term relationship with Patrick Hughes III lasted for decades until Reilly’s death.
138	Frank Ripploh	Gay	Openly gay German filmmaker and actor whose autobiographical film Taxi zum Klo directly documented his own queer life, and is the final film in BOOK TWO – the final film in my series. His work stands as one of the most explicit and self-declared queer testimonies in European cinema, even if its timing could not have been worse.
139	Cesar Romero	Gay	Widely recognized in Hollywood and queer-film history as a closeted gay man, biographical accounts describe his long-established gay identity and close romantic associations with men, including the frequently cited Tyrone Power relationship.
140	Marcelino  Sánchez	Gay	Marcelino Sánchez was a gay man whose early death reflects the losses suffered by queer communities in the 1980s. His performance as Rembrandt in “The Warriors” stands as part of queer film history.  Although Marcelino kept his private life very private, his listing here reflects the understanding held by those who knew him personally and within the community.
141	Randolph Scott	Bisexual	Scott and Cary Grant lived together on and off for roughly twelve years, and later testimony described them as deeply in love; since the same relationship is treated as evidence for Grant’s bisexuality, it likewise supports a definite bisexual classification for Scott.
142	Zachary Scott*	Bisexual	Scott was long described in queer-Hollywood discussion as bisexual, and a woman publicly identifying herself as his granddaughter stated that he was bisexual.  Although stronger published biographies provide little detail about specific male relationships, the family testimony and persistent historical reputation make PROBABLY QUEER the best fit.
143	Paul Shenar	Gay	Shenar had a documented romantic relationship with Jeremy Brett.
144	Vladek Sheybal	Bisexual	Vladek Sheybal was widely understood to be bisexual, noted for his long partnership with actress Irena Eichlerówna and his place among queer-identifying actors of mid‑century European cinema
145	Barbara Stanwyck*	Lesbian/Bisexual	Longstanding reports of relationships with women, together with Axel Madsen’s portrayal of her marriage to Robert Taylor as a lavender marriage, support a strong lesbian or bisexual interpretation.  However, the evidence for a specific, conclusively documented female sexual relationship remains incomplete.
146	Kristen Stewart	Bisexual/Queer	Publicly identifies as queer and bisexual and has had documented relationships with both women and men.
147	Grady Sutton	Gay	Film-history sources consistently identify Sutton as gay, and he was known as part of Hollywood’s gay social world.
148	Wanda Sykes	Lesbian	Publicly came out as a lesbian and is married to Alex Niedbalski.
149	George Takei	Gay	Publicly gay; married Brad Takei.
150	Lilyan Tashman	Lesbian/Bisexual	William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen includes Lilyan Tashman among the documented lesbian and bisexual figures of studio-era Hollywood, and numerous accounts describe her relationships with women.
151	Holland Taylor	Lesbian/Bisexual	Publicly acknowledged her relationships with women, including Sarah Paulson.
152	Ernest Thesiger	Bisexual	The V&A describes Thesiger’s marriage to Janette Ranken as essentially lavender and states that he and her brother, painter William Ranken, had a long romantic relationship; other biographical sources say Thesiger made no secret of his bisexuality.
153	Tessa Thompson	Bisexual	Publicly stated that she is attracted to both men and women.
154	Lily Tomlin	Lesbian	Long-term relationship with Jane Wagner dating from the 1970s; married in 2013.
155	Bruce Vilanch	Gay	Openly gay for decades, Vilanch has spoken publicly about his sexuality and has been a prominent gay writer, performer and activist.
156	Andreas Voutsinas	Bisexual	A biographical profile connected with the I, Andreas Voutsinas painting exhibition describes him explicitly as a man who loved both men and women; he also had a youthful relationship with Jane Fonda and an earlier marriage.
157	Anton Walbrook	Gay	Gay Austrian-born actor who left Nazi Germany in 1936 and became a major star in Britain during and after World War II. His best work was with the Archers (directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), with whom he had numerous triumphs, most notably as the obsessive impresario in The Red Shoes.
158	Christopher Walken	Bisexual	In a 1973 After Dark interview, Walken said he thought of himself as bisexual, while also saying that his actual life was heterosexual; this classification is based on his own public statement, not on unverified claims about same-sex relationships.
159	Clifton Webb	Gay	Contemporaries and later biographers, including Leonard J. Leff and Robert Wagner, consistently describe Webb as gay.
160	Ben Whishaw	Gay	Publicly gay; entered a civil partnership with Mark Bradshaw.
161	Emlyn Williams	Bisexual	Williams’s autobiographical writings document homosexual love affairs as well as his marriage and relationships with women.
162	Paul Winfield	Gay	His long-term relationship with architect Charles Gillan Jr. is well documented.
163	Estelle Winwood	Lesbian/Bisexual	One of the Four Riders of the Algonquin with Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne and Blyth Daly; biographical accounts place Winwood firmly within that lesbian and bisexual social circle and describe relationships with women.
164	Monty Woolley	Gay	Woolley was openly gay within theatrical circles; his long domestic companionship with Cary Abbott and other relationships with men are documented.

Section 2 – Behind the Camera

George Cukor (Director)

• GAY DIRECTORS: James Whale, George Cukor, Irving Rapper, Edmund Goulding, Mitchell Leisen, Vincente Minnelli, Charles Waters, Arthur Lubin and Dorothy Arzner all showcased their gay sensibilities to varying degrees. Their careers took divergent paths. They were preceded, in the Silent era, by two great queer directors from Europe: F.W. Murnau from Germany and Mauritz Stiller from Sweden, the latter bringing to MGM his new discovery, Greta Garbo.  Unfortunately, Murnau was killed in a car crash in 1931, while Stiller, unable to tolerate the studio system, returned to Sweden, where he died in 1928.

• Arzner was the lone lesbian in the group and ahead of her time. Her career spanned from the silent era of the 1920s into the early 1940s. With the exception of long-time silent film director Louis Weber, Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood from 1927 until her retirement from feature directing in 1943. With the exception of Ida Lupino, she was the only woman to establish a successful and long-running career in Hollywood as a film director until the 1970s. Arzner made a total of twenty films and launched the careers of a number of Hollywood actresses, including Katherine Hepburn, playing a pivotal role in establishing the queer Katherine Hepburn persona with the 1933 movie Christopher Strong, as well as Rosalind Russell, Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara. Arzner was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the first woman to direct a sound film. She had romantic relationships with both Billie Burke and Joan Crawford and spent the last 40 years of her life with her longtime romantic partner, the choreographer and motion picture screenwriter, Marion Morgan. However, her film legacy is mostly pre-code, and none of her films make the list.

• 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 of all – Meet Me in St. Louis – helped his cause.

• 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.

• Whale and Cukor, however, both suffered for their sexual preferences.

• 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.

• James Whale, the most OUT of the great Hollywood directors, was in a long-term stable relationship with Warner Bros. producer David Lewis.  As the thirties transitioned to the forties, his penchant for high camp lost favor with the public, and the poor showing of The Road Back was a major blow.  He retired from filmmaking in 1941

• 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.

• Rarely rising above B movies, Arthur Lubin’s greatest claim to fame was directing the 1943 remake of Phantom of the Opera. He also directed the Francis the Talking Mule film series and created the talking-horse TV series, Mister Ed. A fixture at Universal, he is also known as the man who gave Clint Eastwood his first film contract.

• The 1950s and 1960s gave us gay directors such as Nicholas Ray, Tony Richardson, Andy Warhol, Chuck Wein, John Schlesinger, Curtis Harrington 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. Taking his lead from Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Harrington took the new psycho-biddy horror subgenre to new heights in the early seventies with Whatever Happened to Helen (1971).

• In 1964, underground, experimental and queer filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who was a friend and colleague of Curtis Harrington, released his magnum opus, a short film entitled Scorpio Rising.  Approximately 29 minutes long and virtually without dialogue, it follows a group of young bikers preparing themselves and their motorcycles for a night out. But Anger turns the ritual into an intensely homoerotic spectacle: leather, chains, boots, bare male bodies, motorcycles, fetishized dressing and grooming, and lingering close-ups of men become an erotic vocabulary.  There is no conventional gay romance or coming-out narrative, but the camera’s desire is unmistakably directed toward men. The biker becomes an erotic object.  Anger also mixes this with images of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Nazi imagery, Christianity and the occult, collapsing apparently contradictory systems of male worship into one another: movie-star worship, biker masculinity, fascistic masculinity, religious worship and sexual fetishism. The result is both celebration and parody.  The soundtrack is crucial.  Anger assembled contemporary pop records—including “Blue Velvet,” “Wind-Up Doll,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “He’s a Rebel,” and “I Will Follow Him”—and juxtaposed them with the images.  This was revolutionary.  Rather than conventional scoring, existing pop songs comment ironically and erotically on what we’re watching.  It anticipates the pop-song montage techniques of later filmmakers, including Scorsese, and the music video art

• 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.

• Ironically, it was supposedly straight director Stanley Donen who, throughout the last three decades of the studio era, made more films that are structurally, tonally and visually queer-friendly than any movie made by a gay director working during that period. Donen’s movies are urbane, camp-adjacent, gender-playful, anti-macho and deeply invested in style and artifice. His best and most unapologetically queer masterpiece, Funny Face, is listed as queer film number 44.

• GAY COMPOSERS: From MGM’s orchestral genius, Roger Edens, to songwriter Hugh Martin’s (with his songwriting partner Ralph Blane) timeless songs for Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, gay composers during the Hays Code mostly thrived in their musical closets. Martin, it should be noted, having become an evangelical Christian, renounced his homosexuality later in life. Other notable queer milestones from this era include Aaron Copland’s Oscar-winning score for William Wyler’s The Heiress and Leonard Bernstein’s only foray into film scoring for On the Waterfront. Edens was in a long-term relationship with playwright and screenwriter Leonard Gershe – they were Hollywood’s first gay power couple – and, in 1957, they wrote and scored the deliciously urbane and witty Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire- Stanley Donen helmed Funny Face.  Gay songwriter Cole Porter wrote only about a dozen songs for the movies, as opposed to hundreds for the stage, four of which were nominated for an Oscar. But he never won. His Oscar-nominated songs are I’ve Got You Under My Skin (Born to Dance, 1936), Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye (You’ll Never Get Rich, 1941), You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To (Something to Shout Out About,1943), and True Love (High Society, 1956).  Other notable songs that Porter wrote directly for the screen are Be a Clown from Vincente Minnelli’s The Pirate (1948) and Farewell, Amanda, written especially for David Wayne’s queer character, Kip Lurie, in George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib (1949).  Talk about queer synergy!  Be a Clown was all but plagiarized by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown for an almost note-for-note redo in the form of Make ‘Em Laugh from Singing in the Rain four years later, sung by Donald O’ Connor.

During the Hays Code years, there were two branches of filmmaking in which being gay, if not an advantage, was undoubtedly the norm, and a third branch that, although predominantly straight, had a few gay superstars.

• GAY CHOREOGRAPHERS: 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.

• GAY COSTUME DESIGNERS: It may surprise you that the allure of the Costume Department to the gay sensibility applied to both sexes.  Irene Sharaff, one of Hollywood’s most outstanding female costume designers, was gay. Her life partner was the Chinese-American author, artist and translator Mai-Mai Sze.  As a result, her contemporary, the mononymous Irene, who became head of the costume department at MGM after Adrian’s departure in 1941, was also rumored to be queer. She was straight.  Was Edith Head gay?  There is a long-standing belief that Edith Head may have been queer, but it has never been established as fact.  She married twice, and the second marriage seems to have been affectionate and enduring.  She never had children. What makes the question interesting is that rumors about Head’s sexuality circulated during her lifetime.  Some say that she wanted to be one of the boys, and all of the boys were gay, so she enjoyed – and perhaps deliberately encouraged – the idea that she was gay. The ambiguity itself was apparently part of her Hollywood persona. In this book (Book One) and the follow-up (Book Two), he is regarded as ”probably LGBTQ+.“

• As for the men, well, you can practically just run through the list: Gilbert Adrian, Milo Anderson, Travis Banton, Bill Blass, Howard Greer, Giles Steele, Charles LeMaire, Bernard Newman, Moss Mabry, Anthony Mendelson (London), Marcel Vertès  (Paris), Christian Dior (Paris), Hubert de Givenchy (Paris), Piero Tosi (Rome), Danilo Donati (Rome), Piero Gherardi (Rome), John Truscott, Cecil Beaton, Anthony Powell, Orry-Kelly, Walter Plunkett, Arlington Valles (Valles), Howard Shoup, Bill Thomas, Don Feld (Donfeld), Miles White, Albert Wolsky, Morton Haack, Donald Brooks, Bob Mackie, Ray Aghayan, Alan Barrett and many, many more. And then there is the mysterious Harry Haynes, whose only mention in these pages is for designing those iconic leather biker outfits for Colin Campbell, Dudley Sutton and the rest of the “ton-up boys” in Sidney J. Furie’s The Leather Boys. I list him here as “probably gay”. Jean Louis (married in his later years to Loretta Young) and William Travilla (Marilyn Monroe’s designer, and there were rumors of an affair) appear to have been straight, but they were always gossiped about as being at least sexually ambiguous (William Mann, Behind the Screen, p. 237). Many of these gay men listed above were in lavender marriages – Adrian and queer actress Janet Gaynor being the most famous – but all expressed their gayness in their on-screen work.

Which brings us to the question people have been asking since the beginning of time: Is it possible to be a great male costume designer and be straight? Probably not.

• GAY PRODUCTION DESIGNERS: 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 has remained more elusive. Many of its practitioners led discreet, private lives, leaving little documentation of their sexuality. On closer examination, the art‑direction and set‑design departments of the major studios were found to be mostly straight.  Many of the marquee designers—like the celebrated straight Pereira brothers at Paramount—had migrated from architecture, a profession coded as “manly,” technical, and rigorously scientific (although queer art-director-turned-director Mitchell Leisen also traveled this route). Yet scattered throughout this otherwise heteronormative landscape were unmistakably queer exceptions, whose sensibility and wit left a signature the studios could never quite suppress.

• In 1925, Leo B. Mayer brought the openly queer Russian-born, French artist and designer Erté to MGM. Unfortunately, he clashed with both studio head Irvin Thalberg and department head Cedric Gibbons. After receiving a mix of costume and production-design screen credits during the 1925-1926 season, he left Hollywood, never to return.  

• In 1965, three legendary art-set 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, with Allen coming out later in 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.  After an absence of sixteen years, he returned to Hollywood, where he had a long, flourishing career at Warner Brothers (1939-1967), his name appearing on such queer films as Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, A Streetcar Named Desire, Strangers on a Train, Auntie Mame, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Inside Daisy Clover, and the aforementioned My Fair Lady.  He was nominated for 13 Oscars and won four. His mention in connection with eight of the 88 films discussed in this book is more than that of any actor, director, writer, cinematographer, composer, choreographer, costume designer or art-set director (see Table 17). The fact that he worked at the most queer-friendly studio, Warner Bros. (see the numbers below), closes the circle.

• Gay production designer Oliver Smith, who many rate as the greatest art director in Broadway history, only dabbled in the movies, mostly in collaboration with producer Samuel Goldwyn.  His credits include On the Town, The Bandwagon, and Porgy and Bess, and he received his only Oscar nomination for Guys and Dolls.

• In 1953, queer set decorator Howard Bristol, a nine-time Oscar nominee who worked mainly for Samuel Goldwyn (The Little Foxes), Alfred Hitchcock (Rope) and Ross Hunter (Thoroughly Modern Millie), was severely gay-bashed in Santa Monica.  Police found him in a restroom, lying in a pool of blood with his hands bound by his belt and his trousers tied behind his legs.  Bristol was one of the unlucky ones, though he recovered fully from his injuries. His story illustrates not only the hidden presence of gay craftspeople in Hollywood but also the very real physical danger surrounding gay life in that period.

• 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).

• It is widely acknowledged that Cedric Gibbons, despite three lavender marriages (including one to queer actress Dolores del Río), was probably gay.  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.

• In Rome, in the final decade of the Hays Code, groundbreaking queer costume/production designers Danilo Donati and Piero Gherardi, working with director Federico Fellini, the latter on both production design and costumes for  La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Juliette of the Spirits, revolutionized the look of sixties cinema.  In the 60s, 70s and 80s, Ferdinando Scarfiotti would take this one step further, working for Bertolucci and Visconti in Italy and Paul Schrader in Hollywood

• AND…GAY CINEMATOGRAPHERS!   Among the many branches of filmmaking, cinematography has historically been dominated by the straight white male.  David Watkin, who won an Oscar for Out of Africa – he also shot Chariots of Fire, Yentl and Moonstruck and is mentioned in Book Two’s The Devils and The Boyfriend – was one of the few OUT gay cinematographers.  James Crabe, who shot Rocky, The China Syndrome, The Karate Kid and The Formula (Oscar nomination) and is mentioned in Book Two’s Save the Tiger, was another.  In 2018, Rachel Mulligan became the first woman (and the first lesbian) to be nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar for Mudbound.

            Yet, examining the studio era through the lens of queer-coded films reveals intriguing patterns.  For most of the listed cinematographers (see Table 10), their involvement with queer cinema was limited to a single film.  However, a few standouts emerge: at Warner Bros., Harry Stradling (who began his career at MGM) and, at Universal, Russell Metty, each distinguish themselves with six queer-coded films apiece.  This puts both of them right behind set designer George James Hopkins (with 8) and costume designer Bill Thomas (with 7), and ties them with costume designer Edith Head as the most frequently mentioned behind-the-camera talents in queer Hollywood during the Hays Code era.

            Ernest Haller is next with an impressive three queer films to his credit, reflecting Warner Bros.’ significant role in making queer cinema under the Hays Code (see below).  Other notable cinematographers include Charles Lang at Paramount, Burnett Guffey at Columbia and William Daniels at MGM and Universal, each of whom is also credited with three queer-coded works.

TABLE 10 88 QUEER FILMS MADE DURING THE HAYS CODE ERA (1934-1968) – CINEMATOGRAPHERS – SUMMARY Cinematographers listed more than once are shown in red.
David Abel	1	Ernest Haller	3	Russell Metty	6
John Alton	2	Russell Harlan	1	Ted Moore	1
Arthur E. Arling	1	Otto Heller	1	Andy Warhol (camera operator Paul Morrissey)	1
Joseph H. August	1	Kenneth Higgins	1	Nicholas Musuraca	1
George Barnes	1	Jack Hildyard	1	Sven Nykvist	1
Davis Boulton	1	Ray June	1	Georges Perinal	1
Robert Burks	2	Boris Kaufman	2	Franz Planer	1
Jack Cardiff	1	Robert Krasker	1	Harold Rosson	2
Wilfred M. Cline	1	Milton Krasner	1	John L. Russell	1
Joseph Coffey	1	Joseph LaShelle	1	John F. Seitz	2
William Daniels	3	Charles Lang	3	Douglas Slocombe** See BOOK TWO	3
Robert De Grasse	1	Walter Lassally	1	Jeri Sopanen	1
Henri Decae	1	Sam Leavitt	1	Harry Stradling	6
Arthur Edeson	2	Joseph MacDonald	1	Robert Surtees	1
George Folsey	2	Oliver T. Marsh & Joseph Ruttenberg	1	Armansd Thirard	1
William A. Fraker	1	Rudolph Mate	1	Aldo Tonti	1
Tony Gaudio	1	Ted McCord	1	Joseph Valentine: Color consultant: William Skall	1
Gerald Gibbs	1	Otello Martelli	1	Haskell Wexler	1
Burnett Guffey	3	William C. Mellor	1	Harry J. Wild	2
Carl E. Guthrie	1	John J. Mescall	1	Freddie Young	1

            In England, Douglas Slocombe achieved the same tally, and he would go on to photograph four additional queer-coded movies in the New Hollywood (1968-1980), bringing his total to seven  –  see Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980 ).  John Alton, Arthur Edeson, George Folsey, Boris Kaufman, Harold Rosson, John F. Seitz, Harry J. Wild and Hitchcock’s favorite cameraman, Robert Burks, are mentioned twice – the latter for Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest.  This distribution suggests that while queer-coded cinema was not a consistent focus for most cinematographers, specific individuals—often associated with studios that produced more such films—played a more sustained role in shaping its visual language.

• GAY CELEBRITY PHOTOGRAPHERS AND PORTRAIT ARTISTS include such luminaries as Cecil Beaton, George Hoyningen-Heune, Horst P. Horst, George Platt Lynes, Carl Van Vechten, Constantin Joffé, Francesco Scavullo, Richard Avedon, Duane Michals, Michael Childers, Greg Gorman, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anthony Friedkin, Bruce Webber, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, Jack Pierson, David LaChapelle, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott (Mert and Marcus), Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard (Pierre et Gilles), Ryan McGinley, Jose Villa and Luke Gilford.

• GAY PRODUCERS are hard to find in Hollywood under the Hays Code.  Only queer producer Ross Hunter (Pillow Talk, Imitation of Life and Airport) and his partner of 40 years, co-producer and former set-decorator Jacques Mapes, are an essential part of Hollywood history.  The rest is slim pickings.  Director James Whale’s partner, David Lewis (associate producer on Dark Victory), worked at Warner Bros., Harriett Parsons (the queer daughter of Hearst gossip columnist Louella Parsons) worked at RKO (I Remember Mama), and a mostly uncredited Roger Edens (see above) worked as an associate producer on numerous Arthur Freed-produced MGM musicals from the early forties to the mid-sixties.  Queer screenwriter Leonard Spigelgass also had the occasional producer credit, including the 1940 musical One Night in the Tropics. And then there was Billy Wilder’s writing partner and coproducer, Charles Brackett (Sunset Boulevard), who, according to gay writer Gavin Lambert (see below – Inside Daisy Clover), was in a relationship with his young male assistant James Larmore. Others, however, disagree.   His private life will likely always remain his own.

• SCREENWRITING was not a favored domain of queer men and women during the Hays Code years.  Of the eleven queer writers mentioned in the text and summarized in Table 16, Tennessee Williams was the source material for three movies, two of which he adapted for the screen, one in collaboration with Gore Vidal and which, according to Vidal, Williams was so spaced out on drugs and alcohol that he contributed nothing toward the final product.  Gavin Lambert adapted his own novel for the screen. William Inge, D. H. Lawrence, Patrick Dennis, Carson McCullers, Herman Melville, and Patricia Highsmith served purely as source material. Oscar Wilde was the inspiration for two very similar movies released the same year. Arthur Laurents wrote the script for Hitchcock’s Rope from Hume Cronyn’s adaptation, while Leonard Gershe wrote the script for Funny Face and, together with his partner Roger Edens,  a couple of very witty songs. Finally, DeWitt Bodeen is honored for an original screenplay involving our favorite cat person and one in which he adapts Herman Melville.

PART 3.

88 QUEER FILMS MADE DURING THE HAYS CODE ERA (1934-1968) –

OVERVIEW

STUDIO BREAKDOWN

WARNER BROTHERS, THE STUDIO OF BETTE DAVIS, AND LATER, JOAN CRAWFORD WAS, BY A MILE, THE MOST QUEER-FRIENDLY STUDIO IN HOLLYWOOD DURING THE HAYS CODE ERA

Among the Hollywood Studios, Warner Bros. is the clear winner in producing and distributing LGBTQ+ movies under the Hays Code, accounting for 22% of the films listed.  MGM comes in second with 11%, followed by Columbia and Universal in joint third with 9%. 

74 (84%) of the movies are from the US, with 10 (12%) from the United Kingdom, 2 from France, 1 from Sweden, and 1 from Italy.

• Warner Bros: 19

(including Claridge Pictures and Transatlantic: Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein):

• MGM: 10

• Columbia: 8

(including Horizon-Sam Spiegel)

.Universal 8

(including Universal-International)

• Paramount: 6

RKO: 6

(Hepburn, Val Lewton)

• 20th Century Fox (TCF): 5

• United Artists: 4

(including The Mirisch Company {with Wilder and Wyler}, Howard Hawks’ Monterey Pictures

and Sidney Buchman-Famous Artists Productions)

• Allied Artists: 2

• Embassy Pictures (Avco): 1

• Film-Makers Distribution: 1

• Filmways: 1

• Republic Pictures: 1

• Selznick International: 1

• Andy Warhol (The Factory): 1

• British Lion- including Romulus Films

(Columbia in the US): 1

• Anglo-Allied Pictures

(Allied Artists in the US):1

• The Archers

(Eagle Lion Films in the US):1

• Ealing (Eagle Lion Films in the US): 1

• Joseph Janni Productions (Embassy Pictures (Avco) in the US): 1

• Rank (Pathé America in the US): 1

• Springbok Films (Ely Landau and the Landau Company in the US): 1

• Vantage Films (TCF in the US): 1

• Warwick Films (Columbia in the US): 1

• Woodfall Films (Continental Distributors in the US): 1

• Janus Films (Associated Producers Inc. in the US): 1

• Cinédis (UMPO in the US): 1

• Titanus – CCFC Films (Times Film Corporation in the US): 1

• AB Svensk Filmindustri (Lopert-United Artists in the US): 1

SOURCE MATERIAL

Of the 88 movies listed, one is a cinema verité film, while the other 87 are narrative features. Of these, 21 (24%) are original screenplays, while 67 (76%) were adapted from another medium (see above)

88 QUEER FILMS MADE UNDER THE HAYS CODE – 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 across the 88 films examined, as reflected in my subjective opinion, with an average rating of A-. Six of the movies listed won BEST PICTURE, while a further eleven were nominated in the BEST PICTURE category. All 88 queer films and their rating are listed in TABLE 11.

TABLE 11 88 QUEER FILMS MADE DURING THE HAYS CODE ERA (1934-1968) – RATED BY PATRICK BROWNE
FILM	R	FILM	R	FILM	R	FILM	R
*All About Eve	A+	In a Lonely Place	(A)			*Auntie Mame	B-
Casablanca	A+	King Rat	(A)	Brute Force (O)	B+	*The Big Combo (O)	B-
Double Indemnity	A+	*The Loved One	(A)	Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	B+	Compulsion	B-
*Funny Face (O)	A+	*The Picture of Dorian Gray	(A)	Cat People (O)	B+	Oscar Wilde	B-
*Kind Hearts and Coronets	A+	*Portrait of Jason**	(A)	Darling (O)	B+	*The Strange One	B-
Laura	A+	*The Red Shoes (O)	(A)	The Fox	B+	Sylvia Scarlett	B-
Lawrence of Arabia	A+	*Rope	(A)	*Gentlemen Prefer Blondes	B+	The Uninvited	B-
*Meet Me in St. Louis	A+	The Servant	(A)	Murder My Sweet	B+
*Mildred Pierce	A+	Advice and Consent	A-	*My Hustler (O)	B+	Inside Daisy Clover	C+
*My Fair Lady	A+	*The Bad Seed	A-	*The Producers (O)	B+	*Suddenly Last Summer	C+
North By Northwest (O)	A+	Bringing Up Baby	A-	Purple Noon	B+	That  Touch of Mink (O)	C+
Persona (O)	A+	The Dark at the Top of the Stairs	A-	Victim (O)	B+	The Trials of Oscar Wilde	C+
*Psycho	A+	Les Diaboliques	A-	Young Man with a Horn	B+
Rebecca	A+	Imitation of Life	A-			Billy Budd	(C)
*Rebel Without a Cause (O)	A+	I Vitelloni (O)	A-	Ben-Hur	(B)	*The Children’s Hour	(C)
Reflections in a Golden Eye	A+	The Maltese Falcon	A-	*Calamity Jane (O)	(B)	The Group	(C)
*Some Like it Hot	A+	*The Man Who Came to Dinner	A-	*Johnny Guitar	(B)
A Streetcar Named Desire	A+	The Pawnbroker	A-	The L-Shaped Room	(B)	*Caged (O)	C-
*Sunset Boulevard (O)	A+	Red River	A-	The Leather Boys	(B)	Walk on the Wild Side	C-
*Top Hat (O)	A+	Stage Door		*Pillow Talk (O)	(B)
Touch of Evil	A+	Strangers on a Train	A-	Spartacus	(B)
*Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?	A+	A Taste of Honey	A-			*Valley of the Dolls	D+
Adam’s Rib (O)	(A)	Tea and Sympathy	A-
The Bride of Frankenstein	(A)	*The Wizard Of Oz	A-
Gilda (O)	(A)	*The Women	A-
The Haunting	(A)	*Written on the Wind	A-

*The sky’s the limit at a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

(O): Based on an original screenplay.

Predominantly in a language other than English

**Documentary-cinéma vérité 

The 1930s

1. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
(A)

A CAMP CLASSIC

James Whale

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER *Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew

DIRECTOR: James Whale

ACTOR: Ernest Thesiger

Actor Colin Clive’s queerness is now disputed.

Susan Sontag: Notes on Camp: 1964:

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

James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein remains one of the cinema’s purest expressions of what Susan Sontag would later define as high camp. Elsa Lanchester becomes an instant queer icon in the title role, crowned with the most inventive do in film history. Opposite her, the wonderfully mannered Ernest Thesiger—openly gay and once sketched by John Singer Sargent in 1911—delivers his definitive performance as Dr. Pretorius, the slyly queer mentor who coaxes Frankenstein back into forbidden creation. Which leads us to the mythic monster himself, played by a transcendent Boris Karloff, reprising his role from the 1931 movie.

One of the greatest sequels ever made, The Bride of Frankenstein is an improvement on director Whale’s original Frankenstein and is now widely regarded as his masterpiece.  The famous hermit scene is one of the most extraordinary, tonally daring passages in all of classic horror, a moment of warmth and moral clarity dropped into a film otherwise defined by gothic grotesquerie.  It’s also James Whale’s most nakedly personal sequence.  The Monster, wounded and hunted, stumbles into the cabin of a blind hermit (Australian actor O.P. Heggie, immortalized in a single scene).  The hermit, unable to see his appearance, welcomes him with kindness.  He teaches the Monster words — “friend,” “good,” “bad,” “bread,” “wine” — and offers him shelter, food, music, and prayer.  For a brief moment, the Monster experiences companionship and dignity.  The idyll is shattered when two hunters intrude, recognize the Monster, and panic.  The Monster flees, and the hermit’s cabin is accidentally set ablaze.

Food Good, Fire Bad

THE MONSTER (BORIS KARLOFF) IN THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

Whale arrived in Hollywood on the strength of R. C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, and Carl Laemmle quickly signed him to a five‑year Universal contract. What followed was one of the studio’s most artistically fertile eras. In rapid succession, Whale directed Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and ultimately The Bride of Frankenstein—a run that helped define Universal’s golden age of horror and elevated the genre’s visual and thematic sophistication.

His momentum faltered with The Road Back (1937), Erich Maria Remarque’s sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. The film’s troubled reception marked a turning point, and by 1941, Whale’s Hollywood career had effectively concluded.

The premise of Bride of Frankenstein draws from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. The film opens with Shelly (Lanchester doing double duty), her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Walton who, nine years later, would play the doomed, but always sweet-smelling, queer Sidney Marriott in Murder My Sweet) and Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) in the year without a summer (1816) on the shores of Lake Geneva. The film also serves as a direct continuation of Whale’s 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein expanding the myth with wit, melancholy, and unmistakable queer sensibility.

With E.E.Clive, Valerie Hobson, Una O’Connor and Mary Gordon.

Cinematography: John J. Mescall Music: Franz Waxman Universal Pictures

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2. Top Hat (1935)
A+

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

Mark Sandrich

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton) *Bates (Eric Blore)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Edward Everett Horton
ACTOR: Erik Rhodes
CHOREOGRAPHER: Hermes Pan
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bernard Newman (probable)

Actor Eric Blore’s sexuality is now classified as unknown: queer-associated.

More plural personalities!

HORACE HARDWICK (EDWARD EVERETT HORTON) MEETS BATES (ERIC BLORE) FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TOP HAT

 The Best of the Astaire-Rogers movies.

Of the nine films Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made at RKO in the 1930s, Top Hat is their finest—and easily their most unabashedly queer. Eric Blore gives his butler that trademark air of superior fussiness, while Edward Everett Horton, not yet overusing his patented double take, supplies the sort of fluttery exasperation that became a queer‑coded Hollywood staple.
Irving Berlin contributes one of his strongest scores, and the “Cheek to Cheek” number—choreographed by Astaire with his longtime collaborator, and alleged lover, Hermes Pan—captures the pair at their absolute peak. Gay actor Erik Rhodes, returning after The Gay Divorcee (1934), steals every scene as Alberto Beddini, the preening Italian couturier whose malapropisms are as flamboyant as his wardrobe. Rhodes spent most of his career on Broadway; his Hollywood work outside these two films is largely forgettable, but here he’s indelible.
The production design, executed by Carroll Clark under the supervision of Van Nest Polglase, represents Hollywood Art Deco at its most extravagant and aspirational. The original screenplay by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor (from a story by Taylor) gives the whole confection its airy scaffolding, while David Abel’s cinematography bathes it in a luminous, impossible elegance.

SONGS (IRVING BERLIN)
• No Strings (I’m Fancy-Free)
• Isn’t This a Lovely Day (to be Caught in the Rain)
• Top Hat, White Tie and Tails
• Cheek to Cheek
• The Piccolino

ASTAIRE-ROGERS AT RKO
• Flying Down to Rio (1933)
• The Gay Divorcee (1934)
• Roberta (1935)
• Top Hat (1935)
• Follow the Fleet (1936)
• Swing Time (1936)
• Shall We Dance (1937)
• Carefree (1938)
• The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)

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3. Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
B-

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Sylvia/Sylvester Scarlett (Katherine Hepburn)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: George Cukor
ACTOR: Cary Grant
ACTOR: Katherine Hepburn
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bernard Newman (probable)

Depressed after his wife’s death and drowning in gambling debts, Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn) flees France for England with his teenage daughter, Sylvia (Katharine Hepburn), in tow. Because Henry intends to resume his petty smuggling—this time sneaking bolts of lace into England to dodge import taxes—Sylvia disguises herself as a boy, christening the persona “Sylvester” to throw the authorities off their trail. On the Channel ferry, they encounter Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant), a charming grifter whose survival instincts are so sharp that he promptly turns Henry in to save his own skin. By the time they reach Southampton, the duo has become a trio – betrayal being forgiven if it’s done with charm, necessity, and comic timing.

This is the first film in which Grant’s Cockney persona truly registers, and he nearly walks off with the picture. Its themes of gender play and sexual fluidity were far ahead of their time, and audiences didn’t know what to make of it; RKO reportedly lost $363,000, and Hepburn was swiftly branded “box office poison,” a stigma she wouldn’t shake until signing with MGM in 1940.

The film’s reputation has steadily improved, and today it wears its queerness with pride. Hepburn continues her drag performance long after the plot no longer requires it, and in one memorable moment, she is kissed by a woman. It remains the only film in which Hepburn—a gay actress—so overtly channels her own sexuality on screen.

It was the first of four Hepburn–Grant pairings, followed by Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938), George Cukor’s Holiday (also 1938), and the triumphant Philadelphia Story (1940), which revitalized Hepburn’s career and showcased all three artists at their peak.

Adapted from Compton Mackenzie’s 1918 novel by John Collier, the film also features Brian Aherne as an Englishman briefly smitten with “Sylvester,” only to lose interest the moment the boy reverts to Sylvia. Mel Berns, head of RKO’s makeup department, created Hepburn’s striking hair and makeup design—work of a piece with the sophistication he later brought to Citizen Kane and Notorious.

Cinematography: Joseph H. August
RKO
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4. Stage Door (1937)
A-

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

Gregory La Cava

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Jean (Ginger Rogers)
*Kay (Andrea Leeds)
*Linda (Gail Patrick)
*Eve (Eve Arden)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: 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. At the center are Katharine Hepburn’s Terry, the privileged newcomer whose arrival unsettles 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 core 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 spark beautifully off each other. 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. The film itself was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

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+ Cast and Crew ACTOR Katherine Hepburn ACTOR Cary Grant COSTUME DESIGNER: Howard Greer

Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn would next star in Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby, where Grant answers the front door wearing a flimsy negligée because Hepburn has hidden all his clothes. When Hepburn’s aunt (May Robson) demands an explanation, he throws up his hands and exclaims:

Because I just went gay all of a sudden!

CARY GRANT LEAPING INTO THE AIR ON THE WORD GAY.

The film never again suggests that Grant’s character is gay, queer, or homosexual, which raises the linguistic question: how common was gay as a synonym for homosexuality in 1938?

The answer is that the usage existed but was not yet mainstream. By the late 1930s, gay, meaning “homosexual,” circulated widely in queer subcultures but remained largely unknown to the general public, who still heard the word as “carefree” or “frivolous.” Grant’s line, therefore, functions as a sly double entendre—innocent enough to slip past censors, unmistakable to those in the know.

Grant plays a paleontologist who becomes entangled with a scatterbrained heiress (Hepburn) and a leopard named Baby. The film represents the peak of Hollywood’s slapstick era, with Grant taking several classic tumbles. Adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from Wilde’s short story, first published in Collier’s Weekly on April 10, 1937, it remains one of Hawks’s most anarchic and subversive comedies.

RKO. Cinematography: Russell Metty

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-

ADIEU SHEARER!

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Nancy Blake (Florence Nash)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: George Cukor
ACTOR: Joan Crawford
ACTOR: Marjorie Main (probable)
COSTUME DESIGNER: Gilbert Adrian
ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons (probable)

The Women is the first American studio film with an entirely female cast, and its commitment to that conceit runs deep: every piece of artwork on screen was created by women, and the screenplay—by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin—was adapted from Claire Boothe Luce’s 1936 Broadway hit. Even the animals are female! Behind the camera, however, 1939 Hollywood reasserts itself: the crew is almost entirely male, though the production is steered by the industry’s most accomplished gay director, George Cukor, working just a month after his dismissal from Gone with the Wind for, as some contemporaries whispered, being “too gay” for David O. Selznick’s comfort.
The film’s only overtly lesbian figure—an “old maid” who lives in slacks and radiates a dry, knowing independence—is played by Florence Nash, not Katharine Hepburn, though the costume might suggest otherwise. Nash’s presence adds a sly, subversive note to a film otherwise devoted to the romantic and social entanglements of Park Avenue women.

The Women was Norma Shearer’s last major role at MGM. She retired shortly afterward.

Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg and Oliver T. Marsh
MGM
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7. The Wizard of OZ (1939)
A-

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

Victor Fleming

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr)
 LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew ACTOR: Billie Burke (probable)
COSTUME DESIGN: Gilbert Adrian
ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons (probable)

Adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (1939) tells the story of Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl swept away by a tornado to the magical Land of Oz. With her adorable little dog Toto and three companions—a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, and a Cowardly Lion—she follows the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City, hoping the Wizard can send her home. Along the way, they confront the Wicked Witch of the West, only to discover that the power to return was within Dorothy all along.
Judy Garland’s Dorothy is the mother of us all. Before Barbra, before Liza, before Madonna, before Lady Gaga—there was Judy. Her performance in Oz struck a chord that transcended orientation: vulnerable yet resilient, innocent yet knowing, and anchored by that miraculous voice. Over the Rainbow, written by Harold Arlen and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, remains the greatest movie song ever written, and Garland delivers it with a purity that still feels like a lifeline.
The film’s visual splendor—shot in Technicolor by Harold Rosson, framed by sepia‑toned Kansas bookends—was shaped under director Victor Fleming, who took over Gone with the Wind after George Cukor’s dismissal. Queer cinema can be a small world. And yes, Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion reads unmistakably gay; it’s almost a wonder MGM didn’t hand him a lavender mane.
With Jack Haley as the Tin Man, Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow and queer actress Margaret Hamilton making an indelible impression as both the Wicked Witch of the West AND her black-and-white Kansas counterpart, Almira Gulch, the harsh, wealthy Kansas neighbor who wants to have Toto euthanized. She hits Toto with a rake for chasing her cat and later produces a sheriff’s order to take him away to be destroyed. During the tornado scene, Dorothy sees Miss Gulch on her bicycle transforming into the Wicked Witch on a broomstick. Dorothy’s flying farm house lands in Munchkinland full-force, splat on top of the Wicked Witch of the East – sister of the Wicked Witch of the West- killing her instantly.
As for the phrase Friends of Dorothy, its origins are murky, but the logic is clear enough. Garland wasn’t gay, but queer men recognized something in her: a shared sense of outsiderness, a capacity for survival, a voice that could lift you out of whatever Kansas you were stuck in. Dorothy’s longing for a place “over the rainbow” became a metaphor for a life not yet possible—but desperately hoped for.
Billie Burke played Glinda the Good Witch with an airy, almost self-parodying sweetness that became her signature screen persona.  Following his death in 1932, the widow of impresario Florenz Ziegfeld found herself in considerable debt, which partly drove her to pursue a prolific film career.  In later years, she became something of a camp figure—her fluttery, scatterbrained characters were beloved—and she worked steadily in film and television well into the 1950s and 60s.  A queer actress, she had a long-running affair with director Dorothy Arzner.  We will meet her again in Film number 8 – The Man Who Came to Dinner.

Frank Morgan is one of the great unsung pleasures of classic Hollywood. He played five roles in The Wizard of Oz—the Wizard himself, Professor Marvel, the Emerald City door attendant, the cabbie, and the guard—and brought a wonderful blend of bluster and vulnerability to each of them. He was a character actor of the highest order, Oscar-nominated for The Affairs of Cellini (1934) and again for Tortilla Flat (1942). He had a long MGM contract and appeared in dozens of films throughout the 30s and 40s. He died in 1949, aged 59, and is less celebrated than he deserves to be, given the sheer range and warmth he brought to his work. His performance as the father in Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940) is one of the decade’s best.

Just one dog played Toto – a female Cairn Terrier named Terry. She was trained by legendary Hollywood animal trainer Carl Spitz and earned $125 per week on the production, reportedly more than many of the human actors. Terry later had her name officially changed to Toto after the film’s success.
In addition to Over the Rainbow, Arlen and Harburg’s song suite includes Follow the Yellow Brick Road/Were Off to See the Wizard, If I Only Had a/the Brain/Heart/Nerve, If I Were King of the Forest, The Merry Old Land of OZ, and Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.
In 1939, AMPAS was still sorting things out – it still is! MGM’s court composer Herbert Stothart‘s arrangements of Harold Arlen’s music should have been nominated in the BEST ADAPTED SCORE category. Instead, he ended up being nominated for BEST ORIGINAL SCORE and won, defeating Max Steiner’s immortal original score for GWTW.

Production design by Cedric Gibbons, costumes by Adrian.
MGM
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The 1940s

8. Rebecca (1940)
A+

ONE OF HITCHCOCK’S SEVEN PERFECT FILMS

OSCAR: BEST PICTURE OF 1940

Alfred Hitchcock

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Laurence Olivier
ACTOR: Judith Anderson (probable)

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 as a paid companion to the formidable Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates) in Monte Carlo, a shy young woman (Joan Fontaine) meets the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). After a whirlwind courtship, he proposes, and the two marry before returning to his ancestral estate, Manderley. There, the new Mrs. de Winter finds herself overshadowed by the memory of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, whose death remains shrouded in mystery. Presiding over the house is Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), the glacial, obsessive housekeeper who worships Rebecca’s memory and undermines her successor at every turn.
Rebecca marked the Hollywood arrival—courtesy of Gone with the Wind producer David O. Selznick—of the man who was, or would soon become, the greatest director in the history of cinema. Hitchcock’s touch is everywhere: the psychological unease, the shifting power dynamics, the sense of a heroine swallowed by a house that remembers more than it reveals.
Fontaine gives a superb performance, proving she shared the same deep well of talent as her sister, Olivia de Havilland. The supporting cast is equally rich: George Sanders as the insinuating Jack Favell, Rebecca’s cousin, Reginald Denny as Frank Crawley, Maxim’s estate manager and Gladys Cooper as Maxim’s sister.

Selznick International
Oscar-winning cinematography by George Barnes.
Music by Franz Waxman.
Adapted screenplay by Joan Harrison and Robert E.Sherwood 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-

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

John Huston

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre)
*Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet)
*Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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. The story had already been filmed once, in 1931, as a pre‑Code vehicle for Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels, but Huston’s version quickly eclipsed it and is now considered the definitive take. Humphrey Bogart got his breakthrough role as Sam Spade, the hard‑boiled San Francisco private detective navigating a trio of unscrupulous adventurers—Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre—all in pursuit of a jewel‑encrusted falcon statuette.
The film’s queer coding is unmistakable. Peter Lorre’s Joel Cairo is openly gay by 1941 standards—perfumed, fastidious, and treated by Spade with a mixture of contempt and wary amusement. Sam will slap Cairo, but never punch him; the distinction is deliberate. Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.) is repeatedly called “the gunzel,” a term that originally meant a kept boy or homosexual, marking him as Kasper Gutman’s (Sydney Greenstreet) protégé in more ways than one. Both Wilmer and Gutman are, therefore, probably gay, depending on how you read them and your own orientation.
Bogart’s star would explode with this movie and transport him to the movie firmament that is reserved especially for the true Gods and Goddesses of the cinema – Monroe, Dean, Bogart…

One of the quintessential film noirs, The Maltese Falcon hasn’t aged quite as gracefully as some of its contemporaries—largely because its plot is a glorious tangle that barely holds together. But the performances are a feast: Mary Astor gives a superb turn as Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a Celtic Tiger avant la lettre, and the queer triumvirate of Lorre, Greenstreet, and Cook Jr. brings up the rear with style.

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+ Cast and Crew
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 away from this case, Mr. Whiteside, but also leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because, all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I have been filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside, I will be working 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 Woolley delights both himself and his audience as the impossibly pompous Sheridan Whiteside in William Keighley’s excellent 1941 adaptation of the George S. Kaufman–Moss Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner. While passing through small‑town Ohio on a cross‑country lecture tour, Whiteside slips on the icy steps of the Stanley home—where he is meant to dine as a publicity gesture—and promptly breaks his hip. He then commandeers their house for the entire Christmas season, terrorizing the family with his demands, insults, and parade of eccentric visitors.
Whiteside is famously modeled on Kaufman and Hart’s friend, the acerbic—and very gay—theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, and Woolley plays him with a delicious blend of hauteur and malicious glee. Bette Davis is perfection as his long‑suffering yet deeply loyal secretary, one of her rare comedic turns and a reminder of how deft she could be when allowed to play light.

The supporting cast is a joy: Ann Sheridan, slyly parodying her own star persona; the irrepressible Jimmy Durante, belting out 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 endures Whiteside’s abuse with mounting martyrdom; Reginald Gardiner doing a wicked parody of Noël Coward; and Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell as the hapless Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, whose home becomes a battleground of theatrical chaos.

Cinematography: Tony Gaudio
Warner Bros.
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11. Cat People (1942)
B+

Jacques Tourneur

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon)
*The Cat Woman (Elizabeth Russell, uncredited)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
SCREENWRITER: DeWitt Bodeen

The finest achievement of producer Val Lewton’s legendary RKO horror cycle, Cat People (1942), occupies a foundational place in queer film history because it mobilizes horror not as spectacle but as a grammar of deviance, repression, and embodied otherness. The film’s central figure, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), a Serbian fashion illustrator newly arrived in New York, meets and marries Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) and becomes legible as a queer subject through her refusal of heterosexual consummation. She refuses physical intimacy because she is convinced that she descends from an ancient tribe of “cat people” who metamorphose when aroused, jealous, or emotionally overwhelmed. This folkloric dread governs her inner life and becomes the central fracture in the marriage. Oliver—well‑meaning but obtuse—pushes her toward psychiatric treatment with Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), whose interventions only deepen the film’s exquisite ambiguity: is Irena delusional, or is the curse real?
As Oliver grows closer to his coworker Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), Irena’s fear curdles into jealousy. Alice begins to sense a predatory presence stalking her, and torn fabric hints at an attack.
As in *The Seventh Victim and Billy Budd, screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen—himself a gay man—threads queer coding throughout the narrative. Nowhere is it more explicit than in the famous “sister” scene at Irena and Oliver’s wedding dinner. A striking, predatory woman (Elizabeth Russell, uncredited) approaches Irena, looks her over, and murmurs “Moja sestra” (“my sister”). The tone is unmistakably intimate, even flirtatious. It reads as queer recognition—one of the “cat people” identifying another. In that moment, Irena is symbolically “outed” in public, her difference exposed.
Jacques Tourneur’s direction, paired with Nicholas Musuraca’s masterful chiaroscuro cinematography, creates a cinema of suggestion, shadow‑soaked stalking sequences and the shimmering terror of the justly famous swimming‑pool scene: alone in a darkened pool, Alice hears Irena’s unseen presence circling her. The interplay of echo, shadow, and rippling light creates one of the most erotically charged moments in the history of horror—a female‑on‑female menace that feels both intimate and transgressive.
And then there is the iconic “Lewton Bus” jump scare. Named for the film’s producer, the film builds unbearable tension only to puncture it with a mundane intrusion—a city bus screeching into frame—establishing the template for the Hollywood jump scare.

Remade, rather badly, by Paul Schrader in 1982 with Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard and Annette O’Toole.

Music by Roy Webb. Editor: Mark Robson.
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*Despite a loyal cult following, The Seventh Victim (1943) is a pale imitation of Cat People, featuring numerous queer-coded characters, again courtesy of queer screenwriter De Witt Bodeen .  The plot oscillates between the baroque and the faintly ridiculous, with Tom Conway reprising his role as the psychiatrist Dr. Judd.  After a while, you begin to realize that The Seventh Victim is a weird sort of prequel to Cat People.  Its main claim to fame is that it marked the screen debut of actress Kim Hunter and the directorial debut of former editor Mark Robson. 

12. Casablanca (1942-1943)
A+

OSCAR : BEST PICTURE OF 1943

Michael Curtiz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Rick (Humphrey Bogart)
*Captain Renault (Claude Rains)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGN: Orry-Kelly
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 Laszlo (Paul Henreid) are safely airborne and Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) lies dead on the tarmac, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Captain Renault (Claude Rains) walk off together into the mist. It’s the moment when the film shifts from romantic tragedy to something more quietly heroic, and Rick turns to Louis to deliver one of the most famous closing lines in cinema history—a benediction, a farewell, and the beginning of a new alliance. But is it Love?

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

Casablanca unfolds in the Moroccan port city of the same name, with most of the action centered at Rick’s Café Américain, the nightclub owned by the film’s reluctant hero, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). The plot ignites when an old flame, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), arrives unexpectedly with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), the Resistance leader the Nazis are desperate to capture. Rick must decide whether to put aside his lingering heartbreak and help Victor escape so he can continue the fight against fascism.
But Casablanca contains not one love story, but three: Ilsa and Rick, Ilsa and Laszlo, and—running quietly beneath the surface—the charged, conspiratorial bond between Rick and Captain Renault (Claude Rains). By the time they walk off together into the mist and Rick delivers that immortal final line, it’s clear the tension has been there from the beginning. Their “honeymoon,” we are told, will be in Camp Brazzaville—a notorious homosexual haven in the colonial imagination, the Palm Springs of its day.
Dooley Wilson provides the film’s emotional heartbeat as Sam, the piano player whose rendition of Herman Hupfeld’s “As Time Goes By” becomes the movie’s leitmotif. Max Steiner wove the melody into his score, though the song itself predated the film by over a decade, having been written for the 1931 Broadway musical Everybody’s Welcome.
Written on the fly by the fabulous Epstein twins—Philip and Julius—along with Howard Koch, and directed by Michael Curtiz with what can only be described as divine precision, Casablanca remains one of Hollywood’s most romantic and enduring achievements.
The film premiered in New York on November 26, 1942, timed to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa. Its Los Angeles and national release followed on January 23, 1943, aligning with the Churchill–Roosevelt Casablanca Conference. Under AMPAS rules, this made the film eligible for the 1943 Academy Awards. At the 16th Oscars, held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on March 2, 1944, it won Best Picture (Hal B. Wallis, producer), Best Director (Curtiz), and Best Adapted Screenplay (the Epstein brothers and Koch).

When Best Picture was announced, Jack Warner famously rushed to the stage to accept the award, leaving Wallis—its actual producer—stranded in the aisle. Wallis never forgave him. He soon resigned from Warner Bros. and established his own production company under the Paramount banner.

Adapted from the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, Casablanca remains a miracle of studio-era alchemy: accidental, improvised, and somehow perfect.

Ingrid Bergman was nominated for the wrong film. Instead of Casablanca, she received her first Oscar nomination for For Whom the Bell Tolls, a prestige adaptation in amber of the Hemingway bestseller, filmed in color, and set during the Spanish Civil War. Bergman was also denied a nomination for her greatest screen performance: as Alicia Huberman in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious.

Cinematography: Arthur Edeson.

Warner Bros.

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13. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
A+

THE GREATEST OF ALL MOVIE MUSICALS

Vincente Minnelli

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Vincente Minnelli
ACTOR: Tom Drake
ACTOR: Marjorie Main (probable)
SONGWRITER: Hugh Martin (rejected his gay identity later in life)
MUSICAL ARRANGER: Roger Edens
ART-SET DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons (probable)
COSTUME DESIGN: Irene Sharaff

Produced by Arthur Freed for MGM, this greatest of all movie musicals contains no explicit gay plot, yet it radiates queerness from every frame. With the extraordinarily stylish direction of Vincente Minnelli, three classic songs by, at the time, gay songwriter Hugh Martin (with his partner Ralph Blane), musical arrangements by the indispensable Roger Edens, and the glorious costumes of Irene Sharaff, the film has GAY written all over it. A favorite of gay men since its December 1944 premiere, it features Judy Garland in her first fully adult role—and she looks breathtaking in Sharaff’s designs, set against Lemuel Ayers’s lovingly detailed early‑20th‑century interiors and George Folsey’s sumptuous Technicolor cinematography.
Structured as a series of seasonal vignettes beginning in the summer of 1903, the film follows a year in the life of the Smith family of St. Louis, leading up to the opening of the 1904 World’s Fair. Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe adapted the screenplay from Sally Benson’s stories originally published in The New Yorker. The cast is a dream ensemble: 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 stalwart cook.

Garland gets to introduce three of her most iconic songs, all by Martin and Blane:
• The Trolley Song
• The Boy Next Door
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
The last, sung to a luminous Margaret O’Brien, is arguably the greatest Christmas song ever written.

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

Garland and Minnelli married in June 1945, and Liza was born the following year. But this period also marked the beginning of Garland’s struggles with depression and addiction, which strained both her marriage and her career. Minnelli’s numerous affairs with men further destabilized the relationship, and the couple divorced in 1951.

MGM
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Bookmark for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

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+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head (probable)

Actor Cornelia Otis Skinner, long rumored to be gay, was straight

A queer ghost story with so many (coded) lesbian characters it’s hard to keep count—my best estimate is four (three living, one deceased). The Uninvited was a major hit in 1944 and remains wonderfully entertaining today. The film opens with lesbian number one, Pamela Fitzgerald, played by Ruth Hussey. Pamela and her brother Rick (Ray Milland, then at the height of his stardom) fall in love with a deserted house on the Cornwall coast. Director Lewis Allen introduces them in a way that initially suggests they’re newlyweds—naughty indeed—until Hussey’s very boyish haircut tips us off. Heavens, no!
Once installed, the siblings discover a room that is several degrees colder than the rest of the house. The chill belongs to the ghost of lesbian number two, Mary Meredith, who—like Hitchcock’s Rebecca four years earlier—died under mysterious circumstances after falling from a nearby cliff. Mary seems determined to lure her daughter Stella (Gail Russell, heartbreakingly luminous before alcoholism took its toll) to the same fate. Yet the connection between mother and daughter feels more erotic than maternal, and Stella responds to it with unsettling pleasure. Good grief: lesbian number three!

 It also emerges that Mary had a female lover in life, bringing us to lesbian number four: Miss Holloway, played with deliciously sinister flair and intelligence by writer‑actress Cornelia Otis Skinner.  In fact, Miss Skinner became so associated with this role that the public came to see her as a lesbian in real life, despite the lack of evidence of any female sexual or romantic relationships.

The film offers occasional shivers, but the real pleasure lies in watching Hussey and Skinner interpret their queer‑coded roles—Hussey with a light, comedic touch, Skinner with a variation on Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers. What dazzles today is Charles Lang’s immaculate, Oscar‑nominated black‑and‑white cinematography and Victor Young’s haunting theme for Stella, later transformed into the standard Stella by Starlight with lyrics by Ned Washington. The costumes are by Edith Head.

As for Ray Milland’s Rick—well, he is a music critic. Hmmm.

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

Cinematography: Charles Lang.                                 Paramount.    

15. Laura (1944)
A+

Otto Preminger

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Clifton Webb
ACTOR: Vincent Price
ACTOR: Judith Anderson (probable)

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. 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 tell 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 Laura Hunt (a magnificent Gene Tierney in a star‑making performance), a young advertising executive found dead from a shotgun blast to the face, just inside her apartment door. His first stop is the apartment of newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb, who became a Hollywood star at fifty), an imperious, effete—read: homosexual—older man who has appointed himself Laura’s mentor and gatekeeper. 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 beneath her portrait. He awakens to the sound of a key in the lock—and is stunned to see Laura herself walk in. A dress in her closet, belonging to one of her models, Diane Redfern, reveals the truth: the woman assumed to be Laura was Redfern, lured there for a clandestine rendezvous with the unfaithful Carpenter while Laura was away in the country. With Laura alive, the urgency to unmask the killer intensifies.

One of the reasons often cited for the firing of the film’s original director, Rouben Mamoulian, was his treatment of Webb—his chilly, dismissive attitude toward a seasoned stage actor whose sexuality he reportedly disdained. Hollywood lore has inflated this into the primary cause of his dismissal, but the more likely explanation is that Mamoulian was steering the material in a direction Darryl Zanuck found untenable. Mamoulian is, after all, more famous for the films he was fired from (Laura, Oklahoma!, Cleopatra) than for the ones he completed. Zanuck handed the project to producer Otto Preminger, and the result was a stroke of sheer, unforgettable genius.
Adapted from Vera Caspary’s novel by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt, and an uncredited Ring Lardner Jr., the film features Oscar‑winning cinematography by Joseph LaShelle—trumping even John Seitz’s equally stunning work on Double Indemnity—and a haunting, all‑time‑great score by David Raksin.

TCF
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LAURA is one of FOUR GREAT FILM NOIRS OF THE MID-1940s that are ABLAZE WITH QUEER ENERGY.

The Essentials about these movies are listed in TABLE 12.

TABLE 12. LAURA Otto Preminger (1944) 20th Century Fox (TCF) 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 A NARRATION: CLIFTON WEBB IS OUR CONFIDANT, AND THE NARRATIVE UNFOLDS IN FLASHBACK. Remade by Burt Reynolds as Sharkey’s Machine in 1981 MURDER MY SWEET Edward Dmytryk (1944) RKO  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 A NARRATION, DICK POWELL IS OUR CONFIDANT, 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 -see Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980). DOUBLE INDEMNITY Billy Wilder (1944) Paramount 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 A NARRATION: FRED MACMURRAY IS OUR CONFIDANT, 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). 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 MILDRED PIERCE Michael Curtiz (1945) Warner Bros.  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 A NARRATION: JOAN CRAWFORD IS OUR CONFIDANT, AND THE NARRATIVE UNFOLDS IN FLASHBACK. ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES THE SECOND MOVIE TO SHOW THE SIGHTS OF LOS ANGELES LA City Hall 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. It still stands today. 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.

16. Double Indemnity (1944)
A+

MY FAVORITE FILM NOIR OF THE FORTIS

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES.

Billy Wilder

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray)
*Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Barbara Stanwyck (probable) COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head (probable)

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 during Hollywood’s mid‑forties to fifties golden age, Double Indemnity (1944) is a crime thriller directed by Billy Wilder, co‑written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva. The screenplay adapts James M. Cain’s 1936 serial (later published as a 1943 novel), and the result is a model of hard‑boiled precision.
The film stars Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who falls under the spell of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck, in one of her most iconic roles), the platinum‑wigged black widow who lures him into a plot to murder her husband and collect on a policy’s double‑indemnity clause. Edward G. Robinson is superb as Barton Keyes, the claims adjuster whose job is to sniff out fraudulent claims—and whose moral clarity becomes the film’s true compass.
Double Indemnity refers to a clause in life insurance policies that doubles the payout when the death is accidental.
All three actors are magnificent, with Stanwyck and Robinson giving performances worthy of Oscars. Stanwyck was nominated but lost to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, while MacMurray and Robinson were inexplicably overlooked.
Robinson’s absence from the Best Supporting Actor lineup that year is arguably the most egregious snub in Oscar history.
Wilder later said, in multiple interviews, that the real love story in the film is between Walter and Keyes. You can feel their bond in every scene, culminating in that devastating final moment between them. By contrast, the dynamic between Neff and Phyllis is all power, manipulation, and erotic calculation—never love.
The cinematography is by John F. Seitz, who also shot Wilder’s The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard. His work here—venetian‑blind shadows, cigarette‑lit confessionals, and that unforgettable grocery‑store rendezvous—helped define the visual language of noir.

One of the all-time great scores by Miklos Rozsa.

Paramount Pictures
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17. Murder My Sweet (1944)
B+

ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES.

Edward Dmytryk

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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. Dick Powell is in excellent company here, and he acquits himself admirably. He also deserves credit for being the first actor to play Philip Marlowe on screen and for making a surprisingly smooth transition from Warner Bros. crooner to hard‑boiled private eye. It can’t have been easy, especially since director Edward Dmytryk and screenwriter John Paxton twist the plot into knots worthy of Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep. The supporting cast is uniformly strong—Esther Howard, Anne Shirley, Claire Trevor, Otto Kruger, Miles Mander, and the marvelous Mike Mazurki—but nothing here quite matches Humphrey Bogart’s legendary bookstore flirtation with Dorothy Malone in Hawks’s masterpiece.
Which brings us to the film’s LGBTQ+ character. His name is Lindsay Marriott, played by character actor Douglas Walton. He appears in only two scenes before being dispatched in true queer‑coded fashion. We sense his queerness even before he enters: the elevator boy who has let him up to Marlowe’s office remarks, “He smells nice.” And then Marriott materializes—mincing around the office in a fabulous overcoat and ascot, as jittery as Bette Davis without a cigarette. Despite his protests, he IS being blackmailed into making a money‑for‑jewels exchange. It’s all rather sad, and very much of its era.
Dmytryk and the film’s producer, Adrian Scott, were members of the Hollywood Ten and served jail time for their Communist Party affiliations and for refusing to capitulate to HUAC. Blacklisted, Dmytryk eventually reversed course and named names—including director Jules Dassin—thereby allowing his career to recover, though at a steep moral cost. Scott refused to cooperate, moved to England like many in his situation, and never regained his Hollywood footing. Anne Shirley, who married Scott and retired from acting after this film, sent him a “Dear John” letter requesting a divorce, which she obtained in 1948 after four years of marriage. She lived the rest of her life quietly in Los Angeles.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harry J. Wild
RKO
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18. Mildred Pierce (1945)
A+

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES.

Michael Curtiz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:
*Ida Corwin (Eve Arden)
*Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Joan Crawford ACTOR: Zachary Scott (probable)
COSTUME DESIGNER: Milo Anderson 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 of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel, from an Oscar‑nominated screenplay by Ranald MacDougall (with several uncredited contributors). It was Crawford’s first starring role for Warner Bros. after leaving MGM, and she deservedly won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Actress.
Mildred Pierce is the centerpiece of the mid‑1940s Cain triptych, flanked by Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (Paramount, 1944) and Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (MGM, 1946). All three films hook you instantly with their propulsive plots and showcase some of the decade’s finest acting and direction, making Cain one of the best‑served novelists in Hollywood history.

The film opens on the Malibu (or possibly Santa Monica) pier with the murder of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), Mildred’s second husband. The sequence ends with a magnificent close‑up: Crawford’s Mildred reflected in a window, swathed in fur. The police inform her that her first husband, Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett), is the prime suspect—he owns the gun, has a motive, and doesn’t deny the crime. Mildred insists he is too gentle to kill anyone and begins recounting her story in flashback.
Mildred and Bert are an unhappily married couple in Glendale, California. After Bert’s business collapses—thanks to his oily partner Wally Fay (Jack Carson)—Mildred must sell her baked goods to support the family. Bert accuses her of loving their daughters more than him. When his mistress, Maggie Biederhof (Lee Patrick), calls during a quarrel, the marriage collapses.

Mildred keeps custody of sixteen‑year‑old Veda, a bratty social climber, and ten‑year‑old Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), a genial tomboy. Because they live in working‑class Glendale rather than adjacent, aristocratic Pasadena, Veda lives in a state of perpetual shame. Mildred tries to appease her with material comforts, taking a job as a waitress and eventually parlaying her skills into a wildly successful chain of chicken‑and‑waffle restaurants. She runs the business with her friend Ida—played by Eve Arden in her only Oscar‑nominated role. Arden’s dry, queer‑coded delivery makes Ida the film’s voice of reason, and her scenes with Mildred carry a subtle emotional charge that suggests feelings deeper than friendship.
Mildred meets Pasadena playboy Monty Beragon and, though she doesn’t love him, marries him to ease Veda’s entry into high society. Monty, however, is not wealthy; Mildred begins embezzling from her own business to cover his family’s debts and Veda’s extravagances. None of it satisfies Veda, whose appetite for status is bottomless.

Brilliantly filmed in high Germanic style by a cadre of Hungarian, German and Viennese émigrés—Curtiz, production designer Anton Grot and composer Max Steiner, in addition to Southern California natives cinematographer Ernest Haller and art director George James Hopkins—Mildred Pierce is one of the great noirs of the 1940s. Curtiz’s blend of high melodrama and near‑camp makes the film a queer classic. In addition to Arden’s Ida, there is another queer‑coded presence: Zachary Scott’s Monty, whose languid feyness constantly raises the possibility that his sexual interests extend beyond women.
And then there is the film’s magnificent lack of subtlety in the health department. In pre‑1960 Hollywood, a single cough was a death sentence. Poor Kay coughs once—just once—and we know she’s doomed. She survives the family trip to Lake Arrowhead only to return to Glendale in an oxygen tent, setting up one of the film’s most unforgettable scenes. When Kay takes her final breath, the nurse rushes to turn off the oxygen before Mildred or Veda can react. It’s both heartbreaking and, in its abruptness, darkly hilarious.
Like Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mildred Pierce plays as drama and camp simultaneously, with no contradiction between the two. That’s part of its enduring magic.
And yes—Butterfly McQueen appears in a brief but peerless burst of high camp as Mildred’s maid, hired and costumed (of course) by Veda. Delicious doesn’t begin to cover it.

WARNER BROS.
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Bookmark for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

19. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
(A)

Albert Lewin

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield)
*Basil Hallward (Lowell Gilmore)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
SOURCE MATERIAL: Oscar Wilde:
Adapted from his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray
ACTOR: Hurd Hatfield
ART DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons (probable) COSTUME DESIGN: Arlington Valles (probable)

 Actor Lowell Gilmore’s sexuality is now classified as unknown: queer-associated.

We all know the story: a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, wishes that his portrait might age in his place. As he plunges into a life of corruption and hedonism, the painting grows monstrous while Dorian himself remains eerily untouched—until the accumulated weight of his sins finally destroys him.
After serving as Irving Thalberg’s closest assistant and winning an Oscar for producing Mutiny on the Bounty, Albert Lewin became a producer at Paramount following Thalberg’s death at 37. A man of pronounced literary ambition, Lewin soon stepped into writing and directing, debuting with a middling adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence. But back at MGM, he created his masterpiece: a superb adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, with the impossibly beautiful Hurd Hatfield as Dorian. Hatfield’s performance—so subtle it borders on the mask‑like—has always felt exactly right. He’s like Tyrone Power with the emotional temperature dialed down to zero.
Lewin handles the material with exquisite control, and the film stands as one of MGM’s finest achievements of the 1940s. The production design is sumptuous, and Harry Stradling’s Oscar‑winning black‑and‑white cinematography is breathtaking—erupting into color for the climactic close‑up of Ivan Le Lorraine Albright’s grotesque portrait, now housed at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The cast is superb. George Sanders is perfection as Lord Henry Wotton—Wilde’s heterosexual stand‑in—scattering epigrams like rose petals. Angela Lansbury, in her second Oscar‑nominated performance in as many years, is heartbreaking as Sybil Vane, the young woman whose destruction seals Dorian’s fate. Richard Fraser is excellent as her vengeful brother, and Peter Lawford and Donna Reed look impossibly fresh and luminous.
And then there is Basil Hallward, Dorian’s closest friend and the man who paints the fateful portrait. He is played by gay actor Lowell Gilmore, who—like Hatfield—deserved far better from Hollywood. His quiet ache gives the film its emotional center, the one place where Wilde’s original queer longing still flickers through the studio gloss.

MGM
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20. Gilda (1946)
(A)

Charles Vidor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford)
*Ballin Mundson (George Macready)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
CHOREOGRAPHER: Jack Cole

Costume designer Jean Louis was supposedly straight and married to Loretta Young in his later years. However, he was gossiped about as being at least sexually ambiguous (William Mann, Behind the Screen, p. 237)

WERE FARRELL AND MUNDSON QUEER FOR EACH OTHER?

Feast your eyes on Charles Vidor’s stylish direction, Rudolph Maté’s lush black‑and‑white cinematography (unusual for a noir, and all the more intoxicating for it), the slinky Jean Louis gowns, and—above all—Rita Hayworth as Gilda, one of Hollywood’s most iconic creations.

Although Glenn Ford and George Macready always insisted that they believed their characters were gay, Vidor disagreed. The plot and motivations are so convoluted that Gilda becomes difficult to place neatly on the queer spectrum. But it’s queer enough—emotionally, aesthetically, atmospherically—to contain two of the most significant musical numbers in cinema history: “Put the Blame on Mame” and “Amado Mio,” which Hayworth performs in a grand, smoldering style (as dubbed by Anita Ellis), with choreography by Jack Cole, the father of theatrical jazz dance. The songs, written by Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts, are pure Hollywood alchemy.
The result is a film that may defy tidy interpretation, but it never fails to seduce. Gilda is noir as a fever dream—glamorous, unstable, erotically charged, and impossible to forget.

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. Brute Force (1947)
B+

Jules Dassin

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn)

Brute Force was one of several superb noirs director Jules Dassin made in the postwar years, alongside Thieves’ Highway, The Naked City, and Night and the City—the latter a rare, atmospheric noir set in London. Dassin had gone to England because rumors were circulating that he was about to be investigated by HUAC, the House Un‑American Activities Committee. When he returned to the United States, the worst happened: he was named by a recanting Edward Dmytryk, and his Hollywood career ended almost overnight.
An expertly told prison‑break thriller, anchored by an above‑average original screenplay by future director Richard Brooks – whose novel The Brick Foxhole had been adapted the same year into Crossfire, with screenwriter John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk shifting the book’s theme of homophobia to antisemitism for the film – taut direction by Dassin, and great work by a breakthrough star and a bunch of reliable character actors.
Our LGBTQ+ character here is the hateful Captain Munsey, a sadist whose queerness is coded through voice, gesture, and obsession. He speaks in a slightly higher octave than the rest of the male cast, is the prison’s lone aesthete, and is fastidious about his appearance—there’s even a beautifully choreographed shaving sequence that borders on erotic ritual. There’s no doubt about it: Munsey is a raving homosexual, and a very nasty one. Hume Cronyn, a consummate actor, plays this queerness to the hilt.
Cronyn has portrayed several gay characters on stage and screen over the years, and even helped gay writer Arthur Laurents adapt Rope for Hitchcock. His performance here is never insulting; instead, it’s chillingly precise. We’re constantly on edge, waiting for him to summon another unfortunate inmate to his office for yet another round of torture.
But Cronyn isn’t the only magnetic presence. A superb Burt Lancaster, fresh off his star‑making turn in producer Mark Hellinger’s The Killers, returns to Hellinger territory as Joe Collins, a prisoner who can no longer endure Munsey’s brutality and begins plotting a breakout. His fellow inmates are played by a remarkable ensemble: 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 deliver a direct appeal to the audience as the closing credits begin to roll.
Brute Force is tough, tense, and unmistakably political, but it’s also one of the most fascinating queer‑coded noirs of the 1940s—its villain a study in repression, sadism, and the dangers of power in the wrong hands.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Daniels
UNIVERSAL
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22. Red River (1948)
A-

A RARE QUEER WESTERN

Howard Hawks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift)
*Cherry Valance (John Ireland)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Montgomery Clift

One of the greatest Westerns ever made, and a queer one, at that, Red River takes us along the infamous Chisholm Trail on the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas. Directed by Howard Hawks, it features John Wayne in one of his most emblematic roles as Thomas Dunson, the iron‑willed rancher who launches the drive, and Montgomery Clift as Matt Garth, his adopted son and eventual rival. Their clashes—beautifully shaped in the screenplay by Borden Chase and Charles Schnee—give the film its emotional backbone.
The year was 1948, and Clift was exploding into stardom. In Red River, his film debut, he holds his own against Wayne with astonishing poise. That same year, he dazzled audiences in Fred Zinnemann’s The Search and, soon after, as the enigmatic, charming fortune hunter in William Wyler’s The Heiress. But Red River is where he first announced himself as a new kind of American leading man—sensitive, intelligent, and quietly erotic.
And then there’s the flirtation. Clift’s scenes with John Ireland as gunslinger Cherry Valance are among the most overtly homoerotic moments in any classic Western. Their gun‑comparison scene—Mine’s bigger, Let’s see—is legendary, a moment of queer electricity that Hawks lets play without comment. The two men become inseparable, their bond a sly counterpoint to Dunson’s authoritarian masculinity.
The supporting cast is superb: Walter Brennan, Noah Beery Jr., Joanne Dru, and Coleen Gray. Both Dru and Gray are unusually vivid presences for a Western of this era, giving the film not one but two memorable female characters. The stunning black‑and‑white cinematography is by Hawks’s favorite cameraman, Russell Harlan, whose images of dust, sky, and cattle feel mythic. The rousing score is by Dimitri Tiomkin, and the editing by Christian Nyby gives the film its muscular rhythm.
Adapted from Borden Chase’s 1946 story The Chisholm Trail in The Saturday Evening Post, Red River remains a towering achievement—part epic, part psychological drama, and part queer Western avant la lettre. It would be fifty-seven years before another queer Western of equal if not greater caliber came our way. Its title: Brokeback Mountain.
MONTEREY PRODUCTIONS (Howard Hawks)
UNITED ARTISTS
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23. Rope (1948)
(A)

HITCHCOCK’S FIRST FILM IN COLOR

FILMED IN 8 X 10-MINUTE TAKES.

Alfred Hitchcock
Filmed in 8 x 10-minute takes.

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Rupert Cadell (James Stewart)
*Brandon Shaw (John Dall) *Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: John Dall
ACTOR: Farley Granger
SCREENWRITER: Arthur Laurents SET DECORATOR: Howard Bristol COSTUME DESIGNER: Gilbert Adrian

Hitchcock’s famous experiment feels like an idea that could have been sketched on a napkin over coffee with Eisenstein. Two masters of cinema, having reinvented the medium more than once, understood that film is a marriage of two complementary forces:

Mise‑en‑scène — production design, costume, camera placement and movement, and the choreography of actors within the frame.

Editing — the sculpting of that mise‑en‑scène into meaning.

But Hitchcock wanted to know: What happens if you remove editing altogether? What if a film were built almost entirely from mise‑en‑scène—no montage, no rhythmic cutting, just the camera gliding through space like an omniscient guest at a party? Would it feel like a filmed stage play? A voyeur with a movie camera sitting in the audience?
There was, of course, a technical problem: a reel of film only lasted ten minutes. Hitchcock solved this by gliding the camera into the back of an actor’s jacket or an inanimate object—furniture, a dark corner—allowing for a hidden cut and a fresh reel. The illusion of a single, continuous take was preserved.
Adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s play by actor‑writer Hume Cronyn, with a screenplay by gay writer Arthur Laurents, the story draws on the infamous Leopold and Loeb case of the early 1920s. Farley Granger and John Dall, both queer actors, are perfect as Phillip Morgan and Brandon Shaw, two young aesthetes—read: a homosexual couple—who strangle a former prep‑school classmate in their Manhattan penthouse. They do it as an intellectual exercise, a Nietzschean demonstration of superiority. After hiding the body in a large antique chest, they host a dinner party, using the chest as the buffet table. The Manhattan skyline glows behind them like a silent accomplice.
The guests, blissfully unaware, include the victim’s father (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) and aunt (Constance Collier). His mother is home with a cold. Also present are David’s fiancée (Joan Chandler) and her former lover (Douglas Dick), who was once David’s closest friend. The boys’ inspiration for the murder comes from their prep‑school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell—played by James Stewart, excellent in a role that darkens his usual persona. Rupert once discussed Nietzsche’s Superman with them, which they interpreted as approval. Brandon, in particular, believes Rupert will admire their “work of art.” The film strongly hints that Rupert was also their former lover.
The result is an astonishing achievement—one of Hitchcock’s most daring films. And yet, for all its brilliance, you can feel the constraint: half the language of cinema is off‑limits. Hitchcock is working with only the right (spatial) side of his brain, denying himself the left (temporal) side that montage provides. The tension between those two impulses—freedom and restriction—gives Rope its strange, hypnotic power.

The Rope trailer is notably one of Hitchcock’s most ingenious, as it contains an entire specially-shot outdoor prologue absent from the film itself, in which the murder victim, David Kentley (played by Dick Hogan), appears with his fiancée (Joan Chandler, as in the movie) on a bench in Central Park, where they discuss their impending engagement. They then kiss each other goodbye, and he sets off to meet his maker. David’s corpse appears briefly at the beginning of the movie – you first hear his death scream from outside the windows of Philip and Brandon’s apartment with the blinds drawn. David has no dialogue in the movie, but he does in the trailer, giving actor Dick Hogan a unique place in movie history.

Although composed of just 8×10-minute-long takes, in 2012, Rope was voted by the Motion Picture Editors Guild as the 36th Best-Edited Movie of all time. The honor goes to William Zeigler, who also edited Rebel Without a Cause and My Fair Lady.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Joseph Valentine and William Skall

Transatlantic Pictures (Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein)

Distributed by Warner Bros.

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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24. The Red Shoes (1948)

(A)

A QUEER MASTERPIECE HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST FILM

Directors: The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Boris Lermontov: Queer Impresario (Anton Walbrook)
*Grischa Ljubov: Queer Ballet Master (Léonide Massine) *Ivan Boleslawsky: Queer Male Lead (Robert Helpmann)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Anton Walbrook
ACTOR: Léonide Massine
ACTOR: Robert Helpmann

“The Red Shoes” (1948) tells the story of a gifted young ballerina forced to choose between absolute devotion to her art and the man she loves, a conflict that culminates in one of cinema’s most tragic endings. At the center is Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), an aspiring dancer whose talent catches the eye of Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the autocratic impresario of the world‑renowned Ballet Lermontov. Lermontov believes that great art demands total sacrifice, and he grooms Vicky for stardom with near‑religious intensity.

Vicky is cast as the lead in a new ballet, “The Red Shoes,” adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen tale about a girl compelled to dance until death. The ballet becomes a metafictional mirror of Vicky’s own life: the more she succeeds, the more she is consumed by the demands of her art. Complicating this is her growing love for Julian (Marius Goring), the young composer who writes the ballet’s score. Their romance threatens Lermontov’s rigid belief that love and art cannot coexist. He forces Vicky into an impossible choice: abandon Julian or abandon the stage.

The Red Shoes is also one of the richest queer‑coded films of the 1940s, and a queer‑theory framing doesn’t just “fit”; it clarifies the film’s emotional architecture. An introduction to the major players:

1. ANTON WALBROOK’S Boris Lermontov: QUEER IMPRESARIO:
Anton Walbrook’s Boris Lermontov is one of the most unmistakably queer-coded figures in mid‑century British cinema. His celibate, aestheticized existence, his intense emotional investment in beautiful young men and women, his monastic devotion to art, and his rage at heterosexual coupling align him with what writer Richard Dyer calls the queer maestro archetype — the artist whose sexuality is sublimated into aesthetic control.
Walbrook himself was a gay, closeted Austrian émigré, and his performance carries the emotional precision of someone who knows what it means to live a life of sublimated desire. Lermontov’s fury at Vicky’s romance with Julian is not heterosexual jealousy; it is queer jealousy — the jealousy of a man whose erotic and emotional energies are invested in the creation of art, not in normative domesticity.
He wants Vicky not as a lover but as a vessel for his artistic ideal, a dynamic that mirrors the queer mentor‑muse relationship of Diaghilev/Nijinsky.
Walbrook is magnificent in the role, and his performance is the major reason to see The Red Shoes. Along with George Sanders’ Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (see Chapter 9, number 27, below), Walbrook’s Lermontov is one of the perfect queer-coded villains.

2. LEONIDE MASSINE’S Grischa Ljubov: QUEER BALLET MASTER – CHOREOGRAPHER:
Léonide Massine’s Grischa, the Ballet Master, is coded as queer through
his flamboyant physicality, his camp humor, his disdain for heterosexual melodrama, and his devotion to the all‑male spaces of rehearsal and discipline.
Massine— himself gay— a real‑life star of the Ballets Russes, brings with him the queer lineage of Diaghilev’s company — a world where male beauty, male bodies, and male mentorship were central. Grischa’s relationship to Lermontov is that of a long‑term queer collaborator: they share a world, a language, and a set of values that exclude heterosexual romance as a distraction.

3. ROBERT HELPMANN’S Ivan Boleslawsky: QUEER MALE LEAD:
Robert Helpmann — himself gay — plays Ivan, the company’s male lead.
His presence brings the unmistakable aura of queer theatrical culture.

4. THE BALLET COMPANY: A QUEER SPACE:
The Lermontov Ballet is a queer utopia in the sense of José Esteban Muñoz: a chosen family, a world governed by aesthetic values rather than heteronormative ones, a space where beauty, discipline, and devotion replace marriage and reproduction. Within this world, heterosexuality is the disruptive force. Julian’s love for Vicky is treated not as natural but as a threat to the queer order.

5. MOIRA SHEARER’S Vicky: QUEER SUBJECT:
Though not queer in orientation, Vicky is queer in structure: She is torn between two incompatible worlds. She cannot inhabit the heterosexual domestic sphere without losing her identity. She cannot remain in the queer artistic sphere without sacrificing her emotional life.
Her tragedy mirrors the queer experience of the era: to choose authenticity is to choose exile; to choose belonging is to choose self‑erasure.
The ballet’s fairy‑tale structure — the girl who must dance until she dies — becomes a metaphor for the queer artist whose identity is inseparable from performance. When you learn that the original story and screenplay by Powell and Pressburger was originally written about Nijinsky and Diaghilev, but was later changed to The Red Shoes, the blocks begin to fall into place.

Helpmann = the body
Massine = the mind
Walbrook = the will

Together they form the queer artistic world Vicky enters — and ultimately cannot survive.

Shearer is also exceptionally good, not just as a ballet dancer but in the character of Vicky. She is the only one in the cast who give a naturalistic performance and, in the midst of all that camp, she manages to carry it off.

6. MARIUS GORING’s Julian: VICKY’S ALLEGEDLY STRAIGHT HUSBAND WHO GIVES OFF MAJOR GAY VIBES:
Julian loves opera, camp, and long flowing scarves. He always seems queer. If the movie were made today, he would be having an affair with Lermontov, who is clearly obsessed with him.

The Red Shoes is not simply a film about art versus love. It is a film about queer artistic lineage, queer mentorship, queer spaces, and the queer cost of devotion. At least three characters — Lermontov, Grischa, and Ivan — are explicitly queer-coded, and the entire ballet company operates as a queer micro‑society whose values clash fatally with heterosexual romance.

OSCAR NOMINATIONS: BEST FILM (The Archers: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), BEST STORY (Emeric Pressburger), BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (Brian Easdale – Won) BEST ART DIRECTION (Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson- Won), BEST EDITING (Reginald Mills).

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jack Cardiff

The Archers
General Film Distributers (GFD) – Rank Organization: UK and Europe
Eagle-Lion Films: US

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25. Adam’s Rib (1949)
(A)

MY FAVORITE TRACY-HEPBURN MOVIE

George Cukor

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Kip Lurie (David Wayne)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: George Cukor
ACTOR: Katherine Hepburn
COSTUME DESIGNER: Walter Plunkett SONGWRITER: Cole Porter ART DIRECTION: Cedric Gibbons (probable)

Hope Emerson’s sexuality is now classified as unknown: queer-associated

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn—Adam and Amanda Bonner—play married lawyers who find themselves on opposite sides of a sensational case. Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) has shot her unfaithful husband (Tom Ewell) after catching him with his mistress. What follows is a courtroom duel that becomes a referendum on gender, marriage, and equality. One of the film’s most memorable moments comes when Amanda calls a female weightlifter (Hope Emerson) to the stand and has her hoist Adam into the air, a literal demonstration of female strength. By the end, the Bonners reconcile, acknowledging that equality in law and love is far more complicated than either wanted to admit.
Screenwriters Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin populate their comedy with a gallery of unforgettable supporting players—Holliday, Emerson, Ewell, Jean Hagen—and, as Amanda’s best friend, David Wayne as Kip Lurie, the Bonners’ next‑door neighbor and a Broadway composer.

Kip is one of the great queer‑coded characters of the Hays Code era. With his closely cropped hair (so fashionable today) and flamboyant manner, he is the constant target of Adam’s barbed put‑downs, such as Adam’s statement that it would not be hard to turn Kip into a woman since he is halfway there already. Yet Kip pursues Amanda with dogged determination, even composing a song for her—“Farewell, Amanda,” written by Cole Porter, no less. Thanks to Wayne’s inspired performance, Kip stands as one of Hollywood’s most memorable gay characters of the period, coded but unmistakable.
The screenplay earned an Oscar nomination for Gordon and Kanin.
There’s also a wonderful bit of Hollywood lore woven into the film’s production. Hepburn, Cukor, Gordon, and Kanin deliberately shaped Judy Holliday’s scenes to showcase her comedic brilliance—essentially turning Adam’s Rib into an audition reel for Harry Cohn, the powerful head of Columbia Pictures. Their gambit worked. Cohn relented and cast Holliday as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday, the role she originated on Broadway. Two years later, under Cukor’s direction, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, beating out Bette Davis in All About Eve, Anne Baxter in All About Eve, Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and Eleanor Parker in Caged, arguably, the greatest lineup in Best Actress history.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: George Folsey
MGM
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26. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949-1950)
A+

MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BRITISH MOVIE

Robert Hamer

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL
APPROVED WITH MINOR CUTS
The PCA demanded cuts when the movie was released in the US in 1950. These were measured in seconds rather than minutes and involved a subtle toning down of immorality, along with intimations that Louis’ crimes did not go unpunished. The cuts have been fully restored.

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

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) is the most delicious confection ever produced by Michael Balcon and Michael Relph’s Ealing Studios, and it remains my favorite British film. Robert Hamer’s exquisitely intelligent, razor‑dry direction—paired with the screenplay he co‑wrote with John Dighton (The Man in the White Suit, Roman Holiday)—flows like dark chocolate over a perfectly constructed sundae.

At its center is the sublimely urbane Dennis Price as Louis Mazzini, a lowly draper’s assistant who discovers he is distantly in line for a dukedom. Enraged by the aristocratic D’Ascoyne family’s cruel treatment of his mother—she eloped with a mere musician—Louis becomes a serial killer of the most elegant variety, systematically eliminating all eight D’Ascoynes who stand between him and the title of Duke of Chalfont, up to and including the sitting 8th Duke, Ethelred.

TABLE 13. 86 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code Kind Hearts and Coronets Alec Guinness plays all eight D’Ascoynes.   The names of Louis’s eight victims and their method of dispatch are as follows:
The House of D’Ascoyne Chalfont	Cause of Death
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.He 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.

Alec Guinness, of course, has the time of his life playing all eight D’Ascoynes. In a brief flashback involving the elopement of Louis’s parents, he even appears as a ninth – Duke Ethelred’s the 8th’s father, Ethelred the 7th – giving us three generations and both sexes, each rendered with a sly, affectionate mockery of Edwardian upper‑class professions and pretensions. By the time Louis is employed by the banker Lord Ascoyne D’Ascoyne—the first of his casualties—the banker’s son, Young Ascoyne, has already died in a boating accident.

Guinness’s virtuosity is dazzling, but Price remains the film’s true star. He is aided immeasurably by his two magnificent leading ladies. Joan Greenwood, with that incomparable plum‑rich voice, is dazzling as Sybella, a minx whose every utterance is simultaneously an aphrodisiac and a condemnation. Valerie Hobson, never better, plays Edith D’Ascoyne—the pure‑hearted widow of Young Henry—whom Louis coolly sets his sights on marrying. And then there is the great Miles Malleson, who steals scenes as the hangman, fretting over how one ought to behave in the presence of a duke.
The screenplay was adapted from Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, with its strong antisemitic elements wisely excised.
Douglas Slocombe’s black‑and‑white cinematography marks a visual high point for Ealing—crisp, elegant, and perfectly attuned to the film’s tone of genteel savagery.
Kind Hearts and Coronets is a masterpiece of style, irony, and moral mischief—an immaculate blend of charm and cruelty that has never lost its bite.

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.

Produced by: Michael Balcon and Michael Relph
Production Company: Ealing Studios

UK Distributer: General Film Distributors (GFD) – Rank Organization:
US Distributor: Eagle-Lion Films

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The 1950s

27. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

A+

BILLY WILDER’S MASTERPIECE

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST PICTURE

Billy Wilder

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew

Edith Head (probable)

NORMA DESMOND – THE NAME. Billy Wilder fashioned the name around the famous unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor in 1922. Norma comes from the last name of silent movie actress Mabel Normand, the last person to see Taylor alive at his home on Alverado Street, Los Angeles. She died of tuberculosis a few years later. Desmond comes from the middle name of the famous movie director.

Sunset Boulevard is a queer film not because of representation but because of sensibility, structure, and performance style — the same way All About Eve, Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life, and The Red Shoes are queer.  Norma Desmond is the archetype of queer camp: her theatrical excess, her self-mythologizing, her diva worship and her performance as identity.

Billy Wilder’s corrosive Hollywood Gothic remains one of American cinema’s most enduring portraits of fame as self‑constructed mythology.  Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond—silent‑era titan turned recluse—inhabits a mansion that feels less like a home than a mausoleum of vanished glamour.  When William Holden’s Joe Gillis, a drifting screenwriter, stumbles into her orbit, the film becomes a claustrophobic duet between a woman who refuses time and a man who has run out of it.

I’m Big, It’s The Pictures That Got Small GLORIA SWANSON AS NORMA DESMOND IN “SUNSET BOULEVARD”

Wilder’s vision is razor‑sharp yet operatic: a noir narrated by a dead man, a melodrama staged like a drag ritual, a satire that understands the emotional truth beneath its own exaggeration.  Swanson’s performance, pitched at the threshold between grandeur and madness, has long resonated with queer audiences for its unapologetic theatricality—an assertion of identity through sheer force of style. Her final descent down the staircase, framed as both delusion and apotheosis, remains one of cinema’s great camp apothegms: a diva claiming immortality by performing it.

In this scene, Swanson is astonishing, and she is aided immeasurably by Franz Waxman’s “The Comeback,” Golden-Age Hollywood scoring at its peak—a miniature operatic collapse, written with a sophistication that absolutely nods to Richard Strauss’s The Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome (1905).

Erich von Stroheim’s presence is the film’s most devastating meta‑gesture.  Stroheim is the fallen auteur, a visionary director destroyed by the studio system.  Wilder casts him as Max von Mayerling, Norma’s butler, Norma’s ex‑husband, Norma’s former director, Norma’s caretaker, Norma’s jailer and Norma’s worshipper.  It’s the most tragic self‑portrait in Hollywood history. His performance is anti‑acting, full of stillness, humiliation, devotion and a director’s eye.  He is the only character who understands Norma’s delusion because he has lived inside it.  Max’s devotion to Norma is servitude as love, love as punishment, punishment as identity — a dynamic queer audiences have long recognized in coded melodrama.  Casting Stroheim is Wilder’s indictment of Hollywood: “Look what we did to our geniuses.”

And then there is Joe’s love interest, played by Nancy Olson. Her role in Sunset Blvd. is deliberately written as structurally weaker, morally steadier, and dramatically quieter than the operatic Norma–Max axis.  Wilder needs her weakness; it’s architectural, not a flaw in Olson’s performance.

This was William Holden’s big break after twelve years in the Hollywood wilderness.  He seized it with determination, making his already deceased character one of the most memorable in his career.

Sunset Boulevard endures as a landmark of Hollywood self‑reflection, a study of desire, dependency, and the dangerous seduction of fantasy.  It is a film in which performance becomes survival, and the line between tragedy and triumph is drawn in eyeliner.  A masterpiece in queer film legacy.

The “waxworks“ are the aging silent-film stars, playing themselves, who play bridge with Norma Desmond. They are:

Buster Keaton

H.B. Warner

Anna Q. Nilsson

Produced by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.

ORIGINAL screenplay by Wilder, Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr.
Cinematography by John F. Seitz
Paramount
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28. All About Eve (1950)
A+

EVERYONE’S FAVORITE BETTE DAVIS MOVIE

OSCAR: BEST FILM OF 1950

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter)
*Addison DeWitt (George Saunders)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew Costume Designer: Edith Head (probable) COSTUME DESIGNER: Charles LeMaire

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night BETTE DAVIS AS MARGO CHANNING IN “ALL ABOUT EVE”

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, as 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.

Mankiewicz returned to All About Eve territory twenty years later in There was A Crooked Man (1970), where, playing Hollywood’s first well-adjusted queer couple in an Arizona Territory jail circa 1883, Hume Cronyn and John Randolph, with divine inspiration, recreated the Bette Davis–Thelma Ritter dynamic: the sharp tongue, the deep affection, the unspoken history – see Book One: Hidden in Plain Sight – Queer Cinema During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968).

Cinematography by Milton Krasner
TCF
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29. Caged (1950)
C-

HOLLYWOOD’S FIRST WOMEN-IN-PRISON DRAMA

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+ Cast and Crew      Agnes Moorehead’s queerness is now disputed.       Hope Emerson’s sexuality is now classified as unknown: queer-associated.

Hype the New Fish!
BETTY GARDE, ON SEEING ELEANOR PARKER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CAGED

Marie Allen, a naïve 19‑year‑old newlywed (Eleanor Parker), enters prison after serving as an unwitting accessory to robbery. What begins as a brief sentence becomes a brutal education: the system grinds her down, corrupt guards exploit her vulnerability, and fellow inmates teach her the hard pragmatism required to survive. By the end, the innocent girl who walked in has been reshaped into a wary, cynical convict—proof that the institution destroys far more effectively than it rehabilitates.
As Hollywood’s first major women‑in‑prison drama, John Cromwell’s Caged lays out the genre’s foundational – read lesbian -archetypes. Hope Emerson embodies the sadistic, physically imposing matron; Agnes Moorehead offers the counterweight as the reform‑minded warden fighting a losing battle against bureaucracy; and Betty Garde provides the seasoned inmate whose hard‑won wisdom becomes Marie’s only lifeline. The film’s intentions are earnest, but like many social‑problem pictures of the era, its message‑movie sincerity and coded depictions of sexuality have not aged gracefully.
The screenplay by Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld, based on their own story, was grounded in Kellogg’s firsthand research inside women’s prisons. The Academy recognized the film’s impact with Oscar nominations for both Parker and Emerson.

Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie
Warner Bros.
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Parker throws herself into her role with such gusto that, before you can say camp, she has bookmarked the film for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

30. Young Man with a Horn (1950)
B+

A LESBIAN COUPLE OUTWITS THE HAYS OFFICE

Michael Curtiz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Amy North (Lauren Bacall)
*Miss Carson (Katherine Kurasch, uncredited)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGNER: Milo Anderson

Like Mildred Pierce, this is another Michael Curtiz film that plays beautifully on two levels: earnest melodrama on the surface, high camp simmering underneath. Lauren Bacall is Amy North, the brittle society wife of Kirk Douglas’s tormented trumpeter—a woman whose icy glamour barely conceals the fact that she is a closeted lesbian. But not for long. One evening, she sweeps into their apartment with a stunning “date,” Miss Carson (Katherine Kurasch, uncredited), an elegant artist whose work Amy has clearly been studying with more than casual interest. When Bacall introduces her with the line, “This is my husband, Miss Carson—I told you about her,” the blocking and vocal inflection make it unmistakable: Miss Carson is the real partner in Amy’s life, not Douglas.
Douglas’s character finally snaps. With that trademark jaw tension only he could muster, he delivers the immortal diagnosis: You’re a sick girl, Amy. Having done his heterosexual duty, he flees into the arms of a wholesome, Warner Bros.–era Doris Day, presumably to live happily ever after—as straight characters always do once they escape the gravitational pull of a queer partner in mid‑century Hollywood (and, as The Fox later proved, in Canada as well).
Douglas’s role is loosely inspired by the tragic jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, and the film itself is adapted from the novel by Dorothy Baker.

With the great Hoagy Carmichael on piano.

Cinematography: Ted McCord Warner Bros.
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31. In a Lonely Place (1950)
(A)

ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES.

Nicholas Ray

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Mel Lippman (Art Smith)
*Martha, Laurel’s masseuse (Ruth Gillette, uncredited)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray
Costume designer Jean Louis was supposedly straight and married to Loretta Young in his later years. However, he was gossiped about as being at least sexually ambiguous (William Mann, Behind the Screen, p. 237)

In a Lonely Place is one of two masterworks – the other is Rebel Without a Cause – 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. The film is also remarkable for its setting: a cluster of people living in a 1923 Spanish‑Revival apartment complex in West Hollywood—still standing today—known in the film as the Beverly Patio Apartments on North Harper Avenue.

VILLA PRIMVERA
(FICTIONALIZED NAME: BEVERLY PATIO APARTMENTS)
1300-1308 NORTH HARPER AVENUE
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90046

Among its residents:
• Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), a once‑promising screenwriter whose career has stalled. Known for his temper, cynicism, and refusal to play the studio game, he invites a young hat‑check girl, Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart), home to summarize a novel he’s meant 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—a woman who has spent her life protecting men, not loving them.
• Mel Lippman (Art Smith), Dix’s loyal, long‑suffering agent, is queer‑coded through his gentleness, emotional caretaking, and unwavering devotion to a self‑destructive client.
• Martha (Ruth Gillette), Laurel’s masseuse, is also clearly queer‑coded—hyper‑protective of Laurel, and in one memorable massage scene, whispering “Relax” in an intimate, undulating tone that signals a closeness outside the film’s heterosexual frame. Gillette is uncredited.

Laurel’s testimony clears Dix, and the two fall into a passionate, almost reckless romance. On the surface, they are lovers; underneath, Dix is a man incapable of performing stable heterosexual masculinity while Laurel slips once again into the role of caretaker. Bogart is superb, but it is Gloria Grahame who is the revelation – this is widely considered to be the finest performance of her career, and she is sensational. As Laurel, she brings a weary, deeply nuanced vulnerability that perfectly balances Bogart’s aggressive volatility. She moves through the film with bruised intelligence—alert, perceptive, and increasingly aware that the man she is falling for may be someone she will one day have to flee.
There is a gorgeous moment in a nightclub when Dix and Laurel are sitting at a piano. Hadda Brooks is at the keyboard singing the Ray Noble classic I Hadn’t Anyone ‘Till I Met You. It’s the last time that they are truly happy together – before she sees his violent side – and the scene haunts you well after the movie has ended.

Gloria Grahame and Nicholas Ray were married from 1948 to 1952, and their marriage was struggling during the making of this movie. Many, including myself, think that the two relationships mirrored one another. Grahame later married Ray’s son, Anthony, in 1960. They divorced in 1974. She died in 1981 from breast cancer. She was 57.
The film’s haunting score is by George Johann Carl Antheil, an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the early 20th century. In 1941, Antheil and the actress Hedy Lamarr developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used a code (stored on a punched paper tape) to synchronize frequency changes, a technique known as frequency hopping, between the transmitter and receiver. It is one of the spread spectrum techniques that became widely used in modern telecommunications. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. He is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. He died of a heart attack in 1959. He was 58.

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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32. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
A+

HOLLYWOOD’S BEST STAGE TO SCREEN ADAPTATION

TWO OF THE GREATEST PERFORMANCES IN MOVIE HISTORY

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST FILM

Elia Kazan

LANDMARK: SUBMITTED TO THE PCA
APPROVED – BUT WITH A NEW ENDING!
A rapist could not be seen to go unpunished. Stanley’s victory in the play was therefore unacceptable. The PCA demanded a rewritten ending that would punish him and redeem Stella.

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

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Marlon Brando
SCREENWRITER: SOURCE MATERIAL: Tennessee Williams, Adapted from his play A Streetcar Named Desire
SET DIRECTOR: George James Hopkins

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
Music: Alex North
Warner Bros.
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33. Strangers on a Train (1951)
A-

HITCHCOCK TACKLES HIGHSMITH

Alfred Hitchcock

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Bruno Antony (Robert Walker)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Farley Granger
SOURCE MATERIAL: Patricia Highsmith: Based on her novel Strangers on a Train SET DIRECTOR: George James Hopkins

Hitchcock reverses his usual casting dynamics here: gay actor Farley Granger plays the straight man, while straight actor Robert Walker gives one of cinema’s great queer‑coded performances. Unfortunately, Granger’s character finds his happy ending in the arms of the not‑so‑electrifying Ruth Roman, who—along with Anne Baxter in I Confess—was reportedly among Hitchcock’s least favorite actresses. Walker died at thirty‑two, only weeks after the film’s release, making his performance all the more haunting.
The plot is classic Highsmith perversity. Architect and tennis star Guy Haines (Granger) wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam (Kasey Rogers), so he can marry Anne Faulkner (Roman). On a train to meet Miriam, he encounters Charles Bruno (Walker), a charming sociopath who proposes a “perfect” exchange of murders: Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno’s father. Guy laughs it off, but Bruno follows through, strangling Miriam while Guy is in Mexico. From that moment on, Bruno expects Guy to complete the pact.
The source material comes from Patricia Highsmith, a gay writer whose fascination with queer sociopathy would later crystallize in her five Tom Ripley novels. Ripley has been adapted repeatedly—René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960) with Alain Delon, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) with Matt Damon, and most recently the superb black‑and‑white Netflix limited series written and directed by Steve Zaillian and starring Andrew Scott.
Strangers on a Train was a major hit, ending Hitchcock’s brief slump after Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950). It contains some of his most indelible sequences—the tennis match, the lighter in the drain, the deranged carousel climax. Walker is extraordinary, proving—as he had in the gentle, romantic The Clock (1945) opposite Judy Garland—that he was capable of remarkable range. His death remains one of Hollywood’s great losses. Marion Lorne steals her single scene as Bruno’s mother, matching her son’s eccentricity beat for beat. And Patricia Hitchcock, in her most substantial film role, is lively and appealing as Roman’s younger sister.
Granger is competent, but unlike in Rope, where his sensitivity and tension are perfectly used, here he never quite convinces as a straight leading man. That absence of star wattage weakens the film’s emotional stakes. For all its brilliance—and it has brilliance to spare—Strangers on a Train does not make the cut for Hitchcock’s seven perfect films.

Cinematography: Robert Burks
This would be the first of 12 movies on which Robert Burks and Alfred Hitchcock collaborated, including Burks’ Oscar win for Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955). Their partnership from 1951 to 1964 ranks among the most significant director-cinematographer collaborations in Hollywood history, paralleling Hitchcock’s close relationships 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).

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.

Warner Bros.

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

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34. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
B+

Howard Hawks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*The Boys in the Gym.
LGBTQ+
CHOREOGRAPHER: Jack Cole

William Travilla (Marilyn Monroe’s designer, and there were rumors of an affair) appears to have been straight, but he was always gossiped about as being at least sexually ambiguous (William Mann, Behind the Screen, p. 237).

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) pairs Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell at their most irresistible as two showgirls en route to Paris. Lorelei Lee (Monroe) is engaged to a wealthy mama’s boy whose father sends a detective to expose her, while Dorothy Shaw (Russell) happily collects admirers wherever she goes. Romance, comedy, and musical spectacle blend effortlessly, but the film’s queer sensibility is what gives it its lasting sparkle.
In one of the film’s most deliciously coded numbers, Russell belts out Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love? while surrounded by a gym full of hyper‑sculpted men who are far more interested in flexing for each other than noticing her. Russell pretends not to understand why she’s invisible, but the performance gives us the unmistakable wink‑wink: she understands perfectly. Meanwhile, Monroe is busy pursuing a different kind of treasure—diamonds—leading to the film’s showstopper, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” one of the most iconic musical sequences ever put on film.
As with Gilda and its legendary numbers “Put the Blame on Mame” and “Amado Mio,” an essential ingredient in the magic of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Jack Cole’s choreography, which gives the film its sleek, modern, unmistakably queer physical vocabulary.
Adapted from the play by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, and from the Broadway musical by Jule Styne and Leo Robin, the film remains one of Howard Hawks’s most stylish and subversively playful achievements.

Cinematography: Harry J. Wild
TCF
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35. Calamity Jane (1953)
(B)

BEST QUEER SONG IN A MOVIE

David Butler

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Calamity Jane (Doris Day)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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, buckskin‑clad persona collides with her emerging vulnerability, culminating in her discovery of love and a hard‑won sense of self.

Doris Day was always more delightful in her tomboy Warner Bros. roles than in the “professional virgin” parts Universal later saddled her with. As Calamity Jane, she reaches the apex of her queer energy: cropped hair, swaggering gait, buckskins, and a readiness to draw a gun on anyone who mocks her. She may be in love with Howard Keel’s Wild Bill, but she has no intention of surrendering her gender‑bending freedom. That inner conflict—between the persona she’s built and the feelings she can no longer deny—erupts in one of the most emotionally direct musical moments in Hollywood history. Day’s soaring performance of the Sammy Fain–Paul Francis Webster classic “Secret Love” becomes a full‑throated cri de cœur, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever lived with a truth they weren’t yet allowed to speak.

Original screenplay by James O’Hanlon.
Cinematography by Wilfrid M. Cline
Warner Bros.
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36. I Vitelloni

(1953-1956-1957)
A-

Federico Fellini

THE FILM WAS NOT SUBMITTED TO THE HAYS OFFICE AND WAS DISTRIBUTED BY JANUS WITHOUT A SEAL OF APPROVAL.

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)—as they drift aimlessly through life in a provincial seaside town, suspended somewhere 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 wistful, autobiographical tone, all buoyed by a lush Nino Rota score. Like Fellini’s later memory films, it evokes a vivid sense of place—clearly inspired by his Rimini childhood, even though it wasn’t shot there.
One of the film’s most striking moments involves an aging stage actor (Achille Majeroni) who makes a tentative advance on Leopoldo during a stormy night by the beach. Often cited as one of the earliest depictions of a gay character in Italian cinema, the scene is subtle but historically significant, especially within the constraints of early‑1950s Italian filmmaking.
Franco Fabrizi takes acting honors as the newly married and shockingly unfaithful Fausto; Alberto Sordi contributes a memorable pre–Some Like It Hot tango in drag; and Franco Interlenghi’s brooding Moraldo—serving as the film’s moral center and narrator—leaves 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. Fellini knew the Romagnol expression from his youth, and it perfectly 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 has said he hadn’t seen Fellini’s film before making it.

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

IN ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Cinematography: Otello Martelli.

Distribution: Associated Producers Inc.-Janus Films in the US.
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37. Johnny Guitar (1954)
(B)

A LESBIAN DUEL IN THE SUN!

Nicholas Ray

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Vienna (Joan Crawford)
*Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray
ACTOR: Joan Crawford

A LESBIAN DUEL IN THE SUN!

On the outskirts of a wind‑swept Arizona cattle town, Vienna (Joan Crawford)—an aggressive, strong‑willed saloonkeeper—maintains a precarious hold on power. She supports the coming railroad, which the local cattlemen fiercely oppose, and she allows The Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), her former lover, and his gang to frequent her establishment. The townsfolk, led by the rigid John McIvers (Ward Bond) and inflamed by Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), Vienna’s rival for the Dancin’ Kid’s affections, are determined to drive her out. Vienna stands her ground, aided by the mysterious Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a drifter with a past and a guitar who arrives for a scheduled meeting with her. McIvers gives Vienna, Johnny, the Dancin’ Kid, and his men twenty‑four hours to leave town. A showdown is inevitable—but this time, the real duel is between Vienna and Emma, the first all‑female gunfight in the history of the Western.
The result is high camp on the range, powered by two of Hollywood’s most volcanic performers. A Western with two female leads is a rarity; a Western in which the emotional and moral stakes hinge on their rivalry is practically unheard of. Crawford and McCambridge play to the gallery under Nicholas Ray’s stylized, almost operatic direction, making the film essential viewing within queer cinema, the Western genre, and the Ray canon.
Johnny Guitar was adapted from Roy Chanslor’s novel by Philip Yordan, who served as a front for the blacklisted poet and screenwriter Ben Maddow. Maddow had adapted Intruder in the Dust and The Asphalt Jungle (earning an Oscar nomination) before being declared persona non grata in Hollywood for his left‑wing affiliations.
A critical and commercial disappointment in America, the film was embraced in Europe, most notably by the young French critics Jean‑Luc Godard and François Truffaut in Cahiers du Cinéma. Its reputation has only grown since. In his 1988 film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, gay Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar paid explicit homage to Johnny Guitar in the scene where Pepa (Carmen Maura), a voice artist, dubs Crawford’s Vienna into Spanish—a perfect tribute to one of cinema’s great camp operas.

Cinematography: Harry Stradling
Republic Pictures
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38. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
A+

FIRST ADOLESCENT GAY CHARACTER

ONE OF THE QUINTESSENTIAL LA MOVIES.

Nicholas Ray

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Plato (Sal Mineo)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray
ACTOR: James Dean (probable)
ACTOR: Sal Mineo
ACTOR: Nick Adams (probable)
COSTUME DESIGNER: Moss Mabry

SAL MINEO’S PLATO IS HOLLYWOOD’S FIRST ADOLESCENT GAY CHARACTER.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955), directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Dean, is a landmark of American cinema and a definitive portrait of teenage alienation. Dean’s Jim Stark—new in town, angry, tender, and searching—forms an improvised family with Judy (Natalie Wood, in her first adult role) and Plato ( Sal Mineo), two equally lost souls. Over the course of a single, turbulent night, the trio navigates desire, violence, and the desperate need to belong, ending in tragedy beneath the shadow of the Griffith Park Observatory.
Wood, Dean, and Mineo form a fragile nuclear family, with Mineo’s Plato standing as Hollywood’s first adolescent gay character—coded, heartbreaking, and unmistakable. Dean gives his most emblematic performance under Ray’s soaring, expressionistic direction. Jim Backus and Ann Doran play his bewildered parents; William Hopper is Judy’s rigid father; and future Oscar nominees Dennis Hopper and Nick Adams appear among the gang at the infamous “Chicken Run.”
The film’s widescreen color cinematography is by the great Ernest Haller (Gone with the Wind, Mildred Pierce, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), whose saturated palette turns Los Angeles into a mythic emotional landscape. The original score is by Leonard Rosenman, who also scored Dean’s other 1955 film, Elia Kazan’s East of Eden—together, the two scores essentially “invent” the James Dean sound.
The script by Stuart Stern was based on an original treatment by Irving Shulman, with story concepts developed by Shulman and Ray. The result is one of the quintessential Los Angeles movies: a fever dream of mid‑century youth culture, queer longing, and emotional volatility that still feels startlingly modern.

Warner Bros.
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39. The Big Combo (1955)
B-

A GAY COUPLE OUTWITS THE HAYS CODE!

Joseph H. Lewis

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL.
DIALOGUE SET UP BETWEEN UNIVERSAL STUDIOS AND THE PCA.
The PCA raised objections to several scenes in the movie involving brutality and violence. Ultimately, however, Fante and Mingo, the gay couple, outwitted the Hays Office.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Fante (Lee Van Cleef)
*Mingo (Earl Holliman)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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 bring down crime boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), but he lacks the evidence to make anything stick. His superiors order him off the case, yet Diamond persists, driven by equal parts justice and personal obsession. Brown rules through calculated brutality, aided by his two henchmen, Fante and Mingo—played by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman.
Fante and Mingo are unmistakably a gay couple. Everyone on screen seems to know it, and no one questions it. They share a bedroom (separate beds, of course), move as a unit, and radiate a mutual devotion that somehow slipped past the Hays Office. Their chosen profession only heightens their fascination—and, frankly, their sex appeal. It remains one of the most daring queer representations in 1950s American cinema.
Arguably Joseph H. Lewis’s greatest film and a cornerstone of classic noir, The Big Combo is also a showcase for John Alton’s extraordinary black‑and‑white cinematography—those sculpted shadows, those shafts of light, that unforgettable torture scene. Conte, Wilde, and Jean Wallace (Wilde’s wife at the time) all deliver strong performances, as does Brian Donlevy. The film also marks the final screen appearance of Helen Walker, so memorable opposite Tyrone Power in Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley. David Raksin provides the moody, memorable score.
The original screenplay is by Philip Yordan.
The title refers to the crime syndicate run by Mr. Brown—his “big combo,” the machine Diamond is determined to dismantle.

Allied Artists
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40. 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)

At a second‑rate boys’ boarding school outside Paris, the tyrannical Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) rules through cruelty and humiliation. The school itself belongs to his wife, Christina (Véra Clouzot, the director’s wife), a frail, devout Catholic émigrée from Venezuela who teaches Spanish and suffers from a chronic heart condition. Michel mocks her illness, mistreats the students, and openly carries on an affair with Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), another teacher he also abuses. Yet, rather than hostility, Christina and Nicole share a wary, intimate bond—rooted in their mutual hatred of Michel and, as the film strongly suggests, something deeper.
Unable to endure Michel’s brutality any longer, Nicole devises a plan to murder him. Christina, terrified but desperate, eventually agrees. Luring Michel to Nicole’s apartment with the threat of divorce, Christina drugs him, and together the women drown him in a bathtub. They hide the body in a trunk, transport it back to the school, and dump it in the unused swimming pool, expecting it to surface and suggest an accident. But when the pool is drained, the corpse has vanished. From that moment on, the film becomes a masterclass in dread.
Co‑written and directed by Henri‑Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques (released in the U.S as Diabolique) won Best Foreign Film from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. One of the most successful queer films of all time – though coded, the emotional and psychological intimacy between Christina and Nicole is unmistakable – it remains a landmark of psychological horror, celebrated for its atmosphere, its audacious twist ending (no spoilers here), and its enduring influence on the thriller, horror and queer genres.

Based on the 1952 novel The One Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the film famously slipped out of Alfred Hitchcock’s grasp—Clouzot optioned the rights just hours before Hitchcock tried to buy them. Ironically, the film helped inspire Psycho (1960); novelist Robert Bloch called Les Diaboliques his all‑time favorite horror film. And Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) would later be adapted from another Boileau‑Narcejac novel.
Les Diaboliques remains a landmark of psychological horror, celebrated for its atmosphere, its audacious twist ending (no spoilers here), and its enduring influence on the genre—and on queer cinema.

With Charles Vanel as the detective.

IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

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.

41. Written on the Wind (1956)
A-

Douglas Sirk

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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 within. The Hadley family—wealthy, powerful, and emotionally stunted—spirals toward collapse as old resentments and forbidden desires collide.
At the center is Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), a self‑destructive alcoholic terrified of his own inadequacy, and his sister Marylee (Oscar‑winner Dorothy Malone), a restless, sexually frustrated wild child whose longing curdles into spite. Kyle’s deepest emotional attachment is to his childhood friend Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), not to his elegant new wife Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall). Convinced that Lucy is secretly in love with Mitch—and tormented by the discovery of his low sperm count—Kyle unravels. Meanwhile, Marylee’s obsession with Mitch intensifies, pushing the siblings toward a tragic, operatic showdown.
Sirk elevates the melodrama into something mythic: blazing Technicolor courtesy of cinematographer Russell Metty, symbolic décor that mirrors the characters’ inner storms, and performances pitched at the edge of hysteria. Beneath the glamour lies a razor‑sharp critique of American wealth, repression, and the emotional bankruptcy of privilege. The result is one of Hollywood’s great 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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42. The Bad Seed (1956)
A-
NATURE BROUGHT HER HERE, AND NATURE TOOK HER AWAY!

DIRECTOR MERVYN LEROY’S HIGH WIRE ACT

Mervyn LeRoy

LANDMARK: SUBMITTED TO THE PCA
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+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGNER: Moss Mabry

When director Mervyn LeRoy first saw Maxwell Anderson’s play The Bad Seed, he instructed screenwriter John Lee Mahin to adapt it with minimal changes. His main task became toning down the performances—no small feat, given that the central character is Rhoda Penmark, a little girl in a pinafore dress and blonde pigtails who embodies pure, unblinking evil.
LeRoy brought most of the Broadway cast to the screen intact: Nancy Kelly (Oscar‑nominated for Best Actress) as Christine Penmark, the mother slowly unraveling as she realizes the truth about her daughter; Patty McCormack (Best Supporting Actress nominee) as Rhoda, the eight‑year‑old sociopath who murders her classmate Claude Daigle for winning the penmanship medal she believes is rightfully hers; William Hopper as Col. Kenneth Penmark, Rhoda’s father, conveniently away for most of the film; Eileen Heckart (Best Supporting Actress nominee) as Hortense Daigle, Claude’s grief‑stricken, alcohol‑soaked mother; Frank Cady as Henry Daigle; Henry Jones as Leroy Jessup, the caretaker who knows too much; Evelyn Varden as Monica Breedlove, the neighbor who spoils Rhoda; and Paul Fix as Christine’s father and Rhoda’s grandfather. The film preserves the play’s theatrical intensity, for better and for campier.
In many ways, The Bad Seed is a quintessential gay‑movie experience. It runs cartwheels around every definition of camp outlined by Susan Sontag. The film is a high‑wire act for both director and actors, and Nancy Kelly is ON from the first frame to the last, straddling the twin minefields of camp and drama and somehow managing to deliver both simultaneously. Her performance directly influenced later genre classics such as Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Brian De Palma’s Carrie. And then there is Patty McCormack, whose sweet‑as‑pie killer has given the queer lexicon immortal lines like Give me those shoes—they’re mine.

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.

Two performances, however, play as straight drama: Eileen Heckart, heartbreaking in both of her big scenes as the dead boy’s mother, and Henry Jones, quietly devastating as the simple caretaker who knows Rhoda’s secret and pays dearly for it. Jones’s character was later lifted almost wholesale and transported to Seattle as Ernie Hudson’s role 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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43. Tea and Sympathy (1956)
A-

Vincente Minnelli

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Tom Robertson Lee (John Kerr – reprising his stage role)
*Bill Reynolds (Leif Erickson – reprising his stage role)
LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR Cast and Crew
Vincente Minnelli

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

LAURA REYNOLDS (DEBORAH KERR) IN TEA AND SYMPATHY

Tom Robinson Lee (John Kerr, reprising his stage role), a sensitive young man at a boys’ prep school, is bullied for failing to conform to the rigid masculine norms of his environment. The only person who shows him genuine compassion is Laura Reynolds (Deborah Kerr – reprising her stage role), the coach’s wife, whose sympathy gradually blurs into intimacy. Their connection exposes the film’s central tensions around gender expectations, sexuality, and the human need for tenderness.
The contemporary consensus is that even if Laura—presiding over a household of college boys—manages to “save” Tom from his sensitive (read: homosexual) tendencies by seducing him, she cannot save herself from the truth of her own marriage. She is trapped in a loveless union with Bill Reynolds (Leif Erickson – reprising his stage role), a man whose hyper‑masculinity masks his own suppressed desires. Bill has taken the opposite road from Tom: he performs masculinity so aggressively that it becomes its own kind of confession.
In many ways, the film has aged remarkably well. What could not be spoken under the Hays Code—Deborah Kerr later said the words homosexual, gay, or queer were never uttered during the entire production, not even by gay director Vincente Minnelli—gives the film a beauty and delicacy. The unspoken becomes the emotional text, especially in Kerr’s sublime performance, which remains one of her most nuanced and compassionate.

Adapted from the play by Robert Anderson.
Cinematography: John Alton
MGM
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44. Funny Face (1957)
A+

AUDREY’S MOST ENCHANTING PERFORMANCE

Stanley Donen

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
Maggie Prescot (Kay Thompson)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
PRODUCER: SONGWRITER (COMPOSER): Roger Edens
SCREENWRITER: SONGWRITER (LYRICIST): Leonard Gershe
CHOREOGRAPHER: Eugene Loring
PHOTOGRAPHER: Richard Avedon
FRENCH COUTURIER – COSTUME DESIGNER: Hubert de Givenchy COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head (probable)

Funny Face (1957), Stanley Donen’s effervescent musical romantic comedy, contains Audrey Hepburn’s most charming screen performance. Looking impossibly chic in black during the film’s first half, she plays Jo Stockton, a shy Greenwich Village bookshop clerk who is discovered by Fred Astaire’s fashion photographer Dick Avery—a Richard Avedon-inspired figure—and whisked off to Paris for Fashion Week. (All the photographs in the film were shot by Avedon himself.)
Behind the scenes, writer Leonard Gershe and producer Roger Edens were one of Hollywood’s A‑list gay couples of the 1950s and ’60s, though Gershe liked to joke that he “didn’t have enough closet space”—literally or figuratively—for the relationship. Their sensibility permeates the film’s wit, sophistication, and queer-coded glamour.
George and Ira Gershwin’s songs include “How Long Has This Been Going On?” and “S Wonderful.” Audrey does all her own singing and has a lovely, natural voice—one that should have been heard far more prominently in My Fair Lady. The film also cemented her lifelong relationship with her favorite designer, Hubert de Givenchy – their first collaboration was on Billy Wilder’s Sabrina three years earlier – whose costumes helped define her screen persona.
The two major musical set pieces—both written specifically for the film by Edens (music) and Gershe (lyrics)—are unforgettable. “Think Pink” features Kay Thompson’s Maggie Prescott, the lesbian-coded doyenne of the New York fashion world, unveiling her vision for the year ahead with the immortal command: “Think pink… bury the beige!” And “Bonjour, Paris!” sends Audrey, Fred, and Kay dancing through the city in a joyous, witty celebration of their arrival—complete with Gershe’s immortal rhyme of Montmartre with Jean-Paul Sartre.

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Cinematography: Ray June
Paramount
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45. The Strange One (1957)
B-

Jack Garfein

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL
APPROVED WITH MINOR CUTS
The PCA insisted that three minutes of footage be removed to dampen the homoeroticism. The resulting movie had less impact than the Calder Willingham book and play on which it was based. The footage has since been restored.

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

Calder Willingham may have been queer, but if he was, he never came out.

The Strange One (1957) is a stark, unsettling film noir set at a Southern military college, where hazing, hierarchy, and moral cowardice create a pressure cooker of cruelty. Directed by Jack Garfein and produced by Sam Spiegel, the film was adapted from Calder Willingham’s novel and stage play End as a Man. It marked the screen debuts of Ben Gazzara, George Peppard, and Julie Wilson, and is notable for being staffed almost entirely by Actors Studio talent—on both sides of the camera. Its portrayal of homoerotic tension and at least one openly gay character was extraordinary for a film released under the Hays Code, which forced Columbia Pictures to make numerous small cuts. Those cuts have since been restored.
Cadet Staff Sergeant Jocko De Paris (Gazzara) rules the school through intimidation, his father’s influence, and the institution’s tradition of sanctioned bullying. Everyone either fears him or mistakes his swagger for leadership. One night, he frames George Avery (Geoffrey Horne), the son of the base commander, making it appear that Avery got drunk and collapsed on the quadrangle. Avery is expelled, and De Paris ensures that every cadet involved lies to protect him. Eventually, two freshmen (Peppard and Arthur Storch), De Paris’s roommates (Pat Hingle and James Olson), and the regimental commander (Mark Richman) decide they’ve had enough and move to expose him.
Gazzara is electrifying—exuding a raw, unsettling sensuality that he would only match once more, in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). For all the fine work he did over the decades, he was rarely this hypnotic. Peppard, Hingle, Olson, and Richman are all excellent, and Paul E. Richards brings just the right mix of pathos and menace to Cockroach, the queer cadet who worships De Paris and dreams of becoming a writer.
Garfein, a Holocaust survivor, directs with a cold, clinical intensity. He was married to actress Carroll Baker from 1955 to 1969 and is the father of actress Blanche Baker. The film is beautifully photographed by Burnett Guffey (From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde) and features a moody jazz score by Kenyon Hopkins.
And yes—the film contains one of the great shower scenes in American cinema. Horsing around naked with your buddies has rarely felt so charged.
The only woman in the cast, Julie Wilson, makes a vivid impression in just a few minutes of screen time, as does the always‑reliable Larry Gates as the base commander, a decade before his immortal slap exchange with Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night (1967).

Calder Willingham wrote three other influential screenplays: Paths of Glory (1957), One-Eyed Jacks (1960) and Little Big Man (1970) – see Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980) – and received an Oscar nomination for his rejected screenplay for The Graduate (1967), which Buck Henry completely rewrote before the Mike Nichols movie began filming. 

Willingham may have been queer, but never came out publicly.

Columbia Pictures
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46. Touch of Evil (1958)
A+

Orson Welles

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL: A DIALOGUE WAS SET UP BETWEEN UNIVERSAL STUDIOS AND THE PCA. The PCA objected to drug use, the motel assault scene involving Janet Leigh’s character, sexualized menace, interracial marriage references and moral ambiguity surrounding authority figures. Universal negotiated the changes slowly but surely, trimmed some material, and secured the Code seal with a print that was mostly true to the master’s vision.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Mexican gang leader (Mercedes McCambridge)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

You’re a mess, honey

TANYA (MARLENE DIETRICH) IN A TOUCH OF EVIL

Touch of Evil (1958), directed by Orson Welles, unfolds in a corrupt U.S.–Mexico border town where Mexican narcotics officer Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) clashes with the monstrous American police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles) after a car bombing. What begins as an investigation spirals into a fever dream of crime, racism, and moral rot, culminating in Quinlan’s spectacular downfall.
And yes—that is an unbilled Mercedes McCambridge as the unnamed, leather‑jacketed, unmistakably lesbian gang leader who gets her kicks watching Janet Leigh’s Mrs. Vargas terrorized in her motel room. It’s one of the film’s many transgressive jolts, smuggled past the censors through Welles’s sheer audacity.
The film is justly famous for its miraculous opening tracking shot—over three minutes of pure cinematic bravura—leading up to the border‑crossing explosion. At the other end of the film lies Marlene Dietrich’s immortal final line, delivered with the weary authority of a woman who has seen everything and judged it wanting. Between those bookends lies one of the great noir nightmares, the third and final masterpiece of Welles’s Hollywood trilogy after Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
The cast is a delirious mix of the iconic and the eccentric: Charlton Heston, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Ray Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dennis Weaver as the twitchy motel night manager, and Welles himself as the bloated, corrupt Quinlan. Joseph Cotten appears briefly as a coroner, a sly nod to the Mercury Players.
Adapted by Welles, Franklin Coen, and Paul Monash from the novel by Whit Masterson, the film has been restored to something close to Welles’s intended cut, allowing its baroque rhythms and moral complexity to shine.

Cinematography: Russell Metty
Universal-International
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47. Auntie Mame (1958)
B-

A GAY FEAST IN FRONT AND BEHIND THE CAMERA

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST FILM

Morton DaCosta

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Vera Charles (Coral Browne)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Morton DaCosta
ACTOR: 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
SET DECORATION: George James Hopkins

Auntie Mame is a Technicolor comedy about a flamboyant New York socialite who becomes guardian to her orphaned nephew. Through wild adventures, financial highs and lows, and constant clashes with conservative values, Mame teaches him—and everyone else in her orbit—to embrace life with humor, generosity, and open‑mindedness.
I must admit I’m not a card‑carrying member of the Rosalind Russell fan club, so the rapture many of my gay friends feel at the mere mention of her Auntie Mame remains something of a mystery to me. But for a large swath of queer viewers, Russell’s performance is gospel. Gay director Morton DaCosta (born Morton Tecovsky and known to friends as “Tec”) directs with a distinctly theatrical hand—sometimes too theatrical—but he would refine that style in his second and penultimate Hollywood outing, The Music Man, four years later.
The film is also notable for its portrayal of the chic, martini‑dry lesbian character Vera Charles, played by gay actress Coral Browne, who steals every scene she’s in. We’ll be meeting Ms. Browne again as we move through the queer‑cinema canon.
Adapted from Patrick Dennis’s 1955 novel Auntie Mame and the stage play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the film preserves much of the Broadway spirit—no surprise, since Russell originated the role onstage.

Cinematography: Harry Stradling
Warner Bros.
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48. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
B+

OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST FILM

Richard Brooks

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Judith Anderson (probable)
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 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens with Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman, in his superstar breakthrough) holed up in his bedroom, drinking himself numb and mourning the memory of his best friend—read: lover—Skipper, who has recently committed suicide. Brick’s grief is eroticized, idealized, and utterly inaccessible to his wife Maggie, “the Cat,” played with aching sensuality by Elizabeth Taylor. She isn’t getting any, and she knows exactly why, which makes her feel like the cat of the title—restless, hungry, and clawing for survival.
Downstairs, the Pollitt clan gathers for Brick’s father, Big Daddy’s, birthday. Burl Ives, in his most memorable screen performance, plays the patriarch whose hidden terminal illness fuels the family’s scramble for his fortune. Maggie boldly claims she is pregnant—an untruth meant to secure her and Brick’s place in the family—leaving the film on an ambiguous but faintly hopeful note.
Judith Anderson is formidable as Big Mama; Jack Carson plays Brick’s brother Gooper; and Madeleine Sherwood is his awful wife Mae, mother of their five brats. The film softens the play’s queer core, but it can’t erase it. Brick’s paralysis, Maggie’s desperation, and Big Daddy’s frustrated attempts to force the truth into daylight all vibrate with the tension of what Williams wrote and what 1950s Hollywood could not say.

Cinematography: William Daniels
MGM
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49. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
C+

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

Sebastian Venable (Julián Ugarte – we get a brief glimpse of the fiend in Liz’s frantic flashback. The Spanish actor is uncredited)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Montgomery Clift
ACTOR: Katherine Hepburn
SCREENWRITERS: Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams
SOURCE MATERIAL: Tennessee Williams: Based on his play Suddenly Last Summer
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: COSTUME DESIGNER: Oliver Messel

Another Southern Gothic—this time from one of Tennessee Williams’s less‑inspired plays—Suddenly, Last Summer was adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal and Williams himself. We never meet the film’s central gay character, Sebastian Venable; he is already dead when the story begins, his body torn apart and devoured by a mob of young men on a European beach. He had been traveling with his cousin Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor), who had been mentally shattered by the experience and is now prone to reliving the details.
Katherine Hepburn plays Sebastian’s mother, Violet Venable, a regal, venomous matriarch who attempts to bribe a young psychosurgeon (Montgomery Clift) into lobotomizing Catherine to silence her. Violet’s sorest point is that, once her own beauty faded, Sebastian replaced her with Catherine—using both women as bait to attract the boys he desired.
The film is often risible, but its few pleasures are memorable: Hepburn’s imperious, icy performance as a mother willing to destroy her niece to preserve her son’s memory, and Oliver Messel’s lush tropical production design, complete with carnivorous plants and Venus flytraps that literalize the story’s themes of consumption and predation. Clift, post‑accident, looks ill and fragile, while Taylor is saddled with one of her least effective screen moments in the climactic monologue recounting that terrible summer’s day.
Hepburn, Taylor, and Messel all received Oscar nominations. It was only the second time in Academy history that two actresses from the same film were nominated for Best Actress—the first being nine years earlier, when Bette Davis and Anne Baxter competed for All About Eve, also directed by a certain Mr. Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Cinematography: Jack Hildyard
Horizon Pictures |Columbia Pictures | Sam Spiegel
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Taylor’s unintentionally hilarious monologue not only solidifies the film’s C+ rating, but it also bookmarks the movie for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

50. Some Like It Hot (1959)
A+

MY FAVORITE QUEER COMEDY

Billy Wilder

LANDMARK: REJECTED BY THE PCA. RELEASED WITHOUT A CODE SEAL OF APPROVAL.
Some Like It Hot was only the third major studio film (after Otto Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue in 1953 and The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955) to be released without the Hays Office seal.  Wilder assumed it didn’t stand a chance, and he was correct. The PCA rejected it.  Instead, released by United Artists, outside of the studio system, it became an instant smash—and helped usher in the end of the Production Code.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Daphne (Jack Lemmon) *Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown)- at least with Daphne!
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGNER: Orry-Kelly

Oh Sugar!

DAPHNE (JACK LEMMON) TO SUGAR KANE (MARILYN MONROE)

IN SOME LIKE IT HOT

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 refuses to answer to “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 promptly falls for her and later impersonates a Shell Oil heir to win her heart. Jerry, as Daphne, attracts the enthusiastic attention of eccentric millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), leading to a cascade of comic complications. When the mob discovers Joe and Jerry’s disguise in Florida, chaos erupts. Meanwhile, Osgood proposes marriage to Daphne—setting up the most perfect closing line in Hollywood history.
Arguably the greatest American screen comedy, Billy Wilder’s classic (co‑written with I.A.L. Diamond) was adapted from two earlier films: the 1935 French comedy Fanfare of Love (Max Bonnet, Michael Logan, Pierre Prévert, René Pujol, and Robert Thoeren) and its 1951 German remake (Logan, Thoeren, and Heinz Pauck). Wilder’s version improves on both, delivering a gag every other minute and one of the great comic performances of all time: Jack Lemmon’s Jerry/Daphne. Lemmon takes the character somewhere no one had dared go before—Jerry doesn’t just pretend to be a woman; he begins to believe he is one. Even better, he has you believing it. Curtis, Monroe, and Joe E. Brown are all superb, but Lemmon walks away with the picture.
Monroe sings a gorgeous version of Gus Kahn’s “I’m Through with Love,” one of her loveliest screen moments.

Cinematography: Charles Lang
The Mirisch Company
United Artists
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51. Imitation of Life

A-

Douglas Sirk

(Approved)

LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew

PRODUCER: Ross Hunter

COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

DIRECTOR DOUGLAS SIRK WASN’T QUEER, BUT HIS MOVIES WERE

DIRECTOR DOUGLAS SIRK WASN’T QUEER, BUT HIS PRODUCER WAS

Imitation of Life is a queer film not because of representation but because of sensibility, structure, and performance style — the same way All About Eve, Mildred Pierce, Sunset Boulevard and The Red Shoes are queer. Douglas Sirk’s final Hollywood film is a melodrama about race, performance, motherhood, and the American dream, told through two intertwined lives: Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), a white actress chasing Broadway fame, and Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a Black domestic worker who becomes Lora’s housekeeper and emotional anchor.  Within these stories, we have two additional narratives: Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), Annie’s light‑skinned daughter who attempts to pass as white and Susie (Sandra Dee), Lora’s daughter, who grows up in the shadow of her mother’s ambition. The film tracks two parallel ascents: Lora’s rise to stardom and Sarah Jane’s desperate attempt to escape Blackness, and both trajectories end in varying degrees of failure: Annie’s death and Sarah Jane’s operatic, hysterical grief. And our realization that Lora’s glamorous career and luxurious surroundings create the appearance of a fulfilled life while concealing emotional emptiness and neglect.  Susie, raised amid that privilege, likewise possesses all the outward trappings of happiness while longing for the intimacy her mother’s success has denied her.  Their lives, too, are imitations: beautiful representations of the American ideal that fail to provide the happiness they promise.

Sirk uses melodrama not for sentiment but for surgical critique.  Every glossy surface –  Turner’s gowns, cinematographer Russell Metty’s magnificent Technicolor palette, the immaculate interiors — is a lie, a mask covering racial violence and emotional neglect.  Both mothers are punished.  Lora for ambition.  Annie for devotion.  Sirk’s cinema is inherently queer because it exposes the performative nature of identity, and Imitation of Life is his most explicit articulation of that idea.  Sarah-Jane’s passing-for-white mirrors queer coding, while Annie’s invisibility mirrors queer invisibility.  Meanwhile, Lana Turner’s performance is pure camp, always performing Lora, never simply being her.  That said, this is one of Turner’s BIG THREE:  three movies where she proved herself an actress (The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1946, and The Bad and the Beautiful in 1952 are the other two).  Kohner and Moore are marvelous, both receiving well-deserved Oscar nominations for their work in the Best Supporting Actress category. 

Imitation of Life is based on the 1933 Fannie Hurst novel, whose other works were filmed as Back Street [numerous times], The Four Daughters [remade as Young at Heart] and Humoresque.  It was originally made as an early Code movie in 1934 by director John M. Stahl, with Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington appearing in the Turner, Moore and Kohner roles, respectively.  That movie, beautifully done,  had minimal queer resonance; its emotional world is domestic, maternal, and conventional, with no diva‑camp architecture.

One has to add that queer producer Ross Hunter also loved lacquered surfaces, couture wardrobes,  immaculate interiors and heightened (camp) femininity.  Imitation of Life is, therefore, like Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, the result of a producer and a director who were very sympatico.  The finished movies speak for themselves.

Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue were both in the cast of Imitation of Life, though they never shared a moment on‑screen; Donahue appears only briefly as the lout who beats up Sarah Jane. That same year, the two became a marquee pairing—along with Max Steiner’s swooning score—in the runaway hit A Summer Place. Dee simultaneously scored her own breakout triumph with Gidget, a phenomenon that launched two sequels, both made without her.

Also starring John Gavin, Robert Alda and Dan O’Herlihy.

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Cinematography: Russell Metty. Universal

Bookmark for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

52. Pillow Talk (1959)
(B)

Michael Gordon

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*“Rex,” the gay Texan, Brad Allen’s alter ego (Rock Hudson)
*Jonathan Forbes (Tony Randall)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Nick Adams (probable)
ACTOR: Rock Hudson
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

Directed by Michael Gordon, Pillow Talk was the first of three romantic comedies pairing Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall; the others were Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964). A massive hit, it became the biggest box‑office success of 1959.
Hudson plays Brad Allen, a (supposedly straight) Broadway composer and tireless playboy who shares a party line with Doris Day’s Jan Morrow, a successful interior decorator—and, in the film’s late‑1950s moral universe, a supposed virgin. Brad monopolizes the phone with his endless stream of conquests, while Jan can’t place a single call. Naturally, it’s love, though not at first sight.
To seduce Jan, Brad invents a flamboyant alter ego: a Texas rancher named Rex Stetson. As Rex, he mercilessly teases Jan by showing an interest in effeminate things, slyly implying that Rex might be gay. The result is a deliciously layered conceit:
A gay actor playing a straight man pretending to be gay.
Tony Randall’s Jonathan Forbes is the quintessential late‑’50s “confirmed bachelor”—wealthy, fussy, impeccably dressed, socially polished, and utterly uninterested in women despite claiming to pursue Jan. The film never says he’s gay (it couldn’t), but everything about him fits the era’s coded shorthand: refined, unmarried, romantically inert, and the polar opposite of Hudson’s hyper‑hetero persona. Randall leaned into this archetype throughout his career; in Pillow Talk, it’s practically the point.
Gay actor Nick Adams, as Jan’s suitor Tony Walters, brings a different kind of coding. His scenes with Day have a “best friend” warmth rather than romantic heat. He’s adoring but not sexually assertive—an intentional contrast to Hudson’s swaggering Brad Allen.
Thelma Ritter appears in the fifth of her six Oscar‑nominated performances as Jan’s wisecracking housekeeper, adding her usual comic brilliance.

Director Michael Gordon was a member of the Group Theatre (1935–1940) and was blacklisted as a Communist during the McCarthy era.  As a result of being blacklisted, Gordon’s Hollywood career fell into two phases.  In the late 1940s, he distinguished himself by directing action movies, melodramas, and films noir, including The Web.  He also directed the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac, for which José Ferrer won Best Actor at the Oscars.  After being blacklisted, he was temporarily forced to stop directing films, but was called back to Hollywood at the end of the 1950s by producer Ross Hunter to direct Pillow Talk.  Gordon’s second creative phase was concerned with light-hearted comedy films. His grandson is actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The combined Day-Hudson-Randall-Ritter dynamic makes Pillow Talk ideal for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

This was Doris Day’s only Oscar‑nominated performance.
The Oscar‑winning original screenplay is credited to Russell Rouse, Maurice Richlin, Stanley Shapiro, and Clarence Greene.
Cinematography: Arthur E. Arling
Universal
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53. Ben-Hur (1959)
(B)

William Wyler

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston)
*Messala (Stephen Boyd)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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 Ben‑Hur is the granddaddy of Hollywood religious epics, starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd as childhood friends whose bond curdles into hatred—and then explodes in spectacular fashion to Miklós Rózsa’s pounding score. Some purists still argue that the chariot race in the 1925 Fred Niblo/Ramon Novarro silent version is superior, but Wyler’s remains the definitive cinematic thunderbolt.
And if you believe Gore Vidal, the emotional engine of the film is simple: a lover’s quarrel. Vidal claimed he wrote the reunion scene between Judah Ben‑Hur (Heston) and Messala (Boyd) as if they had once been lovers, with Messala still carrying a torch. Wyler and Boyd were in on the ruse; Heston, famously, was not. Boyd plays the scenes with unmistakable longing, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. There is far more here than a bromance—if Wyler hadn’t yelled “Cut,” you half‑expect the two men might have embraced in a very different way.

The fact that Vidal, a gay writer, provided the final polish to Karl Tunberg’s script (Tunberg alone received screen credit), and that playwright Christopher Fry—straight, but sympathetic to Vidal’s interpretation—stood beside Wyler throughout the Cinecittà shoot, lends further credence to Vidal’s claim. The film’s early scenes between Heston and Boyd practically hum with the tension Fry and Vidal insisted was there.

The final irony: of the film’s twelve Oscar nominations, only Tunberg went home empty‑handed. The 1959 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay went instead to Neil Paterson for Room at the Top.

Adapted from the novel by Lew Wallace.
Cinematography: Robert Surtees
MGM
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54. Compulsion (1959)
B-

RICHARD FLEISCHER

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Artie Straus (Bradford Dillman)
*Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell)

Set in 1924 Chicago, Compulsion is a fictionalized retelling of the Leopold and Loeb case. Artie (Bradford Dillman) and Judd (Dean Stockwell) are two wealthy law students who consider themselves intellectually superior and decide to commit the “perfect crime.” They kidnap and murder a young boy as a philosophical experiment in superiority and thrill‑seeking. Their plan unravels when Judd accidentally leaves his glasses at the crime scene—an oversight that becomes the key piece of evidence leading to their arrest.

The trial becomes the film’s centerpiece, with Orson Welles—playing a fictionalized version of Clarence Darrow—delivering a passionate argument against the death penalty. His defense focuses on the boys’ psychological immaturity, moral corruption, and emotional deformity rather than pure evil.

Leopold and Loeb were used as the basis for the lovers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (see above), and Compulsion was remade as Swoon by Tom Kalin in 1992. They were lovers, and both Richard Murphy’s screenplay (based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Meyer Levin) and Richard Fleischer’s direction infuse the film with a palpable queer subtext. It’s there in the lingering looks, the physical closeness, the emotional dependency, and especially in Judd’s jealousy whenever Artie shows interest in women. Dillman’s Artie is dominant, charismatic, and manipulative; Stockwell’s Judd is submissive, wounded, and yearning. Stockwell gives one of his most haunting performances.

Cinematography: William C. Mellor
TCF
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55. North by Northwest (1959)
A+

ONE OF HITCHCOCK’S SEVEN PERFECT FILMS

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Leonard (Martin Landau)

• 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
Produced by Alfred Hitchcock

In New York City, a waiter pages George Kaplan at the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room after two thugs request him to do so. At that exact moment, advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) summons the same waiter and is mistaken for Kaplan. Kidnapped and taken to the Long Island estate of Lester Townsend, a United Nations diplomat, Thornhill is interrogated by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), a suave spy posing as Townsend, and his watchful henchman Leonard (Martin Landau). Thornhill escapes, but when the real Townsend is murdered at the United Nations and collapses into Thornhill’s arms just as a photograph is taken, Thornhill becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, he must travel—literally—north by northwest, from New York to Chicago and finally to the Dakotas.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman set out to write what he called “the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures,” and he succeeded. The film is a dazzling tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across America by a shadowy organization determined to smuggle microfilm—the film’s MacGuffin—containing government secrets out of the country. Grant, in one of his most iconic roles, anchors the film’s blend of suspense, wit, and glamour.

Martin Landau’s Leonard has long been a touchstone in queer Hitchcock analysis. Both Hitchcock and Landau deliberately coded the character with subtle homoerotic undertones. Leonard’s devotion to Vandamm is tinged with jealousy; he is suspicious of Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), Vandamm’s lover, and his protectiveness feels personal as much as professional. Hitchcock dressed Leonard in sharper, sleeker suits than Grant’s Thornhill, signaling refinement and control. Stylish and leonine, he circles Grant like a cat in their electric first scene together. His line about Thornhill—“He’s a well‑tailored one, isn’t he?”—is a sly acknowledgment of male beauty and one of the film’s most frequently cited queer-coded moments.

The late‑1950s Hitchcock team is here at its artistic peak. Graphic designer Saul Bass revolutionized the opening credits with kinetic typography. Eva Marie Saint, as Eve, gives Grace Kelly in Rear Window a run for her money as Hitchcock’s most elegant leading lady, and her chemistry with Grant is palpable. MGM initially selected her wardrobe, but Hitchcock disliked the choices; he and Saint went to Bergdorf Goodman to choose her costumes themselves. Hitchcock’s taste was impeccable—Saint’s wardrobe remains one of the most memorable in Hollywood history. North by Northwest is the only feature film released by a major Hollywood studio during this period to bear no costume design credit.

Jesse Royce Landis, superb as Thornhill’s mother, famously shaved a few years off her age, leading to the long‑held myth that she was younger than Grant. In fact, she was eight years his senior. Leo G. Carroll has several memorable moments as The Professor, a quintessential Hitchcock bureaucrat: calm, paternal, and ruthlessly pragmatic. Though he works for the U.S. government, he allows Thornhill to remain in danger because it serves the larger operation.
North by Northwest is Hitchcock at his most playful and most precise—a masterpiece of glamour, danger, and queer‑coded intrigue.

In fiction, a MacGuffin is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the characters’ motivation, but is insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. Angus MacPhail originated the term for film, which Hitchcock adopted. The term was later extended to literature.

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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The 1960s

56. Oscar Wilde (1960)
B-
THE BETTER OF THE TWO OSCAR WILDE FILMS RELEASED IN 1960.

GREGORY RATOFF
PCA Code Status: Submitted to the Hays office but refused a seal because it portrayed Oscar Wilde in a sympathetic manner. 

Resubmitted to PCA in October 1961 in the wake of the famous rewording

 – homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with “CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT”  and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior – 

“Oscar Wilde” was granted a full seal of approval the second time around.  Only the word “whore” was cut.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Oscar Wilde (Robert Morley)
*Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as “Bosie” (John Neville)
*Robbie Ross (Dennis Price)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew SOURCE MATERIAL: Oscar Wilde: gay poet, novelist, diarist, playwright and general bon vivant.
ACTOR: Dennis Price

It is 1892, opening night of Lady Windermere’s Fan. Oscar Wilde (Robert Morley), married to Constance (Phyllis Calvert), begins a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas—Bosie—played by a far‑too‑mature John Neville. Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry (Edward Chapman), publicly accuses Wilde of being a homosexual. Wilde sues him for libel, but the case backfires spectacularly when evidence of Wilde’s relationships with men is exposed. He is prosecuted, convicted of gross indecency, and imprisoned, leading to his social and financial ruin.
Neville may be miscast, but Morley is superb. He delivers Wilde’s stream of bon mots with effortless charm while also capturing the tragedy of the man, especially during the trial scenes. The film’s high point is the back‑and‑forth between Wilde and Sir Edward Carson, played with icy brilliance by Ralph Richardson. Their verbal duel is as riveting as any courtroom drama of the era.
The word homosexual is never spoken—this is 1960, after all—but the film does not shy away from the implications. Queensberry leaves a calling card at Wilde’s club, accusing him of being a “sodomite” (misspelled somdomite), and the nature of Wilde and Bosie’s relationship is unmistakable through gesture, tone, and framing. Dennis Price is excellent as Robbie Ross, Wilde’s loyal friend and former lover, while Alexander Knox brings quiet intelligence to Sir Edward Clarke, Wilde’s counsel, who realizes mid‑trial that his client has not been entirely forthcoming.
Robert Morley always maintained that he was too young to play Wilde when he played him on stage, to great success, on the West End and on Broadway in the late 1930s, but he was too old to play him effectively in this movie.
This was the final film directed by actor‑director Gregory Ratoff, who had earlier directed Ingrid Bergman in her Hollywood debut, Intermezzo. Modern audiences may know him best as Max “you sly puss” Fabian in 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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Please see Table 6 for a Wilde-to-Wilde comparison.

57. The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)
C+
THE LESSER OF THE TWO OSCAR WILDE FILMS RELEASED IN 1960.

KEN HUGHES
PCA Code Status: Submitted to the Hays office but refused a seal because it portrayed Oscar Wilde in a sympathetic manner.  Released without a Code Seal.

Moderately good reviews, together with screenings at some boutique cinemas, generated some local business.  Overall, however, it was a financial failure.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Oscar Wilde (Peter Finch)
*Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as “Bosie” (John Fraser)
*Robbie Ross (Emrys Jones)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
SOURCE MATERIAL: Oscar Wilde: gay poet, novelist, diarist, playwright and general bon vivant.
ACTOR: John Fraser

Because the story is airbrushed to the point of uncertainty, The Trials of Oscar Wilde pales in comparison to Oscar Wilde, the other Wilde movie released in 1960. Clearly, the more expensive movie, filmed in Technicolor – the cinematographer is Ted Moore – and with a large cast, The Trials of Oscar Wilde boasts a better Bosie (John Fraser) and a better Queensbury (Lionel Jeffries) but a lesser Wilde (Peter Finch) and a lesser sense of the foreboding that precedes a tragedy.
Directed by Ken Hughes with James Mason as Sir Edward Carson and Nigel Patrick as Sir Edward Clarke. The film was released by Warwick Films, a partnership between Cubby Broccoli and Irving Allen, one week after the release of Oscar Wilde. Lionel Jeffries was only five years older than John Fraser, who played his son.

Warrick Films. Distributed by Columbia in the US. Screenplay by Ken Hughes and Montgomery Hyde, adapted from the Unproduced play:
THE STRINGED LUTE by John Furnell (the pseudonym of Phyllis Macqueen)

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Please see Table 6 for a Wilde-to-Wilde comparison.

TABLE 14 88 Queer Films Made During the Hays Code Era (1934-1968) Oscar Wilde vs. The Trials of Oscar Wilde Released a few weeks apart in 1960, Oscar Wilde and The Trials of Oscar Wilde cover the same story over the same period.
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: NO .  Resubmitted to the PCA in October of 1961 in the wake of the famous rewording- homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with CARE, DISCRETION and RESTRAINT and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior. Granted a full seal of approval the second time around	SUBMITTED: YES  APPROVED: NO Released without a Code seal of approval in 1960.	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	Mrs. Wilde	Mrs. Wilde	Yvonne Mitchell
PRODUCTION	Jo Eisinger for Vantage Films	Harold Huth for Warwick Films(Irvin Allen & 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 flop in the US. Ended the Allen-Broccoli relationship.	Sir Edward Clarke	Alexander Knox	Nigel Patrick

58. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960)
A-

Delbert Mann

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Sonny Flood (Robert Eyer)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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.

59. Spartacus (1960)
(B)

Stanley Kubrick

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL.
DIALOGUE SET UP BETWEEN UNIVERSAL STUDIOS AND THE PCA.
The scene featuring General Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) was cut by Universal before submission to the Hays Office due to negative reactions from preview audiences.
Decades later, this deleted scene was salvaged from the cutting room floor and added to the movie when the the slave-revolt was restored in 1991.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Laurence Olivier
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas COSTUME DESIGNER: Arlington Valles (Valles) (probable)

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.

The restored 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
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60. Psycho (1960)
A+
ONE OF HITCHCOCK’S SEVEN PERFECT FILMS

Alfred Hitchcock

SUMITTED FOR APPROVAL.
Dialogue set up between Hitchcock and the PCA regarding the screenplay.
APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS
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! The completed movie had to endure a few more cuts, primarily to the opening bedroom scene in Phoenix, as well as to the motel bathroom and shower sequences at the Bates Motel.  Overall, a Hitchcock triumph!

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
LGBTQ+ ACTOR Cast and Crew
Anthony Perkins

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, respectively, are all essential to the film’s success.
Never was Hitchcock’s ability to manipulate an audience’s sympathies clearer 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.

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

Screenplay by Joseph Stefano based on the novel Psycho by Robert Bloch.
Cinematography: John L. Russell PARAMOUNT
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61. Purple Noon (1960-1961)
B+

Rene Clement

NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL
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, film societies and arthouse cinemas, 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+ Cast and Crew
SOURCE MATERIAL: Patricia Highsmith, based on her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley

Mr. Greenleaf hires Tom Ripley—an almost impossibly beautiful Alain Delon—to travel to Italy and persuade his son Philippe (Maurice Ronet) to return home to the United States. Once in Italy, Tom becomes inseparable from Philippe, basking in his luxurious lifestyle while quietly resenting his arrogance. Philippe’s fiancée, Marge (Marie Laforêt), is wary of Tom’s presence from the start. When Philippe mocks him one time too many, Tom kills him during a boating trip. He then forges documents, assumes Philippe’s identity, and begins siphoning off his wealth. Tom manipulates friends, lovers, and the authorities with astonishing finesse, maintaining his double life even as Marge’s suspicions deepen.
This first adaptation of queer author Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley covers the same narrative ground as Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film starring Matt Damon and the recent eight‑episode Netflix series written and directed by Steve Zaillian and starring Andrew Scott.
What it lacks in the emotional depth and superb supporting cast of Minghella’s version, it compensates with a hypnotic style all its own, thanks to French two‑time Oscar winner René Clément (Forbidden Games) and his master cinematographer Henri Decaë (The 400 Blows). Italy has rarely looked so sun‑drenched, seductive, and treacherous. And Delon—icy, feline, breathtaking—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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IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

62. The Children’s Hour (1961)
(C)

William Wyler

PCA Code Status: APPROVED.

Submitted to the PCA in December of 1961, two months after the October rewording

 – homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with “CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT”  and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior. 

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine)

THE STORY’S 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 The Children’s Hour in 1936, the lesbian storyline was transformed into a heterosexual triangle involving Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins, and Joel McCrea, with a wonderfully venomous Bonita Granville as the malicious schoolgirl who spreads the lie. Retitled These Three, the film was a considerable success—and despite the enforced heterosexuality, the queer subtext still pulsed beneath the surface. It also launched a remarkable run of classics Wyler would make under the Goldwyn banner.
Cut to 1961. Fresh from the triumph of Ben‑Hur, Wyler decided to remake the story, this time restoring Hellman’s original same‑sex theme. He cast two of Hollywood’s greatest actresses—Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine—as the schoolmistresses whose lives and careers are destroyed by a student’s vindictive rumor. MacLaine plays Martha, who secretly loves her friend and colleague, Karen (Hepburn), a love she can neither name nor express. Karen, meanwhile, is in a stable heterosexual relationship with Joe (James Garner), which only deepens Martha’s torment.
But Wyler found himself caught between eras. In 1961, he was not prepared to make an openly gay film, yet he was no longer willing to bury the theme entirely. The result is a strange hybrid: what begins as an act of bravery ends in timidity. The film is all text and no subtext—yet still not bold enough to fully confront the emotional truth at its center. There are moments of real power, especially from MacLaine, but they are isolated flashes. The film ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, one that might have triumphed had Wyler waited another decade. That said, MacLaine’s queer panic, together with Wyler’s strained earnestness, makes The Children’s Hour ideal material for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCRRENING!
Fay Bainter, playing the grandmother whose reaction to her granddaughter’s lie sets the tragedy in motion, received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. It was her final screen role.

Cinematography: Franz Planer
William Wyler – The Mirisch Company United Artists
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63. A Taste of Honey (1961-1962)
A-

QUEER KITCHEN SINK REALISM!

Tony Richardson

NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL
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, film societies and arthouse cinemas. Distributed by Continental Distributing.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Geoffrey Ingham (Murray Melvin)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Tony Richardson
ACTOR: Murray Melvin

Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Shelagh Delaney’s play still shines with undimmed force. Delaney co‑wrote the screenplay with Richardson, who had directed the original Broadway production in 1960. The film stands as one of the defining works of kitchen sink realism, a gritty British genre rooted in working‑class life, emotional candor, and social critique.
Rita Tushingham—who embodied the spirit of British independent cinema from the early to mid‑sixties—plays seventeen‑year‑old Jo, living with her irresponsible mother in a run‑down, post‑industrial corner 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 single night together, she discovers she is pregnant.
Determined to keep the baby but unwilling to marry Jimmy, Jo moves in with her best friend, Geoff (Murray Melvin), a gentle, soft‑spoken gay man who offers to marry her and help raise the child. The film treats Jo’s pregnancy, interracial romance, and her friendship with a gay man not as sensationalism but as life—messy, funny, painful, and real.
Melvin—openly gay and nearly thirty at the time, though playing a teenager—gives one of the era’s most quietly groundbreaking performances. He was among the first openly gay actors in British cinema, and his portrayal of Geoff remains tender, dignified, and deeply humane. Melvin often worked with Richardson and with director Ken Russell, and his presence here is part of what makes A Taste of Honey so radical.

Melvin’s most memorable movie screen moment is the card game sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, featuring natural candlelight and Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat on the soundtrack –see Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980): Barry Lyndon. Dora Bryan is particularly memorable as Tushingham’s self-centered yet occasionally caring mother

Cinematography: Walter Lassally Woodfall Films
Continental Distributors in the US
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64. Victim (1961-1962)
B+
DIRK BOGARDE’S BRAVE PERFORMANCE

Basil Dearden

LANDMARK! Despite the October 1961 rewording, homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with “CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT”  and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior – Victim was denied approval outright for presenting homosexuality with CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT.   Released by Pathé-America in the US without a seal. Good reviews, together with screenings at some boutique cinemas, generated some local business.  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+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Dirk Bogarde ACTOR: Hilton Edwards

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 twenties) has a small but memorable scene as a blind patron of a gay bar whom his younger-sighted friends feed 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. Micheál had a memorable role as the epicene elocution teacher in Curtis Harrington’s 1971 film What’s the Matter with Helen – see Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980).

Janet Green and John McCormick wrote the original screenplay.
Cinematography: Otto Heller. Rank in the UK
Pathé-America Distribution Company in the US
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65. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
A+
DAVID LEAN’S MASTERPIECE
OSCAR: BEST FILM OF 1962

David Lean

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:
*T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole)
*Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif)

David Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962) charts the transformation of British officer T. E. Lawrence from eccentric soldier to legendary leader as he attempts to unite the Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The film is both a sweeping historical epic and an intimate psychological portrait, exploring the toll that Lawrence’s self‑mythologizing journey exacts on his identity.
Lean’s film is rich in queer subtext, much of it conveyed through Peter O’Toole’s extraordinary performance. His Lawrence is androgynous, introspective, sensitive, and physically delicate—an intentional contrast to the traditional image of the masculine war hero. The film emphasizes Lawrence’s profound alienation: from the British military, from his Arab allies, and ultimately from himself. His relationships with men, particularly Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), are emotionally charged. Their gazes linger, their silences vibrate with tension, and their partnership carries an intimacy that transcends conventional camaraderie. Those luminous close‑ups of Sharif’s eyes—Lean knew exactly what he was doing—helped earn him a well‑deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination.

The behind-the-camera talent is as extraordinary as the acting; Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson’s screenplay was adapted from Lawrence’s autobiography,  Anne V. Coates immaculate editing and Maurice Jarre’s monumental original score.

The breathtaking wide-screen cinematography is by Freddie Young.  Distributed by Sam Spiegel’s Horizon Pictures through Columbia Pictures.

T. E. Lawrence’s sexuality has long been debated. Biographers have speculated that he may have been gay or asexual, citing his lack of romantic relationships with women and his writings about pain, submission, and fractured identity. His memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom contains passages that some scholars interpret as coded expressions of same‑sex desire or masochism. Lean’s film never states anything outright, but the subtext is unmistakable: Lawrence is a man at war not only with empires but with himself.

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66. Advise and Consent (1962)
A-
THE FIRST LOOK INSIDE AN AMERICAN GAY BAR

Otto Preminger

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)
Preminger’s timing was perfect as he coasted on the October 1961 rewording: homosexuality could be referred to if it was treated with “CARE, DISCRETION AND RESTRAINT”  and not presented as acceptable or desirable behavior

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Senator Brig Anderson (Don Murray)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Charles Laughton
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Blass

Otto Preminger was renowned for his innovative, boundary‑pushing approach to filmmaking, and Advise and Consent is one of his most beautifully written, acted, and directed achievements. It also treats its gay subplot with remarkable tenderness and respect for 1962. Don Murray—consistently superb and chronically underrated—plays a closeted senator being blackmailed during the bruising confirmation battle over a new Secretary of State. Preminger, ever fond of sly casting, pits him against a reactionary Southern senator played by Charles Laughton, a gay actor in his final screen role.
Only the scenes involving the woeful George Grizzard prevent Advise and Consent from achieving full classic status. He gives a master class in bad acting, while the rest of the ensemble—Henry Fonda, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, Walter Pidgeon, Lew Ayres, and Franchot Tone, along with Murray and Laughton—deliver some of the finest work of their distinguished careers.
A minor deduction, too, for requiring us to endure a sadly faded Gene Tierney as a Washington socialite whose sole purpose seems to be explaining, to the ladies‑who‑lunch (and to the viewer), the difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate. It’s a thankless and unnecessary task for an actress of her stature.
Still, when the film focuses on its political machinations and its quietly groundbreaking queer storyline, Advise and Consent remains one of Preminger’s most compelling and forward‑thinking works.

Adapted from the novel by Allen Drury.
Cinematography: Sam Leavitt Columbia Pictures
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67. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
A+
DAVIS AND CRAWFORD ARE SPECTACULAR TOGETHER!

THE PSYCHO-BIDDY HORROR SUBGENRE IS BORN.

Robert Aldrich

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Joan Crawford
ACTOR: Victor Buono

Thanks to Lukas Heller’s superb adaptation of the Henry Farrell novel, Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? works simultaneously as high drama and delirious camp. Hollywood’s two grande dames, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, are in top form, with Davis getting the showier role as Baby Jane Hudson. But Crawford is equally superb as Blanche—the still, wounded eye at the center of Bette’s hurricane.
Opening flashback: In 1917, Baby Jane is a spoiled vaudeville child star adored by audiences, while her sister Blanche grows up overshadowed. Years later, Blanche becomes a major Hollywood actress, only to be 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. She psychologically and physically torments Blanche—locking her in rooms, serving grotesque meals, and sabotaging every attempt to reach the outside world.
In the film’s devastating climax, Blanche reveals that she was actually responsible for her own accident, not Jane. But the confession comes too late. Jane’s madness has already spiraled beyond reach. On the beach at Santa Monica, she dances childishly as the police arrive, leaving Blanche near death. The haunting ending underscores Jane’s complete detachment from reality.
Gay actor Victor Buono is perfection as Jane’s would‑be accompanist Edwin Flagg, whose horrified reaction to what he discovers prompts Davis’s immortal line: He hates me! And Australian actress Marjorie Bennett, as his mother Dehlia Flagg, seems to have wandered in from a John Waters movie—glorious, grotesque, and unforgettable.
Baby Jane is gay sensibility incarnate: baroque, hysterical, tragic, and wickedly funny. The psycho-biddy horror subgenre had arrived in style.

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!

Score by Frank De Vol.
Cinematography: Ernest Haller Warner Bros.
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Director Curtis Harrington would give his own inimitable touch to the psycho-biddy horror subgenre in the early seventies with Whatever Happened to Helen – see Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980).

68. That Touch of Mink (1962)
C+

Delbert Mann

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Connie (Audrey Meadows)
*Roger (Gig Young)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Cary Grant
ACTOR: Richard Deacon (uncredited)
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas

Between Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964), Doris Day paired with Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink, another Stanley Shapiro–co‑written confection. 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 had shown a surprising flair for comedy the previous year with Lover.
When Philip Shayne’s (Grant) Rolls‑Royce splashes Cathy Timberlake (Day) on her way 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; he looks as though he’d rather be anywhere than with Miss Day. Their scenes together in Bermuda are, at best, awkward—and at worst, downright creepy. You WANT them to disappear.
On the plus side, the film is gorgeously photographed by Russell Metty, and it features a fabulous fashion show courtesy of Bergdorf Goodman and ace costume designer Bill Thomas. And Shapiro gives us not one but two funny queer subplots.
The first involves a perpetually soused Gig Young as Roger, Philip’s neurotic financial adviser, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Gruber (Alan Hewitt). Because Gruber leaves the room just as Roger begins relaying crucial information about Cathy, he becomes convinced that Roger is about to embark on an affair with Philip. This misunderstanding leads to the film’s famous final scene involving Roger, a baby carriage, and an astonished Dr. Gruber—who, incidentally, is using Roger for insider stock tips.

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. Meadows never overplays it; it’s a sweet, funny performance that adds texture to the film’s queer‑coded world.
And although uncredited, gay actor Richard Deacon has a memorable moment as Mr. Miller, Connie’s prissy supervisor. Deacon virtually patented this role in countless TV series and small film parts throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s

.
The original screenplay is by Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster.
Universal
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69. Billy Budd (1962)
(C)

Peter Ustinov

(APPROVED)

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Billy Budd (Terence Stamp)
*John Claggart (Robert Ryan)
*Edward Vere (Peter Ustinov)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
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 was produced, directed, and co‑written (with Robert Rossen and DeWitt Bodeen) by Peter Ustinov. Based on Coxe and Chapman’s stage adaptation of Herman Melville’s short novel—considered by many his second masterpiece after Moby‑Dick—Billy Budd tells a stark moral tale set aboard a British naval vessel.
Billy Budd, a strikingly handsome young sailor, accidentally kills his false accuser, the Master‑at‑Arms John Claggart (Robert Ryan), after Claggart’s relentless persecution pushes him beyond endurance. Captain Edward Vere (Ustinov), recognizing Billy’s lack of intent, nevertheless insists that the law governing mutiny requires him to sentence Billy to death. The tragedy lies in Vere’s tortured adherence to duty over justice.
Ustinov cast a then‑unknown Terence Stamp as Billy, and the effect was seismic. Stamp’s beauty, innocence, and radiance electrify the film; he became an overnight sensation, making an otherwise modest production hugely profitable. He received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for 1962, losing to Ed Begley in Sweet Bird of Youth. Many—including myself—would argue that Billy is the picture, and the rest of the cast orbits around him.
Claggart’s jealousy of Billy is never explicitly explained, but the implication is clear: Billy’s beauty, optimism, and moral purity provoke something dark and unspoken in Claggart. Many—including gay composer Benjamin Britten, whose opera Billy Budd is one of the great queer works of the 20th century—have long noted the homoerotic undercurrents among Billy, Claggart, and Vere. Ustinov understood this and wisely brought in gay screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen (Cat People, The Seventh Victim) to deepen the subtext.
A queer film, therefore, based on a queer novel—Melville’s coded masterpiece brought to the screen with sensitivity, tension, and a quietly radical charge. The overall effect, however, is somewhat less than meets the eye.

Cinematography: Robert Krasker Rank | Anglo Allied Pictures Allied Pictures in the US
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70. Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
C-

Edward Dmytryk

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Hallie (Capucine)
*Jo (Barbra Stanwyck)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Capucine (probable)
ACTOR: Barbara Stanwyck (probable)
ACTOR: Laurence Harvey
COSTUME DESIGNER Charles LeMaire

Laurence Harvey’s Dove Linkhorn and Jane Fonda’s Kitty Twist meet on a dusty Texas road 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 run by Jo (Barbara Stanwyck). The film strongly suggests that Jo and Hallie share a lesbian relationship. Hallie, unhappy with her life but accustomed to its comforts, continues working for Jo and hesitates to risk everything for the married life Dove proposes.
Stanwyck—looking decidedly butch—and Capucine—radiantly femme—have several compelling scenes together, their dynamic far more charged than anything involving Harvey or Fonda. Harvey is wan, and Fonda, still early in her career, isn’t given enough to do. The result is a film with flashes of queer electricity but not enough narrative or emotional momentum to sustain it. 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 Imitation of Life’s Juanita Moore (no relation).

Adapted by John Fante from the 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren.
Music by Elmer Bernstein. Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald.
A Charles K. Feldman Production for Columbia Pictures
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71. The L-Shaped Room (1962-1963)
(B)

Bryan Forbes

SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS
Johnny, who is gay in the book, is not identified as queer in the movie.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Mavis (Cicely Courtneidge)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew ACTOR: Emlyn Williams
PRODUCER: James Woolf

The phrase “L-shaped” serves as a powerful architectural metaphor for a marginal, isolated, or unstable position in society.  In the context of British literature and cinema—especially post-war “kitchen sink realism”—an L-shaped room represents a literal and figurative rejection of mainstream societal structures.  In mid-20th-century cities like London, large Victorian family homes were frequently partitioned by landlords into cheap, multi-tenant boarding houses.  An L-shaped room is rarely intentional; it is usually the awkward leftover scrap of space left after cutting a large room into smaller pieces to maximize rental income.

Writer/director Bryan Forbes’s uneven adaptation of  Lynne Reid Banks’s novel boasts Leslie Caron’s most outstanding performance.  She plays 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 Notting Hill, 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 job at a café, 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.

THE PROBLEM WITH JOHNNY

• Johnny’s sexuality is one of the most significant changes made when adapting Lynne Reid Banks’s novel.  By altering Johnny’s character and shifting the narrative focus, director Bryan Forbes changed how the film approached marginalized identities. 
• In the Book, John (Johnny) is explicitly revealed to be gay. His character combines multiple layers of societal marginalization in 1960s Britain: he is a Black immigrant, a jazz musician, and a homosexual man at a time when homosexuality was still illegal. The novel also explores the protagonist Jane’s initial homophobic prejudices, which she eventually overcomes as they bond over their shared status as outcasts.
• In the Movie, Johnny’s homosexuality is entirely omitted or, at most, buried under highly ambiguous subtext.  Instead, the film primarily focuses on his marginalization due to his race, his unrequited feelings for Jane, and his friendship with Toby. This is problematic, as his character is an enigma who fades in and out of the narrative, diminishing the impact of several scenes.

THE LAVENDER SWAP

To maintain a queer narrative thread in the film without using Johnny, the filmmakers shifted the theme of hidden sexuality to another character.

• Mavis in the Book: An older, former wardrobe mistress who speaks openly about her past heterosexual affairs with men.
• Mavis in the Movie: Played by Cicely Courtneidge, she is transformed into a retired music-hall performer who harbors a “lavender secret”. She is portrayed as a closeted lesbian who shares a deeply tender, delicate coming-out scene with Jane, providing the movie with its primary LGBTQ+ representation. 

WHY THE CHANGE HAPPENED

• In 1962, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) and international distribution rules, such as the Hays Code, were highly restrictive regarding homosexuality.  A character who was both Black and gay was considered too radical or controversial for mainstream cinema audiences at the time.
• Splitting the themes allowed the film to focus Johnny’s arc on the racial prejudices of post-war London, while using Mavis to explore the quiet loneliness of aging as a closeted individual in a changing world. 
• Two years later, Peters became the first Black, queer character to be portrayed on screen in Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (see below).

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

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe. Romulus Films: James and John Woolf
Distributed by Columbia Pictures in the US.
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72. The Haunting (1963)
(A)
LESBIAN CHIC COURTESY OF CLAIRE BLOOM

Robert Wise

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Theo (Theodora) (Claire Bloom)

As the chic Greenwich Village lesbian, Theo—short for Theodora—Claire Bloom is a knockout in The Haunting, Robert Wise’s chilling 1963 adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. Shot in England (standing in for New England), the film features Theo in couture designed exclusively by Mary Quant, the queen of Carnaby Street. It remains one of the finest, if not the finest, haunted‑house films ever made.
Theo is one of several guests invited by Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), a paranormal researcher, to spend a weekend investigating the notorious Hill House. For ninety years—and likely ninety more—the mansion has been marked by tragedy, insanity, and violent death. Joining Theo are Eleanor (Julie Harris), a lonely woman with psychic sensitivity, and Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the skeptical heir to the estate.
The group soon experiences terrifying phenomena: pounding on doors, ghostly voices, shifting architecture, and a sense that the house itself is alive. Eleanor, fragile and yearning for belonging, feels a deep personal connection to Hill House, believing it speaks directly to her. Her psyche deteriorates as she becomes increasingly isolated and obsessed. In the film’s devastating final act, Eleanor drives her car into a tree on the estate—an act that may be suicide or supernatural compulsion. The film closes with the unforgettable line:

AND WE WHO WALK HERE, WALK ALONE!

This is perhaps Julie Harris’s most emblematic screen performance; no one played fragility mixed with a troubled mind better. And it’s easy to see why Theo is drawn to her. Bloom’s portrayal is subtle, elegant, and deeply humane. Theo’s attraction is expressed with care and restraint, making her one of the most enlightened gay characters to appear in mainstream cinema 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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73. The Servant (1963-1964)
(A)
ONE OF THE SHARPEST DISSECTIONS OF BRITAIN’S SOCIAL HYPOCRISIES

Joseph Losey

Not Submitted For Approval

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+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Dirk Bogarde

Tony (James Fox), an upper‑class bachelor settling into a new London townhouse, hires Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) to manage his household. Barrett appears efficient, deferential, and indispensable, but Tony’s girlfriend, Susan (Wendy Craig), distrusts him from the start and urges Tony to dismiss him. Barrett soon brings Vera (Sarah Miles) into the house, claiming she is his sister. Tony begins a clandestine affair with her. When Tony and Susan return early from a trip, they discover Barrett and Vera together in Tony’s bedroom. Vera is revealed not as Barrett’s sister but as his lover. Tony fires Barrett and ends his relationship with Susan. Yet Barrett insinuates himself back into Tony’s life, and over time, the balance of power reverses: Tony becomes passive, dependent, and degraded, while Barrett assumes total control of the house.
Adapted by Harold Pinter from Robin Maugham’s novella and directed by Joseph Losey, The Servant pulses with homoerotic tension rooted in its dominance‑and‑submission dynamic. The sexual charge between master and servant is unmistakable, and its influence radiates forward in time—most notably into Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970), where James Fox again plays a man undone by another’s seductive power – see – Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980).
Pinter’s screenplay is a masterclass in sharp dialogue, loaded silences, and psychological tension, earning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay of 1964. Losey’s direction creates a claustrophobic, almost suffocating atmosphere, using mirrors, shadows, and shifting spatial relationships to chart the collapse of class boundaries. The film’s exploration of power, dependency, and social rot anticipates the themes Losey and Pinter would later refine in Accident (1967) and The Go‑Between (1971).
A landmark of British cinema, The Servant remains one of the most incisive dissections of Britain’s social and sexual hypocrisies. Though it falters in its final thirty minutes, it contains Bogarde’s most extraordinary performance—controlled, insinuating, and devastating

The black-and-white cinematography is by Douglas Slocombe.
Produced by Joseph Losey and Norman Priggen for Springbok Productions
Distributed by Bryanston Films in the UK
Distributed by Ely Landau and the Landau Company in the US
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74. The Leather Boys (1964)
(B)

Sidney J. Furie

Not submitted For Approval

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Pete (Dudley Sutton)
*Reggie (Colin Campbell)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
COSTUME DESIGNER: Harry Haynes (probable)

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” (see below) 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.
“Ton-up boys” were a 1950s and 1960s British youth subculture defined by their obsession with motorcycles and speed. The term refers to their goal of “doing the ton”—achieving speeds of 100mph or more on public roads. To reach these speeds on machines often limited to 70–80mph they heavily modified their motorcycles for performance, unintentionally creating the “café racer” style. Often synonymous with “Rockers” or “Leather Boys,” these riders were typically working-class teenagers who used motorcycles for freedom and social escape in post-WWII Britain. They were heavily influenced by American rock and roll and often wore leather jackets (sometimes repurposed from military gear). Because they were often too young for pubs, they gathered at transport cafés. These cafes served as both social hubs and the start/finish lines for impromptu races. The famous 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.

Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs British Lion-Columbia: Raymond Stross
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75. My Fair Lady (1964)
A+
OSCAR: BEST FILM OF 1964

GEORGE CUKOR

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison)
*Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: George Cukor
ACTOR: Jeremy Brett
ART-SET DIRECTION: Cecil Beaton
ART-SET DIRECTION: George James Hopkins
AET-SET DIRECTION: Gene Allen
COSTUME DESIGNER: Cecil Beaton

Why can’t a woman be more like a man? HENRY HIGGINS TO COLONEL PICKERING IN MY FAIR LADY

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 delivered 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 stage role 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 born of 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, Gladys Cooper as Henry’s mother (both were Oscar-nominated) and gay actor Jeremy Brett as Eliza’s suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who sings On the Street Where You Live (dubbed by Bill Shirley).

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

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, while the set decoration was by Beaton, George James Hopkins and Gene Allen. Cinematography by Harry Stradling. Score arranged and conducted by Andre Previn.

Winner of eight Oscars: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Art-Set-Design, Best Costumes, Best Adapted Score, Best Sound and Best Cinematography.

Of its 12 nominations, it lost four: Best Supporting Actress (Gladys Cooper, who lost to Lelia Kedrova in Zorba the Greek), Best Supporting Actor (Stanley Holloway, who lost to Peter Ustinov in Topkapi) Best Editing (William Ziegler, who lost to Cotton Warburton for Mary Poppins) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Alan Jay Lerner, who lost to Edward Anhalt for Beckett). Both Ziegler and Lerner should have won. The real surprise, however, is that Audrey, due to studio politics and the whole Marni Nixon dubbing fiasco, did not even receive a nomination – a travesty.

Warner Bros.

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76. The Pawnbroker (1964-1965)
A-

Sidney Lumet

LANDMARK:
SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL.
INITIALLY, REFUSED A SEAL OF APPROVAL BY THE PCA.
The film’s producer, Ely Landau and his distributor, Allied Artists, were having none of this. They decided on a two-pronged approach: they would make arrangements for the film to be released without Hays Code approval – it was originally released in New York state under these conditions in 1964 – and they would APPEAL THE PCA’S VERDICT to the Motion Picture Association of America (the same MPAA that would take over the rating system after the PCA’s dissolution in 1968). They won. The MPAA voted 6 to 3 to reverse the PCA’s verdict. The film was GIVEN THE HAYS CODE SEAL OF APPROVAL on its general US release in 1965. The ruling was one of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years.

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, who manages to brighten up her few scenes playing a lonely, widowed neighborhood social worker who tries to offer friendship and connect with Sol.

THE PAWNBROKER IS:

· 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 AND ONLY PCA-APPROVED FILM TO SHOW A WOMAN’S BARE BREASTS** ***

*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 pivotal role of the mob boss Rodriguez, the man who controls Sol’s business. The L-Shaped Room even gets a Marquee cameo in the movie.

**The film was controversial on initial release for depicting nude scenes in which actresses Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver fully exposed their breasts. The scene with Oliver, who played a prostitute, was intercut with a flashback to the concentration camp, in which Nazerman is forced to watch his wife (Geiser) and other women being raped by Nazi officers.

*** One year later, in 1966, Vanessa Redgrave famously bared her breasts in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. The film, distributed by MGM, was submitted to the PCA but denied a Seal. MGM then decided to distribute the movie without Hays Office approval through its subsidiary Premier Productions. It was an arthouse smash and the final nail in the Hays Code coffin.

Cinematography: Boris Kaufman Distributor: Allied Artists
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
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77. Inside Daisy Clover (1965)
C+

Robert Mulligan

SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS
A dialogue was established between the studio and the Hays Office regarding the Natalie Wood and Robert Redford characters.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Wade Lewis (Robert Redford)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
SCREENWRITER: SOURCE MATERIAL: Gavin Lambert (novel)
SET DESIGNER: George James Hopkins
COSTUME DESIGNER: Bill Thomas COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head (probable)

In 1936, Angel Beach, California, Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) is a tough, chain‑smoking fifteen‑year‑old tomboy living with her eccentric mother (Ruth Gordon) in a rundown trailer. Dreaming of stardom, she sends a recording of her singing to Swan Studios. Studio head Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer) signs her, rebrands her as “America’s Valentine,” and promptly 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 has had affairs—including with Swan’s wife. Daisy retrieves her mother from the institution, only for her to die suddenly. Swan’s manipulative control over Daisy’s career intensifies her emotional collapse. After a failed suicide attempt, Daisy decides to walk away from Hollywood entirely. In the film’s iconic ending, she blows up her beach house and strolls off, declaring, “Someone declared war.”
Although Redford insisted that his character be changed from homosexual (as in Gavin Lambert’s novel) to bisexual, it was still a bold choice of role for the time, and one that helped launch his career. Natalie Wood throws herself into the role of Daisy, though Jackie Ward dubs her singing. Yet because Lambert had to eviscerate his own book in the translation to screen, and because Robert Mulligan’s direction is uneven, Wood’s work here cannot match the high‑water marks of Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, or Love with the Proper Stranger (also directed by Mulligan).
The film’s finest performance comes from Ruth Gordon, in what would become her signature screen persona: the eccentric yet sympathetic older woman. She earned her first Oscar nomination for the role and would win three years later for 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 Warner Bros.
Produced by Alan J. Pakula
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78. King Rat (1965)
(A)

Bryan Forbes

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Corporal King (George Segal)
*Lt. Peter Marlowe (James Fox)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Denholm Elliott PRODUCER: James Woolf

Changi Prison, Singapore, 1945. In this Japanese POW camp, Allied prisoners endure starvation, disease, and despair. Traditional military hierarchies collapse as survival becomes the only currency. Unlike most, American Corporal King (George Segal) thrives. Running a black‑market empire, trading with guards, and manipulating scarce resources, he becomes 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 Courtenay), the camp provost, embodies rigid British discipline. He despises King’s corruption and becomes obsessed with exposing him, even as corruption among higher‑ranking officers goes unpunished.
King saves Marlowe’s arm with medicine, but the gesture is ambiguous: genuine friendship, strategic self‑interest, or both? Marlowe knows where King’s profits are hidden. When liberation finally arrives, the restored military hierarchy instantly strips King of his influence, revealing how transactional his power—and his relationships—truly were.
Adapted from James Clavell’s 1962 novel, drawn from his own POW experience, and directed by Bryan Forbes, King Rat is one of the 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 King. Their friendship is unusually intimate compared to other POW interactions. King tends to Marlowe’s wounds, stays by his bedside, entrusts him with secrets, and looks at him with a warmth he shows no one else. Clavell’s novel hints at Marlowe’s sensitivity and ambiguous attachments, while the film leaves their bond open to interpretation. Some viewers read Marlowe’s wistful gaze as coded longing as King departs the camp.
James Fox, an actor of unusual sensitivity, is easy to queer‑code, and his scenes with Segal have a beauty and yearning that any gay man can recognize. Segal, rising to stardom, still had depths and mysteries that later roles rarely tapped. The British‑American dynamic between them adds yet another layer of fascination.
Tom Courtenay once again proves what a tremendous actor he is, and the supporting cast is a treasure trove of British greats: John Mills, Denholm Elliott, and James Donald, each bringing nuance and gravity to this stark, morally complex world.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey Produced by James and John Woolf for Salem Films
Distributor UK: British Lion Films Distributor US: Columbia Pictures NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, APPLE TV+, YOUTUBE

79. The Loved One (1965)
(A)

Tony Richardson

(APPROVED)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger)
*Mr. Starker (Liberace)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
DIRECTOR: Tony Richardson
SCREENWRITER: Christopher Isherwood
ACTOR: John Gielgud
ACTOR: Tab Hunter
ACTOR: Liberace
ACTOR: Roddy McDowell

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Rouben Ter-Arutunian
COSTUME DESIGNER: Rouben Ter-Arutunian

Everyone had fun adapting Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 short satirical novel about the funeral business in Los Angeles.

The film follows Dennis Barlow, a young English poet (Robert Morse), who arrives in Los Angeles and becomes entangled in the surreal, grotesque world of Whispering Glades, a cemetery/theme park hybrid. There, he meets Aimée Thanatogenos (Anjanette Comer), a naïve cosmetician whose name literally means “beloved, born of death.” The plot spirals into a series of absurdist encounters with the funeral home’s staff, including the flamboyant mortician Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger) and the corporate overlord Henry Glenworthy (Jonathan Winters). The tone is anarchic, mordant, and deliberately excessive—an English outsider’s nightmare vision of American consumerism, spirituality, and death.

Understandably, however, 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 yours truly. Haskell Wexler’s black-and-white photography is impressive, as are Rouben Ter-Arutunian’s costumes and production design. Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern wrote the 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)

Music by John Addison. Edited by Hal Ashby.
FILMWAYS. MGM.
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80. Darling (1965)
B+
OSCAR NOMINATION: BEST FILM

John Schlesinger

(SUBMITTED: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS)

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Miles Brand (Dirk Bogarde)
LGBTQ+
DIRECTOR: John Schlesinger
ACTOR: Dirk Bogarde
ACTOR: Laurence Harvey

What felt dazzlingly fashionable in 1965 now reads as almost quaint — and that may be precisely the point. John Schlesinger captures the spirit of the swinging sixties with his uniquely queer, observational eye, charting a London where glamour and emptiness blur into one another. At the center is Julie Christie, delivering the star‑making, Academy Award–winning performance that defined her early career, even if most audiences that year encountered her as Lara in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago — complete with her own swooning musical theme.

In Darling, Christie’s Diana Scott is a young model drifting through the city’s new celebrity culture, a creature of appetite and self‑invention who toys with the affections of two older men — Dirk Bogarde’s married television journalist and Laurence Harvey’s suave advertising executive. Schlesinger frames her rise and fall not as moral caution but as cultural diagnosis: a portrait of a generation seduced by novelty, speed, and surfaces, and of a woman who becomes both its emblem and its casualty.

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 Schlesinger would go on to direct better Queer Films, such as Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday, which will be covered in Book Two: Out of the Shadows – Queer Cinema from the New Hollywood (1968-1980).

The Oscar-winning Original Screenplay is by Frederic Raphael.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kenneth Higgins. Joseph Janni Productions
Distributor in the US: Embassy Pictures (acquired by Avco in 1967)
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81. My Hustler (1965)
B+

The only Warhol film to make a profit!

The only Warhol movie transferred to digital media.

Andy Warhol and Chuck Wein

LANDMARK:
NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL.
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 and still classified it as a “sex perversion”. In 1965, mainstream studios still 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. It remains the only FACTORY film to have turned a profit, and it is the only extant Warhol movie to have been transferred to digital media.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Ed – the client (Ed Hood, uncredited)
*Joe – the older hustler (Joe Campbell, uncredited)
*Paul – the younger hustler (Paul America, uncredited)

LGBTQ+
PRODUCER: DIRECTOR: CINEMATOGRAPHER: Andy Warhol
DIRECTOR: Chuck Wein
ACTOR: Ed Hood (uncredited)
ACTOR: Paul America (uncredited)
ACTOR: Joe Campbell (uncredited)

Prepare to be surprised. If your only encounters with Andy Warhol’s cinema are Chelsea Girls or Empire, 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 among 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 unexpectedly engaging. Co-director Chuck Wein’s influence is clearly felt.  Much of the film’s 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, more seasoned hustler; and Genevieve Charbin Cerf as a straight woman determined to get her share of the action.
The Factory’s legendary door person—and Chelsea Girls alum—Dorothy Dean makes a cameo appearance, adding another layer of Warholian texture.
The film’s wit, looseness, and sun‑bleached Fire Island energy have made it a favorite among both gay and straight audiences. Conceived by Warhol and Wein, the project relied heavily on improvised dialogue—hence the absence of an official screenwriting credit. Paul Morrissey served as the uncredited camera operator, while Warhol himself is credited as cinematographer. Morrissey was the first to introduce synchronized sound and camera movement into a Factory film, giving My Hustler a clarity and immediacy that set it apart from Warhol’s earlier experiments.
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)
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82. 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 films like this, before there was a California.

At the outbreak of World War II, Lakey returns 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 Distributed by United Artists
Adapted for the screen and produced by Sidney Buchman – Famous Artists Productions
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83. Persona (1966-1967)
A+
MY FAVORITE FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Ingmar Bergman

SUMITTED FOR APPROVAL: APPROVED WITH MINOR CUTS.
Measured in seconds rather than minutes. A few frames of nudity and some dialogue tightening. Bibi Andersson’s sexual monologue was kept largely intact. These frames have since been restored. Persona was the last major motion picture to defer to the PCA. The same year, MGM decided to distribute Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up without Hays Office approval through its subsidiary Premier Productions. It was an arthouse smash and the final nail in the Hays Code coffin.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Alma (Bibi Andersson) *Elisabet (Liv Ullmann)

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.

IN SWEDISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Original screenplay by Ingmar Bergman
AB Svensk Filmindustri Lopert/United Artists in the US

84. Valley of the Dolls (1967)
Rated (D+) (Solo)
The sky’s the limit at a Gay Midnight Screening!

Mark Robson

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL: DIALOGUE SET UP BETWEEN THE PCA AND TCF
Although the PCA raised questions about the dolls of the title and some queer thematics, the cuts that were decided upon at TCF had more to do with rating – the MPAA was less than a year away – and pacing rather than censorship per se. What we see today at gay midnight screenings is essentially what audiences saw back 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+

William Travilla (Marilyn Monroe’s designer, and there were rumors of an affair) appears to have been straight, but he was always gossiped about as being at least sexually ambiguous (William Mann, Behind the Screen, p. 237).

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. Patty Duke is so bad in this movie precisely 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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85. Portrait of Jason (1967)
(A)

Shirley Clarke

LANDMARK:
NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL
Bypassing the Hays Office, the film was released independently, without a Code seal. Playing at film festivals, arthouses and college campuses, it found an audience and paved the way for Independent Film as we know it today.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER and LGBTQ+ Cast
*Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne, playing Himself)

Director Shirley Clarke and her partner, Carl Lee, remain off‑camera as they employ cinéma vérité techniques—prompting, prodding, provoking—to draw out hustler Jason Holliday (born Aaron Payne), who narrates his life story directly into the lens. For the entire film, Jason is the sole on‑screen presence, holding us enraptured as he bares his soul. He sings, changes costumes, performs theatrical monologues, and shifts effortlessly between bravado and vulnerability.

The film oscillates between comedy and tragedy, exposing Jason’s contradictions: the flamboyant self‑presentation versus the pain of marginalization, the survival instinct versus the longing for recognition. Blending cabaret flair with raw confession, Jason gradually reveals the sadness beneath his exaggerated persona. His performance is both constructed and devastatingly real, a portrait of a man who has learned to survive by turning himself into a show.

Portrait of Jason remains essential viewing—one of the most searing, intimate, and groundbreaking works of queer cinema.

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

Cinematography: Jeri Sopanen
Film-Makers Distributors (Original release)
Milestone Films (Re-release)
NOW STREAMING ON THE CRITERION COLLECTION
Bookmark for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

86. Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
A+

John Huston

LANDMARK:
SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS.
Released by Warner Bros. on October 13, 1967, two weeks after the death of its author, Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye stands as the only PCA-approved overtly queer-themed film to be shown intact before the Code’s demise in 1968. The new SMA (Suggested for Mature Audiences) stamp helped it achieve the Code seal of approval.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Anacleto (Zorro David)
*Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Marlon Brando
ACTOR: Zorro David
SOURCE MATERIAL: Carson McCullers – based on her novel Reflections in a Golden Eye

AT AN ARMY BASE IN THE SOUTH……….
We meet Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando), a repressed, closeted officer at war with his own masculinity and desires. His marriage to Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) is passionless and openly humiliating: she flaunts her affair with his best friend, Col. Langdon (Brian Keith), with a cruelty that borders on sport. Langdon’s wife, Alison (Julie Harris), emotionally fragile and despairing, has mutilated herself—cutting off her nipples with garden shears—and finds her only solace in her flamboyant Filipino houseboy, Anacleto (gay actor Zorro David, mesmerizing and far more complex than the “gay archetype” he initially appears to be). Meanwhile, a young soldier, Private Williams (Robert Forster), becomes a nocturnal voyeur, slipping into the Pendertons’ yard to watch Leonora sleeping. His presence awakens Penderton’s suppressed desires.
If this sounds like Carson McCullers territory, it is—Reflections in a Golden Eye is adapted from her 1941 novel, and the film captures her trademark blend of Southern Gothic, sexual repression, and emotional violence.
John Huston considered this his favorite film, and while it is not for everyone, those attuned to its wavelength find it spellbinding. Brando does something extraordinary with Penderton: a portrait of closeted torment that stands alongside his Stanley Kowalski in its psychological daring. Taylor gives one of her most relaxed, confident performances—she was beginning to gain weight at this time, and she uses her body fearlessly, almost as a weapon. Julie Harris, who made surprisingly few films for an actress of her caliber, is transcendent. Her scenes with Anacleto are girlish, flirtatious, and unspeakably sad.
Brian Keith, always underrated, underplays beautifully. His Col. Langdon is not a villain—just a man too oblivious to see the suffering around him or the multiple storylines converging toward tragedy.
And then there is Robert Forster, making his film debut as Private Williams. In contrast to the aging bodies around him, he is startlingly beautiful, spending much of the film nude while riding Leonora’s prized horse. It’s a tribute to the narrative’s complexity that she never even knows he exists until the fateful final scene.

THE GOLDEN TINT
Reflections in a Golden Eye was initially released with a gold‑tinted filter applied to every scene. Huston and cinematographer Aldo Tonti designed the desaturated, shimmering palette to evoke a drawing made by Anacleto—a golden peacock’s eye reflecting the world—and to create a dreamlike, overheated, otherworldly atmosphere. Only certain shades of red and green were allowed to bleed through.
Audiences were baffled, and the film performed poorly. Warner Bros. withdrew it within a week and reissued it in standard Technicolor, which flattened Huston’s vision. Today, both versions are available, included on the 2020 two‑disc Blu‑ray from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

The haunting score is by Toshiro Mayuzumi, Warner Bros – Seven Arts
Adapted by Gladys Hill and Chaplin Mortimer from the novel of the same name by Carson McCullers
NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, APPLE TV+, YOUTUBE

87. The Producers (1967-1968)
B+

Mel Brooks

SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL: APPROVED WITHOUT CUTS
One of the last films to be approved by what was then an ailing PCA, which gave it an SMA (Suggested for Mature Audiences) stamp and released it without cuts.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER
*Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett)
*Carmen Ghia (Andreas Voutsinas)
LGBTQ+
ACTOR: Andreas Voutsinas

Although always assumed to be gay, Christopher Hewett’s sexuality is disputed.

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.
They choose the play SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER, ex-Nazi Franz Liebkind’s musical valentine to Adolf Hitler—an idea so tasteless it seems foolproof. He is played by Kenneth Mars. 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.

Cinematography: Joseph Coffey Embassy Pictures (acquired by Avco in 1967)
NOW STREAMING ON APPLE TV+, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, AND YOUTUBE
Bookmark for a GAY MIDNIGHT SCREENING!

88. The Fox (1967-1968)
B+

Mark Rydell

LANDMARK:
NOT SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL
Rather than risk a rejection, The Fox (1967) bypassed the PCA completely and was never submitted for a Code seal. Instead, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts slipped the movie into theaters through a shell subsidiary, Claridge Pictures, slapped a temporary “Suggested for Mature Audiences” advisory sticker on the promotional materials, and let adult-only independent theaters handle the rest. Once the modern MPAA letter-rating system launched in late 1968, the film was officially brought into the fold and assigned an R rating. Playing at film festivals, arthouses, 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.

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS
*Jill Banford (Sandy Dennis)
*Ellen March (Anne Heywood)
LGBTQ+ Cast and Crew
ACTOR: Sandy Dennis SOURCE MATERIAL (NOVEL): D.H. Lawrence

Director Mark Rydell (The Rose, On Golden Pond) moves the location of queer writer 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 Claridge Pictures – Warner Bros. Seven Arts
“THE FOX” IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. THE DVD CAN BE PURCHASED FROM AMAZON.

Table 15 is a summary of all 88 Queer Films made during the Hays Code Era (1934-1968). Directors, actors, screenwriters, the creators of source material, production and costume designers are listed.

TABLE 15 88 QUEER FILMS MADE DURING THE HAYS CODE ERA (1934-1968) – SUMMARY. Directors | Actors | Screenwriters| Source Material | Production Designers | Costume Designers 64 directors. 128 actors (9 uncredited).
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 (13)	GAY COSTUME DESIGNERS  PRODUCTION DESIGNERS ART DIRECTORS SET DECORATORS (22)
Alfred Hitchcock (5)	Dirk Bogarde (3)	Liberace  (1)	Tennessee Williams (3)	George James Hopkins (8)
George Cukor (4)	Eve Arden  (2)	Peter Lorre (1)	De Witt Bodeen (2)	Bill Thomas (7)
Michael Curtiz (3)	James Fox (2)	Shirley MacLaine  (1)	Patricia Highsmith (2)	Edith Head (6)
Howard Hawks (3)	Mercedes McCambridge (2)	Fred MacMurray  (1)	Oscar Wilde (2)	Cedric Gibbons (4)
Nicholas Ray (3)	Judith Anderson (1)	George Macready (1)	Patrick Dennis (1)	Orry-Kelly (4)
Billy Wilder (3)	Bibi Andersson (1)	Achille Majeroni (1)	Leonard Gershe (1)	Gilbert Adrian (3)
Edward Dmytryk (2)	Lauren Bacall (1)	Peter McEnery (1)	William Inge (1)	Charles Le Maire (2)
Bryan Forbes  (2)	Anne Baxter (1)	Leonide Massine (1)	Gavin Lambert (1)	Moss Mabry (2)
John Huston (2)	Candice Bergen (1)	Audrey Meadows (1)	Arthur Laurents  (1)	Anthony Mendelson (2)
Sidney Lumet (2)	Claire Bloom (1)	Murray Melvin (1)	D.H. Lawrence (1)	Bernard Newman (2)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (2)	Eric Blore (1)	Sal Mineo (1)	Carson McCullers (1)	Arlington Valles (2)
Delbert Mann (2) Vincente Minnelli (2)	Humphrey Bogart (1)	Agnes Moorhead (1)	Herman Melville (1)	Gene Allen (1)
Otto Preminger (2)	Stephen Boyd (1)	Robert Morley  (1)	Gore Vidal (1)	Cecil Beaton (1)
Tony Richardson (2)	Marlon Brando (1)	John Neville  (1)		Bill Blass (1)
Douglas Sirk (2)	Joe E. Brown (at least for Daphne) (1)	Paul Newman (1)		Howard Greer (1)
William Wyler (2)	Coral Browne (1)	Peter O’Toole (1)		Harry Haynes (1)
Robert Aldrich (1)	Victor Buono (1)	Laurence Olivier (1)		Oliver Messel (1)
Lewis Allen (1)	Colin Campbell (1)	Cornelia Otis Skinner (1)		Walter Plunkett (1)
Ingmar Bergman (1)	Capucine (1)	Gail Patrick (1)		Irene Sharaff (1)
Mel Brooks (1)	Montgomery Clift (1)	Anthony Perkins (1)		Howard Shoup (1)
Richard Brooks (1)	Vera Clouzot (1)	Brock Peters (1)		Edward Stevenson (1)
David Butler (1)	Elisha Cook Jr (1)	Dennis Price  (1)		Rouben Ter-Arutnian (1)
Shirley Clarke  (1)	Cicely Courtneidge  (1)	Lidia Prochnicka (1)
Rene Clement (1)	Joan Crawford  (1)	Claude Rains (1)
Henri-Georges Clouzot    (1)	Hume Cronyn (1)	Tony Randall (1)
John Cromwell (1)	John Dahl (1)	Robert Redford  (1)
Morton DaCosta (1)	Zorro David (1)	Paul E. Richards   (1)
Jules Dassin (1)	Alexander Davion (1)	Edward G. Robinson (1)
Basil Dearden (1)	Doris Day (1)	Ginger Rogers (1)
Stanley Donen (1)	James Dean (1)	Gail Russell (1)
Federico Fellini   (1)	Alain Delon (1)	Robert Ryan (1)
Richard Fleischer (1)	Sandy Dennis (1)	George Saunders (1)
Victor Fleming (1)	Bradford Dillman  (1)	George Segal (1)
Sidney J. Furie (1)	Hilton Edwards (1)	Omar Sharif (1)
Jack Garfein   (1)	Leif Erickson (1)	Simone Signoret (1)
Michael Gordon (1)	Robert Eyer (1)	Simome Simon (1)
Robert Hamer  (1) Ken Hughes (1)	Peter Finch (1)	Art Smith (1)
Elia Kazan (1)	Glenn Ford (1)	Robert Stack (1)
William Keighley (1)	John Fraser (1)	Terence Stamp (1)
Stanley Kubrick (1)	Betty Garde (1)	Rod Steiger (1)
Gregory La Cava (1)	Lowell Gilmore (1)	James Stewart (1)
Mervin LeRoy (1)	Farley Granger (1)	Dean Stockwell  (1)
David Lean (1)	Cary Grant (1)	Dudley Sutton (1)
Albert Lewin (1)	Sydney Greenstreet (1)	Ernest Thesiger  (1)
Joseph H. Lewis (1)	Alec Guinness (1)	Kay Thompson (1)
Joseph Losey (1)	Rex Harrison (1)	Liv Ullmann (1)
Robert Mulligan  (1)	Hurd Hartfield (1)	Peter Ustinov (1)
Michael Powell (1)	Robert Helpmann (1)	Lee Van Cleef (1)
Emeric Pressburger (1)	Katherine Hepburn (1)	Andreas Voutsinas (1)
Gregory Ratoff  (1)	Charlton Heston (1)	Anton Walbrook (1)
Mark Robson (1)	Christopher Hewett (1)	Robert Walker (1)
Mark Rydell (1)	Anne Heywood (1)	Douglas Walton (1)
Mark Sandrich (1)	Jason Holliday  (1)	David Wayne (1)
John Schlesinger (1)	Earl Holliman (1)	Clifton Webb (1)
	Edward Everett Horton (1)	Monty Wooley (1)
Jacques Tourneur (1)	Rock Hudson (1)	Gig Young (1)
Peter Ustinov (1)	Ruth Hussey (1)
Charles Vidor (1)	Wilfrid Hyde-White (1)
Andy Warhol (1)	Emrys Jones (1)
Chuck Wein (1)	Bert Lahr (1)
Orson Welles (1)	Martin Landau  (1)	*Julián Ugarte (1) *uncredited
James Whale (1)	Andrea Leeds  (1)	*Paul America(1)*Joe Campbell(1)*Richard Deacon(1)*Ed Hood(1) *uncredited
Robert Wise (1)	Jack Lemmon (1)	*Ruth Gillette(1)* Lynda Grey(1)*Katherine Kurasch(1) *Elizabeth Russell(1)*uncredited	*Gore Vidal (1) * uncredited

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FACT

James Agee.	Agee on Film (1958).
Kenneth Anger.	Hollywood Babylon I (1975).
Kenneth Anger.	Hollywood Babylon II (1984).
Hector Arce.	The Secret Life of Tyrone Power (1979)
Kaye Ballard.	How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years: A Memoir (2006).
Rayner Banham.	Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971).
A. Scott Berg.	Goldwyn: A Biography (1989).
Robert Bergan.	The United Artists Story (1986).
Patricia Bosworth.	Montgomery Clift (1978).
Simon Callow.	Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (1995).
Marion Davies.	The Times We Had: Life with William (1975).
Joan Didion.	Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968).
Joan Didion.	The White Album (1979).
Alexander Doty.	Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon (2000) – Six Iconic movies: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wizard of Oz, The Women, The Red Shoes (with Diva), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Psycho.
John Gregory Dunne.	Regards: The Selected Nonfiction (2005).
Richard Dyer.	Homosexuality in Film Noir: Jump Cut Magazine Article (1977).
John Douglas Eames.	The MGM Story (1985).
John Douglas Eames.	The Paramount Story (1985).
Robert Evans.	The Kid Stays in the Picture (1995).
Otto Friedrich.	City of Nets: Hollywood in the 1940s (1986).
Neal Gabler.	An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1988).
Gerald Gabler.	The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship – Letters from the Hays Office (1934-1968) (1987).
Kenneth Geist.	Pictures Will Talk: The Life & Films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1983).
Lilian Gish.	The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me (1969).
Boze Hadleigh.	Hollywood Lesbians (1994).
Mark Harris.	Pictures at a Revolution (2008).
Ronald Haver	David O. Selznick’s Hollywood (1980).
Clive Hirschhorn.	The Warner Bros Story (1979).
Clive Hirschhorn.	The Universal Story (1983).
Clive Hirschhorn.	The Columbia Story (1990)
Jean Howard.	Jean Howard’s Hollywood: A Photo Memoir (1989)
Tab Hunter.	Tab Hunter Confidential (2005).
Daine Jacobs.	Christmas in July: The Life and Work of Preston Sturges (1992)
Richard Jewell	The RKO Story (1982).
Pauline Kael.	The Citizen Kane Book: Raising Kane (1974).
Elia Kazan.	A Life (1988).
Matthew Kennedy.	Edmund Goulding’s Dark Victory (2004).
Michael Koresky	Queer Now & Then: Film Comment (2002-2020).
Sidney Lumet.	Making Movies (1995).
Alex Madsen.	The Sewing Circle (1995).
William Gregory Mank.	Laird Cregar: A Hollywood Tragedy (2019).
William Mann.	Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haynes (1998).
William Mann.	Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood (2001).
Richard Meryman.	Mank: The Wit, World and Life of Herman J. Mankiewicz (1978)
David Niven.	The Moon’s a Balloon (1972).
David Niven.	Bring on the Empty Horses (1975).
Vito Russo.	The Celluloid Closet (1981).
Richard Schickel.	D. W. Griffith: An American Life (1984).
Anthony Slide.	Lost Gay Novels (2003).
Anthony Slide & Matthew Renoir	A Journey Through Film History (2025).
André Soares.	Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro.
Donald Spoto.	Laurence Olivier: A Biography (1992).
Jean Stein.	Edie: An American Biography (1982)
Susan Sontag.	Notes on Camp. The Partisan Review (1964).
David Thompson.	A Biographical Dictionary of Cinema (1975).
Michael Troyan.	Twentieth Century Fox (2017)
François Truffaut.	Truffaut/Hitchcock (1966).
Bob Woodward.	Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1986)

FICTION

                     

James M. Cain.	The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934).
James M. Cain.	Mildred Pierce (1941).
James M. Cain.	Double Indemnity (1936, 1943).
Raymond Chandler.	The Big Sleep (1939).
Raymond Chandler.	Farewell, My Lovely (1940).
Raymond Chandler.	The Long Goodbye (1953).
Joan Didion.	Play It As It Lays (1970).
Dominick Dunne.	An Inconvenient Woman (1990).
John Gregory Dunne.	True Confessions (1977).
Bret Easton Ellis	Less Than Zero (1984).
James Ellroy.	The Black Dahlia (1987) – L.A. Quartet.
James Ellroy.	The Big Nowhere (1988) – L.A. Quartet.
James Ellroy.	L.A. Confidential (1990) – L.A. Quartet.
James Ellroy.	White Jazz (1992) – L.A. Quartet.
John Fante.	Ask the Dust (1939).
F. Scott Fitzgerald.	The Last Tycoon: An Unfinished Novel (1941).
Gavin Lambert.	Inside Daisy Clover 1963).
Horace McCoy.	They Shoot Horses Don’t They?  (1935).
John Rechy.	City of the Night (1963)
Bud Schulberg.	What Makes Sammy Run?  (1941).
Michael Tolkin.	The Player (1988).
Gore Vidal.	Myra Breckenridge (1968).
Gore Vidal.	Myron (1974).
Gore Vidal.	Hollywood (1990).
Calder Willingham.	End as a Man (1957).
Evelyn Waugh.	The Loved One (1948).
Nathanael West.	The Day of the Locust (1939).