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.
Read More
The best play to film adaptation of all-time, with two of the greatest performances: Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois and Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski.
Read More
Hitchcock reverses himself here, having gay actor Farley Granger play the straight character and straight actor Robert Walker play the gay character.
Read More
It’s Howard Hawks again, this time adapting the Jule Stein/Leo Robin Broadway smash “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”. With Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.
Read More
The Best Queer Song in the History of Cinema: Day’s spectacular delivery of the Sammy Fain-Paul Francis Webster masterpiece “Secret Love.”
Read More
The film blends neorealist observation with a nostalgic tone, supported by a lush Nino Rota score. Like Fellini’s later autobiographical work, it captures a vivid sense of time and place.
Read More
Stewart, Kelly, and Ritter are all magnificent. Kelly, looking radiant, gets to deliver one of the Big Screen’s all-time sexy lines.
Read More
A Western with two female leads is that rarest of cinematic jewels and, under Nicholas Ray’s direction, both Crawford and McCambridge play to the gallery.
Read More
Wood, Dean and Mineo form a nuclear family under the shadow of Griffith Park Observatory in Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece “Rebel Without a Cause.
Read More
“The Big Combo” features a gay couple (played by Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef) whose chosen profession also adds to their fascination and their sexiness.
Read More
Nancy Kelly is ON 100% of the time straddling the twin minefields of camp and drama yet managing to accomplish both simultaneously.
Read More
“Tea and Sympathy” has aged well. What could not be said under the Hayes code lends it beauty and delicacy, especially in Deborah’s sublime performance.
Read More
“Funny Face“, the 1957 musical romantic comedy directed by Stanley Donen, boasts Audrey Hepburn’s most charming screen performance.
Read More
Gazzara is electrifying in the lead, exuding a raw, unsettling sensuality. It remains one of the great curiosities of his career that only in his very next film, Anatomy of a Murder (1959), did he manage to recapture this level of charisma.
Read More
“Vertigo” is anchored by the unforgettable performances of Stewart and Novak, Hitchcock’s masterful direction and Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score.
Read More
Yes, that is Mercedes McCambridge as an unnamed lesbian gang leader getting her kicks while watching Janet Leigh getting roughed up in “A Touch of Evil.”
Read More
Director Morton DaCosta directs “Auntie Mame” as if he were still in the theatre. He did better on his penultimate visit to Hollywood (“The Music Man”).
Read More
Richard Brooks’ respectable adaptation of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” opens with Paul Newman mourning the suicide of his best friend (read Lover), Skipper.
Read More
The movie is risible, its few pleasures come from Hepburn’s regal (but very nasty) mother who will do anything to protect her son’s memory.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
Hudson’s characters has a gay alter ego named “Rex” and supporting actors Tony Randall and Nick Allen are constantly brushing off the gay ceiling.
Read More
If you believe Gore Vidal it was all because of a lover’s spat. Wyler and Boyd were in on the ruse, and Boyd played his scenes that way, but Heston was not.
Read More
“Compulsion.” Leopold and Loeb were lovers, and both Richard Murphy’s screenplay and Richard Fleischer’s direction lend the movie a queer subtext, evident in both dialogue and body language.
Read More
Eva Marie Saint gives Grace Kelly in “Rear Window” a run for her money as Hitchcock’s most elegant leading lady and the chemistry between the two leads is more palpable than in any Hollywood picture before or since.
Read More
The Kirk Douglas/Stanley Kubrick epic has not aged well but the supporting cast, particularly Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov, make it worth watching.
Read More
Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates made him immortal while, at the same, time, ending his career in Hollywood. A masterpiece.
Read More
They say that this film did more to sway public and political opinion on homosexuality in England than any parliamentary discussion.
Read More
Although he was playing a teenager, gay actor Murray Melvin was almost thirty when he made “A Taste of Honey” with Rita Tushingham.
Read More
Not having the courage of his convictions, what started out as bravery ended in cowardice and it’s a shame.
Read More