Young Man with a Horn (1950) Queer Film (B)

LESBIAN COUPLE DECEIVES THE HAYS OFFICE

DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz

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.

STREAMING: Amazon Prime and Apple TV+

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Written on the Wind (1956) Queer Film A- TheBrownees