Series offers films with gay themes
Homosexuals have always played a creative role behind the scenes in Hollywood. But gay stories almost never made it to celluloid. Or did they?
On Monday, the Turner Classic Movies cable channel begins “Screened Out,” an ambitious series on how American movies from 1912 to 1970 dealt with homosexuality.
Forty-four films, ranging from rarely seen silent features to mainstream hits, will be shown starting at 5 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday nights throughout June (cable channel 501 in Spokane, 141 in Coeur d’Alene).
“What people don’t realize is that 77 years ago homosexual themes were considered viable enough to be part of mainstream entertainment,” says Richard Barrios, whose 2005 book “Screened Out” is the basis for the series. “I think it’s going to open a lot of eyes.”
But all that stopped in 1934 with the adoption of the Motion Picture Production Code, which set standards so strict that for 20 years thereafter movie married couples had to sleep in twin beds. Any open mention of homosexuality was forbidden.
“Screened Out” looks at films made both before and after the code, from early sound comedies featuring “sissy boys” (“Our Betters”) to decadent, gender-bending costume melodramas dripping with lurid sex and violence (Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Sign of the Cross”).
From the ‘50s there are social dramas like “Tea and Sympathy” that take a veiled approach to homosexuality (effeminate young men aren’t gay; they’re “sensitive”). The thaw that began in the late ‘60s is represented by movies like “The Fox” and “The Boys in the Band” that capitalized on new artistic freedom to unambiguously depict homosexuality.
It’s easy to see the potential for gay content in a movie like 1955’s “Women’s Prison.” But Garbo’s “Queen Christina”? “Gilda”? “The Maltese Falcon”? “Yeah, I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘What was gay about that movie?’ ” Barrios says. “And other people get it instantly. They’re like, ‘Ohhh, yeah.’ “
Making “Screened Out” special is the breadth of its material. Not content to recycle films in the Turner library, Barrios went looking for movies that are rarely seen today.
“We’re leading off with this silent movie from 1912, ‘Algie, the Miner,’ that we had to go to the Library of Congress to get,” he says.
“Algie” is a comedy about an effeminate tenderfoot who goes out West to make his fortune and win his girl. A running gag has him kissing crusty frontiersmen who help him. “The girl is the escape clause,” says Barrios, “something mainstream audiences could pick up on and so ignore the fact that Algie is very, very gay.”