The gayest movies from Hollywood''s golden era

Rebecca -- Hitchcock wanted to play up the dyke angle, Selznick nixed it. Trivia: Lesbian actress Alla Nazimova wanted the part of Mrs. Danvers really badly, but didn't get it. Can you imagine her doing the hand-up-the-nightie scene?

I love the scene where Mrs. Danvers fondles Rebecca's lingerie!

Giant - Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo and James Dean

"The Gay Divorcee"

Gilda

Queen Christina

Ben-Hur

The Young Man With A Horn - the Lauren Bacall/Kirk Douglas/Doris Day

A Walk On The Wild Side - Barbara Stanwyck/Laurence Harvey/Capucine/Jane Fonda

Reflections in a Golden Eye - Marlon Brando/Elizabeth Taylor/Brian Keith/Julie Harris/Robert Forster

and of course: Advice and Consent The Best Man The Children's Hour

Rebel Without A Cause. Sal Mineo is melting for James Dean the entire movie! He also has a picture of Alan Ladd in his locker at school. He intentionally played Plato as gay.

The Man Who Came To Dinner - so screamingly gay it spits tinsel.

Mame (not the Lucille Ball disaster)

Lucille Ball's MAME is most certainly not a disaster viewed through the prism of time. It was the casualty of an anti-musical backlash in the early 70s when a raw, cinema verite style was championed. MAME has now become a tv holiday favorite and perennial at Christmas.

[quote]Lucille Ball's MAME is most certainly not a disaster viewed through the prism of time. Yes it is. Stop trying to polish this turd and pass it off a gemstone. We know you love Lucy and we know you love musicals: that doesn't change the fact IT'S STILL A TURD.

The French Line %0D %0D Spartacus%0D %0D Lawrence of Arabia%0D %0D %0D %0D %0D

Lawrence of Arabia is pretty damn gay. The scene with Jose Ferrer is jaw-dropping

It's strange that actors as epicine as Clifton Webb and Vincent Price were big stars; Webb was even considered a top box office draw.

This would never, ever happened today.

"Sitting Pretty" - the movie that was the basis for that 80's sitcom, Mr. Belvedere. Clifton Webb as the queeniest "strait" priss-pot, gossip-monger, yoga-loving, expert fighter, man-about-town.%0D %0D "North by Northwest" - were any of the 3 or 4 leading male characters in that movie supposed to be heterosexual? The entire plot was gay men chasing a gay man - around bars, pretty living rooms, even an antique auction.

[quote]MAME has now become a tv holiday favorite and perennial at Christmas.

On what planet?

"Lucille Ball's MAME is most certainly not a disaster viewed through the prism of time."

If you compare it to Chernobyl, you might have a point.

Any of the Dean Martin/ Jerry Lewis movies. They now play as a top and bottom couple. They always give Dean the obligatory love interest, while Jerry caterwauls and cries like a jilted yenta.

I don't think OP means what movies have the most gays IN them, but I'll add:%0D %0D Cabin In the Sky with Ethel Waters and Lena Horne.

[quote]It's strange that actors as epicine as Clifton Webb and Vincent Price were big stars

Epicine? Oh dear.

Gilda's pretty amazing. Glenn Ford's relationship with his boss is blatantly romantic. Why didn't the censors catch it? In All About Eve the budding relationship between Eve and Phoebe suggests sex. In fact Anne Baxter seems dykey throughout -- an attitude that makes her pursuit of Bill and Lloyd more interesting than on paper. It's great that she ends up with Addison; they seem like perfect beards. Mankiewicz would have known many similar couples on Broadway, such as Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McLintock, Lunt and Fontanne, Talullah Bankhead and John Emory, Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle (though only he was gay).

Sorry. I made some spelling errors: Guthrie McClintock and John Emery are correct. I should have checked first.

Interesting thread with so many different interpretations of "gayest" movies.%0D %0D Howard Hawks' early comedies like Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire....it's hard for me to believe Hawks wasn't gay. %0D %0D Not that there's anything gay in sexual content, it's just the campy repartee. Straight men are usually not that kind of witty.%0D %0D OMG!!! And Hawks later directed the uber-gay Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!

The Women%0D %0D Some Like It Hot%0D %0D Duh!

Hello - Calamity Jane

"Strangers on a Train"

The shot of Tony Curtis' wet ass showing naked and perfect through his wet pants as he rises from the bathtub in "Some Like It Hot" provided one of those moments of my childhood in which I not only knew I was gay, but I knew what it meant.

What has that got to with "Strangers on a Train"????

[quote]"Lucille Ball's MAME is most certainly not a disaster viewed through the prism of time."%0D %0D The prism of time? Is that what they call that crap they smeared all the lenses with?

Johnny Eager (1942) - Van Heflin won a Supporting Actor Oscar playing gangster Robert Taylor's best friend, a Shakespeare-spouting alcoholic who's clearly in love with Taylor; indeed, the final scene in the movie practically confirms it.%0D %0D Body and Soul (1947) - To celebrate his success in boxing, John Garfield throws a party in his new high-rise apartment; his manager (Lloyd Gough) arrives and, nodding at Lilli Palmer, asks Garfield "Who's that?" Garfield: "Oh, her? She's with me." Garfield nods at the hunky guy who has come with Gough and asks, "Who's that?" Gough responds: "He's with me." Garfield and Gough give each other knowing looks.

Did you know that Glenn Ford was a Judy fan?

That movie with Joan Crawford in Tropical Makeup #4 "singing" Two-Faced Woman.

Fan R29? They dated, he banged her.

We should define that you mean explicitly "gay"--as in having gay characters/subtext, as opposed to just being "camp."

Most of Joan Crawford's late career work is camp, but JOHNNY GUITAR is the one with a very specifically gay and lesbian relationships and longings subtextual from some of the characters (Turkey, Emma).

[quote]Did you know that Glenn Ford was a Judy fan?

In the early 1960s, Judy assumed that Glenn Ford would be her next husband. He didn't propose.

Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington only seemed dykey because she was evil.

Casablanca - It's obvious that the real couple are Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart.

Mae West films, specifically her debut in SHE DONE HIM WRONG. This was a watered-down version of her bawdy New York hit, DIAMOND LIL, with 40-year-old Mae as "Lady Lou" (rather than the illicit Lil.)

A risque melodrama with a female drag queen who gets young Cary Grant in the end. It was shocking enough to have been instrumental in the formation of The National Legion of Decency, an organization dedicated to the suppression of smut in public culture.

I think Glenn Ford also beat Judy.%0D %0D And how gay is this scene from "Red River"?

"In the early 1960s, Judy assumed that Glenn Ford would be her next husband."%0D %0D Another gay almost husband.

Anything directed by Josh Logan.

The big sky - Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin are so gay.

The "Celluloid Closet" has an impressive list (includes most of the movies posted).

R33, there are many indications that Eve is gay. %0D %0D At the party, Margo basically calls her as much when she says that 'Eve would like to take me up to bed' or something like that. %0D %0D Eve is seen making a phone call at her boarding house and when done, she goes upstairs with her arm around the waist of a female 'roommate'. %0D %0D Her easy acceptance and invitation to Phoebe to stay at her place at the end.

r22 may have a point. Hawks often had a cute young guy in the mix too - Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo, young James Caan in El Dorado - Dewey Martin in Land of the Pharoahs, as well as the ubercamp Joan Collins with the ruby in her navel. He also discoved Bacall and created that persona for her, as he did with Monroe in Monkey Business and the one with Jane Russell.

Adams Rib is screamingly gay too for a Hepburn Tracy film, with very gay (or so it seems) David Wayne living next door.

Rope is really gay

"My Bodyguard". Little Chris Makepeace wants a big, strong bf.

Let's not again debate whether All About Eve -- Eve and Addison were gay -- they were. All of the subtle stuff meant a lot in 1950.

[quote]MAME has now become a tv holiday favorite and perennial at Christmas.

In what country is this taking place? I haven't seen it listed on Christmas TV in years.

,

Hitchcock's Rope.

Trapeze. Curtis and Lancaster had to hold back mowing down Lollobrigida to get at each other.

I think Lancaster and Curtis had an affair during "Trapeze" and "The Sweet Smell of Success", which is even more homoerotic. In TSSOS the two men have an obviously dom/sub relationship! And most of Lancaster's films with Kirk Douglas seem homoerotic, the film is always about the love or love/hate between the two men.

Which brings me to... Douglas's "Spartacus", which has got to be the most bisexual film ever made. Baddie Crassus lusts after both Tony Curtis and Jean Simmons, and both Simmons and Curtis fall deeply in love with Spartacus himself. He definitely sleeps with Simmons, as she gets preggers, but how could he not sleep with the willing Curtis as well. Spartacus has been kept in all-male environments formost of his life, he's got to know his way around a prostate gland.

Now that I mention it, "The Sweet Smell of Success" has got to be THE most homoerotic film of the studio era. There's a hint of a heterosexual romance just to throw the slow-witted off the track, but for most of the film stars Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster engage in Dom/Sug games. Curtis is so eager to please Lancaster that he's practically fellating him, or begging to.

Excellent film, especially for fans of the homoerotic. Check it out.

Mame with Rosalind Russell. If Ito was any gayer, the screen would have gone rainbow.

[quote]Mame with Rosalind Russell.

"Mame" on film starred Lucille Ball. Rosalind Russell starred in "Auntie Mame."

"White Christmas"

"Easter Parade"

The Man Who Came to DInner is on right now.

Whiteside calls Maggie a Sappho.

What about the Jewiest Hollywood movie? Start that thread.

[quote]Casablanca - It's obvious that the real couple are Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart.

I might need to rewatch Notorious, but I kind of got the impression Cary Grant's agent got Rains's character a little hot and bothered was well (but it was not mutual). Rains had to be the most sympathetic Nazi ever. His mother makes Mrs. Danvers seem like Little Mary Sunshine.

North by Northwest - the Martin Landau character carries a torch for his boss Vandamm (James Mason), and so wants to get rid of the fish (Eva Marie Saint) that stands between them.

Between marriages. Glenn Ford was a popular escort for unattached females in Hollywood a la Cesar Romero.

"I might need to rewatch Notorious,"

Always a great idea! This time notice how Hitchcock uses ultra fast fade-outs instead of cuts to show Grant falling for Bergman.

So many wonderful moments in this film.

HELLO DOLLY

The scene at the restaurant with the dancing prancing waiters all so eXcited because Dolly Levi is coming: Jesus H. Christ. Too gay, even for me !

[quote]Howard Hawks' early comedies like Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, [bold]The Lady Eve[/bold] and Ball of Fire....[/quote]

Hawks was a great screwball director, r22, but Preston Sturges wrote and directed The Lady Eve. Sorry this eccentric genius didn't have a longer career.

James Whale's The Old Dark House. Prissy Ernest Thesiger's first line: "My name is Femm".

"It Happened at the Baths"

"Johnny Flamer"

"Buttsex Finds Andy Hardy"

Hello, Dolly! is not from Hollywood's Golden Era.

[quote]Rebecca -- Hitchcock wanted to play up the dyke angle, Selznick nixed it.

But Hitchcock did cast Judith Anderson, and she was rumored to be a lesbian.

I love Hitchcock films, but his villains are all too often homosexual or sexually ambiguous. The Lodger, Murder!, Rope, Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, Bruno in Strangers on a Train, Leonard in N×NW, Norman in Psycho, etc. Not right.

The Bride of Frankenstein

Johnny Guitar

How has no one mentioned Cat on a Hot Tin Roof yet???

[quote]Ben-Hur

As Gore Vidal says in the DVD documentary, he re-wrote the script to insert a gay subtext between Charlton Heston & Stephen Boyd.

Good comment r22, Hawks later always had a pretty boy in his movies, with the older guys - Ricky Nelson at his prettiest in Rio Bravo, or young James Caan in El Dorado. - then theres that number "Aint there anyone here for love" with Jane Russell and the muscle boys in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which Jack Cole made the campest thing ever.

One one even say Hawks perfected the Monroe persona in both Monkey Business and Blondes ....

[quote]Lawrence of Arabia is pretty damn gay. The scene with Jose Ferrer is jaw-dropping

What happens in the scene?

Does Jose Ferrer fondle Peter O'Toole?

It's been a few years since I've seen it.

[quote]Rebecca -- Hitchcock wanted to play up the dyke angle, Selznick nixed it. [quote]But Hitchcock did cast Judith Anderson, and she was rumored to be a lesbian.

Selznick might have nixed all that Hitchcock wanted, but there was definitely a lesbian overtone in the movie.

Bump

The Wizard of Oz

Howard Hughes' The Outlaw is just about the gayest film I have ever seen and I am an eldergay. The film was delayed for over two years after shooting allegedly due to censorship reasons over Jane Russell's cleavage but the real issue with the censors had to have been the blatantly implied relationship between the two older leads and ' Billy the Kid:

Eldergays Sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) and Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) are both in lust with young straight trade Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel). Billy wants the luscious Russell but knows the score and knows on which side his bread is buttered and plays the two older queers against each other. It all ends badly with lots of shots of Russell's breasts.

It really has to be seen to be believed.

Good comments about Hawks, r 22 and r72. Hawks was also the original director of The Outlaw (see above) but quit after two weeks of shooting because of interference from producer Howard Hughes, who took over the direction himself.

Hollywood rumor has said for years that Hughes was bi and was having an affair with Jack Beutel, who played Billy the Kid, during the production of The Outlaw.

Cant believe it took til R76 to mention the extremely gay Wizard of Oz. The Cowardly Lion alone....

Great thread, some very insightful comments here.

Not a Hollywood movie, but in a 1956 Russian musical comedy 'Carnival Night' there are at least four male-to-male kisses (in a 70-minute long movie). They are mostly played for the laughs but it's obvious the director had some weird obsession with men kissing.

Here's another kiss from Carnival Night:

Any movie with Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, David Wayne, or Clifton Webb, is automaticallly a kaleidoscope of flying pink purses & glitter.

Interesting someone upthread mentioned CASABLANCA.

Several characters ping: Sam, Ugarte, the Russian bartender & Carl, the German waiter.

Not to mention Renard "If I were a woman I would be in love with Rick" or something like that - and the final scene with him and Rick walking off together in the fog.

R85 they were off into the fog on the way to fight the Nazis in the Belgian Congo. Had they been going to Ibiza or Mykonos instead, well....

Adding MIDNIGHT COWBOY although I think thats after what would be considered Hollywoods Golden Age.

Johnny Guitar....Oh wait, is this only for male homosexuality...? No, because All About eve is all over this thread, as I would expect.

WAY OUT WEST 1930- Billy Haines (most of his films, he is rather fey, but this one is the one where he plays the over the top carnival barker).

[italic]The Reluctant Dragon[/italic]

Many films from 1930-33 when the Hays code took effect; it was known as the Pansy craze. Good times.

[italic]Ferdinand the Bull[/italic], if you want to count short subjects.

Sidney Shore: A Girl's Best Friend (1981)

Not Golden Era, but this one merits a mention.

Desert Fury--the mother/daughter pair is barely concealed couple and John Hodiak/Wendell Corey are the other barely concealed couple.

Then there's No Business like Show Business--along with all the campy numbers, Ethel Merman, Mitzi Gaynor and Marilyn Monroe unbelievably paired with Donald O'Connor, there's also the barely closeted Johnny Ray, who while walking in the park at night has an epiphany--he's going to be a priest!

I can't believe it took 94 messages to get to Desert Fury. The DL is slipping.

Yes, Desert Fury is tres gay.

Don't forget Fante and Mingo in The Big Combo.

Doris Day really butches it up in Calamity Jane. A "secret love" indeed!

Send Me No Flowers (1964). Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, Doris Day, Paul Lynde

The Clara Bow precode Call Her Savage is pretty great, and it doesn't get much gayer than this scene.

Did anyone mention the male nurse in the rehab clinic in "Lost Weekend?" I forget the name of the actor, but he seems campy, tells Ray Milland that the drunk patients will put on a floor show. And the nurse's name is Bim or Bimbo. In the novel "Lost Weekend," the author cops to same-sex feelings.

"Billy Haines's Fifty-Times-Making-Whoopee Weekend."

Wisecracking leading man William Haines makes whoopee with fifty brawny sailors over one weekend in Joan Crawford's Brentwood house, which he then completely re-decorates.

[quote] What happens in the scene? Does Jose Ferrer fondle Peter O'Toole? It's been a few years since I've seen it.

They whisper secrets into each other's ears, Rose.