Movies where characters who are supposed to be straight actually seemed gay

A League of Their Own. Everybody.

Especially Lori Petty/Kit (who’s as single as it gets!)

Tony Randall -In every film he ever made.

[quote]In Moment By Moment Lily Tomlin and John Travolta were supposed to be a straight couple, but they both pinged too much to make it work

Lesbians don't "ping", they honk.

I’ve never heard of Moment By Moment. Now I will have to check it out. Lily can be convincing as straight, as can Travolta, even though his real life is a question mark. But, I can’t imagine them playing a couple.

Paul Lynde as the father in Bye Bye Birdie.

Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson in the iconic Valley Of The Dolls seemed more like a take-no-shit tough lesbian than a straight woman.

Even though she was straight, Mary Astor gave off a tough bull dyke vibe in some of her later movies

Barbara Stanwyck in many of her movies. Frilly and feminine she wasn't.

Loki—thread closed

Hugh Jackman - even though we all know he's all man......

Tom Cruise.

I always though Jane Russell came across as super butch, despite the sex kitten image

Touché

Yikes, that was directed at r2. This quarantine is fucking w me.

In the remake of the Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, the romance between Martin and Chessy was laughable. He seemed swishy even for a Brit and she was dykier than Julie Kavner.

Brokeback Mountain with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal

Most Keanu Reeves films, especially "Point Break".

Aren't both John Travolta and Keanu Reeves bi, not gay?

Every Tennessee Williams protagonist.

Anything with Robert Cummings as the male lead.

Sommersby. Now the thread is closed.

R12 - I heard that Jane Russell was a lesbian.

In Laura, Gene Tierney's admirers played by Clifton Webb and Vincent Price both seemed gay. The fact that Webb tries to kill her out of jealousy - twice - makes it even more unbelievable.

Bryan Singer’s X-MEN movies, especially X2: UNITED, were extremely gay-coded (though this was deliberate) under a veneer of heterocentric drama to remain acceptable to global audiences and market to a mainstream summer 2000s crowd.

Even so the homoerotic tension between Magneto & Prof. X, Cyclops & Wolverine, Wolverine & General Stryker, Beast & Archangel, Iceman & Pyro etc. dripped off the screen so obviously that even the straighties picked it up. Plus there was tell of beefcake randomly strolling around shirtless in the form of Colossus & Juggernaut. Nightcrawler was the only main male character who showed to physical attraction to another male (though he was fascinated by shapeshifting genderbender Mystique). The whole trilogy was an exercise in homosexually-charged edging with lashings of camp (Ian McKellen’s Magneto, to Rogue: “We LOVE what you’ve done with your hair...”)

On the negative flipside it was easy to forget Jean Grey, Rogue, Storm & Kitty Pryde were even in those movies at all.

Kay Ballard owns this thread.

Any film with moi.

Yes, R25. KayE Ballard: The Movie

I don't care what anyone else says - Eve Harrington in "All About Eve" was a big ole lesbian. Her "Big Mama" interaction with Phoebe in the final scene all but confirmed it for me.

Addison DeWitt was also another obvious gay character for me in that movie.

r4 All you need to know is that John Travolta's character was named "Strip." Seriously.

R27 = Priceless 😅

I remember seeing the film of Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and the young man who was supposed to be the supporting male lead and romantic interest to the female was the biggest queen I had ever seen on screen!! It was distracting he was so effeminate and mincing.

Paul W. Downs in Rough Night . He didn't seem believable as a straight guy engaged to Scarlett Johansson.

Kevin Kline in I Love You to Death. Pussy Hound? He seemed in love with Devo. Also his scene with Phoebe Cates -- no chemistry. He was believable to me as Cole Porter.

r23, and Dame Judith Anderson seemed pretty butch, too

In EVERY version of "Little Women" Jo seems like a baby dyke.

R28 is correct. I've heard the character was written that way and then most references were edited out.

Well, if you couldn't see the lesbian undertones in Fried Green Tomatoes, you had to be blind.

R35

If anything Gerwig/Ronan just made it somewhat more explicit. The biggest disappointment in the book was that Jo eventually marries a man.

Ellen Degeneres in Mr. Wrong

Can we include TV? Malcolm Gets in Caroline In The City

[quote]I remember seeing the film of Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and the young man who was supposed to be the supporting male lead and romantic interest to the female was the biggest queen I had ever seen on screen!! It was distracting he was so effeminate and mincing.

I didn't think that actor seemed effeminate at all, just very young and very British. I guess it's that old "gay or British?" thing.

Claude Rains was a GREAT actor, and he's great in CASABLANCA except that plot element of him trying to get young women to have sex with him through nefarious means really doesn't ring true, because he seems so prissy and gay.

The first POINT BREAK was overloaded with homoerotic tension between Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves.

TOP GUN: A film with characters named Goose, Slider and Maverick.

"Guys get your butts above the hard deck "

"I want somebody's butt, I want somebody's butt NOW!"

Another line in TOP GUN: Early on, when the new recruits are getting a lecture about the Top Gun program from their instructor, I think it's Barry Tubb who says to Rick Rossovich, "This is giving me a hard-on."

Ah yes, TG.

Hey R43 you're correct. I am R42.

Just like Maverick says, you can be my wingman.

Mulan

Richard Madden in Bodyguard TV show.

Thanks, R42/45. But to be completely accurate, I checked and the actual line is "This gives me a hard-on," and Barry says it to Whip Hubley (I think that's who that is), not Rick Rossovich. Val Kilmer and Rossovich are one of the "couples" in that movie :-)

R4 You can spare yourself the tedium of watching the whole film.

This 10-minute collection of clips pretty much summarizes the entire film. It never gets more compelling as both the characters and the story are dry as dust... and as sexless as a stick of gum.

Anything with Meg Foster but a special nod to A Different Story where she played a lesbian to Perry King's queen and they end up falling in love.

^ A lesbian falls in love with a gay man? Was that a Jada Pinkett Smith biopic?

Technically a TV show but the tension between Lex and Clark on Smallville was off the charts. I don't know if it was written that way intentionally or the actors just had chemistry but everytime they were together there was a quasi sexual subtext while Tom Welling s scenes with the Lana girl felt flat.

R49 Shit, how can you make a film with two charming charismatic people, and have it be as boring as that. Was Lily playing like her character was on quaaludes?( It was the 1970s)

R52, I was *just* about to bring up Smallville. I'd never seen gay energy overwhelming a show quite so much as it did that one.

Lex seemed like the college guy befriending the high school guy - always there with gifts and advice and always with the piercing eye contact. Clark was hot as hell but kinda slow and shy. Lex knew exactly what to do. It never stopped being sexual between them.

....but then Green Arrow showed up and paraded around shirtless, and Aquaman too. Black Canary at one point had to tell them "if you're done stroking each other...." LOL - it was that blatant.

Plus Clark was always having to "keep his secret" from everyone and Lana was lame as hell. They could have been a couple from season two onwards, but no - it was always much more dramatic than that for one reason or another.

Whenever Lex came up into the barn's loft to chat with Clark.... they'd both end up grinning. It was so gay.

And then there was DILF PA Kent....

R49 That clip was almost painful to watch. And Lily Tomlin runs the gamut of emotions from A to B, but doesn't even reach B. What mismatched leads!

But with matching hairstyles.

Duckie. Thread closed.

R54 Lana and Clark 'canonically' inevitably split up. It doesn't have to go that way, but she's generally defined as the highschool sweetheart that hits a dead end. Not sure if that dead end means dying like Gwen Stacy for Peter Parker, but Superman is the most boring comic stuff for me so I don't know.

R40 In this scene he took some time out on the ship before it arrived back in London!

In an excerpt from the documentary "The Celluloid Closet," Gore Vidal explains that Ben Hur and Messala were former lovers.

R60, I think I read an article about that. Gore Vidal was brought in to write or rewrite the script. He wrote it exactly as you stated, but nobody ever told Charlton Heston that Messala and Ben Hur were ex-lovers.

Ms. Pussy Galore from GOLDFINGER was written as a lesbian in the novel and the actress Honor Blackman butched it up for the film adaptation.

Clea DuVall in The Slaughter Rule

Clark had good chemistry with Lana and Lois. It's weird looking back how they had Lex trying to be friends with him when he was only 14 lol

But I'm glad Tom and Michael still hang out.

I just watched LATE NIGHT, I'd have to add Emma Thompson's character (Katherine) to this list.

Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect

Ashley Wilkes in "Gone with the Wind."

I can think on many cases in series, only on Ducky in movies. Like Chandler in Friends, Alan of Two and a half men, many characters of The Big Bag Theory. They seems forced to heterosexuality at the end.

[quote]I can think on many cases in series, only on Ducky in movies. Like Chandler in Friends, Alan of Two and a half men,

Sane actor played Ducky and Alan.

Mary S. Masterson in "Some Kind of Wonderful."

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne in “Bridesmaids.” It seemed like they really just wanted to fuck each other. Melissa McCarthy also played very butch lesbian but I guess that was the joke, that she was straight.

R66 and Brittany Snow.

Can Gigandet in Burlesque.

Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons

Danny Kaye in White Christmas

David in THE MARTIAN CHILD

John in MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

Julian in AMERICAN GIGOLO seemed bisexual.

Paul in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

R77 all but American Gigolo are based on books, and in the books those characters are either explicitly or implicitly gay (John in Midnight is the author, who, while he is not very publuc about it, is, I’m sure I’ve read gay IRL). Of course Eastwood directed Midnight, so he had to straighten it up. Interesting that Cusack played in both MC and Martian—not my first go-to for someone to play gay, though neither character is stereotypical in their gayness. I assume it was box office notCusack’s reticence that determined the decaying—back then, he wasn’t as if the rails as he seems to be today (his buddy Jeremy Piven on the other hand was always a jerk). As for BAT, I assume they felt the need to add a love story—the narrator in the novel seems Truman-like, but no real focus on his own sec or romantic life.

R73 I agree both Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow came off as lesbos in Pitch Perfect and that led to most of the online fanfics being lesbian relationship fics. Most of the straight pairings in those movies never really worked. Skylar Astin and Kendrick had zero chemistry, the pairing of Hailee Steinfeld and Ben Platt in part 2 was awful, and then there was the awful pairing of Brittany Snow and Matt Lanter in part 3.

R79 I know about the BeChloe fans. But maybe Anna and Brittany weren't interested in doing that. Or the studio said no. Either way it couldn't have hurt the film.

James Dean in Rebel