FILM

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Queering Classic Hollywood: Girls are a Girl’s Best Friend

There is a practical (if not exactly admirable) logic to “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Even though the song justifies a stereotypical gold-digger mentality, there is truth to its lessons. There have…

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Queering My Fair Lady: Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man

If “maiden aunts” are often read as lesbian in heteronormative films, then “lifelong bachelors” are equally decipherable but rarely explored as queer. Two of the most delightful examples of aging bachelor bonding are Professor Henry…

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Queering Classic Hollywood: Lesbianism and the Western - The Case of “Johnny Guitar”

It’s not difficult to see the gay overtones of classic Hollywood Westerns, with their characteristic tropes of tough men together in the wilderness and male-male rivalries so intense they seem like love…or at least lust. The genre can be an…

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Queering Classic Hollywood: Why Ned Drinks - Lew Ayres in “Holiday”

One of my favorite characters from a Classic Hollywood romantic comedy is Lew Ayre’s Ned Seton in Holiday (1938). The film is directed by George Cukor, the gay son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants and nicknamed a “woman’s director,”…

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Queering Classic Hollywood: Gay Hitmen - Fante and Mingo in “The Big Combo”

One of my favorite B noir films is The Big Combo (1955). Like Gun Crazy, released by the same director five years earlier, The Big Combo offers a non-stop explosion of violence and corruption, leaving the viewer feeling more than a little soiled…

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Queering Classic Hollywood: Why We Love Mrs. Danvers

During a recent live tweet of Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), I was amazed by the outpouring of adoration for Mrs. Danvers. “Always upvote Team Danvers,” one person tweeted, and the hashtag #teamdanvers appeared. This hashtag has been taken over…

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Queering Classic Hollywood: The Allure of Queer Romance in “Sylvia Scarlett”

When “queerness” isn’t an umbrella term for LGBT, its meaning is best found in spaces and images that resist binary thinking about sexuality. Queerness rejects both the hetero vs. homo opposition and bisexuality, which imply that there are…