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My Dark Role ModelsMay 05 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Gay characters play a central role in many pictures of Hollywood's golden age -- usually as psychopaths out to ruin the lives of straight characters. I discovered my queer sexuality as a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s, well before sympathetic gay characters became common in motion pictures. Today, there's Ellen DeGenneres in Ellen, Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Mathew Broderick in Torch Song Trilogy, and a host of other big-name performers and performances which might serve as more or less positive role models for young people exploring their sexual orientation. Things were different 30 years ago, when nearly all of the gay characters whom one encountered in old movies broadcast on TV were borderline psychopaths or worse. I list my "favorites" here in evidence of how much things have changed, as a source of insight into the cultural environment of a generation that is quickly passing from the scene, and -- to be frank and politically incorrect -- because they're a lot more fun than most of the well-intentioned gay characters that populate so many films today. Lauren Bacall in Young Man With a Horn (1950). In which Bacall plays the neurotic society-girl wife of Kirk Douglas, a trumpet-player on the way up. But the more he succeeds, the more she's doomed to fail, flunking her exams in psychiatry graduate school, looking at etchings with a Park Avenue Lesbian, turning her husband into an alcoholic and nearly ruining his life. In the end, wholesome Doris Day comes to the rescue. Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944). A frustrated, fussy old queen gives beautiful Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) her first big break, then engages with her in an obsessive friendship, becoming pathologically jealous of her boyfriends, ridiculing and making them small in her eyes - merely because they're "men." The smirk on Dana Andrew's face as Webb rises from his marble bath famously speaks volumes. Theodore von Eltz as Arthur Geiger in The Big Sleep (1946). The film was so muddled by censorship considerations that you really need the book to understand this character's significance. He's the bisexual proprietor of a pornographic lending library, who dabbles in blackmail and gets bumped off in his Hollywood Hills bungalow in the first reel. Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941). "Maybe you can get around him the way you got around that one in Istanbul." Barbara Stanwyck in A Walk on the Wild Side (1964). In which Miss Stanwyck is the Lesbian madame of a New Orleans brothel, keeping the lovely Capucine in her clutches by threatening to reveal to the poor girl's boyfriend and only hope for salvation what kind of filth she's been wallowing in as a member of the brothel staff. Gypsy Rose Lee in Screaming Mimi (1959). The famous stripper as another Lesbian madame, this time with designs on Anita Ekberg. Charles Laughton as Earl Janoth in The Big Clock (1948). This was remade in the 1980s as No Way Out with Gene Hackman in the Janoth role. In the book by Kenneth Fearing on which it's based, the climax of the argument that leads to the murder and sets the whole plot in motion is the accusation by Janoth's mistress (another Park Avenue Lesbian) that Janoth is in fact in love with his assistant, Steve Hagen. Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington and George Sanders as Addison de Witt in All About Eve (1950). "That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that, in itself, is probably the reason. You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also a contempt for humanity, an inability to love or be loved, insatiable ambition - and talent. We deserve each other."  |
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by Stephen_Murray
by carstairs38
by jankp
