American Queer Cinema in the '50s and '60s
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video, I take a look at some iconic gay and lesbian characters in midcentury Hollywood films (Young Man With a Horn, Tea and Sympathy, and The Children's Hour) and explain how their stories reflected the ways society dealt with queer people during the time of their release.
This was my final project for my US 1950s & 1960s History class (HI 338)!
0:00 Intro: All About Eve
2:09 Queer cinema until 1950
4:13 The Fifties
6:04 Intellectual Gays: Young Man With a Horn
12:20 Cured Gays: Tea and Sympathy
18:47 The Sixties
20:30 Tragic Gays: The Children's Hour
27:10 Conclusion: Be Kind
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website: www.linabarclay.com/
letterboxd: letterboxd.com/linaoutofspace/
twitter: @catherinelise
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clips from:
All About Eve (1950) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
An Affair to Remember (1957) dir. Leo McCarey
Calamity Jane (1953) dir. David Butler
Johnny Guitar (1954) dir. Nicholas Ray
Morocco (1930) dir. Josef von Sternberg
Night of the Iguana (1964) dir. John Huston
Portrait of Jason (1967) dir. Shirley Clarke
Queen Christina (1933) dir. Rouben Mamoulian
Strangers on a Train (1951) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Suddenly, Last Summer (1949) dir. Joseph L Mankiewicz
Tea and Sympathy (1956) dir. Vincente Minnelli
The Celluloid Closet (1996) dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
The Children's Hour (1961) dir. William Wyler
Walk on the Wild Side (1962) dir. Edward Dmytryk
Young Man with a Horn (1950) dir. Michael Curtiz
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sources:
• “A Code to Govern the Making of Motion and Talking Pictures.” Motion Picture Association of America. 1948. digitalcollections.oscars.org....
• “PERVERTS CALLED GOVERNMENT PERIL.” The New York Times (New York, NY), April 19, 1950. timesmachine.nytimes.com/time....
• Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. New York: Harper & Row, 1995.
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music:
• Backed Vibes Clean by Kevin MacLeod (Free Music Archive, CC BY)
• The Urban Gentry by Beat Mekanik (Free Music Archive, CC BY)
• Americana by Mr Smith (Free Music Archive, CC BY)
• Ahmad by William Ross Chernoff's Nomads (Free Music Archive, CC BY)
- - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
When I first watched The Children's Hour, I somehow didn't expect to resonate with Martha's suppression of queerness as I did. I grew up quite closeted for a short time and a lot of her sentiments of feeling disgusting for liking someone resonated with my own. I feel like a queer person had a hand in writing Martha because it speaks deeply to our complex journey in understanding ourselves, especially when we come to the chilling realization that we're not like the others. Fantastic video, by the way! I'm happy TH-cam introduced me to this video essay. Queer cinema in the 50s and 60s is an interesting subject to tackle.
I’m old and have seen The Children’s Hour several times over the decades. It reminds me and us of how bad the past was. I’m straight. I wish Martha hadn’t killed herself. Even in the early Sixties, people knew that there were places (NYC and other big cities) where gays were accepted, to some extent. Not enough, of course, and in seven years, Stonewall would erupt. The play and 1962 movie could’ve let Martha live and seek a more cosmopolitan environment. Of course, Hollywood demanded that lesbians and gay men be punished, hence the suicide.
Also integral to the film is how gossip and lies can ruin lives. And how a young psychopath should’ve been nipped in the bud, as in The Bad Seed.
amazing video. it made me realise that we have a lot to learn about queer cinema in the 50s and 60s. i watched The Children's Hour for the first time back in may and it really affected me and made me think about the struggles of queer people throughout our history. i loved this video!
You did an excellent presentation with this video. TY for sharing it. This might open people's eyes to how much times have changed. God Bless You & stay safe.
FABULOUS essay, please do more!
this is a great video! next time can you turn the background music down a bit? :) a bit of a senses overload at the beginning
love the video lina, great breakdown as per usual!
Really enjoyed this video.
Very informative 👏
Yoo this is such a good video essay 😭😭😭
great vid as always!!!
In Young Man with a Horn, I think Amy’s root problem is an inability to be satisfied with anything. (Also, she lacks moral constraints.) She tries many different things, gets bored, and gives them up: piano, her degree, her marriage. The lesbian relationship is just her desperately seeking something to be passionate about, and finally expanding her search outside of men. It’s not supposed to be a good thing, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be the key to her character, either.
Agreed! I think this is the case for most queer-coded characters during this time - their coded alternative sexualities only help to supplement their primary character flaws/struggles. (Eve Harrington is another great example of this.) You hit the nail on the head with Amy’s characterization. I talked solely about her queerness in this video (as opposed to mentioning her primary issues throughout the film) to keep my argument focused.
Very interesting ,really well done
Be Kind Rewind has many children, I see.
You got me… I’m obsessed with her LOL
@@LinaBarclayYou did great all on your OWN!! We are all inspired by someone.
Very well done!
Years from now, when you talk about how Lina Barclay pronounced "mores" ... and you will ... be kind
LOL
Years from now, when you talk about Lina's obsession with the commies, be kinder.
Nice job. The only quibble I have is that Eve Harrington is punished for her evil actions, not her attractions. She willingly works to wreck two relationships to further her career.
Advise and Consent would have been a good movie for this analysis. Perhaps in future.
Also the film adaptation of Mary McCarthy's The Group.
Just re- watched Advise and Consent on DVD yesterday. Long time since I last watched it!
What films have the most violence against "queers"?
One example is Walk on the Wild Side (1962). And, of course, Suddenly, Last Summer, which depicts a gay man literally being eaten by his prey.
Almost any movie featuring Nazis, their oppressions and their concentration camps
I realize this is a mini-doc, but it's weird that the two most important US queer film statements aren't here: The Strange One and Advise and Consent.
So refreshing to see a discussion of people with same-sex attractions without a discussion of calabai!
The joke is on heterosexuality in "Tea and Sympathy." The scene where the headmaster and the boys frolic and climb over each other on the beach is as homoerotic as you could get at the time, and it had to be deliberate. The stage play the movie is adapted from made Tom Lee more likely gay.
"The Children's Hour" is not about lesbianism; it's about the destruction caused by hate and lies and misunderstanding. The 1961 movie is actually very honest in its cluelessness about the subject and how ill-equipped people were to deal with it at the time. Both stars have said they never discussed lesbianism, nor did William Wyler discuss it with them, during filming. The movie doesn't even reject lesbianism: not only is Karen not repulsed by Martha's confession, she asks Martha to come with her "to begin again."
The Shirley MacLaine interview where she talks about that in the Celluloid Closet was surprising to me! I definitely understand how the driving force for the conflict is the idea of the devastating impacts of gossip and deceit. That said, even though Wyler, Hepburn, and MacLaine claim to have not known what they were doing in terms of tackling lesbianism, I personally think that Martha’s struggle with sexuality feels very authentic - so much so that it opens the film up to queerer readings.
(Also, even though I know Shirley MacLaine said in the Celluloid Closet and other places that she didn’t know what she was doing, she did say this about playing Martha in a 1976 interview, which I appreciated: “Lillian Hellman hadn't just fallen out of her tree when she wrote The Children's Hour in the early Thirties. She had experienced a lot of it herself. In the play, scenes were developed so that you could see Martha falling in love with Karen and realizing why she was jealous of Karen's boyfriend... but when Wyler put it on the screen he cut those scenes out. He thought they would be too much for middle America to take. I thought he was wrong, and I told him so, and Audrey Hepburn was right behind me. But he was the director, and there was nothing we could do. Even so, I conceived my part as though those scenes were still there. I didn't want it to suddenly just hit her when the child tells the lie that maybe she could really be a lesbian and therefore she felt sick and dirty. Lillian had written a slow examination of one woman's personal growth in the area of falling in love with another woman. But Willie Wyler didn't want that, and that's why the story didn't work on film.”)
Thank you for noting the importance of considering the behind-the-scenes contexts of how these stories make it to the big screen!
Gay people always fit in ( in their own community) !
The truly gay character in Tea and Sympathy was undoubtedly Bill Reynolds. Leif Erickson was the classic "Coach" or "Daddy" archetype, lusted on by many queers when Coach/Daddy types became a huge part of the Bear scene starting in the '80s, but still prominent today. Not for nothing did gay director Vincente Minnelli choose Leif Erickson to play this role.
The Gay Daddy/coach/bear archetype still prominent today? You mean like Coach Sandusky at Penn State? Or former wrestling coach/Speaker of the U. S. House of Reps. Dennis Hastert?
I wanted to watch this, but the background music was distracting and annoying. It seems like TH-camrs think that people can’t listen to dialog without musical accompaniment.
Yes I didn't understand what the children's hour was about it showed one of the teachers hung herself. I got the message of taking your own life because you didn't fit in. Of which came through quite clearly.
Love MacLaine's reading of the reveal line on her true feelings towards Karen: "I feel so damn sick and dirty!"
But what about all the movies that cleverly got around the Hays code? One scene in Spartacus especially. I also think your understanding of these films are too onesided. The fact Audrey Hepburn's character turned her back to everyone at the funeral and walked away, and that is how the film ended, suggest to me she blamed the others for her friend choosing to end her life. How a film ends is quite significant to how it is meant to be interpreted. Had the point been to show Martha made the right choice by taking her life - suicide, by the way, where just as bad for a family's reputation as homosexuality - there wouldn't have been a point to the funeral scene, would there? And certainly not to having Karen turn her back on them and walk away - alone. Even the Deborah Kerr film, and the Lauren Bacall one. To me the point of the Deborah Kerr film, from the impression I formed myself, that the righter and/or director meant to illustrate that homosexuals could be sporty jock types, and that hobbies and interests didn't define sexuality. The fact that Kerr's character longed to be touched by her husband, while he preferred the company of men, more suggests he was a married gay man, with a lover called Dean, and she knew about it. I think this movie was not mainly about homosexuality, but was meant to defend and explain divorce, and the gay husband was chosen so the viewers more easily should accept the heroine divorcing her husband. Divorce was pretty controvercial long into the 70s. Kramer vs Kramer is really the first film to address the subject in depth. Divorce was a luxery few women could afford - unless they were rich movie stars - in most of the 50s and 60s. And if they were catholic it was absolutely forbidden in the eyes of the church.
I think your interpretation is a little too narrow, just looking at the gay characters and how they are portrayed. Then you miss the full picture, and the fact there was other aspects in society that was tabu and difficult to address because of restrictions and the general opinion. I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the first draft of the script, Deborah Kerr's character and the perceived gay character genuinely fell in love, but because an grown woman divorcing her husband cause she had found love with a younger man was way too risky commercially, that had to be changed. I can't see the point of having the young man in the story at all, unless that was how he initially got there.
What the writers write can be changed by directors, producers, actors or studios. Therefore we should always have in mind that a movie can attempt to tell more than one story, or more than one version of a story, at the same time. Depending on whether the writer, director, producer, studio or combinations of two or more of them have influenced the end product more.
I’m with you here! The main reason why I’m so one-sided in my analysis is the nature of the assignment I was making the video for: a maximum 15 page and 30 minute history class video essay that had to choose and stick to a specific historical argument using materials from class. This was just the most efficient argument to choose within those constraints. With infinite time and pages, I would have loved to include a lot more examples (like Spartacus - I love that scene!) to make a more nuanced argument.
I did try to mention the fact that Karen walks away at the end makes the film sympathetic to Martha’s struggle, and yes, definitely antagonizes the people in her community who made Martha’s life unbearable. (The Children’s Hour and its adaptations deserves an entire video on its own…)
Your interpretation of Tea and Sympathy as a movie about divorce is really interesting! I hadn’t thought about that. I mostly based my argument on Vito Russo’s interpretation and Robert Anderson’s publicly-stated intentions about the message of his play because they supported my argument about queerness being depicted in Hollywood as a curable disease. (Also, I wanted to discuss a Deborah Kerr movie… had it not been for her, I might have picked a different film.) Back to your point about divorce, the film ending of Tea and Sympathy was actually changed from the play version. In the original theater production, the show ended after the scene in the woods and there was no epilogue explaining that Deborah Kerr and her husband divorced. That divorce epilogue was only added to the film because the Catholic National Legion of Decency (I believe? Correct me if I’m wrong) insisted that Deborah Kerr’s character must have repercussions for cheating on her husband. In a way, this change actually works against your point, which would be interesting to explore!
But overall, totally agree with what you’re saying here.
@@LinaBarclay Thank you for a most enlightening reply. This being an asignment with the constraints you mentioned explains perfectly why I found room for alternative interpretations. People in the 50s clearly didn't see the world as we do today. That a divorce from a gay man should be seen as a repercussion is certainly not how it would be seen today. It also illustrate how little control of their own lives women had back then. Very few of them worked, they usually stayed home and cooked and cleaned for their husbands and children. Should their husband be unfaithful there was little they could do about it. Divorce was a scandal, and besides they were dependent of their husbands both financially and socially. The Mrs and her new surname - her husband's - being her public identity, and only social standing and security in life. So I can understand why divorce would have been seen as a repercussion for her. Why her "unfaithfulness" should be worse than her husband marrying her under false pretences, and at least in spirit being unfaithful to her by prefering to be around young men, is harder to understand. Without knowing it the censorers changed my interpretation of the movie to their disfavor. By having Kerr's character divorce her gay husband, they sent me the messages that straight marriages are not for everyone, and if people are forced into such, it will not work, but end in misery for both parties - even divorce. Quite frankly I think much of that movie could have been re-made today, and formed an excellent tale of the dangers of toxic masculinity and people not being allowed, or confident enough, to be themselves. She finding true love with the young man wrongly perceived as gay, and her husband finding what he needs - whether love or sex - from the men he prefers over her company.
@@Tvjunkieful12 Totally. It’s so interesting to consider how the messaging in a film meant for one generation (that grew up learning about these identities and social dynamics in the context of domestic containment) can be automatically interpreted in a completely different way by an audience that grew up questioning those exclusive social norms. I think a modern remake of Tea and Sympathy with this perspective in the hands of Todd Haynes or someone similar would be super exciting! If only Deborah Kerr were still alive to finally break out of her sexually repressed character mold…
Thank you for sharing your thinking on this!
@@LinaBarclay Excluding social norms, I think I would have labelled them. It is tragic really that humans don't realize life would have been so much better and peaceful if we all learned to respect other people, and that we cannot respect other people without respecting they have a right to live their life as they want. Whether a religious belief, their sexuality, choices of food, taste in music and everything else. At the core there are two types of people in the world those who are guided by what they feel is the right thing to do or say. And those who support anyone or anything that is benefitial to themselves in some way - even if it should be wrong or even illegal. That is why progress takes so long - too many people feel they benefit more from the status quo. And why movies and popular culture are so important. Cause by appealing to those guided by doing what is right, when they are moved and convinced by the characters and stories pushing ideas questioning the present order, more of those in the personal benefit group will experience it benefitial to support those ideas too.
@@LinaBarclay
I'm guessing you haven't seen Casino Royale (1967).
"Doodle me, Jimmy."
In neither the comments nor the documentary, could I find any remark a propos the sexual allusion in the film title 'Young Man With A Horn'. In 50s and 60s Australian English at least, a 'horn', especially in this context, referred to an erect penis.
You have an obsession with the word queer.
I watched Tea and Sympathy twice and it's so brutal the way Tom was always crucified just for being a non-conventional straight man and how his father despises his personality.
‘’Tea and Sympathy” has the sickest outcome that I have ever seen on screen and Deborah Kerr comes across as phoney.
I feel so naive! “All About Eve” is one of my favorite films, yet Eve’s possible lesbianism never occurred to me. I always assumed that Eve was a malignant narcissist who wished to become the next Margo Channing. If anything, Eve seemed to want to obliterate Margo. Love was the farthest thing from what Eve seemed to feel toward Margo. While Eve may indeed have been queer, loving Margo still doesn’t quite compute for me.
I don't see codified lesbianism in All About Eve.
Because you don't have the eye for it
I don't see it either.
The putrid 1950's- great for anything heterosexual- anything outside of those ripples were hounded down to a sunless world. Utterly despicable. 🇺🇲☄️. Stand Vigilant, the current Maga world would repeat itself without hesitation if given half a chance.
50s was one of the gayest period in our history
@user-qq6rr2je4q oh shut up...all periods in American history were GAY ..HELLO ?
Hollywood and the music industry played a big role in the fraying of the moral tapestry of society. Sadly, now it's beyond repair.
It happened way before Hollywood and the Music industry.
When the first white people landed in America and the first people brought here in chains, the fabric of this country was sadly beyond repair.
The moral tapestry of the religious people in this country was frayed long before a movie was ever made.
So all the gay founding fathers and presidents had nothing to do with it?
@@user-qq6rr2je4q WTF.. where did that come from?
“All the Gay”?😵💫
Considering the wagon perversion and debauchery that is prevalent in the modern Era. The sensors and anti communists did not go far enough in the fifties .
You can't legislate morality. Put your alternate views in the marketplace of ideas, and do it in a way that shows respect for your audience's intelligence, whether you believe in it or not.
The anti- communists were horrible people who ruined lives. As for "perversion and debauchery" that would be found in the greed of Congressmen selling their souls to heartless corporations. If you are so threatened by the LGBT community , then take your copy of "Mein Kampf" and go watch a Proud Boys video. Your fascism and bigotry are alarming.Go elsewhere.
Sez the kid whose parents weren't even born then.
Deborah Kerr could do far better.
this woke analysis should specify that " communism " means Staline and Mao, with their 100 000 000 victims ... so the USA were right or wrong to protect themselves against Staline and Mao ?
I can’t recall Staline ever doing me wrong.
@@tjwash5118 are you the proof that " woke " means also selfish, in addition to stupid, ignorant, complaining and irrational snow-flake ?
Gurl please.🙄 Like you have a clue what woke means.
What a load of bullshit
😅 I haven't watched the video---your 'direct' comment made me chuckle just the same.
@@rockradstoneI think Jason may be commenting on the homophobic weirdo in the comment above him. Or I could be wrong. Perhaps he is commenting on the video but i
liked the video myself.
Oh no! Not more of this self-indulgent crap. Puhleeze, darling.