Bloomsbury
Review by Brian Tanguay
Before reading Sick and Dirty, queer representation in Hollywood wasn’t a subject I’d given much thought to or had occasion to study. By the time I started watching films, the Motion Picture Production Code era, which forms the backdrop for the book, had passed. I know more about censored books than I do about censorship in the movies; this book has altered that relationship. When queer characters were represented at all in the Code era, it was as an aberration, a sin or illness. The men (and they were all men) who created and administered the Code made it their mission to “protect” the public from any film even hinting at sexual deviance. It became a formidable impediment, Puritanical and full of moralizing. But, as Michael Koresky shows through his cogent analysis, writers, directors, and actors devised ways to outwit the Production Code and slip queer ideas and themes into their work.
Prior to examining this history, Koresky provides necessary context, pointing out the difference between representation and acceptance. In 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, many articles appeared announcing an end to the struggle for gay rights, as if it was over and settled. In fact, court decisions and concerted and well-funded efforts by political and religious conservatives blaming“liberal” culture for various social ills, have eroded some gains. Banning books with LGBTQ+ themes in school and public libraries is now an all too common occurrence, a stark reminder that civil rights won in one era can be stripped away in another. Victorious proclamations about a post-gay age,” Korensky writes, “applied mostly to those “with the privilege to be able to look past their own marginalization.”
Not only is Michael Koresky master of his subject matter, he writes with uncommon clarity, precision, and verve. His love for the possibilities inherent in the art of film is obvious. Queerness, he asserts early on, is key to understanding the movies made in the twenty-five years covered in his book. He goes on to show that rather than an inconsequential, marginalized segment of Hollywood, queerness was part of the movie industry’s core texture and temperament. “Thanks to the number of gay and lesbian people who plied their craft in the industry, a queer consciousness permeated the fabric of American movies.”
Sick and Dirty also introduced me to the work of Dorothy Arzner, who, it chagrins me to admit, I’d never heard of. In an industry dominated by men, Arzner distinguished herself as a director during sixteen years of filmmaking, and went on to start the first filmmaking course at the Pasadena Playhouse. In the 1960s she taught at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, where one of her pupils was Francis Ford Coppola. Though public recognition of Arner’s contributions to film history is greater now than when she was alive, she remains relatively unknown. Perhaps her inclusion in Sick and Dirty will prompt renewed interest in her work.
Koresky analyzes a handful of films, including Rope, Tea and Sympathy, and Suddenly, Last Summer, but it’s The Children’s Hour, based on the play by Lillian Hellman, to which he repeatedly returns. As Koresky explains, The Children’s Hour bookends Code-era Hollywood. Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights to the play in 1935, but its first screen adaptation, as These Three, omitted the play’s queer content entirely in order to remain inside the boundary set by the Code. By 1961, however, with the Code’s power in decline, William Wyler made The Children’s Hour with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn. A very young MacClaine, cast as Martha Dobie, makes the film’s shocking final scene unforgettable. Hellman, for her part, always insisted that her play had less to do with lesbianism than it did with small-mindedness, bigotry, and the destructive power of a lie.
Until reading this book, I didn’t understand why Judy Garland became a gay icon. What accounts for the enduring connection between Garland and gay men? Koresky offers a hypothesis. Garland became a musical star at the moment when the form was at the apex of its popularity. Songs are often the domain of hidden dreams and secret lives, and the musical broke through the border between real and imagined, discord and harmony, in a way that spoke to marginalized gay men. Garland’s films are not outwardly sexual or physically sensual, so perhaps the musical element is the best explanation for the enduring bond.
I came away from this marvelous book with a fresh appreciation for movie making, the ultimate collaborative undertaking. Dozens of people, artists in their own right, bring different skills, experiences, and sensibilities to the process. As Koresky shows, it’s complicated, equal parts remarkable and insidious at the same time. The competing aims of commerce and art — the split personality of American cinema — further tangle the process.
Sick and Dirty will appeal to film students, aficionados, and anyone who wants to better understand the artistic tensions and limitations during this period.
