'' (1895) The first notable suggestion of homosexuality on film was in 1895, when two men were shown dancing together in the
William Kennedy Dickson motion picture
The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, commonly labeled online and in three published books as
The Gay Brothers. At the time, the men were not seen as "queer" or even flamboyant, but merely as acting fancifully. However, film critic
Parker Tyler stated that the scene "shocked audiences with its subversion of conventional male behavior". During the late 19th century and into the 1920s and 30s, homosexuality was largely depicted through gender-based conventions and stereotypes. Oftentimes male characters intended to be identified as gay were flamboyant, effeminate, humorous characters on film. The terms "pansy" and "
sissy" became tagged to homosexuality and described "a flowery, fussy, effeminate soul given to limp wrists and mincing steps". The first erotic kiss between two members of the same sex in a film was in
Cecil B. DeMille's
Manslaughter (1922).
Marlene Dietrich was the first leading lady to kiss another female on screen in 1930's
Morocco. In terms of homosexuality, the code marked the end of the "pansy" characters and the beginning of depictions that were more reserved and buried within subtext. Gay characters on screen also came to be represented as villains or victims who commit crimes due to their homosexuality. Per the production code these homosexual villains would have to be punished by the law to coincide with the code's rule stating that films could not place crime above law. An example of the enforcement of the production code is the character Joel Cairo in the 1941 film
The Maltese Falcon. In the original novel the character is clearly homosexual, though in the movie his homosexuality is made vague. The production code not only affected what was cut from movies containing homosexual characters, but also often removed them completely. The stage play ''
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman was released as a film in 1936 titled These Three directed by William Wyler. The stage play contained a storyline of two teachers being accused of having a lesbian affair, yet the film version created a heterosexual love triangle between two women and one man. Nico Lang of Harper's Bazaar'' said Disney's 1941 film
The Reluctant Dragon "is extremely queer, even if it's not necessarily gay". He also noted the inclusion of a gay couple (two male antelopes) in
Zootopia. •
I Was a Male War Bride (1949), directed by
Howard Hawks and starring
Cary Grant as a French officer who must impersonate a female war bride •
Glen or Glenda (1953), a film by
Ed Wood starring himself •
Some Like It Hot (1959), featuring
Tony Curtis,
Marilyn Monroe, and
Jack Lemmon From 1950 to 1956
Jerry Lewis appeared in several film remakes in roles originally written for women. He appeared in drag in the films
At War with the Army,
Scared Stiff, and
Money From Home and routinely adopted effeminate mannerisms and gender ambiguous role-playing with his partner
Dean Martin. He was criticized by the press for his 'prancing and mincing' homosexual references.
World War II era to 1960s During the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War, Hollywood increasingly depicted gay men and women as sadists, psychopaths, and nefarious, anti-social villains. These depictions were driven by the censorship of the code, which was willing to allow "sexual perversion" if it was depicted in a negative manner, as well as the fact that homosexuality was classified as a mental illness and gay men and women were often harassed by the police. This can be examined in
Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film
Rope. Legally, it was the 1952 case
Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson that extended First Amendment legal protection to films, reversing its original verdict, and, via a separate case in 1948,
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., ended the once common practice of film studios owning the theaters. That practice had made it difficult for films produced outside of these studios, such as independent or international films, to be screened widely, let alone to be commercially successful. Culturally, American consumers were increasingly less likely to boycott a film at the request of the Catholic Church or fundamentalist Protestant groups. This meant that films with objectionable content did not necessarily need the approval of the Hollywood Production Code or religious groups to be successful. As a result, Hollywood gradually became more willing to ignore the code to compete with television and the growing access to independent and international cinema. During the 1950s–60s, gay characters in American films were identified with more overtly sexual innuendos and methods (e.g., a reference in
The Seven Year Itch (1955) to two male tenants who are "interior decorators or something"), but having a gay or bisexual sexual orientation was largely treated as a trait of miserable and suicidal misfits who frequently killed themselves or other people. During this post-war era, mainstream American cinema might have advocated tolerance for eccentric, sensitive young men wrongly accused of homosexuality, such as in the film adaptation of
Tea and Sympathy (1956), but gay characters were frequently eliminated from the final cut of the film or depicted as dangerous misfits who would fall prey to a well-deserved violent end. Others had homosexual themes almost completely removed such as in the 1958 film adaptation of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, An early example of
homoeroticism in American film was 1957's
The Strange One. The film
Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, widely seen as one of the best films ever created, was revolutionary for several reasons including depicting not only a character who is heavily implied to be gay, but also implying a relationship between two men. Though
T.E. Lawrence's sexuality remains ambiguous, director
David Lean had
Peter O'Toole play his version of the desert hero as a gay man. Beyond this, Lean also implied a relationship between Lawrence and his companion Sherif Ali, played by
Omar Sharif. Years later, when asked about the homosexuality in his hit film, Lean commented, "Throughout, Lawrence was very, if not entirely, homosexual. We thought we were being very daring at the time: Lawrence and Omar..." This is one of the first examples of an LGBT+ film being a box office success without an incredible amount of innuendo to disguise the homosexual nature of the film.
The Best Man (1964), where a character, played by
Cliff Robertson, is accused of being homosexual, was the first American film to use the word "homosexual".
Inside Daisy Clover in 1965, based on the novel of the same name, was another early example to depict an expressly gay or bisexual character who, while forced to marry a woman for his career, is not uncomfortable with his sexual orientation and does not commit suicide or fall victim to murder. Yet, beyond a few lines of dialogue, the character's bisexuality was largely restricted to bits of subtext and innuendo. Homosexuality began to become more prominent in film including in films such as
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967),
The Detective,
The Legend of Lylah Clare,
P.J., and
The Sergeant (all 1968) and
The Killing of Sister George (also 1968) became the first English-language film to have consenting adult homosexuals as the focus of the film. In America, efforts at creating complex gay or bisexual film characters were largely restricted to people such as
Andy Warhol and
Kenneth Anger. However, mainstream American cinema efforts at marketing films for an LGBT audience did not begin until the 1970s. == After Stonewall ==