What was the earliest movie made that had a gay character?
Just curious.
Spartacus?
I watched this movie years ago but can’t remember the answer to your question. It’s all about homosexuality in the movies from the very earliest days through to 1995.
Great documentary, I recommend it.
Openly gay, or “implied”?
Crassus in the movie Spartacus was bisexual, and that was 1960. I doubt that’s the earliest though.
Charlie Chaplin had a gay prison inmate in Modern Times.
He also made reference to homosexuality in Behind the Screen (1916), though none of the characters are gay (it’s a misunderstanding – Charlie kisses Edna Purviance, whose disguised as a man. Eric Campbell has a field day when he sees it).
The production codes put an end to these references for decades, though (other than oblique ones – Cary Grant says he’s “gone gay all of a sudden” in Bringing Up Baby; he also makes reference to the gay subculture in NYC (which was pretty open in the 1920s)).
The Wizard of Oz (1939) - the Cowardly Lion. Okay, maybe not, but we can speculate, can’t we?
I think he was just metrosexual.
Algie the Miner (1912) - arguable, Algie is effeminate that doesn’t mean he is gay.
A Florida Enchantment (1914) - an engaged woman is magically transformed into a man.
(The Great Train Robbery - one of the earliest films - is 1902 for reference. 1895 is the invention of film). Many early films have been lost.
The character Countess Geschwitz in Pandora’s Box (1929) is obviously a lesbian.
The use of the stereotypical “pansy” nudge, nudge, wink, wink can be seen in all sort of silent films. Edit: always the object of derision for comedic effect. Otherwise. Eyebrows of Doom’s list is pretty accurate as far as explicit queer themed films. Anders die Alten (Different from the Others) was produced in a much more gay-tolerant period in German history when “the third sex” theories were in vogue. I don’t believe any complete copies survived the Nazi regime.
However, prints of Madchen in Uniform (1931) another remarkably pro-gay German film, set at a girls’ boarding school, do still exist, although many versions have been chewed up by American censors. Funnily, the teacher student kiss wasn’t a problem for U.S. censors, but the long heart wrenching speech about tolerance and acceptance was what they found more objectionable. The film has my favourite, oft repeated line: “Ein Scandal!” and ends with the lesbian characters being celebrated while the nasty headmistress skulks off in the shadows.
Edit: expecting a film of the time to be relatively chaste, I nearly fell out of my chair when the teacher passionately kissed the student. Not what I was expecting in an old black and white flick.
I don’t remember the ending celebrating the lesbian characters, but the movie is definitely sympathetic to them. The play the movie was based on had a darker ending, with the teenaged girl actually committing suicide by jumping to her death offstage. (She plans to do this in the movie, but is stopped by her classmates.) I remember reading that a jumping scene was actually filmed, but the stunt looked so ridiculous the filmmakers decided to change the ending!
The bit of American censorship that sticks in my mind about this movie is that, in the scene where the girl announces at a school party that she’s in love with her teacher, the English subtitles have her merely offering a toast to the teacher. If you don’t speak German it must seem like everyone else at this school is ridiculously uptight for getting all shocked about a student simply saying “Cheers” to a favorite teacher.
This was the first one that came to my mind.
Peter Lorre’s character in The Maltese Falcon [1941], Joel Cairo, is implied to be gay - see Bogart’s reaction to his perfume, and there’s this cutesy whoop-woo in the soundtrack at that point. I’ve seen speculation that Gutman and Wilmer are too.
It’s not speculation: Bogart calls Wilmer a gunsel, which at the time* meant a young homosexual who was kept by an older man. Gutman does not dispute that assessment.
*The meaning of “gunman” is first cited in 1950 in the OED; “homosexual” dates from 1914. The Maltese Falcon, of course, first appeared in novel form in 1930.
Well yes, but he could be just saying that to goad him, rather than as a statement of fact. I agree it’s likely, though.
Here’s the description of Cairo in the book:
BTW, Wilmer is also described as a “punk”, which was also slang for a receptive gay man.
There was a book that claimed there was a gay code in early movies. If characters did certain things or said some phrase it was implied they were gay. It was the only way writers could sneak them into the film.
I’ve been trying to find the book title with google. I read the book years ago. There was a whole list of early movies and he indicated the gay characters. I don’t know if the author was right. But his explanation made sense.
Vito Russo’s “The Celluloid Closet”?