The 1931 German film Mädchen in uniform is about a female teacher and a boarding school student falling in love. The movie is pretty clear on what kind of relationship the two have. No innuendo.
Robert Redford was supposed to play a closeted gay movie star in INSIDE DAISY CLOVER, setting up the plot point of him marrying Natalie Wood’s character for some wholesome publicity. Redford apparently insisted that the character be portrayed as bisexual rather than gay, which is arguably better for this thread: it plays out as the story of a guy who just wants to be rich and famous and instead of being faithful to his wife wants to enjoy bedding a string of women – which, granted, isn’t a positive portrayal; but, as negative portrayals go, it’s one that straight guys in the audience could nod at, amirite?
So you get that buy-in, and, oh, yeah, he also enjoys bedding men.
Mary McCarthy’s 1963 novel The Group featured Lakey, who after a trip to Europe, was revealed to be a lesbian. The other members of the group not only were conflicted about Lakey’s sexuality but also upset that her lover was not as smart as the rest of them.
Norman Lear’s short-lived 1975 series Hot l Baltimore had an explicitly gay couple, George and Gordon. I believe it was the first American series to have an explicitly gay couple as regular characters. (To clarify, by explicit I don’t mean they engaged in onscreen sex. I mean that the show openly acknowledged that the characters were gay rather than just implying it.)
Well, it was more obvious at the time, with the “swishy” stereotype. The character also appears in the background of other scenes, too, which probably would make it clearer.
In the pre-code 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon Joel Cairo is played by Otto Matieson who also displays gay mannerisms. Also the relationship between Cook and Gutman is far more strongly indicated than in the later film.
Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda was another film about transvestites, by a transvestite.
There were also numerous character actors and comic actors who were believed to be gay by most viewers (and usually were), like Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, Jonathan Frid, etc. Most people believed Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith on Lost in Space) to be gay based on his mannerisms, but he probably was not (married over 60 years and a child, not much evidence other than mannerisms). He was the son of Jewish Russian immigrants who grew up in the Bronx and adopted the persona of a somewhat prissy British aristocrat. He eventually evolved into a humorous but somewhat likable character.
Lesbian characters were not uncommon in films, either - Claire Bloom’s character in Robert Wise’s The Haunting is broadly hinted to be lesbian but is not presented unsympathetically.
Claude Rain’s character in Casablanca is often assumed to be gay, although Rains himself was not.
No doubt that’s why Captain Renault is always manipulating to have beautiful women owe him a favor for helping them get out of Casablanca. In other words, you got the wrong guy. Did you mean Major Strasser, or Peter Lorre’s character (of whose sexual preference I have seen no indication at all), or perhaps Cuddles Sakall’s character, or Leonid Kinskey’s, or really anyone else (except Rick, I suppose) would be more believable.
The novel version of Myra Breckenridge, about a male-to-female transitioned trans character, “came out” in 1968. The movie came out in 1970.
Officers visit a gay bar in the movie “The Boston Stranger”, from 1968.
When I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope”, from the late 1940s, it was EXTREMELY obvious to me that the two main characters were a gay couple.
And viewers of that time would have known that it was based on the murderers Leopold and Loeb, who were gay.
Here’s a list of the 118 films mentioned in The Celluloid Closet, which the OP can look through to decide which could be considered the first positive references to homosexuality:
Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), a German film from 1919.
Well, they reportedly had some sort of sexual relationship, but I don’t think either openly identified as gay and IIRC in his memoir Life Plus 99 Years Leopold denied that they were lovers. But regardless of what their true sexual orientations might have been, you’re right that many viewers would have associated the two with homosexuality.
Not Claire Bloom’s character-- Julie Harris’s.
On an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis’s brother is revealed to be gay in a “bring down the house” line, followed by an even funnier line by Phyllis. There is nothing whatsoever negative, no stereotypically gay about the brother (Ben, IIRC). The joke is that Phyllis thinks her single brother is a great catch, and has been trying to set him up with Mary, whom she likes, but instead, he hits it off with Rhoda, whom she does not like. At the end of the show, Rhoda assures Phyllis that she and Ben are just friends, and she wouldn’t consider dating him. Phyllis, who is never very logical, immediately jumps on Rhoda with “Why not? he’s handsome, smart, talented, makes a good living,” and Rhoda interrupts to say “He’s gay.”
The biggest laugh in the history of the show ensues.
The Phyllis says “Oh thank gawd!”
Practically every family sitcom has an episode with a tomboy who fools some boy into thinking she’s a boy. By the end, she discovers she likes boys “that way,” and we see her in a dress for the first time. It’s kind of a junior version of the books and movies where all the lesbian needs is a good man to straighten her out.
I had some other really pithy example, but not it eludes me. Oh well; I’ll be back.
There’s a Sanford and Son episode from its first season called “The Piano Movers” (1972), in which a principal character is a gay antique collector (the guy who has a piano that must be moved). Fred Sanford makes cracks about the guy being gay, but if I recall correctly the characterization is not entirely negative.
Dunno what category you’d assign to the various pairs of devoted spinster companions who are affectionately portrayed as eccentric but likeable in a number of 20th-century English murder mysteries, but are not actually called lesbians (and in some cases may well not actually have been intended as lesbians).
E.g., Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd in Agatha Christie’s 1950 A Murder Is Announced, and Miss Dawson and Miss Whittaker in (the backstory of) Dorothy Sayers’s 1927 Unnatural Death.
Going by books rather than movies - Carmilla had a pretty expressly (for the time) lesbian relationship, albeit between a woman and a vampire. It dates to 1871/72.
The 1930s movie version edited out any lesbian references, but the 1960 movie Blood and Roses didn’t:
IIRC, Agatha Christie didn’t intend to intend them to be lesbians; she based them on two real-life eccentric-but-likable women who lived together and had no use for men and who Christie apparently didn’t think were lesbians. So if Christie intended the characters to be based on those women, and didn’t bother to make any changes, and those women were lesbians – it’s all a hall of mirrors!
The famous Peter Lorre character from “Maltese Falcon” (1939). The clip starts after this point, but when Humphrey Bogart’s secretary is introducing him, she snidely says “He’s artistic” and exchanges a knowing glance with him. His sexuality is never explicitly named, but it is fairly obvious and intentional.