“They” talk a lot, don’t they?
Buddy Bizarre - Blazing Saddles
Well the book I read said his marriage was mostly for show because gay men would be out of a job in Hollywood. He contracted VD from a woman back in the 20’s and was then sterile. His children were adopted.
That is a reach way too far, based mainly on what appears to be wishful thinking. From the fact that Renault is a conflicted character, someone decides that his conflict is sexual and that he must be bi. I can think of one or two other, more likely, reasons why he is conflicted. Here’s one: he likes being Captain of Police, he doesn’t like the Germans, but he is forced to cooperate with them or lose his position. Voila, conflict. Here’s another: he’s a weak, venal man in a position of power who takes advantage of women. Perhaps he admires Rick’s character but thinks he can’t live up to it. Until at the end he finally does.
At one point he mentions to Major Strasser that he was “with them (the Americans) when they blundered into Berlin in 1918,” an event that didn’t actually happen. So my explanation of that is that the whole movie takes place in a parallel universe. That makes about as much sense. As for Ebert, this is one of his blind spots, I think. Any male character not conventionally masculine and straightforward must be subtly gay. Give me a break. Perhaps he doth protest too much.
Finally, in your original post on this topic you said that Renault is “often assumed” to be gay. I challenge “often” as not being supported by your cite or your unsupported rumors (rumors and cite which only reference possible bisexuality anyway, which is very different from being gay). If you had said “some people have suggested that Renault might be bi-sexual, and here are a couple of examples” I probably wouldn’t have bothered to contradict you. But you have conflated vague innuendo into general opinion, in a lazy and thoughtless manner.
“Advise and Consent,” the movie, has what has been described as the first scene showing a gay bar; the plot of the movie involves a senator (from Utah) being blackmailed about his past homosexual activities (the movie takes place in the late 50s or early 60s). At least the movie makes it clear what he’s being blackmailed about (when I read the book I was in the dark about what his secret was). See here The DVD Journal | Reviews: Advise and Consent for some discussion.
I vaguely remember this character but don’t remember any suggestion that she might be a lesbian, and was wondering if maybe it went over my head since I read The Count of Monte Cristo when I was fairly young. However, I just learned from Wikipedia that I would have been reading an English translation that downplayed this subplot:
A reference to Achilles I came across earlier today reminded me that Greek mythology and literature has many examples of romantic/sexual relationships between men. I don’t know what the OP considers the beginning of the mainstream media, but I was going to point out that The Iliad has been well known in Western culture for thousands of years and Achilles is one of the central characters. However, while on Wikipedia I also learned that it’s actually not explicit in The Iliad that Achilles and Patroclus are lovers.
Achilles was unambiguously attracted to women, but the nature of his relationship with comrade-in-arms Patroclus has apparently been debated since ancient times. The article about this is pretty interesting. Aeschylus, Aeschines, and Plato were all Achilles/Patroclus 'shippers, but Xenophon and Aristarchus of Samothrace were not.
There is also the problem that, in ancient semi-mythological accounts particularly, the relationships between young warriors did not of necessity fit modern notions of love, friendship and sexuality. For another long-debated example, see David & Jonathan from the Old Testament; their love was “better than the love of women”.
Yet David was, infamously, not adverse to the “love of women”, witness his notorious affair with Bathsheba.
Did David and Jonathan have a “gay” relationship? Impossible to tell.
Don’t have a hissy fit. I was helpfully responding to a request for information on the Internet, provided an example of a commonly held view by many film historians and critics, and I am neither lazy nor thoughtless, you dwart.
To read Ebert’s response and why he and others felt that Renault’s character was the sly insertion of a gay character in subversion of the Hays Office, see: Questions for the Movie Answer Man - Roger Ebert - Google Books
I don’t personally feel that Renault is gay (he’s a fictional character, after all). It’s more likely that he represented the filmmaker’s opinion at the time about the supposed French national character - willingly collaborationist at times, sometimes brave, sometimes corrupt, but he turns out to be a good ally in the end. The overtones of homosexuality were probably due to that same perception that the French weren’t as “red-blooded” as the American national identity was. But Bogart’s comment about Renault’s suddenly becoming “broad minded” when it is suggested that he sleep with a female character, and Renault’s suggestion that if he were a woman, he would be in love with Rick makes you wonder…
Regardless, it’s a great and nuanced performance by Rains.
James Jones’s 1951 war novel From Here to Eternity had some gay sex scenes which weren’t restored until many years later. The Frank Sinatra character from the movie, in the original draft of the book, supplemented his poor Army pay by being a male prostitute on the side.
Certainly, but I thought it was interesting that the nature of Achilles and Patroclus’s relationship isn’t just difficult for us to interpret now, but that this was the case in antiquity as well. The Hellenistic Greeks were, like us, dealing with a story that was very old even then and couldn’t help viewing it through the lens of their own culture.
It’s a good point. In both the Achilles/Patroclus case, and the David/Jonathan case, we are dealing with stories (albeit highly mythologized) set in a “warrior” culture, that may in a lot of ways be difficult for later folks (who may have been soldiers, but not “warriors”) to understand.
REALLY?? Not saying you’re wrong/he wasn’t, I just never heard that about him. Huh.
“beginning of a beautiful friendship…”? 
Malthus:
No, it’s not. The Hebrew scriptures praise David as one who “had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life—except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.” (I Kings 15:5). Given that gay sex is proscribed by the Torah, it’s safe to say that the nature of David’s relationship with Jonathan was not what we moderns consider “gay.”
This is much later than most of the other offerings, but. . .
In “Marathon Man (1976),” Roy Scheider’s and William Devane’s characters were very subtly gay lovers.
There are two possible answers to that.
(1) The exact relationship between David and Jonathan was what we consider “gay” today, but did not transgress the Biblical prohibition - which, if I recall correctly, was against men lying with men as if they were women. David and Jonathan could easily have expressed what we would consider homosexual love, without breaching that very specific prohibition (and yes, I know Orthodox Jews interpret it broadly to prohibit any sort of homosexuality, but that may not have been the interpretation in David’s time).
(2) The statement in 1 Kings 15:5 can’t possibly be true, as David did tons of other things that are without a doubt prohibited by the Torah.
One example: counseling vengeance murder being, literally, the last thing he ever did:
See 1 Kings 2:9:
If he did one thing seriously prohibited (such as counseling murder for vengeance), that logically eliminates the argument that he had not transgressed in any other way (save that Uriah the Hittite thing).
Australian soap 'Number 96’, about the occupants of an Australian apartment building had Don Finlayson, a gay man as a central character. He’s credited as the first openly gay character in world TV [although based on discussions above you’d have to qualify that with regular cast, non-stereotypical, self-identifying]. His kiss with a male partner in bed was probably the first in regular television land.
Yes, he worked hard to lose his accent to get better roles and said, as I recall, “I’m not gay; I’m affected.” He and his wife would lie in bed creating Robot insults.
As in ‘Zach, show in me Bubble Head’. ‘Okay, if you show me Booby…’
In Top Gun (1986), the protagonist is a secretly gay fighter pilot, along with many of his fellow flyers. It was all treated quite respectfully and tastefully, even the volleyball orgy scene.
So far all you’ve shown in your cite is that Ebert had a bug up his ass about this character. Nothing about anyone else agreeing with this view or coming up with it on their own (it isn’t clear who some of the Q’s were from, but some of the film quotes there are just incorrect). Oh, and you can save your made-up insult words for use in a more appropriate forum.
Yes, I agree that it is a great and nuanced performance. That doesn’t ever seem to have been an issue, only what the nuances were (or were supposed to have been).