When Hollywood ‘Went Gay All of a Sudden': TCM Highlights Films That Track Queer Evolution

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In classic film circles, 'Bringing Up Baby' is just one of those movies that everybody knows about. It's Cary Grant. It's Katharine Hepburn. It's Howard Hawks. All 'Old Hollywood For Dummies' buzz words. But the movie — a notorious flop upon release — is a historical curiosity not because it is a cute, zany screwball comedy of a bygone era — though it is. 'Bringing Up Baby' just happens to have what is likely first usage in film of the word 'gay' to mean something other than happy. At least we think it does.
'My understanding is that by the time 'Bringing Up Baby' came out, the word 'gay' was known in some circles to mean homosexual,' TCM host Dave Karger said during a recent interview with IndieWire. 'And the story goes that Cary Grant ad libbed that line. So, I would like to think that he that Cary Grant knew what he was saying when he allegedly came up with that line.'
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Author Alonso Duralde, author of the book 'Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film' agrees.
'I know that when I wrote about 'Bringing Up Baby,' I quoted William Mann in his film 'Behind the Screen,' who said back in 2001 that the word 'gay' to mean 'homosexual' had been floating around for at least the better part of a century at that point,' Duralde said. 'And he, in turn, quotes Gary Schmidgall, who was a biographer of Walt Whitman, who said that there were cases of people using it that way in the first years of the 20th century.'
Duralde explained that its use would have been 'very intramural' in the '30s. That perhaps Cary Grant knew about it, 'but it was not something that the wide world knew about just yet,' adding, 'You have to wonder… was that a wink?'
Truly, it is difficult to interpret the word as meaning anything another than a wink in this instance, although it clearly flew over the heads of the censors — and likely anywhere except specific circles in the coastal cities — way back in 1938. Grant is wearing Hepburn's frilly robe. He's frustrated at his own flamboyant appearance, badgered by May Robson, and then exclaims, 'I just went gay all of a sudden!' Take a quick watch (the exchange begins at 1:43).
This is about as openly 'gay' as the movies would get for the next 30 years. Not that there weren't plenty of films that walked a tight rope around the suggestion of homosexuality. Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rebecca' has the sinister Mrs. Danvers, whose obsession with the title character appears to be romantic in nature. There's a seemingly blatant hitman gay couple in 'The Big Combo.' A rather disturbing Wendell Corey acts possessively of his mobster roommate in 'Desert Fury.' Sal Mineo — a real-life bisexual — appears to be in love with James Dean in 'Rebel Without a Cause.' One commonality between all of these characters is that they (spoiler) die — perhaps the only reason why the strict production code of the time allowed them to make it to the screen.
A note on the production code — known commonly as the Hays Code after its longtime leader Will H. Hays — for those new to Old Hollywood. In 1934, as fears of government censorship were looming, American film studios began enforcing a strict production code (drafted in 1930) that essentially outlawed the depiction of a host of perceived moral wrongs and ambiguities — any crime had to have a consequence, overt sex was out of the question, dialogue had to be squeaky clean, and, of course, queers weren't supposed to exist.
Regardless, some coded characters (as listed above) and certain gay stereotypes made it into the movies, even under censorship. Of course, the characters were not out, open, or doing anything about it, but it was clear to knowing eyes what exactly was going on. One specific stereotype was the 'pansy' — also known as the 'sissy' — which Turner Classic Movies will be highlighting in on Monday, June 23, with a series of films that showcase variations on this kind of character.
'The pansy craze really exploded in the 1930s,' Karger explained. 'It started in live entertainment, where there were bars in Hollywood that stars and studio executives would frequent, and there were well known drag performers who were very popular amongst the Hollywood set. What you also saw in varying degrees before and after the production code was enforced, were queer coded, open, outwardly gay characters in some films.'
Actors like Edward Everett Horton (see: 'The Gay Divorcee') and Franklin Pangborn (see: 'Professional Sweetheart') made careers off of playing the pansy. 'What I love about these movies is that it gives wonderful platforms for some of these fascinating and hilarious character actors of the era,' Karger said.
'The thing about the sissy is that you're not saying this guy wants to have sex with dudes,' Durlade said. 'You're just saying, 'Oh, look at this frilly little whatever.' That character goes all the way back to the earliest cinema. That character goes back probably to vaudeville. The sissy was a way to get around the censor, precisely because they were asexual, and so they didn't have to wade into the murky things of perversion, because there was nothing sexual about the character. He was just there to be the butt of the joke.'
TCM will also showcase interesting rarities like the pre-code 'Call Her Savage' with Clara Bow, which present the pansy in a far more overt fashion. This one wouldn't have had to slip in under the censors' noses, since it was released in 1932 before the code was in rigid enforcement.
'['Call Her Savage'] features one scene in what is clearly a gay bar, and there's these two boys wearing French maids outfits, flitting around, and singing about how they wish they were on a navy ship surrounded by hunky sailors, essentially,' Karger said. 'And it's just so fascinating to see these two kids, almost 100 years ago, able to be their true selves and talk about their true wants and desires.'
The lineup also includes Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche-led 'Midnight,' a delightful '30s 'Cinderella' tale that finds John Barrymore playing the fairy godmother. None of those leads are the 'gay' character. That instead belongs to veteran character actor Rex O'Malley — who in real life, uh… never married — who plays a gossipy friend, aka the pansy.
'There's just all these great scenes of him, sitting around a breakfast table, pumping all the other characters for the latest gossip. And it's just so fun,' Karger said. 'He steals every scene he's in. And yeah, of course, nothing overtly gay is mentioned. We're not told he's gay. They can't use that word in that context, of course, at that point. So he's essentially — like a lot of these men are — an asexual guy who's much more interested in the lives and going ons of everyone else than he is about pursuing a romantic life of his own.'
Next week, on June 30, TCM will once again visit queer cinema, contrasting with a series of later films — ones that examine depictions of homosexuality, drag culture, and trans people in more recent decades.
'I love the fact that we have these two nights of pride programming, one of which is from the 1930s and then the other of which is from the last 40 years. So we get to see how LGBTQ+ cinema has has evolved,' Karger shared. Among the movies included on the second night are 2008's Oscar-winning 'Milk' (a TCM premiere), the 1994 lesbian-themed dramedy 'Go Fish,' and 1990's 'Without You I'm Nothing,' written by and starring Sandra Bernhard.
'I'm all for the bread and butter films that we show on TCM. I love that. That's what we mainly do. But I think whenever we can step out of the usual 'classic era' and include movies like the ones that we're doing on that second Pride night, particularly for for Pride Month, I think it's really exciting,' Karger said.
As for the word 'gay,' the 'Bringing Up Baby' use of the word did not revolutionize its use in modern culture. In 1961, 23 years later, Natalie Wood was still singing (well, Marni Nixon was) about feeling 'pretty, witty, and gay' in 'West Side Story.' But like so many cultural touchstones in American history, the 1960s changed things. Civil Rights, hippies, the second wave of feminism, and then, of course, 1969 Stonewall Riots setting off the gay liberation movement, shifted culture. By 1970, 'The Boys in the Band' was throwing 'gay' around in clear reference to homosexuality. Ironically, Wood herself helped launch the play that became that film adaptation. But, I digress.
What's most interesting looking at TCM's June 23 and 30 lineups is that, while coded, the stereotypes remained the same for many decades, even after the production code had fallen — and in the more modern films, the through-line is evident. The movies did not go 'gay all of a sudden' when Cary Grant made his exclamation in 'Bringing Up Baby,' but perhaps instead this little moment set a standard of gayness that would largely hold for the rest of the century and beyond.
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