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Chicago Tribune
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: The new book ‘Sick and Dirty' examines the not-so-hidden queerness of classic Hollywood
You're a kid. You catch a few seconds of something strange on TV. Those few seconds have a way, sometimes, of paying a call decades later. It happened to author, critic and film curator Michael Koresky. His absorbing new book is 'Sick and Dirty: Hollywood's Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness,' and just as he was writing its final chapter, he dredged up a fuzzy memory of seeing something on his grandmother Bertha's TV set when he was around 10. 'We were over at my grandmother's place in Newton, Massachusetts, where we always went on Jewish holidays,' he says. 'She always had the TV on. This time it was set to PBS, which played movies in the afternoons, I remember. I walked by the TV and saw this little snot-nosed girl, sitting in the back of a car, looking very angry, whispering something in this older woman's ear, and the woman's face just falls, horrified. It looked like a horror movie.' And then: 'My grandmother's walking in and out of the room, carrying loaves of challah, and she stops and looks at the TV, and she sees me looking, and she says to me: 'That one,' pointing at the girl. 'That one's a troublemaker.' And she didn't tell me why.' Years later, Koresky found out why. The film was the 1961 version of 'The Children's Hour,' Lillian Hellman's pathbreaking 1934 drama about 'a lie perpetrated by this malicious little girl, about her schoolteachers being lesbians, carrying on an affair,' Koresky says. His book takes its title from a self-lacerating line spoken by the tragic closeted lesbian played by Shirley MacLaine. What Koresky achieves here is a sharp, sometimes personal investigation of some choice Hollywood projects, beginning with the massively altered 1936 'Children's Hour' adaptation, 'These Three.' Many of the films under review were derived from sensational source material optioned by a studio only to be de-sexualized (at least on the page) and rendered the most distant of cousins to their sources. Rules were rules then. The Production Code Administration enforcement went into full practice in 1934, bringing the raucous pre-Code enforcement era to a halt. 'Sick and Dirty' isn't a pre-Code book. It's a Code book, about what happened next, what then-transgressive sexual images — furtive, oblique, often partially or fully erased — sneaked into the slyly suggestive 'Rope,' for example, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Its homicidal lovers plainly are as gay as a day in May, yet just closeted enough to pass muster with the Code. Koresky, senior curator of film at New York City's Museum of the Moving Image, delves into the screen versions of 'Tea and Sympathy,' as well as what he calls 'the unparalleled derangement' of Tennessee Williams' 'Suddenly, Last Summer,' with its climax of the Elizabeth Taylor character's sexually voracious, manipulative cousin literally eaten alive by young boys he has 'procured' for himself. 'We know these movies come from an era of censorship,' says Koresky. 'We know the Production Code only allowed films to say and show certain things. Yet this time of great restriction, the mid-'30s to the early '60s, was also arguably the greatest period ever for American cinema.' Our conversation is edited for clarity and length. Q: How did you land on the handful of films you focus on in 'Sick and Dirty'? A: I wanted films from the key decades to reflect some idea of forward motion, in each era. It's a history of Hollywood, roughly 25 years of it, and it's not really an alternative history. It's the history of the Code, and how these films are connected, as well as connected to the culture at large. I write about 'Rebecca' (Hitchcock's 1940 Oscar winner, with the plainly lovelorn Mrs. Danvers as relished by Judith Anderson), which could've had its own entire chapter. 'Red River' (the Howard Hawks/John Wayne/Montgomery Clift Western from 1948) could've had its own chapter. And there were smaller films like 'Desert Fury' (1947, Western noir), which is one of the great gay Hollywood films of all time. Q: Can you talk a bit about how Hollywood's reliance on Broadway influenced the occasional, forbidden images of gay and lesbian life, usually tragic, of course, and always cleaned up for the Code's purposes? A: Sure. The entire book is anchored by 'The Children's Hour,' and (playwright) Lillian Hellman is the stealth protagonist, in a way. 'These Three' was the first adaptation made in Hollywood from that play, a prime example of how you'd get these hit plays on Broadway, and Hollywood would be so envious of the scandal and sensation and success of them, and they'd buy the film rights immediately — knowing they'd be ordered by the Production Code essentially not to make movies out of them unless they changed every single thing. They'd have to rework entire plotlines. With 'Tea and Sympathy' (director Vincente Minnelli's 1956 version of the Robert Anderson play about an 'unmanly' teenage boy's torturous coming of age), MGM paid $400,000 for it, knowing they wouldn't be able to make it the way they wanted to. Tennessee Williams' plays, and Hollywood's versions, made him one of the most important figures in cinema history, I think, in terms of how the Production Code was tested, challenged, how things progressed, and led to the amendment of the Code language. People were craving this prestige shock material. And then, in 1959, to have something like 'Suddenly, Last Summer,' which is about as out-there as a movie could get in 1959, to have that somehow get through largely intact … Q: I still can't quite believe it happened. A: Once that film got released, and became a hit, and an Oscar-nominated hit, all bets were off. Q: Until reading 'Sick and Dirty,' I didn't know about how a Loyola University meeting here in Chicago led to the creation of the Production Code in 1934. A: The Chicago Catholics were central to what Hollywood became. When the Catholic Church during the Depression threatened to boycott Hollywood, that meant 20 million potential lost customers. Depression-era Hollywood was terrified of losing everything. It couldn't ignore them. And under Joseph Breen, with the strong influence of the Roman Catholic National Legion of Decency, the Code was truly enforced. Q: Where are we now as a film culture? A: It's a hard question. I have such conflicting feelings about the culture in general. This year, I mean look at how corporate sponsorship of Pride Month has dried up because of political pressure, and the pullback on DEI. Political reality dictates a lot. And it's affecting everything right now. But things haven't changed all that much in Hollywood. You look at a movie like 'Love, Simon' (2018), the first Hollywood film with a gay teen protagonist. Coming out story, very bland. I had conflicted feelings about; I'm not sure who it's geared toward. On the other hand, if I'd seen that movie as a teenager growing up, it would've been a seismic event in my life. Q: Your book pushed me to see a movie I'd somehow never made time for: The William Wyler version of 'The Children's Hour' from 1936. Such a wholesale whitewashing! But so good! And with Wyler's direction of Merle Oberon and especially Miriam Hopkins, it's sublimely clear these two college friends meant so very much to each other. A: It's the great example of a completely censored film that's also a really interesting one, and beautifully made. When I teach film, I preface a screening of something like 'Tea and Sympathy' by saying: 'These movies have some very progressive elements. They also have some very conservative elements. Now, let's talk about how those elements interact.' With 'Tea and Sympathy,' the students responded to it, not as a relic of a former time. Many wrote about how it related to their own lives, and how it feels to be young and not know who you are. I'm never going to admit actual nostalgia for a time of movie censorship. But you have to admit that this time of restriction holds sway over our imaginations, to this day.
Los Angeles Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
30 must-read books for summer
Nothing says 'summer's here!' than reading near a body of water. And what qualifies as a beach read has evolved to include more than romances and thrillers. From histories on New York's 1960s art scene and the making of the film 'Sunset Boulevard' to biographies on James Baldwin, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Lee, to gripping memoirs from Miriam Toews and Molly Jong-Fast, there's something from every nonfiction genre. Meanwhile, our fiction picks include books with alternate timelines, ones that blur the boundaries between what's imagined and what's real and multiple dark academia novels. Here are 30 upcoming books — publishing between late May and September — recommended by regular Times critics. Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde — Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop By J. HobermanVerso: 464 pages, $35(May 27) Hoberman, a veteran culture critic, takes an in-depth look at the '60s New York arts scene — including Beat poets, experimental filmmakers and guerrilla theater — and how its rebel spirit spread throughout the country and the world. The book is also a reminder of a time when art truly mattered and definitively shaped the culture at large in New York and beyond. — Chris Vognar Sick and Dirty: Hollywood's Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness By Michael KoreskyBloomsbury: 320 pages, $30(June 3) Koresky, senior curator of film at New York's Museum of the Moving Image, brings his deep knowledge of Hays Code-era (1934-1968) cinema to this celebration of queer film culture. In setting out to erase gays and lesbians from screens, the Code only encouraged creators and performers to get creative in making their movies. In this reading delight, Koresky highlights the work and stories of those whose resistance kept queer filmmaking alive. — Lorraine Berry Flashlight By Susan ChoiFarrar, Straus & Giroux: 464 pages, $30(June 3) Choi's 2019 novel, 'Trust Exercise,' combined the messy, familiar territory of a high-school drama class with a first-person flashback forcing a #MeToo reckoning. 'Flashlight,' her new book, grew from a 2020 short story in the New Yorker, and shares that deliberate pruning. 'How much can you leave out?' Choi has said of the story, and her restraint makes this book about 10-year-old Louisa, who is found half-dead on a beach, and her missing father. What follows takes Louisa on a journey to untangle a lifetime of shifting identities affected by shifting borders in Asia and the United States. — Bethanne Patrick Meet Me at the Crossroads By Megan GiddingsAmistad: 320 pages, $29(June 3) Giddings deserves a wider reading audience: Her previous two novels have been lauded by critics for their combination of magical realism and modern social and political reality. Ayanna and Olivia are teenage twin sisters whose lives are changed by a mysterious worldwide event. Seven doors open, beckoning those who believe a better world exists through the portal. Giddings interrogates the meaning of faith in a heady novel about love and family. — L.B. The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp By Lynne OlsonRandom House: 384 pages, $35(June 3) Olson's book may be the most important history released this summer. Ravensbrück, located 50 miles north of Berlin, was a concentration camp built for women, where as many as 40,000 perished before the war's end. Among its prisoners were members of the French Resistance. At the camp, they refused to work and considered themselves guerrillas whose purpose was to sabotage Nazi efficiency. Their efforts continued after liberation. Olson's history of these women is a shot of inspiration for those resisting current fascism. — L.B. How to Lose Your Mother By Molly Jong-FastViking: 256 pages, $28(June 3) Jong-Fast's mother is writer Erica Jong, author of 'Fear of Flying' and many other novels and books of poetry. In 2023, Erica was diagnosed with dementia, and Molly suddenly realized that the clock was ticking; she had better get to know her remote mother before she truly disappeared. Already the author of several other memoirs, 'How to Lose Your Mother' is sure to be a revealing read on what it's like to be the daughter of a famous writer, and a writer yourself, and more importantly, what it's like to lose someone while they're still technically here. — Jessica Ferri So Far Gone By Jess WalterHarper: 272 pages, $30(June 10) We Americans love our literary losers, and who better to give us the latest version of a recluse with a heart of gold than Walter? The author of 'Beautiful Ruins' and 'The Cold Millions' deploys wry yet empathetic humor to create Rhys Kinnick, onetime journalist and current cabin dweller, who loathes the internet-obsessed world. But when Rhys discovers his beloved grandchildren are in the hands of a modern-day militia, he enlists his hostile best friend and his reluctant ex-girlfriend to help him rescue the kids. It's a gleeful, kooky and tender homage to Charles Portis' 'True Grit' with echoes of Tom Robbins and yes, Elinor Lipman too. — B.P. King of Ashes By S. A. CosbyFlatiron: 352 pages, $29(June 10) Cosby is a gifted novelist whose passionate writing about the modern South has garnered him much critical praise and the admiration of President Obama. His flawed heroes fight for the right things while living on the land soaked in the blood of the enslaved. In 'King of Ashes,' Cosby presents readers with another complex Black man, Roman Carruthers, who returns home to chaos and must put things right. A criminal gang's threats to his family sets Roman on a trail into a wilderness of betrayal and heartbreak. — L.B. The Scrapbook By Heather ClarkPantheon: 256 pages, $28(June 17) Clark, whose brilliant biography of Sylvia Plath, 'Red Comet,' was a Pulitzer finalist, uses her first novel to explore a highly literary and highly troubled relationship. Narrator Anna, fresh out of Harvard in the '90s, is falling hard for a young German man, Christoph. Questions linger, though: How much of her heart should she give to him? How anxious should she, as a Jew, be about dating a German man whose grandfather served in the Wehrmacht? The book is at once a rich historical novel and a philosophical study of how much influence past generations have on our affections. — Mark Athitakis The Möbius Book By Catherine Lacey Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 240 pages, $27(June 17) Lacey is always doing something mysterious with form, and I loved her previous books, 'The Book of X,' and especially, 'Pew.' Her latest novel is split down the middle, making it impossible to decide which half to begin with. Blending truth and fiction, the reader is in good hands no matter Lacey's subject. — J.F. Ecstasy By Ivy PochodaG.P. Putnam's Sons: 224 pages, $28(June 17) Did you watch 'Kaos,' the short-lived Netflix series from Charlie Covell that starred Jeff Goldblum as Zeus and Debi Mazar as Medusa? If not, I highly recommend it; if so, you'll be predispositioned to love L.A. Times Book Prize winner Ivy Pochoda's 'Ecstasy,' a departure from her previous writing mainly in terms of source material. While still set in 21st-century America, this one is based on Euripides' 'The Bacchae' — well, the one he might have written as a brilliant, fiercely feminist provocateur. Protagonist Lena escapes patriarchal entrapment by joining forces with a close friend, Hedy, and fleeing to a beachside encampment of 'feral' women. As delicious as Zeus' home-brewed nectar. — B.P. Memories That Smell Like Gasoline By David WojnarowiczNightboat Books(June 24) Nightboat Books is an extremely important publisher, and it crowdfunded the publication of this book by artist Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992. 'Memories That Smell like Gasoline' is a hybrid book of art and text that reflects Wojnarowicz's experience of the AIDS epidemic. I can't get enough of his work. Like 'Dear Jean Pierre,' published by Primary Information, I'm so glad that independent publishers are here to make sure Wojnarowicz's work, which feels like it could've been written yesterday, is never forgotten. — J.F. El Dorado Drive By Megan AbbottG.P. Putnam's Sons: 368 pages, $30(June 24) Abbott + women + pyramid scheme = winner, winner, chicken dinner. I'm using that Midwestern catchphrase because Detroit is where we find the three Bishop sisters, whose auto industry-generated family fortune has ground to a halt along with many of the region's assembly lines. Pam Bishop persuades siblings Harper and Debra to join the Wheel, a multilevel marketing scheme targeting women looking to get rich quick. As in many of Abbott's previous books, including 'Give Me Your Hand' and 'The Turnout,' tension ratchets up in direct proportion to the rules and secrecy involved in the group. Eventually, a murder puts things in high gear, and like the sisters, readers will need to ask how much is too much. — B.P. Clint: The Man and the Movies By Shawn LevyMariner Books: 560 pages, $38(July 1) Levy, whose previous book subjects include Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita' and Jerry Lewis, aims for a middle ground between previous Clint Eastwood biographers Richard Schickel (who heaped praise on the star) and Patrick McGilligan (who heaped scorn). Focusing largely on the work, which Eastwood continues as a director at age 94, Levy also explores the personas the subject has cultivated over the years, from tough guy to auteur. — C.V. Archive of Unknown Universes By Ruben Reyes Books: (July 1) El Salvador's prisons are being used as gulags by the current administration. In the 1980s, the United States played a horrific role in the country's brutal civil war. In this beautiful novel, Reyes, the son of two Salvadoran immigrants, crafts a love story that combines science fiction and history. Young lovers Ana and Luis travel back in time from 2018 to 1978 Havana. There, Neto and Rafael — revolutionaries and lovers — are separated by the Salvadoran conflict. Their fate as secret lovers and the outcome of the war hinge on what Ana and Luis will find. — L.B. Killing Stella By Marlen Haushofer New Directions: 80 pages, $15(July 1) Haushofer's 1963 novel, 'The Wall,' was reissued by New Directions in 2022 with an afterword by Claire-Louise Bennett. The book is one of the most disturbing novels I've ever read, and when New Directions announced it would be reissuing Haushofer's novella 'Killing Stella,' I promptly sat down in the park with the advance copy and read the whole thing. (Don't worry, it's slim at 80 pages). Though it's a breakneck confession rather than the slow-burn genius of 'The Wall,' 'Killing Stella' is a deeply unsettling book that asks us to look at our own complicity in violence against women. — J.F. The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them By Ekow EshunHarper: 400 pages, $35(July 8) In examining the lives of five men — Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Matthew Henson, Ira Aldridge and Justin Fashanu — Eshun, a British writer, curator and broadcaster, explores Black masculinity in the context of history: how it gets made and who gets to write and tell it. The topic seems particularly relevant right now as the U.S. government embarks on a misguided quest to erase Black history in the name of fighting DEI. — C.V. The Dance and the Fire Daniel Saldaña ParisCatapult: 256 pages, $27(July 27) As raging fires threaten Cuernavaca, Mexico, a young woman choreographs a dance based on the work of expressionist Mary Wigman. She has returned to the city at the same time as two friends from high school, with whom she once had a passionate love triangle. The three friends try to find their rhythm in the steps of the danse macabre she creates, even as old dance patterns of desire and friendship bring them closer to the encroaching flames. — L.B. Flashout By Alexis SoloskiFlatiron: 288 pages, $29(Aug. 5) Soloski's second novel is a dark academia thriller with an off-Broadway twist. In 1972, Allison, a New York college student, is seduced by an avant-garde theater troupe that seems to act as much like a cult as it does a company. Twenty-five years later, secrets from that era unravel in a SoCal arts school and her dark past catches up with her. Soloski, a culture reporter for the New York Times (whose 2023 debut, 'Here in the Dark,' is being adapted for TV), is gifted at revealing the subtle emotions that emerge when actors are on the stage or in the studio, while sustaining a sardonic, noir-like style. — M.A. The Hounding By Xenobe PurvisHenry Holt: 240 pages, $27(Aug. 5) The village of Little Nettlebed seems straight from Jane Austen, until its inhabitants start claiming that the five Mansfield sisters have more in common with Rachel Yoder's 'Nightbitch' than proper young Enlightenment ladies. In other words, they're straight-up bitches of the canine variety who can morph from belle to beast in the blink of an eye. What takes this novel past conceit to commentary lies in its exploration of interiority among all of the characters, not simply the suspected women, but those who observe, accuse and fear. When a community cannot explain misfortune, who suffers? Purvis makes a clever but careful case for combining the Gothic with the paranormal. — B.P. Putting Myself Together By Jamaica KincaidFarrar, Straus & Giroux: 336 pages, $30(Aug. 5) Kincaid is one of this country's finest living writers, if not this country's best living writer. Born in Antigua, Kincaid was sent to New York by her mother to work as a servant, and Kincaid never looked back, making herself into a writer. The author of five novels, a collection of short stories, numerous works of nonfiction on gardening and the astounding pseudo-memoir 'My Brother,' Kincaid is now publishing a collection of her essays from her early days at the New Yorker to the present. The subtitle says it all: 'Writing 1974 –.' We need that dash; we need Kincaid. — J.F. The Gossip Columnist's Daughter By Peter OrnerLittle, Brown: 448 pages, $29(Aug. 12) In 1963, Karyn Kupcinet, an aspiring actor and the daughter of prominent Chicago gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet, was found dead in Hollywood. In this novel, her killing (which remains unsolved) leaves questions lingering across decades. Orner imagines a family friend attempting to put the pieces together. And broken families are an Orner specialty: his 2011 novel, 'Love and Shame and Love,' worked similar terrain. So is artful prose, which he's displayed in a pair of excellent memoirs about his favorite writers. Playing to his strengths, he weaves old-school boldface-type journalism and the stubborn persistence of family secrets. — M.A. Ready for My Closeup: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream By David M. LubinGrand Central: 320 pages, $30(Aug. 12) Featuring an iconic, harrowing performance by Gloria Swanson as a fading Hollywood star, 'Sunset Boulevard' remains, 75 years after its release, one of the great movies about the movies. If anything, Lubin suggests in this history of the making of the film, that it's more relevant today as social media stokes an 'obsession with youth and beauty, our dread of old age, and our fear of becoming irrelevant.' It's also a rare example, he shows, of creative egos working in sync, from director Billy Wilder to screenwriter Charles Brackett to stars Swanson and William Holden, ironically making a great Hollywood film by exposing the flaws of that world. — M.A. Fonseca By Jessica Francis KanePenguin Press: 272 pages, $28(Aug. 12) Penelope Fitzgerald is one of my favorite writers, so when I heard that Kane was writing a historical novel about Fitzgerald's real trip to Mexico in 1952 to see about a potential inheritance from a silver mine, I stopped everything I was doing and requested a copy. Fitzgerald was a late-blooming novelist who supported her whole family, including her troubled husband, and won the Booker Prize in 1979 for 'Offshore' — a novel about a family who, like Fitzgerald's own, lived on a houseboat on the Thames in London. I'm looking forward to discovering Kane's work through the life of a writer I deeply admire. — J.F. Baldwin: A Love Story By Nicholas BoggsFarrar, Straus & Giroux: 720 pages, $35(Aug. 19) Boggs' hefty new biography of James Baldwin — the first in three decades — looks at one of the 20th century's greatest American writers through the lens of his romantic relationships. It's an ingenious approach. Baldwin's writing about race and American society was always entwined with love stories, from his pathbreaking 1956 LGBTQ+ novel 'Giovanni's Room' to his late classic, 1974's 'If Beale Street Could Talk.' The biography is strengthened by Boggs' discovery of previously unpublished writings in Baldwin's papers, shaping a book that explores how Baldwin 'forced readers to confront the connections between white supremacy, masculinity, and sexuality.' — M.A. Hatchet Girls By Joe R. LansdaleMulholland Books: 288 pages, $30(Aug. 19) Lansdale, the genre bard of East Texas, brings the deeply flawed and deeply human crime-fighting duo Hap and Leonard back for a 14th time. This case involves the Hatchet Girls, a cult that follows a bloodthirsty leader intent on giving polite society hell. There also appears to be a wild hog hopped up on meth. Lansdale is a mordantly funny chronicler of Lone Star misdeeds who knows how to keep a plot furiously turning. — C.V. A Truce That Is Not Peace By Miriam ToewsBloomsbury: 192 pages, $27(Aug. 26) Toews' life has been transformed by the suicides of her sister and father, as well as her own struggles with depression. So when the 'Women Talking' novelist was asked during a conference, 'Why do you write?' her answers were inevitably death-struck and complicated. In this lyrical memoir, Toews explores her writing career with storytelling that is at once propulsive and recursive, using her work as evidence of both her success and her inability to escape her past. It's bracing, candid reading. As Toews writes: 'Literature is not compassion; it's war.' — M.A. Katabasis By R. F. KuangHarper Voyager: 560 pages, $32(Aug. 26) Dark academia remains a hot genre; R. F. Kuang ('Yellowface') takes it to a new level in her sixth novel. Two graduate students, Alice and Peter, must travel to hell in order to save their professor's soul, and yes, there's a bit of will-they-or-won't-they romance. However, the emphasis is less on any ultimate hookup than on how the distinct pressures of the ivory tower can torment and even destroy its inhabitants. Alice has clinical depression, maybe other comorbidities, and those are exacerbated not just by her workload, but by her department's longstanding and long-internalized misogyny that even the strongest magick can't fix. — B.P. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution By Jill LeporeLiveright: 768 pages, $40(Sept. 16) The Harvard history professor and New Yorker writer follows up her 2018 U.S. history overview, 'These Truths,' with a close look at the Constitution, arguing that it should be treated as a living thing, forever adapting to the times, rather than a fixed text never (or very rarely) to be changed. This seems like a really good time for a close look at Constitutional intention and interpretation. — C.V. Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America By Jeff ChangMariner: 560 pages, $35(Sept. 23) Chang, a hip-hop scholar ('Can't Stop Won't Stop') and activist, places his subject in the context of Asian American identity and pride. Tracing Lee's journey from youth in Hong Kong to his rise to Western stardom to his death at the age of 32, Chang reveals both the global icon and the complex human being who helped put martial arts on the American map. — C.V.
