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Celluloid Closet 2.0

  • Period: to

    The Dickson Experimental Sound Film was shot

    The first film ever to record live sound, it included footage of two men dancing together. Over the years whether those men were actually gay has been debated.
  • Algie the Miner

    In this 10-minute film short, Algie Allmore a city boy with suspicious behaviors like giving cowboys kisses on their lips and dressing different is given only one year to prove that he's the man to marry Harry Lyons' daughter
  • A Florida Enchantment

    In the film, Lillian Travers, a wealthy Northern woman about to be married, takes a magical seed which transforms its user into the opposite gender. Lillian's transformation into Lawrence Talbot has also sometimes been read as a transformation into a butch lesbian. This reading is bolstered by the later transformation of Lillian's fiancé into what could be an effemininate gay man. However, as Lillian and her fiancé are shown attracted both to each other and to the same sex (albeit at different t
  • Behind the Screen

    The film is significant to the history of homosexuality in the cinema, as it contains a joke about the subject, which was relatively unusual at the time. After Chaplin learns that Purviance is really a woman, he kisses her while on the set; at this point, a male stagehand enters and, thinking that Chaplin has kissed a man, starts acting in an overtly effeminate way until Chaplin kicks him
  • Manslaughter

    A wild, wealthy woman is brought to heel by a sermonizing district attorney after she accidentally hits and kills a motorcycle cop.
  • The Soilers

    The Soilers is a 1923 American silent comedy film starring Stan Laurel.[1] It was released in the same year as the Western silent movie drama The Spoilers, and the name of one character from the original, McNamera, may have a parody in the name of the Finlayson character.[2]
  • Wanderer of the West

  • Wings

    Wings is a 1927 American action silent film about two World War I fighter pilot friends, both involved with the same beauty, produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman and released by Paramount Pictures. Wings was the only completely silent film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture
  • The Broadway Melody of 1929

    The plot involves the romances of musical comedy stars, set against the backstage hubbub of a Broadway revue. Anita Page and Bessie Love play a vaudeville sister act who have come to New York for their big break on Broadway. Charles King plays the song-and-dance man whose affection for one sister (Harriet alias Hank) is supplanted by his growing love for the younger, more beautiful sister (Queenie). Queenie tries to protect her sister and derail the love triangle by dating a wealthy but unscrupu
  • Call Her Savage

    wikipedia linkA wild young woman rebels against the man she believes to be her father. In a scene late in the film, Nasa and Jay Randall share the back seat of a taxi. He says to her, "Well, you said you wanted to go slumming, so I picked a place to eat in the Village. Only wild poets and anarchists eat there. It's pretty tough." After a further exchange of dialogue, the scene cuts to the place, a gay bar where two men in maid's uniforms and with feather dusters are singing a song.
  • Dancing Lady

    Dancing LadyJanie Barlow (Joan Crawford) is a young dancer who is reduced to stripping in a burlesque show. Arrested for indecent exposure, she's bailed out by millionaire playboy Tod Newton (Franchot Tone), who was attracted to her while slumming at the theatre with his society pals. When she tries to get a part in a Broadway musical, Tod intercedes with director Patch Gallagher (Clark Gable) to get her the job: he'll put his money into the show, if Janie is given a part in the chorus. Even though he needs
  • Bride of Frankenstein

    Wikipedia ariticleBride of Frankenstein was released to critical and popular acclaim, although it encountered difficulties with some state and national censorship boards. Since its release the film's reputation has grown, and it is hailed as Whale's masterpiece. Modern film scholars, noting Whale's homosexuality and that of others involved in the production, have found a gay sensibility in the film, although a number of Whale's associates have dismissed the idea.
  • Dracula's Daughter

    Dracula's Daughter Gay film historian Vito Russo noted in his book The Celluloid Closet that Universal highlighted Countess Zaleska's attraction to women in some of its original advertising for the film, using the tag line "Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!" He further cited Countess Zaleska as an example of the presentation of the "essence of homosexuality as a predatory weakness"
  • Bringing Up Baby

    The picture tells the story of a paleontologist in a number of predicaments involving a woman with a unique sense of logic and a leopard named Baby.
  • The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo is published