Why do you think they called them "best boys"?

A new book names names and tells tales as it charts the lasting influence of gays and lesbians on the movie business.

By Douglas Cruickshank

Nov. 8, 2001 | "Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969," William J. Mann's meticulous sociocultural archeology, unearths the impact of gay, lesbian and bisexual film industry workers on American motion pictures -- not to mention their impact on the country's sense of style, glamour and fun. There's nothing revelatory in Mann's book, unless you've been leading a very cloistered life. ("Raymond Burr?") But it's exhaustively researched, well written and filled with entertaining anecdotes, interviews and odd historical details.

Mann rounds up both the usual and unusual suspects. Among the famous are Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Cesar Romero, Tallulah Bankhead, Montgomery Clift, Edward Everett Horton, Cole Porter, Liberace, Burr, Clifton Webb, Sal Mineo, Ramon Navarro, Roddy McDowall and Rudolf Valentino, the David Bowie of his day. But "Hollywood Babylon" it isn't. True to its title, the book focuses more on the people behind the scenes -- from set decorators and costume designers to choreographers, writers and producers -- than on the stars, though Mann provides plenty of tasty morsels about actors and actresses, as well as directors, such as Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor, Dorothy Arzner, William Desmond Taylor and Edmund Goulding.

Here, describing the emergence of Marlene Dietrich, Mann writes, "At the German premiere of 'Der Blaue Engel,' the film that catapulted her to international stardom in 1930, she walked out onto the stage with a bunch of violets pinned to the crotch of her gown. Violets, the symbol of lesbianism -- sure to be understood by an audience of her friends in Berlin."

Later he tells of Ronald Reagan's discomfort when "Dark Victory" director Goulding, who was homosexual, suggested that the future commander-in-chief give a gay spin to his role in the film. "Mr. Goulding wanted me to play my character as if he were the kind of guy who wouldn't care if a young lady were undressing in front of him," Reagan complained.

Elsewhere in the book Mann reports:

Sometimes Goulding would actually play the scene himself first, costumes and all: "The sight of him tripping into a room with a frilly party frock lashed to his middle is said to be something that verges on the terrific," said one reporter.

The movie industry, almost from its inception, attracted individuals for whom "normal" life just didn't seem that appealing, or even attainable. They've frequently been, and continue to be, people -- "show people" -- who, by the very nature of their outsider character and outsize personalities, are more prone to experiment, to pursue the unconventional. Sometimes that was reflected in their sexual orientation, sometimes it wasn't. "The divide in Hollywood was never a simple break between gay and straight," Mann writes; "it was always more between progressive and repressive, imaginative and conventional ... a 'gay sensibility' or 'alternative worldview' wasn't always the sole product of homosexuals."

"If you view Hollywood as a colony of immigrants," critic and historian Michael Bronski tells Mann, "there is a way of seeing [gay filmmakers] from an immigrant experience, even if they were born in America. Remember, Hollywood was made up of people who were considered 'outside' of what a real American citizen was supposed to be. They were Jews, they were homosexuals, they were independent women, they were actual immigrants. So in many ways, all of Hollywood was familiar with having to 'pass.'"

Next page: A queendom where passing wasn't necessary