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

And yet Don Bachardy, the longtime partner of Christopher Isherwood, told Mann, "I can't think of any homosexual who was involved in the Red Scare. Queerness and communism seemed instinctively incompatible. There was a squareness to communism, many [gays] thought. It lacked color and excitement and fun." Those drab clothes!

In any case, what had been anticipated by Photoplay writer Howe in the '20s came to pass -- in spades -- in the following decades, reaching its zenith in the claustrophobic '50s. "It's a fascinating irony," Mann writes, "that ... the three most enduring iconographic stars of this most repressive of times were, in fact, sexually deviant: [James] Dean; [Marlon] Brando, who'd acknowledge his own sexual experiences with men; and [Rock] Hudson. Their onscreen alchemy is infused with such deviance."

Not surprisingly, Mann's book is most fun to read in the chapters about Hollywood at its most fun -- the first three to four decades of the 20th century, what George Cukor called the town's "la belle epoque."

In 1916, the hottest male movie idol was the now forgotten J. Warren Kerrigan, who lived with his mother in "The Kumfy Kerrigan Kottage" and once told the Motion Picture Blue Book that he loved the ladies "when they leave me alone." Another gay star was Gareth Hughes, who had the lead in Fox's "Every Mother's Son" in 1918. Mann describes him as a "flaming little queen." By the mid-1920s his film career was more or less over, but Hughes lived out his days productively as a member of an Episcopal monastery who worked with Paiute Indians in Nevada. The indelible Edward Everett Horton, Ramon Novarro and Harrison Ford (as Mann prudently points out, no relation to today's macho helicopter jockey) were among the other gays who became stars during the 20th century's first two decades. "Behind the Screen" tells of Ford going on a costume-buying spree for actress Norma Talmadge and being "as enthusiastic as a young debutante planning her first party dress." Mann isn't stingy with an almost endless string of colorful anecdotes.

On a few occasions in "Behind the Screen," Mann tries too hard, stretches a little too far, to make his case. He includes the text of several telegrams, for example, between actors Andy Lawler and Gary Cooper. Mann describes the messages as "enigmatic" -- they will strike others as entirely innocuous. All he can say for sure is the obvious -- that Lawler and Cooper were good friends, and that Cooper had an androgynous quality that may have added to his appeal. These speculative digressions are doubly unnecessary because he's got mounds of well-documented, verified accounts.

Also, for a book that's clearly the result of a massive and methodical research effort, some omissions are peculiar. Mann refers to film historian Kevin Brownlow's "landmark study of the silent era," but doesn't bother to mention in the main text the title of Brownlow's wonderful "The Parade's Gone By" (the 1968 book he's presumably referring to) or his equally fine "Hollywood: The Pioneers," published in 1979. Likewise, Mann goes into considerable detail about the mysterious 1922 murder of gay director William Desmond Taylor, but never mentions "A Cast of Killers," the bestselling 1987 book on the subject by Sydney Kirkpatrick, based on the research of film director King Vidor, which many believe solves the case.

But that's nitpicking. For those fascinated by film history, gay and lesbian history, or both, "Behind the Screen" is the book of the moment and a treat to read.

This story has been corrected.

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