Considering that even the general public is dimly aware that there is a greater number of homosexuals involved in the movies than in some other occupations, it’s surprising that, until recently, there has been relatively little written about them as a group and nearly nothing regarding those who labored behind the camera. Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet and Parker Tyler’s Screening the Sexes were early, pioneering works focusing on actors and/or onscreen representations, and which stood alone for decades until Boze Hadleigh’s books of interviews came along. Occasional biographies of Montgomery Clift, Tyrone Power, James Whale, or George Cukor might deal with their sexuality and reveal the “secret” of a few others in the process, but a book that examines the broad range of queer involvement in the movies had to wait until William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen.
Despite the subject matter Mann’s book has less in common with these earlier books than it does with Neil Gabler’s An Empire of Their Own, which relates how a number of enterprising Jews took a disdained media and transformed it into a major entertainment business – heck, the major entertainment business of the 20th century – and became the moguls behind the great Hollywood studios in the process. While none of them were also gay, Mann’s book leaves the impression that without Jews and gays, there might not even be a Hollywood, at least not as we know it.
It bears remembering that straight WASP Thomas Alva Edison, the so-called inventor of the movies, initially thought they were nothing more than a Penny Arcade fad which would soon lose its novelty. Even as late as 1913, he was adamant that the public would tolerate movies no longer than 10 minutes, despite evidence of European historical epics, clocking in at 6 to 10 times that length, which the same public was flocking to see. No, it took society’s outsiders to perfect the fantasy machine that became studio-era Hollywood.
The arts have always been a haven for those who are different – and not just sexually. This is true of theater in particular; artists are generally open and exploratory, and artist communities tend to be non-judgmental toward a broad range of behavior. That the theater, decoration, and fashion trades have long been havens should come as no surprise, and it was from these areas that film initially drew its personnel. In Hollywood, they were far better paid, and the industry’s concentrated location at the time gave it a sense of community.
However, it was a community that needed to be kept hidden from the public at large. Hollywood, after all, was manufacturing fantasy and not merely onscreen; if Theodosia Goodman of Ohio was transformed for public consumption into Theda Bara, a woman of mysterious origin whose name was an anagram for Arab Death, no less needed to be done for the cowboy who was a flaming queen or the bull dyke who played virgins. So elaborate facades involving faux romances and sham marriages became the order of the day (and continue even now).
With the rise of the Production Code’s power in the early 1930s, it became effectively mandatory. The code was drawn up with the direct input of the Catholic church, and Mann makes note of the Hays Office’s Joseph Breen’s virulently anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks in his memos. The early 1950s again saw a need for gays and lesbians to adopt extreme camouflage, surprisingly not from Joseph McCarthy’s HUAC hearings but from the many scandal magazines such as Confidential, which began publishing at that time.
For all the need for circumspect behavior, Mann points out that Hollywood gays needed to be far less in the closet than their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the US. They also made far more money and, unlike their brethren in other industries, often wielded considerable power. If the onscreen portrayals were comedic figures, they were far less demeaning than the characterizations of blacks allowed at the time. Considering the code forbade their depiction at all, getting them on screen actually turned the joke on the censors. As Mann points out, the depictions were benign compared to the psychotic fags and predatory dykes that characterize such post-Stonewall offerings as Cruising and Windows.
Does this mean that pre-Gay Lib Hollywood was better than today? No. Just different. Perhaps not quite so repressed as we’ve thought. Yes, one had to live a lie to the general public, but there always has been and always will be some price to pay for fame, and the closet may have borne no costlier a sticker than any other trade-off (very few public figures lead the lives they present to us). For gays and lesbians, however, it meant that the true extent of their numbers and their contributions to society also remained hidden.
This is where Behind the Screen is most valuable; it names names – lots and lots of names from the well-known to forgotten performers and never-heard-of technicians. In the cases of the famous, Mann’s research sometimes merely provides further verification, while in others it reveals that their same-sex alliances were far more extensive than previously realized. It is also quite astonishing how many became far-right-wing Republicans (one wonders what the reaction of those who voted for him would be to the knowledge that the bent population of the Reagan White House might have had a higher percentage than Fire Island around the Fourth of July).
In the hands of a lesser writer (or, at any rate, one with less perspective), Behind the Screen could have turned into a gossipy laundry list. Mann constructs his book chronologically, making it a history of Hollywood itself (though focusing on the participation and contributions of a specific group), and is careful to situate the film capital’s chronicle within the larger context of US events.
Behind the Screen is essential for anyone interested in Hollywood – particularly its heretofore unwritten past – and for gays and lesbians looking to recover some of their history. Mann’s exhaustive research and prose style make it informative and enjoyable reading as well.