San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Uncovering early gay icons of silver screen
To count down the contributions of LGBTQ people in cinema would be an enormous task, akin to enumerating the cinematic contributions of people with blue eyes. Yes, we’re talking about a minority of individuals, but an absolutely massive minority.
And their work is anything but monolithic. On the contrary, it’s as varied as the personalities and experiences of the people who identify within that group.
A comprehensive look is impossible. A perfunctory list of great gaythemed movies (with worthy but usual suspects such as “Brokeback Mountain,” “Milk” and “Call Me by Your Name”) seems too rote. And a genuine survey of the gay people working in the current film industry would require an entire book to do the subject any justice.
Instead, let’s try something else. Let’s take a look at great work by gay cinema artists of the past who, at the time they created this work, were not even widely known to be gay. Even here, the choices have to be arbitrary. This is not a “best of.” There are too many great artists who fit into this category, so this can only be a random sampling.
Still, there’s a point to doing this. Though these artists couldn’t be open about it at the time, it’s safe to assume that in the 1930s, ’50s and ’70s, there were just as many gay people working in cinema as there are today. This means that the gay contribution to movies is greater than we will ever know.
Alla Nazimova in “Salome” Nazimova was a Russianborn actress who became a major star of the turnofthecentury Broadway stage, where she starred in original productions of Ibsen, including “Hedda Gabler.” She was already in her early 40s when she codirected and starred in this bizarre and utterly singular film, in which she played Herod’s teenage daughter, the one who demanded the head of John the Baptist.
The film, released in New York in 1922, is dominated by the Art Deco costumes and sets by Natacha Rambova, who was rumored to be Nazimova’s lover at the time. Though she said nothing about her sexuality to the press, she lived openly with women throughout her life and coined the term “sewing circle” for the bisexual and lesbian community in Hollywood. Watch it: Available on YouTube.
Ramon Novarro Born Jose Ramon Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico, Novarro shot to stardom in the title role in “BenHur” (1925). At his confident best — as in “The Pagan” (1929) — he was as beautiful as anyone who ever appeared on film. He had a sweet spirit and a boyish sense of humor and was instantly appealing.
Unfortunately, MGM didn’t know what to do with him. Seeing him as an “exotic,” they cast him in every role they considered exotic — including as a Russian (“Mata Hari”), an Indian (“Son of India”), an Italian American (“Huddle”), a Chinese (“The SonDaughter”) and a Native American (“Laughing Boy”) — all of which he played with his light MexicanSpanish accent. (Curiously, they never cast him as a Mexican.)
Understandably, his career faded. In his personal life, Novarro was a Roman Catholic who once considered entering the priesthood. He was conflicted about his sexuality and never spoke about it publicly, but he was ultimately outed in the most cruel and gruesome way imaginable: In 1968, at age 69, he was murdered by two men he had invited into his Laurel Canyon home.
Watch “BenHur” (1925): Available to rent on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video.
Dorothy Arzner’s “Merrily We Go to Hell” Arzner, a lesbian, was the only female director working during Hollywood’s golden age. She made a number of notable films, one of the best of which is this 1932 drama about