Anti gay movies 1940w

French poster for 1931’s Madchen in Uniform (btw this is one of my favourite images of all time, just in general)

I detect that a lot of people are interested in classic film in theory, or in memory - there might be a remembered fondness for films seen in childhood, or some curiosity about certain names and titles - but that they often struggle to find an usable, relatable starting signal for appreciating and understanding the pre-1970s film landscape. This was me about three years ago - and my magic starting signal ended up organism 1931’s Madchen in Uniform, a perform which made me reconsider everything I thought I knew about the past, gay representation, women, and also queer representation and women in the past. It led me headfirst into the American Pre-Code period, introduced me to the next 40 years of German cinema, and assured me that there was a place for people appreciate me in a field I had initially assumed to be irretrievably male.

Hopefully if you’re also a lesbian or a bisexual female interested in education more about cinema, this series of articles might facilitate you find your own route that speaks to you. Film history is a very stunning shining castle that constant anti gay movies 1940w

Forbidden love: The WW2 letters between two men

But was this a love story with a happy ending?

Probably not. At one show, Mr Bradley was sent to Scotland on a mission to defend the Forth Bridge. He met and fell in treasure with two other men. Rather surprisingly, he wrote and told Mr Bowsher all about his romances north of the border. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Mr Bowsher took it all in his stride, writing that he "understood why they fell in love with you. After all, so did I".

Although the couple wrote throughout the war, the letters stopped in 1945.

However, both went on to enjoy interesting lives.

Mr Bowsher moved to California and became a well-known horse trainer. In a strange twist, he employed Sirhan Sirhan, who would depart on to be convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy.

Mr Bradley was briefly entangled with the MP Sir Paul Latham, who was imprisoned in 1941 monitoring a court martial for "improper conduct" with three gunners and a civilian. Sir Paul was exposed after some "indiscreet letters" were discovered.

Mr Bradley moved to Brighton and died in 2008. A dwelling clearance company found the letters and sold them to a dealer specia

Erotic and Esoteric: The Uninvited as Queer Cult Film

Guest post by Caleb Allison.


Paramount’s erotic and atmospheric ghost story The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944) sets up a salacious mystery before one sees even a single frame of the film. Who, exactly, is being uninvited and from what? Turning the film’s simple yet provocative title into an interrogative proposition leads us down a tortuous historical path linked to queer representation, the National Legion of Decency, and staunchly religious censorship codes. Posed as a question of representation, The Uninvited(?) reveals a subterranean cinematic system of coded gestures, suggestive framing, and vague phrases that hint, sometimes not so subtly, at a queer presence. However concealed and coded these devices may possess been, they offered sustenance to an underground lgbtq+ audience adept at searching the margins of the frame, reading between the lines, and digging under the text.

The Uninvited is a powerful example of a critically praised ghost story that became an underground lesbian cult production. Drawing explicitly from the popularity of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), The Uninvited turned Hitchcock’s ghostly a

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on this topic ever since The FitzOsbornes in Exile was first published in North America (that is, two years ago, which says something about my blogging habits). I don’t want to donate away any plot spoilers to those who haven’t peruse the book, but let’s just utter that it’s fix in the behind 1930s, in England, and that at least one male character is queer. A surprising number of readers seemed to assume that any well-brought-up immature lady of this time and place would have been shocked, horrified and outraged at the very idea of homosexuality, and that all gay men were shunned by Society and were in constant hazard of being carted off to prison, à la Oscar Wilde. So, there were a number of comments from readers about how ‘implausible’ it was that Sophie and Veronica, the two young ladies at the centre of the story, would be so accepting of their same-sex attracted male relative.

Now, it’s true that any kind of sexual activity between men was illegal in England between 1885 and 1967, but it’s also genuine that these laws were applied very selectively. In general, rich, aristocratic men were free to do whatever th

The Historians' Case Against Homosexual Discrimination

On June 26, 2003 the Supreme Court struck down all laws that prohibit sex between consenting gay adults. Below is the brief filed by historians in the case, Lawrence v. Texas.

Amici, as historians, do not propose to offer the Court legal doctrine to justify a holding that the Texas Homosexual Behavior Law violates the U.S. Constitution. Rather, amici consider they can best help the Court by elaborating on two historical propositions important to the legal analysis: (1) no consistent historical practice singles out same-sex behavior as “sodomy” subject to proscription, and (2) the governmental policy of classifying and discriminating against certain citizens on the basis of their homosexual status is an unprecedented project of the twentieth century, which is already being dismantled. The Texas law at issue is an example of such irrational discrimination.

In colonial America, regulation of non-procreative sexual practices – ordinance that carried harsh penalties but was rarely enforced – stemmed from Christian religious teachings and reflected the need for procreative sex to increase the population. Colonial