American Queer Life: How Culture Saved A Little, Gay Boomer Boy

So starved was I to see myself represented on the movie screen (or on TV or in books), those seven words both shocked and elated me. I was not alone. 

My childhood in small-town America during the 50s and 60s provided safety and security but little exposure to culture. Saturday morning TV movies opened different worlds to me. Tarzan and his son Boy, Charlie Chan and his bumbling son, or Sherlock Holmes and his wifely Dr. Watson ignited two desires: male companionship and adventure. Tarzan, portrayed in a glorious black and white glow by Olympic gold medalists Johnny Weissmuller or Buster Crabbe, revealed a voyeuristic pleasure: masculine beauty. 

As a kid and into adulthood, a new release or reissue from Disney heralded exciting entertainment. The pretty princes of Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959) began a tradition inherited by the royal heroes in The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991). (Am I attracted to male cartoons? Isn’t there enough shame in the world?)

The cotton-candy joys of animation yielded to the cinematic feast of West Side Story (1961). The film dazzled my senses, made my heart leap with indescribable joy like the beautiful, butch dancers who defied gravity. Sadly, I didn’t know one of the film’s directors, its composer, lyricist, maybe even one of its stars, were gay: Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, George Chakiris. If only I had known …

Mary Poppins (1964) solidified my love for musicals and Julie Andrews. At 11 years old, I longed to live with her blissfully in her animated world, penguins waiting on us flipper and foot, maybe in a prince’s castle just beyond the hill and dale. 

Ft. Lupton’s Star Theater offered free, Saturday-afternoon flicks for two milk carton coupons. The  7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), starring Kerwin Mathews and Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation, launched my thrill for hunky heroes and special effects. Harryhausen’s other films—Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Clash of the Titans (1981)—starred swashbuckling hunks Todd Armstrong, John Philip Law, and Harry Hamlin. (Hamlin would later star in Making Love (1982) about a married man finding love with another man, a noble Hollywood effort to equalize gay and straight relationships.) 

Responding to the AIDS crisis, the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 90s rejected the arrogant and smothering judgment of Reagan politics and religious castigation. Todd Haynes’ Passion (1991), Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991), Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992), Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991), Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992) and Mysterious Skin (2004) interpreted queer stories and their protagonists as real and heroic, creating a unique cinematic language.

While I appreciate the Chris trio (Evans, Hemsworth, Pine) and the Ryan duo (Gosling, Reynolds), their prettiness and films do not compare with the Greek-godlike beauty and artistry of Brando’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Clift’s From Here to Eternity (1953), Dean’s East of Eden (1955), Newman’s The Long Hot Summer (1958), McQueen’s Bullitt (1968).

What of the female stars? Watch Davis in The Little Foxes (1941), Stanwyk in Double Indemnity (1944), Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945), de Havilland in The Heiress (1949), Garland in A Star Is Born (1954), Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966). They used the talents they had to get ahead in a man’s world. Gay men related to their struggles; that’s why we adored them.

Movies became a guide to gaydom. I snuck in to see Midnight Cowboy (1969) at the Brighton Twin. The film was X-rated; I was underage, the owners desperate. Win-win! I loved The Killing of Sister George (1968), a compassionate tale about lesbian lovers and an all-time fave. The original La Cage Aux Folles (1978) brought tears of laughter and made farce socially relevant. I read how Alien and its sequels were metaphors for the AIDS plague, a disease injected inside a victim that bursts out in some disgusting co-morbidity. I looked for the gay subtext in The Mechanic (1972), only to discover decades later that to get made all homosexual references had been cut. 

In Ode to Billie Joe (1976), the dramatization of Bobby Gentry’s mournful, Southern song, I discovered why Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatachie Bridge. He had sex with a man. Once. Well, it’s not for everyone. But Something for Everyone (1970) really did present something for everyone: Michael York, every character’s object of desire. 

I was living in New York when William Friedkin began filming Cruising (1980), raising a ruckus with gay activists over its negative portrayal of the leather scene and a potential incitement to murder. At 2 a.m., I headed to the set location in the meat-packing district to observe a protest. A yelling crowd of about 500 blocked the area, but their most creative disruption was the glitter a group threw on the street. The sparkling glare prohibited filming. 

Many of the movies I’ve mentioned are from the olden days, so for my cinematic education, I relied on television’s Saturday Night at the Movies or The Midnight Late Show. Later, Blockbuster became a VHS goldmine. Also, I basked in the dark of revival theaters watching fuzzy, grainy, and scratched prints of classics like Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), mesmerized and enthralled. 

What counted as porn 40 years ago—full-frontal, male nudity—is now common in mainstream movies, and one reason I’m looking forward to God’s Own Country (2017). The gay love story with a positive ending (so I’ve read), stars lovely Josh O’Connor, recent recipient of a Golden Globe for The Crown. The mystery underneath Tarzan’s loin cloth shall be revealed again. And I’m OK with that.