playing
sexual chess
by Douglas Messerli
Howard Bradford and
Richard C. Kahn (screenplay, based on a novel by Radclyffe Hall), Richard C.
Kahn (director) Children of Loneliness aka The Third Sex / 1935
[Lost film]
Richard C. Kahn’s 1934 film The Third Sex is described in some sources as an “exploitation film about homosexuality.” But this apparently lost film, seems to at least aspire to be a kind of Magnus Hirschfeld-inspired study of various sexual differences which are obviously perceived as “problems” by psychoanalysts and other authorities whose advice seems to be based on little personal knowledge of homosexuality. The story is based on a novel (Well of Loneliness) by the famed lesbian author Radclyffe Hall.
One figure, Elinor Gordon (Luana Walters), who was frightened sexually by a man as an infant, confides to her psychoanalyst that she is considering yielding to the advances of her attentive and affectionate female roommate, Bobby Allen (Jean Carmen).
The psychoanalyst advises her to get rid
of her roommate, who works in the same law office as does she, and to marry a
football player. In other words, to rid herself of any desires and play at
“normalcy.” She apparently does rebuff her roommate’s attentions and travels
with her lawyer employer, Dave Warren (Allan Jarvis), to the country house of
the senior partner, John Grant (John Elliott). Elinor falls in love with Dave,
but Grant’s daughter Judith (Sheila Loren), meanwhile, is romantically interested
in an artist acquaintance, Paul Van Tyne (Morgan Wallace), who without her
knowing is a homosexual.
At one point in the film
Paul takes her to a café filled with same sex couples. “What sort of people are
these?” she asks, to which he responds, “These are the children of loneliness,
nature’s tragic mistakes.”
After his secret sexuality if
discovered, Paul commits suicide, the way of all gay flesh of the day.
Los Angeles, March 1,
2021
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema and World Cinema Review (March 2021).
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