passing: two johnny arthur films
by
Douglas Messerli
Beginning
in the late 1920s and throughout the early 1930s, actor Johnny Arthur often
played what was described as the role of the “panze” or “pansy,” a
stereotypical role which—before the Motion Picture Code banned them—allowed
effeminate and other gay-stereotyped characters to offer comedic moments, even
if they were generally isolated through the plot from the heterosexual figures.
These figures, at least reminded the presumed heterosexual audiences throughout the US that queers still did exist.
LGBTQ film critic Richard Barrios
characterized Arthur in this manner:
“Some
cinematic sissies dither, others get all haughty, and still others suffer in
affronted silence (as in some of Mr. Pangborn’s priceless facial expressions).
Johnny Arthur exhibited onscreen in a constant state of anxiety, balancing
precariously at midpoint between dread and displeasure. His established image
was not so much effeminate as it was more subversively, a drastic departure
from any kind of conventional masculinity. …Silent film deprived him of one of
his prime assets, a voice so whiny that it probably caused early speaker
systems to hum and buzz incessantly.”
His sense of anxiety, in fact, allowed
Arthur to perform in 89 short and feature films during the 1920s and 1930s,
long after “sissies” had been banned from the screen by the morally prissy
Joseph Breen. Arthur was the go-to man for the hen-pecked husband, a man who
took on home decorating without of clue to what he was doing, and the
soon-to-be married man upon whom you could most depend to never take a look at
another woman because of his general fear of the species.
Los
Angeles, July 10, 2022
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