Michael Curtiz | Captain Blood / 1935

gay pirate land

by Douglas Messerli

 

Casey Robinson (screenplay, based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini), Michael Curtiz (director), Captain Blood / 1935

 

Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) is an Irish doctor in 1685 who is summoned to aid Lord Gildoy (Dennis D. Auburn), a rebel against involved in the Monmouth Rebellion, a protestant protest attempting to dispose the Catholic King, James II. Arrested even while he is trying to save a man’s life, Blood is sentenced to death by the notoriously unforgiving Judge Jeffreys. Yet by a simple, almost accidental royal decree, Blood and the surviving rebels are taken from their cells and put upon a ship to the West Indies to be sold into slavery.

    In Port Royal in southeastern Jamaica, Blood is noticed by, Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland), the beautiful niece of the local military commander Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill), who purchases him and attempts to contain his now quite rebellious nature by recommending him as the physician to the colony’s governor Steed (George Hassell), who is suffering from a highly painful version of gout. Blood not only does he temporarily relieves Governor Steed’s condition, but is declared the royal physician, replacing the governor’s previous incompetent doctors, Dr. Bronson (Hobart Cavanaugh) and Dr. Whacker (Donald Meek).

     So begins the intense relationship between Blood, outwardly resentful of Arabella’s notion that she might simply purchase another human being, with Arabella who he finds attractive despite his dismissals of her attempt to play the lady bountiful.

     Observing the sentencing of a ship’s carpenter—warned to not attempt escape—who explains that as a slave without a ship there is no hope of escape, Blood concocts a plan. Meanwhile, he explains to Arabella that he cannot allow himself to serve a society that treats the two rebels against an unfair tyrant to suffering, while he was snoring in his bed. Indeed, his sentencing has turned him into a radical beyond what the true rebels ever imagined.

      Blood visits the two doctors—who oddly enough live together and are now both suffering from a lack of customers—playing into their desperation. These two men, Bronson and Whacker, are the reason that this film visits these pages. For they are quite obviously gay lovers in a time when Joseph I. Breen and the Hays Code Board had utterly banned gay figures from film. Yet here they are again, bumbling prissy outsiders, performing as a duo sharing a living and working space when there was every reason in Hollywood logic to refuse such a scene.

      His conversation with them concerns the possibility of leaving, which he implants in their conversation by suggesting their own departure, only to allow them to turn it on its head as they attempt to find a way that he might depart and their careers as island doctors be restored. I repeat the dialogue to make sense of all that happens after.

 

          “Come in.”

          “Good afternoon colleagues, Dr. Bronson, Dr. Whacker. Well, how is business

                 my friends?”

          “Terrible.” (Bronson)

          “Good.”  (Whacker)

          “Terribly good.” (Bronson)

          “Great, that relieves me. I had heard that things were not altogether…well idle 

                  gossip obviously. You intend to remain here?

          “Remain here? Why not?”

          “It’s queer. There are you free to come and go as you please. And you choose to 

                stay here. While I, who hate this pestilential island…Such are the quirks of 

                circumstance.”

           Blood pauses, stands, and announces “I must be running along now gentleman.”

 

    It is queer indeed, as this couple of quacks brings him back into the room to discuss the possible purchase of a ship which might take him away from their isolated island of operation. The moment he is out the door, they begin to plot how they will gossip their way out of the situation, only to have Blood return to remind them that he is the now beloved Royal Governor’s special physician and as such in still able to destroy their careers if they might reveal his attempt to escape.

     So does Dr. Blood become the swashbuckling hero which the movie is really interested in talking about, even it he finds entry into that subject through two silly gay sissies.

     But then, we also must ask ourselves what is the world the handsome Blood is now committing to. Pirates, as we know, ship to sea with their own kind and sex basically for the rest of their lives, without women unless they in their plundering of cities they rape them, carry them off and enjoy their just desserts—something we know that the moral pirate Blood would never engage in. But his statement of commitment to his men and them to him, reads strangely like a statement of male bonding that might have appeared in a local New York Village gay bar in 1970:

 

“We, the undersigned, are men without a country. Outlaws in our own land and homeless outcasts in any other. Desperate men, we go to seek a desperate fortune. Therefore we do band out ourselves into a brotherhood of buccaneers to practice the trade of piracy on the high seas. We, the hunted, will now hunt.”

 

     Hunting is what we know all desperate, homeless outcast gay males do in their nightly visits to the gay bars of New York City. And Blood further joins up with the far more treacherous French buccaneer, Captain Levasseur (Basil Rathbone), the actor whom Flynn biographer David Bret in his book Satan’s Angel claims Flynn, “who preferred male sexual encounters,” had a sexual relationship. But few of Rathbone’s aficionado’s such Marci Jessen give this account any credence. And it appears the Rathbone spoke quite often as a homophobe. For my purposes it doesn’t actually matter. The characters are already in a gay pirate land that exists only in Hollywood movies. Captain Hook and Johnny Depp can attest to that!

   Of course, the fiction of the film must return us to a heteronormative reality if it wanted to survive the censors. Arabella’s uncle, Colonel Bishop, now the appointed governor is determined to destroy Blood, sending Arabella back to England to protect her.

     Three years later, however, upon returning, her boat is captured, along with the royal emissary Lord Willoughby by Lavesseur’s ship. This time, turning the tables so to speak, Blood buys Arabella’s freedom from Lavesseur, making her as resentful as he had been previously when she had purchased him. Offering her valuable jewelry Blood has acquired in his adventures, he discovers that his new mistress dismisses the jewels and her would-be admirer. But despite that he orders his men to return to Port Royal to deliver her up to her Uncle, certain death for them all.

      What they soon discover, however, is that, in fact, King James has been usurped and has fled to France, which explains why England is now at war with France and two French warships can now be seen outside the Jamaican city on attack. Willoughby has been sent by William III to offer Blood and his pirate crew parsons and commissions in the Royal Navy.

       Pretending the fly the French flag, Blood’s vessels move near the two assaulters, quickly switching to the British Union Jack. The attack first the one ship and, destroying it, turn to the other (which quite inexplicably has continued it sights on the city instead of the destroying ship),

destroying it as well, but losing their own ship in the battle.

      Bishop apparently has abandoned the city in his attempts to find and disarm Blood’ pirate ship.

And in reward for saving the city, Blood is appointed the new governor of the city. Arabella confesses the she loves Blood, and the former pirate makes it clear that the feeling is mutual. By the time Bishop returns, now on trial for having abandoned his post, the new Governor is there to wish him the greeting, “Good morning, Uncle.”

 

Los Angeles, January 24, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

          

Harry Beaumont | The Broadway Melody / 1929

the lavender door

by Douglas Messerli

 

Edmund Goulding (screenplay, with dialogue by Norman Houston and James Gleason, continuity by Sarah Y. Mason), Harry Beaumont (director) The Broadway Melody / 1929

 

Long before 1942 and 1955, two sisters from Ohio arrived in New York City—one of them determined to become an actor, while the elder, less conventionally attractive one serves as their manager—and seeing their new quarters, lament their decision to have left home, just as in the works adapted from Ruth McKenney’s stories remade into the play and movies My Sister Eileen (1940 on stage and 1942 and 1955 on film) and Leonard Bernstein’s hit Broadway musical Wonderful Town (1953). These Michigan sisters Hank (Harriet) Mahoney (Bessie Love) and Queenie (Anita Page) settle down with anticipation and second thoughts in a barren Empire city hotel room where they plan to take up residence until they can “make it” as a singing-dancing duo on Broadway. They have an advantage of knowing Hank’s old boyfriend Eddie Kearns (Charles King), who has pioneered the Broadway trek and made it good, with noted producer Francis Zanfield (Eddie Kane) having just bought one of Eddie’s new songs, “The Broadway Melody” which he plans to perform with the two sisters in Zanfield’s upcoming production. They are at a disadvantage for having a lack of talent so immense that they can’t even imagine.

     Their wailings and clumsy moves almost get them thrown out of their audition, Zanfield keeping on Queenie for his show only because of her looks. When Queenie hears the news she quietly makes a deal with Zanfield to keep his sister in the act if the two work for one paycheck, begging him, when he agrees, not to let her managerial sister know about the bargain deal. He agrees and Hank pushing her way into the pretend contractual details is delighted for the easy negotiations. But soon after, in rehearsals, even their paltry breakout scene with Eddie is cut, and the girls are almost ready to be tossed back onto the streets until a leggy blonde falls from platform upon which she stands as eye candy while a self-centered tenor who warbles out a song below, as Queenie is quickly whisked into her place.

      Except for several stagey but unspectacular theater numbers with songs by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown—the scenes that evidently helped this basically bland movie win the Academy Best Picture Award, the first given to a sound film—that pretty much sums up this piece.

      The rest of the work consists of a meaningless melodramatic story wherein the film’s dominant threesome, Eddie, Hank, and Queenie—all deeply caring for one another, torture their fellow lover and sisters in order to protect them from the truth. Although Eddie and Hank begin the film as a couple destined to marry, upon seeing the grown up Queenie, Eddie is unable to resist her and she him, both he and Queenie, however, so determined not to let Hank know that they create rifts in their relationships, Queenie in particular pretending to be interested in the attentions of the wealthy cad Jacques Warriner (Kenneth Thomson) who awards his new girlfriend with a diamond bracelet, a glamorous apartment and other promised gifts in exchange for....  She, Hank, Eddie, and we all know what it will end up, which is why the motherly Hank and Eddie—who sees Warriner as a challenger—gang up against Queenie to protect her, she, in turn, insisting upon courting Warriner to hide the truth of her and Eddie’s newfound love from Hank.  

      Only when, at the last moment, Hank puts the missing links together does she pretend to be disinterested in Eddie sending him off to save Queenie from the final coils of the reptilian playboy around her lovely body. Eddie rushes into the room where Warriner is engaged in making his pass  to save the day, but leaves it with a sore cheek where the villain has slugged him, and a bad hip where Warriner’s guests have landed him on the hallway floor. Fortunately, Queenie, finally ready to fess up to their love, leaves with him, and soon after the two are married, Hank having gone back on the local vaudeville circuit, unable to shake her gypsy theatrical aspirations.

       Indeed, the whole film is rather uninspired and not a great deal of fun, except for the backstage goings on where, for example, after the narcissistic tenor keeps demanding that the spotlight be thrown upon him, whereupon the lighting operator literally throws the spotlight down upon the singer, nearly killing him. Hank and a nasty blonde chorine have several near-cat fights as the blonde, Flo (Mary Doran) finds ways to deter Hank and Queenie’s act; by the end of the film, ironically, Hank has joined up with the nasty peroxide-minded girl to tour the provinces. Indeed, the film seems determined to make fun of its stereotyped subluminaries as it mocks the speech impediment of the girl’s stuttering uncle Jed (Jed Prouty); the endless drunkenness of one of Zanfield’s investors who his partner has nicknamed “Unconscious,” a man so confused that he will evidently follow anyone male or female off for an imaged sexual interlude; and, most importantly, portrays the pique and hauteur of the gay sissy costume designer Del Turpe (Drew Demarest) who is given a far meatier role (with three long scenes) than would be allowed a year later after the more codified but still not entirely enforced list of moral and sexual restrictions took effect.

     By 1930 “panzes,” as sissies were then described, were not allowed to have general contact of verbal communication with their heterosexual counterparts, while in this 1929 film Del has full conversations with his straight adversaries, at one point after he leaves in a huff, a chorus girl intoning: “Don’t mind him. She’s just one of us.” If she is mocking the gay costumer as being “one of the girls” she is nonetheless expressing a kinship with a gay man rather than the utter segregation of such figures that will occur only a few months later.

       The two scenes in which Demarest “shines” have been quoted fully in both Vito Russo’s and Richard Barrios’ compendious studies of early queer cinema, so I won’t repeat them again in full. One involves the outlandish large hats he has created for his chorus girls, who find it difficult to wear without crushing as they leave their dressing room for the stage, the fact of which brings the fussy designer into confrontation with their careless exit. A large-framed wardrobe mistress (a figure that in later prison movies might be perceived as a lesbian bull-dyke), however, stands in his way, hands on hips, to remind him “Say, listen. I told you they were too high and too wide.”

        Clearly used to her assaults, Del hissingly retorts: “Well, big woman, I design the costumes for the show not the doors for the theater.”

        Big woman comes back at him: “I know that. If you had, they’d have been done in lavender.”

     Yes this is offensive, relying on the fact that we know that by associating him with the color lavender, she was really throwing back in his face something close today to calling him a faggot. But somehow the very fact that his scene and others in the film call the viewers’ attention to the fact that there are gay men and possibly lesbian women working in the theater is of far greater importance than any name-calling involved. Even if they are represented as absurd figures of derision, gays are not yet entirely invisible on the screen in 1929 (or throughout the early 1930s before the code got serious in 1934, banning even sissies from celluloid).

       In the first scene we feel that at least the two figures in dialogue are cohorts, fellow workers behind the stage action, but in the second scene those of the heterosexual hierarchy square off with our exaggerated queer, mocking him rather than just pointing up his difference.

     Bearing an ermine coat over his arm, Del presents Zanfield, surrounded by admiring investors, with a bill for two thousand dollars. Shocked by the price, the producer in a loud voice proclaims he will not pay such a price for a coat worn by an actress for less than two minutes.

      The often-giggling costumer retorts: “But you said ermine. It’s a gorgeous garment, isn’t it?” as he looks to the two investors to Zanfield’s right for confirmation.

      The heavy-set man outrightly mocks him, imitating a stereotypical gay lisp and baby talk, neither of which our huffy hero has displayed in his statements, “Oh! Isn’t it gorgeous? In fact, it’s gorgeoussest thing we ever saw, you sweet little cutie.”

      Rightfully offended, Del marches off, now half-wearing the coat, while the fat man’s drunken companion begins to follow him as in his repeated chases throughout the film after sexual satisfaction, his partner pulling him back to address him as “Unconscious.” Is story writer Goulding suggesting that even the he-man, in his unconscious state, may be interested in trailing after queer sex every now and then, especially  if after they can wake up they can declare “I was so drunk last night I didn’t know what I was doing?”

      Clearly, the script was not suggesting any such thing, but its accidental implications are nonetheless fascinating, particularly since such interchanges between gay and straight would soon not be permitted for several decades except in language hidden under and within the pretended “normalcy” of the plot. By allowing figures such as Del Turpe to storm off and on screen, the actor and writers were declaring, if nothing else, his right to be there, granting him at least a layer of recognition that he and others like him existed in everyday life.

     And surely Del and his kind were a lot more fun to be around than the unnecessarily suffering ninnies at the center of this pic. And it’s sad that soon cinema producers, directors, and writers would feel it necessary to close those lavender doors.

 

Los Angeles, November 25, 2021 

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2021).

Michelle Bossy | Early Retirement / 2022

sex is dirty

by Douglas Messerli

 

Susan-Kate Heaney and Peter Sabri (screenplay), Michelle Bossy (director) Early Retirement / 2022

 

After breaking up with his boyfriend, Alex (Peter Sabri), at 30-something of age, moves in with his parents Pat (Adrienne Barbeau) and Farid (Maz Siam).

     His parents, particularly Pat are certainly more liberal, energetic, and open-minded than many of their neighbors in the elderly community in which they now love. Pat is disturbed by her neighbor’s “Vote for Trump” sign, and is determined to do something about it, despite the advice of her husband.

     But for the most part, their world has radically changed since Alex’s long-ago departure. Farid now speaks to TV set and his biggest worry is the numbers her receives from his oncologist. And there are older issues which were never settled, including Alex’s father’s tendency to get up and leave the room every time Alex’s former lover Travis’ name comes up in discussion or when Travis attempts to call Alex in order to talk with him about the causes of the breakup. Clearly, Alex has left because he feels that Travis has lied to him, but given Travis’ continued attempts to communicate with him, we can only wonder whether he might not be exaggerating what happened. Even Pat argues that he should at least give him a chance to explain. But Alex is as stubborn and unforgiving, evidently as Farid.

     When Alex suggests it’s easier just to cut the relationship off, his mother suggests that such a position comes far too naturally for her son. “Sometimes you keep people at a distance.

     Presumably, in order to comprehend what she means by that, he must confront his own father’s tendency to do the same thing, particularly with his son.

      The distance between the two of them is first revealed to us when Farid shows his disapproval of his son’s late rising, fixing himself breakfast at a time when his father is almost ready to in lunch. And then there’s there the matter of putting salt of his eggs before he’s even tasted them. “You’re going to get high blood pressure,” observes Farid. Angered by his father’s well-meant scolds, Alex finds this a good time to take the dog for a walk. Sitting on his own parent’s stoop, Alex lights up a cigarette, only to be told by a nosey neighbor that there’s no smoking allowed in the retirement community.

      Pat, returning home in armloads of groceries, finds that Farid has not even begun to prepare anything for their dinner, and she is understandably frustrated that at 5:30 in the afternoon he has not cooked anything. “I can’t believe you were here all day by yourself and you couldn’t come up with something to eat?

      But then, one might also ask, why hadn’t Alex pitched in to help his parents, prepared dinner for the both of them? This film hints at a problem the film itself doesn’t pursue: Alex’s own selfish behavior, pretending he is simply a guest to be served by his elderly parents.

      She storms off, arguing that she can’t do it all by herself. Both of Alex’s parents, it is clear, when frustrated have the tendency to storm off in anger, breaking off all forms of communication.

      But it is finally only when Farid again pulls away when Alex mentions his former lover that Alex begins to connect.

      Finally Alex poses the question he perhaps should have so many years earlier: “Why do you have such a problem with me dating another man?”

      “I don’t have a problem. In the beginning I was shocked. But by this point, all these years, I’m resigned to it.”

     Yet, he realizes, his father is still uncomfortable whenever his name comes. He never asks about Travis. Alex suggests that when Travis spoke to his own father, he thought the idea of two men having sex together was disgusting.

      Farid immediately responds, “Yea, so?” as if that should be the expected reaction. Evidently, however, Farid thinks that even sex between man and a woman is rather disgusting. “It’s not the cleanest thing in the world!” he laments.

      Alex’s response is somewhat equally bewildering: “As a parent should you really be thinking of the sex at all?”

       But finally it comes down to the perception that it was something unacceptable as Farid was growing up, and he simply cannot overcome what he has been taught.

       Both men, I would argue, are locked up in notions of sexuality that presumably might long ago have been abandoned: that sex is unclean, that sex is not something older people should even be thinking of, particularly in relationship to their children, or that sex is valued only in terms of what you have been taught long ago in the past.

      We don’t know if Alex or Farid have come to any deeper insights about sexuality through their conversation. But at least Alex realizes that notions of sexuality have to do with both him and his father leaving the room—or in Alex’s case, the relationship. Surely, Travis’ lie had to do with a sexual encounter outside of their apparently monogamous commitment.

     This film reveals, if nothing else, how we are still so very unable to accept the fullness of the sexual experience into our lives.

      If nothing else, Alex finally does pick up his phone, respond to Travis, and return to that world with the relief that at least he’s not just repeating the past. Alex is not ready to retire from one of the most remarkable experiences of life. Sex, in any form, isn’t dirty, but an opening up of the body, the essence of our reality, to truly engage with someone else. Why do we still have such a problem in doing that, why do we leave rooms, relationships, whenever a sexual encounter we didn’t expect appears on the horizon?

     Michelle Bossy’s fine short film doesn’t truly answer that, but at least it moves in the right direction, it’s heart in the right place.

 

Los Angeles, January 24, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

     

Bert Glennon | Syncopation / 1929

letting the genie out of the bottle 

by Douglas Messerli

Frances Agnew (screenplay, based on the novel Stepping High by Gene Markey), Bert Glennon (director), Syncopation / 1929

Little remembered today, Bert Glennon’s musical Syncopation was the talk of the town upon its March 24, 1929 release. Based on the novel Stepping High by Gene Markey, RKO’s first sound musical which they previously presented over the radio, was a grand success breaking all records of the New York Hippodrome in its two-week run. Print ads of the day proclaimed it as “A spectacle your eyes and ears will marvel at!” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle), “The sensational jazz jamboree of night club love brought to life by a marvelous cast of Broadway artists, including Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians play in their own inimitable way” (the Philadelphia Inquirer), and “A whole musical show in film form served up with the snap and sash of a Broadway night club” (Lubbock Morning Avalanche).

      Today the plot, after numerous such films beginning with the break-up of a successful dance or singing team—Holiday Inn (1942) and Easter Parade (1948) are just two examples—seems to have written itself, as the dancing team of Benny (Bobby Watson) and Flo (Barbara Bennett) after years of “on the road” productions, finally make it big when the show they’re in is taken to Broadway. The show flops, but the duo get an offer from a nightclub and become famous.

      Predictably, Flo gets swept up by a wealthy millionaire suitor who wants to take her act to Europe, and she divorces Benny. But when she realizes that her new playboy suitor Winston (Ian Hunter) wants all the privileges of playing and none of paying with a marriage proposal, she repents and returns to Benny who welcomes her back, the couple returning to their original road act.

     Most of the characters other than the central trio in this film are nearly forgettable—except the constant friend Sylvester Cunningham (Mackenzie Ward) of the female interior decorator Rita Elliot. Richard Barrios describes Sylvester “as thin and affected as the cigarette holder he grandly lofts, as unnecessary as the French phrases that glaze his conversation.” But he obviously intrigues Barrios who goes on to brilliantly summarize all that needs be said about this truly “pansy” figure:

 

“He serves one plot function only: to demonstrate what happens when Flo…loses touch with her roots and tries to go highbrow with her earthy husband Benny…. All it takes is a limp-wristed handshake and one utterance of ‘tout ensemble!’ for Benny to get Sylvester’s number: ‘Better not open the window,’ he cracks, ‘he’s liable to fly away!’ And later sends him off with the blessing: ‘Good luck with you next batch of fudge!’

    As Barrios points out, these are strange lines coming from Bobby Watson, the actor who played Benny, given that Watson would soon after playing the “manly” hoofer in this film spends most of the rest of his career as the premiere and most visible of gay sissy characters in pre-1934 films, the year Breen banned even “pansy” portrayals from US cinema. 

    Moreover, Watson's character of a truly loving heterosexual husband is so utterly boring in this film that you almost understand Flo wanting to lose him and his even less-talented friends such as the high tenor Lew (Morton Downey) and his girl Peggy, who has the unfortunate task of singing like Betty Boop and playing a mindless ditz in the manner of Gracie Allen—without her funny lines. 

    So amateurish are most of the musical's acts, including the dance numbers—particularly when Flo (now Florette) joins up with her partner Artino—that we can’t wait for another appearance of the outrageous pansy Sylvester. And oddly, as obvious as his stereotypical character is, Sylvester gets more time on screen in this 1929 film than almost any pansy in the next four to five years until they completely disappeared. You might even argue such an openly homosexual figure was not offered more screentime since Ralph Cedar's The Soilers (1923) and more lines than any gay character except Johnny Arthur in Desert Song (also in 1929) and Ray Hedge as Clarence in Myrt and Myrtle (1933). 

      In fact, he almost gets the film's last lines, or at least the last lines that really matter except for Flo and Benny's final reunion. After Flo realizes that Winston wants to take her to Europe without marrying her—and, in fact, never had any intention of marrying her—she makes a grand scene of their breakup in front of Rita and Sylvester. When Winston leaves the room the decorator and friend turn to one another in startlement, Sylvester almost unable to contain himself as he trills out: "Well, for goodness sake I’m all atwitter. I just can’t wait to tell everyone that Alex’s been given the air," and off he trots.

     By the time that Bobby Watson begin playing such roles the sissies had been cut down to brief spots allotted in the otherwise utterly heterosexual landscapes which they haunted.

    Barrios sees the coincidence of this figure and that of Drew Demarest’s Del Turpe character in The Broadway Melody of the same year, a film whose production schedule intertwined with Syncopation’s, as a harbinger for what was to come. Certainly it aroused enough attention that Variety praised Ward’s acting as “a nance interior decorator.”

 

Los Angeles, July 31, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2022).