Douglas Messerli | The Films of Ernest Thorp and His Circle: A Revelation of Apartheid South African Queer Identity in the 1940-1950s [Introduction]

the films of ernest thorp and his circle: a revelation of apartheid south african queer identity in the 1940s-1950s

 by Douglas Messerli

 

Somedays are just remarkable for the cinematic finds that one makes, and this is a special day in which I discovered the works of the very underground and unspoken works of apartheid-era queer film maker Ernest Thorp, making at a time in an almost unthinkable era of South African history, gay films that might have had him arrested and imprisoned.

    Little is known about Thorp (1911-1998) except what we learn from the revelatory essay by Ludwig Wagner “Redefining the Historical Timeline of Queer Film in South Africa: Ernest Thorp’s Nil Desperandum and South Africa’s First Queer Films,” noting that Thorp’s father Herbert founded the Durban Amateur Photographic Society (1921) and that Thorp himself was the curator of the Durban Botanic Gardens from 1950-1975.

     The short history we have, I quote from Wagner:

 

“Access to like-minded members and industry professionals through the society would explain how Thorp arranged for the queer and sometimes homoerotic footage he filmed to be clandestinely processed and developed.13 During WWII, while working as an apprentice horticulturalist, Thorp established himself as a prominent social figure in Durban. Unable to enlist in the Royal Navy during the war, he opted to “entertain as many visiting naval men as possible at his home in Durban,” becoming a “mentor” to many (emphasis mine).

     At the time, Thorp met Admiral Middleton, a commander of a British battleship anchored in Durban, who shared his interest in orchids and invited him to visit him back in England.15 On May 1, 1948, Thorp arrived in England aboard the Umtali. When, after a few months in Britain, Thorp could not secure passage back to South Africa, Admiral Middleton offered to transport Thorp back to South Africa as a guest of the Royal Navy as repayment for “the kindness he had shown to hundreds of sailors.” Thorp returned to South Africa in September 1948 after being given one of the Admiral’s cabins on HMS Jutland, part of a squadron visiting the Union. Thorp entertained the sailors on HMS Jutland during his return journey, showing “several films he had taken of places of interest” in South Africa.

    Thorp was an international authority on orchids and travelled the world collecting specimens. In addition to accompanying luminaries such as General Jan Smuts on plant-collecting trips in the Drakensberg, he had lunch with the King of Thailand at his palace. Thorp also met Queen Elizabeth—when she visited Durban along with King George VI and princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in 1947—taking her on a tour of the Botanic Gardens. Shortly before his retirement, Thorp presented a paper at the 7th World Orchid Conference in Colombia in 1972.20 Thorp was utterly discreet and private, always conscious of his position as curator of the Botanic Gardens. His students remember him being an “avid photographer and cinematographer,” showing them many films and slide shows of his international travels.”

     But what is most interesting about Thorp is not his hosting and mentoring of numerous sailors and their officers, but his own involvement with close friends such as Joe Gareson and his lover Salwyn Hurwitz, the latter of whom, under his friendship and tutelage made his own short films which I also review below. The overall contribution of these two figures give us an entirely new insight into what living as a queer man during a time in which one could easily be imprisoned for being gay actually meant. Thorp and his fellow travelers seemed to act, on the surface, with open impunity, but we know their lives must have been highly curtailed and closeted despite the films they made for one another and other members of their circle, a brave act given the times.

    These films include one, Black and White Dying Swan, a film by Hurwitz, dated 1945, hence its appearance here in my volume, as well as other short Hurwitz films vaguely dated in the 1940s, as well as Thorp’s own, far more important Nil Desperandum dated by Wagner to be from 1949-1951, and a latter Thorp film from 1955.

 

Los Angeles, November 9, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2026).