Book Review: Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969

By Al Preston

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            Hollywood is known for its glitz and glam. For the fabulous actors and strong writers and artistic directors that make the movies and blockbusters that appear on the big screen. It’s remembered for being very restrictive as well.

            Specifically, they weren’t able to display queerness on the screen unless it was within a very specific set of stereotypes which, of course, made the queer person the villain. The Hayes code, a method for the movie industry to self-police its content so that the government wouldn’t meddle in their work, stopped any references to positive queerness in any film.

            While the Hayes code did do that…it didn’t start policing the content of movies right away. The history of Hollywood before the Protection codes is just one part of the story of queerness in film that William Mann’s Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969 reveals.

            The Protection Codes began being enforced in the 1930s so from 1910 until then, Hollywood was more experimental, liberal, and uncensored. It was also packed with gays and lesbians.

            The ‘Wild West’ ended pretty much just before the first World War and welcomed many people and pretty unlawful behaviors for a long time. As the West, which California was a part of, was mostly left to its own devices, people seeking their fortunes, but also those seeking to free themselves from the oppressive laws of the East (be that for nefarious reasons or identity reasons) made their way West.

            As queer folks were often strictly policed in the East and the ratio of men to women in the early days of the West skewed heavily towards men, queerness was rampant and mostly free from persecution in the wilds of the American frontier. Transgender folks lived long lives passing until their death. Female impersonators were common shows in bars, and lesbians and gay men tended to happily live with their partners without being bothered.

            As the ‘wild’ part of the West died down, more regulation spread through the country, but for a long time, Hollywood was able to get away with more than they ever could, even today.

            Film was relatively new, it wouldn’t be until the mid-1920s that they could record sound. Silent films were beloved by the masses, making the industry booming. So booming, that the little settlement of Los Angles and Hollywood went from only a handful of people to practically a huge city in only a couple of years.

            As a new medium, there was room for creativity and figuring out the best ways to record, act, and edit a film, but they weren’t starting totally from scratch. As one can imagine, the film industry borrowed hints and tricks from live theatre, which had been an art form for centuries. For many new set designers, lighting designers, and costume makers, the young film industry promised fame and fortune much faster than the ancient theatre arts.

            So, you have a place already very full of wild, brave, and talented queer folks bringing in more, wild, brave, and talented queer folks. Inevitably, most of the people working on films in 1910 and onwards, were queer, mostly gay men and lesbian women. Not just on screen either, Mann interviewed people from every facet of film production and found lesbians and gays in every department.

            Lesbians were editing films and writing scripts. Some were even directing. Gay men made costumes and sets. Both acted on screen as well, sometimes barely hiding their queerness for the camera. People loved it. Couldn’t get enough of the actors and actresses or their reportedly glamours lives.

            It wasn’t easy, however, for Mann to find these folks to interview. Of course, absolutely no one said that an actor was queer out loud. Not the actor themselves, nor the rapidly growing tabloids and fan magazines. Instead, they talked around the issue as so many queer folks always did.

            Despite most film studios not caring that their actors were in gay bars or in loving relationships with others of the same gender, they didn’t want that to be their image. As an extremely visual medium, especially in those early years, image meant everything to Hollywood. It was what they were selling, after all.

            Not just in the form of films for people to watch, but also the vision and ideals of the stories and characters in those films. Many of the first films were westerns, featuring rough and tough cowboys. These stories were meant to depict the idealized image of a masculine man of the American West, the image of a man to idealize and strive for. It mattered very little that the actor curating that image was a relatively stereotypical gay man. He just had to appear like the standard masculine man for the screen.

            That will change a bit over time, but at the beginning of Hollywood, as long as actors, editors, and directors could create the desired image for the screen, the studios didn’t care what they did in their free time. If an actor or actress was particularly good at selling the right image, any and all gay related scandals would be swept under the rug, and they were protected from prosecution.

            In those early years, gays and lesbians were free to do whatever they wanted as long as they played their part in generating an image of men and women that was the exact opposite of who they were personally. I would argue that having to, as it were, pay for their freedom isn’t entirely freedom. However, as movies and film became able to play sound and become ‘talkies’, the perception of the actors and the queerness they included in their work began to shift publicly.

            According to Mann, leading up to ‘talkies’, all of the queer folks working in the industry began infusing their queerness into the films they were making. Actors of the same genders were kissing on screen, while others were playing up their flamboyant personalities for their characters.

            Those decisions, those characters, were really popular. The ‘Pansey’ as most of the male characters who were stereotypically gay were called, was popular and well liked. However, once sound was introduced and the flamboyant actions of the characters got flamboyant voices added to them, people started to get uncomfortable.

            Of course, the times were changing as well. The US was entering the Great Depression. Actors and film makers were refusing to be paid less, the image of queerness was becoming less appealing as everyone struggled more and more to eat, work, and live.

            Which meant it was the perfect time for church leaders to claim that the country was going through a moral crisis, and the Great Depression was the punishment they had to endure for their moral failings. Mann doesn’t talk about that in great detail. Instead, he talks at length about how religious leaders led to the Protection Code being enforced, not about where these religious leaders were coming from and why. To be fair to Mann, that’s not the purpose of his book.

            He doesn’t just assume that his audience knows why religious leaders are condemning queerness in film, but I’m sure anyone with any knowledge base could make some good, educated guesses that are all mostly right. Especially in this day and age, we still live in a time where religious leaders are telling their congregations to boycott this, that, or the other for being against their personal moral views so Mann doesn’t really need to explain himself in that regard too much.

            However, I think this particular time period and this particular outcry of moral crisis could use a bit more information. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl are the direct reason that there was a desired shift in viewing men as strong, capable, and tough. Hollywood was not depicting that type of man to reflect the times because the queer folks making the industry wanted to create things that reflected themselves, not the times. Which is notably different from the reason they were brought on to make movies in the first place.

            Mann frames this shift as religious leaders disliking the image of queer people in movies, which is true and did happen, but I think it’s missing the context that the reason they even noticed was because the initial goal for films and movies is to depict the current ideal image and while the ‘Pansey’ and queerness were popular and beloved for a time, when the switch over started to occur, the gays and lesbians in the film industry were more interested in their vision than the studios.

            As studios had been protecting their workers from queer related scandals and allowed them to make whatever movie or story they wanted simply because people would go to see it, queer folks were achieving real freedom in Hollywood. While they still hid their queerness publicly behind coded language (IE: if asked why they weren’t married, most gay actors would simply state that they were dedicated to only one woman, their mother) they could write, act, and create any kind of story with Panseys, lesbian kissing, and selling sex appeal.

            The Protection codes then not only become a story about censoring queerness and other ‘taboo’ subjects, but also one of the studios turning on the people who gave them fame and fortune. To Mann’s arguments, the queerness on the screen, the fact that these movies sold and sold well, meant that the image they were selling was accepted. However, Mann insists that studio execs wanted an image that could be replicated, immolated, and made into reality.

            While Mann kind of talks around that idea, he doesn’t directly say it. The Protection codes being enforced was not only a way for the government to keep their noses out of Hollywood’s business, but it also is the moment the power of image was taken out of the hands of those creating it and put back into the hands of the studios, which I would think is really important to Mann’s argument; that movies, and the queer folks who make them, curated the idyllic image of the typical American.

            Hollywood was susceptible to the changing tides of society and the way the American culture and people changed with the big events of the time. The loose and liberal twenties and early thirties that allowed gay folks to be in every part of film production and make outrageous and queer films without hindrance. The Great Depression brought about a much stricter view of gender and a moral crisis wanting to blame the struggles of America on something and many preachers chose the ‘horrific’ display of queerness (among other things) on the screen and among the American people.

            The Production or Hayes code became enforced and strict in that time, policing queer folks on and off of the screen. Many fled Hollywood and the harsh criticisms they faced from journalists who began scrutinizing every second of their lives.

            World War II encouraged a very pro-America view of the world and was followed by a new sense of freedom of sexuality and gender expression that wasn’t necessarily welcomed, but it wasn’t policed as strictly as the rise of TV encouraged Studios to take risks to keep audience attention. The return to more risky and queer displays—either as villains in the film noir style written and produced by Hollywood’s straight members or as the reality breaking movie musicals that were produced by Hollywood’s queer folks—led to yet another moral backlash, the Red and Lavender Scares.

            While queer folks working in Hollywood weren’t targeted during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt for communists in Hollywood, the fear of being the next on the chopping block led to many of them pulling back from positions of power. Many chose to remain as apolitical as they possibly could in order to avoid being blacklisted.

            Despite the constant attacks from fearmongering government officials and the cruel scandal magazines digging up their private rides, the rise of TV and in influx of LGBT+ folks once again flocking to Hollywood meant that the fresh new blood wasn’t going to put up with the constant attacks quietly.

            The ‘old guard’ gays left Hollywood as the new blood took over and refused to be quiet about their queerness. They were empowered by the Stonewall Riot like many other queer folks across the nation to stand up for themselves. That also spelled the end of the ‘studio era’ that Mann was focused on. With publicist and agents taking over as representatives of actors and guilds taking over caring for the support staff that hold the industry together, studios (AKA: Universal, Paramount, MGM) no longer had their own departments and actor sets anymore.

            Mann utilizes case studies of actors to discuss all of these time periods and events. Many, many names appear in this book that would surprise film fans. Queer folks were the pivotal creatives behind many popular and well-known films from set designs, costumes, writing, editing, producing, and directing. I really enjoyed the many set designers, wardrobe, and writers that Mann highlights in this book because film is an extremely collaborative artform who often credits much of the entire production to the writers, producers, or directors over the many other people who ensure the entire production actually looks good.

            All in all, this book was an interesting read. It was fun to learn some really niche things about the Hollywood of old, to see how the magic of film and movies got started and by who. I think Mann made a relatively convincing argument, although it felt like he was dancing around major points to support his argument.

            I know that he set out to describe the queer people behind the creation of films and the image of the average American, but I think that argument could have been helped with a conversation of what that image was supposed to be and why.

            Additionally, I didn’t know how to feel about the way Mann described the executives running the studios. Specifically, he said that they were all Jewish immigrants wanting a piece of the American pie. He doesn’t explain how or why these folks became studio owners, he doesn’t tell us much about them at all other than they are Jewish people wanting to have the same privileges and lives as the average Christian white American family with similar family backgrounds.

            Which feels weird and strange for a lot of reasons. It was also awkward to try and Google that fact, but sometimes you have to ask hard questions to get real answers. After a few searches, it seems that yes, many of the men who founded the big film, studios, such as Paramount and Warner Bros, were Jewish or were raised in Jewish families. However, many of them were also second-generation immigrants. Their parents came to America to find a better life for their families and many of them grew up poor.

            I don’t see a need to directly point out that they were all Jewish immigrants. As second-generation immigrants, they faced the same struggles as many non-Jewish second-generation immigrants. The desire to have the American dream, the promised easy life that America offered is not the desire of just Jewish immigrants.

            There’s nothing wrong with all of them being Jewish immigrants…I think the problem lies in pointing it out so insistently. I could see one or two mentions here and there, but these studio executives are primarily referred to as the Jewish studio executives. Not second-generation immigrants, only once as children who grew up poor. Mann specifically names them as Jewish families wanting to curate the image of an American because that was the image they wanted personally…

            Sounds—bad, right? It sounds like a dog whistle. For part of this book, that makes them the villains. When the Protection Codes start getting enforced, these men who once allowed their queer workers do whatever they wanted were demanding that those same workers go back into the closet. When they’re not directly enforcing heteronormativity on and off the screen, these studio owners are these ever present, but rarely discussed figures.

            While that isn’t great, they are the owners of popular businesses that want to keep the good grace of the public who give them money to pay those workers. I think it’s pretty reasonable that they didn’t want the government to be the thing that controls what they do. I think it’s reasonable, from the mindset of a businessperson, that they would want to reduce scandal and harm to their business.

            Is it moral? Is it right? Well—we’re talking about Capitalism here. Rarely are business moves in good moral standing. However, they would have made those same choices if they were Christians whose families had been in the Americas since before the Revolutionary War. The framing of them as Jewish just feels…suspect.

            I don’t know if that was intentional or not on Mann’s part, but it made me leery. He doesn’t talk about what led these men to make these studios. He doesn’t talk about them by name for the most part. They become these shadowy figures pulling the strings in the background which, again, feels like a particular kind of dog whistle. I wish that Mann had simply acknowledged that this work can sound like a dog whistle.

            There are a few other gripes I have here and there with this book. Firstly, I think the scope of this book is too big. I complained, fairly often to whoever would listen, that it was too long and took me a long time to read, but it, sadly, could have been longer. Which I think is the reason I have my other issues with the book.

            Mann makes some really big claims that I feel he didn’t have the space and time to actually properly argue. He packs in so much information in how long this book already is that you learn quite a bit, but in terms of giving us information that supports his arguments, I feel like it was lacking.

            He spends so long telling us about the lives of some of his case studies, which helps support his arguments about the kind of people these folks were and where they came from; working class immigrant families with similar backgrounds and families. These dives into these folk’s lives take pages away from digging into the arguments Mann is making to the point where I’m not sure every single one of them needs pages dedicated to their backgrounds, especially when they are so similar.

            The Red and Lavender Scare chapter of this book, “Pinkos, Commies, Queers: Hollywood’s Gays and the Cold-War Inquisitions, 1945-1960,” bothers me the most. In an effort to fit so much of the very complicated time of the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare into one chapter, stuff gets lost. At one point, Mann argues that after the Lavender Scare—the removal of queer folks from government jobs because they would be ‘easily blackmailed’ by communists—and the Red Scare—which was the accusations and blacklisting of communists in the government but also Hollywood—didn’t end up affecting Hollywood gays. He says that they were always worried they were next, which is reasonable, but he attributes the fact that they ended up being ignored to the fact that Hollywood gays were not communists.

            The reason I take issue with this, is not because I think that all of the Hollywood gays were communist. It doesn’t matter if they were, the problem is in the phrasing. Mann uses Harry Hay, the founder of the Mattachine Society and who knew many gays in Hollywood, a number of times. Including in this section of the book…and doesn’t acknowledge that Hay is a communist. He got kicked out of the Mattachine Society because of it.

            Just because most of the gays working in Hollywood were not part of the communist party which did tend to be rather homophobic, does not mean that no queer person joined the communist party. Many did and even if they didn’t, they were activists. The US Government spied on them under the argument that they very well might be communist still…I don’t know why the gays of Hollywood weren’t involved in the Red Scare as much as their straight counter parts. Mann suggests that another reason is that there were significantly less gays in positions of power at the time which probably contributed to the reason.

            However, it’s the phrasing that gays were not communists because they weren’t welcome that is the problem. It makes it sound like no gay, in or out of Hollywood, was a communist which isn’t true, he quotes one of the most famous examples of a communist gay! It boarders on the suspicion that Mann doesn’t bring up Hay’s tie to the communist party because it would weaken his argument that Hollywood gays weren’t linked to the communist party at all…or at least, the implication of that as an argument.

            If the wives of men thought to be communist were under scrutiny, why weren’t the gays who knew Hay? Based on this book, I don’t know, I don’t think Mann really knows either. Whatever the reality, I don’t think one 43 page chapter can actually talk about this topic in any sort of genuine depth or nuance. This chapter is the worst offender of the problem in the whole book, but it’s evidence of the larger issue, which is that Mann either on purpose or accidentally, makes the gays of Hollywood the tragic heroes of the industry. The pioneers that made it what it was, which is true in a sense. However, there is no room for nuance because we spend so long explaining the backstories and filling in historical narratives that the argument gets lost or simplified to ‘Hollywood gays are the true heroes and victims of evil studio executives, censors, and the government who won’t let them make the movies they want to make and therefore these gays can do no wrong.’

            It’s a gross simplification even in that sentence, but that’s what it ends up feeling like. There’s so much cool information and analysis in this book, but it gets bogged down and loses nuance because of how much needs to be fit into chapters that are both very long, yet not long enough.

            My mentors in my years at college talked frequently about knowing when to stop. Or, at least, making yourself stop. The scope of this book is far too wide reaching for Mann’s argument. There’s too much for Mann to properly cover it all. Since he does try to cover it all, I personally felt left with questions unanswered, unconvinced of the argument as a whole, and bogged down by dense writing and pages of information that feel disjointed from his thesis or at least unnecessary for it.

            The book is really interesting but a dense read. I enjoyed some parts, the parts where Mann talks at length about his actual argument and the way Hollywood actually appeared in reality. I recommend it only if you are interested in that aspect and warn to enter into the read with skepticism and the willingness to research some claims yourself. It’s okay to question the things you read, it’s how we learn and grow and do better in the future.