448: Woody Allen - Lancers

“Lancer – The Hair Conditioner for Men”
0.00 - 0.50

“Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask)”

Written and directed by Woody Allen
Adapted from the book “Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask)” by David Reuben M.D.

Tom Mack as Football Player
Don Chuy as Football Player

Two football players, their authenticity proven by their awkwardness reading their script, share grooming tips. You too need not worry about being concerned about you appearance, as men possessed of such hamfisted masculinity take the curse off . Nothing sissy here. British readers may remember almost identically crappy ads from the ‘70s with Keven Keegan and boxer Henry Cooper. What’s the joke other than these are crappy adds? It’s not until the football players walk into the background and out-of-focus that we get the pay-off which is a rather passionate clinch. Whammo, all the signifiers that have produced all the metrosexuality jokes for the last 15 years.

As to why this gay-themed sketch appears in the film’s “What Are Sex Perverts?” segment, well that derives from Reuben, not Woody Allen (though in his earliest films, he employs a few rather crude gay stereotypes”).

Dr Reuben’s book, “Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*but were afraid to ask)” was published in 1970, when all mainstream medical authority followed the official definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder. To read any gay memoir of the sixties is to be struck by the fact that almost every gay man (in America, maybe not so much the UK) was in therapy grappling with his socially aberrant urges. If he was lucky his psychiatrist would gently coax his client to accept his homosexuality and live a healthy life. If he was unlucky then his shrink would blithely inform him that he could convert to heterosexuality, and that therefore any gay feelings and activities were a personal failing, with much resultant guilt and self-disgust. This element of Reuben’s book for the masses led to quite a few campaigns by gay groups in various countries to get the book banned (vide Rand Holmes’ 1971 Harold Hedd strip).

At the end of 1973 the board of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted unanimously to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders. Thus rendering Dr Reuben exemplary strictures outdated. Which seems like the delightful cue for a relevant excerpt from Gore Vidal’s demolition job of Reuben’s book. Ta Da:

-------------------------------
New York Review of Books, June 4, 1970

On the subject of homosexuality, Dr. Reuben tries to be a good sport. Yet at heart he is angry with the homosexualist who perversely refuses to enter into it penis-vagina relationship. It would be so easy to straighten him out. If he would only visit "a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted heterosexual." I wonder if Dr. Reuben might be got up on a charge of violating the fair advertising practices act - on the ground that no such psychiatrist exists: It is true that the late Dr. Bergler enjoyed announcing "cures," but since no one knows what a homosexualist is (as opposed to a homosexual act), much less what the psychic life (as opposed to the sex life) of any of his patients was like, his triumphs must be taken on faith.

However, it should be noted that anyone so disturbed by society's condemnation of his' natural sexual instinct that he would want to pervert it in order to conform would, no doubt, be a candidate for some kind of "conversion" at the hands of a highly paid quack. Yet to change a man's homosexual instinct is as difficult (if not impossible) as changing a man's heterosexual instinct, and socially rather less desirable since it can hardly be argued, as it used to be - the clincher, in fact, of the natural lawyers - that if everyone practiced homosexuality the race would die out. The fact of course is that not everyone would, at least exclusively, and the race currently needs no more additions.

As a religious rather than a scientific man, Dr. Reuben believes that there is something wicked (he would say sick) about the homosexual act. Therefore those who say they really enjoy it must be lying. He also believes implicitly a set of old queens' tales that any high school boy in Iowa (if not the Bronx) could probably set him straight on. "Most homosexuals at one time or another in their lives act out some aspect of the female role." Aside from his usual inability to define anything (what is a male role? a female role?), he seems to mean that a man who enjoys relations with his own sex is really half a man, a travesty of woman.

This is not the case. The man involved in a: homosexual act is engaged in a natural male function; he is performing as a man, and so is his partner. That there are men who think of themselves as women is also a fact, as the visitor to any queer bar will have noticed (those Bette Davis types are with us from Third Avenue to Hong Kong), but they are a tiny, minority, not unlike those odd creatures who think of themselves as 100 percent he men on the order of Lyndon Johnson, another small and infinitely more depressing minority, which of course includes the thirty-sixth President.

Dr. Reuben is also horrified by what he thinks to be the promiscuity of all homosexualists. But then "homosexuals thrive on danger," he tells us, and of course their "primary interest is the penis, not the person." As usual no evidence is given. He takes as fact the prejudices of his race-religion-country, and, most important, as I shall point out, class. Reading him on homosexuality, I was reminded of the lurid anti-Semitic propaganda of the thirties: All Jews love money. All Jews are sensualists with a penchant for gentile virgins. All Jews are involved in a conspiracy to take over the financial and cultural life of whatever country they happen to be living in. Happily, Dr. Reuben is relatively innocent of making this last charge. The Homintern theory, however, is a constant obsession of certain journalists and crops up from time to time not only in the popular press but in the pages of otherwise respectable literary journals. Fag-baiting is the last form of minority baiting practiced at every level of American society. Dr. Reuben tends to gloss over the social pressures which condition the life of anyone who prefers, occasionally or exclusively, the company of his own sex. Homosexualists seldom settle down to cozy mature domesticity for an excellent reason: society forbids it. Two government workers living together in Washington, D.C., would very soon find themselves unemployed. They would be spied on, denounced secretly, and dismissed. Only a bachelor entirely above suspicion like J. Edgar Hoover can afford to live openly with another man. In any case, homosexual promiscuity differs from heterosexual only in the atmosphere of fear in which the homosexualist must operate. It is a nice joke if a Louisiana judge is caught in a motel with a call girl. It is a major tragedy if a government official with a family is caught in a men's room.

For someone like Dr. Reuben who believes that there is no' greater sin than avoidance of “heterosex - penis and vagina," two men who do live together must, somehow, be wretched. "'Mercifully for both of them, the life expectancy of their relationship together is brief." Prove? I wrote for the tenth time in the margin. But we are beyond mere empiricism. We are now involved in one of the major superstitions of our place and time and no evidence must be allowed to disturb simple faith.

Dr. Kinsey (dismissed by Dr. Reuben as a mere biologist) did try to find out what is actually going on. Whatever Kinsey's shortcomings as a researcher, he revealed for the first time the way things are. Everyone is potentially bisexual. In actual practice a minority never commits a homosexual act, others experiment with their own sex but settle for heterosexuality, still others swing back and forth to a greater or lesser degree, while another minority never gets around to performing the penis-vagina act. None of this is acceptable to either Dr. Bergler or Dr. Reuben because they know that there is no such thing as bisexuality. Therefore Dr. Kinsey's findings must be discredited. To the rabbinical mind, any man who admits to having enjoyed sexual relations with another man must be, sadly, consigned to the ranks of Sodom. That the same man spends the rest of his sex life in penis-vagina land means nothing because, having enjoyed what he ought not to have enjoyed, his relations with women are simply playacting. Paradoxically, in the interest of making money, the mental therapists are willing to work with any full-time homosexualist who has never had a penis-vagina relationship because deep down they know he does not enjoy men no matter what he says; This is the double standard with a vengeance.

Driving through Wyoming, a Jewish friend of mine picked up a young cow hand and had sex with him. Dr. Reuben will be pleased to note that my friend was, as usual, guilt-ridden; so much so that the boy finally turned to his seducer and with a certain wonder said, "You know, you guys from the East do this because you're sick and we do it because we're horny." My friend has never recovered from this insight into that polymorphic goyisher world best revealed some years ago in Boise, Idaho, where a number of businessmen were discovered frolicking with the local high school boys. Oddly enough (to the innocent), as husbands and fathers, the businessmen were all long-time homesteaders in penis-vagina land. So what were they up to? Bisexuality? No, it does not exist. Evidence dismissed, just as all accounts of other cultures are also unacceptable. Turks, Greeks, Moslems. . . Well, as one critic likes to say, that is another context (disgusting lot is what he means).

[We all know what the reference to J. Edgar Hoover means nowadays. The government official in a men’s room almost certainly refers to the scandal around President Lyndon B. Johnson’s advisor Walter Jenkins who was arrested for cottaging in October 1964.]

439: 12 + 1

“12 + 1”
Directed by Nicolas Gessner and Luciano Lucignani
Written by Marc Behm, Nicolas Gessner, and Dennis Norden

Jackie: Tim Brooke-Taylor
Bennet: Willie Rushton

“12 + 1” aka “The Thirteen Chairs” (1969) is a dreadful film. The story is the chase for jewels that have been hidden in one of twelve chairs that have been sold off to disparate buyers. The original story is from the satirical Russian novel “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov which is an excellent book and you should read it if you get the opportunity. The book has been adapted for the cinema numerous times but almost all drop the specific satirical aspect, and just use it as a string on which to hang various comic encounters. This film is better known for being Sharon Tate’s last film before her murder and starring a ragbag of American (Orson Welles), English (Terry-Thomas) and European (Vittorio Gassman) stars in brief appearances than for any positive or distinguishing characteristics as a comedy. The online version below looks as though it’s been filmed through someone’s filthy net curtains so that doesn’t aid the viewing experience, but even if you discount that, no comedy can survive having half of its actors dubbed, the photography and editing looking as though been done using sellotape, and if the script wasn’t garbage to begin with then having been translated backwards and forwards repeatedly has only aided the process of decomposition. There’s a section in which Orson Welles looks as though he may be enjoying himself playing dress-up in a theatre, but that’s largely immaterial here.
6.24 – 10.56
The only remaining interest then is in the gay couple played by Willie Rushton and Tim Brooke-Taylor. So: gay antique dealer. That’s already a gay stereotype with some history. A gay couple is a bit of a novelty at this time though. In line with other 1969 films about gay lifestyles such as “The Boys in the Band” and “Staircase” this is a bitchy relationship, just on the point of disintegrating nastily. Rushton is emotional (a man pleading for the affections of another is the joke here), and wearing tighter white trousers than he otherwise would in real life. Tim Brooke-Taylor, who has already had some experience over the last 5-6 years of playing gay comedy characters in “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, “At Last the 1948 Show”, and “Marty Feldman”, finally gets to bring his camp stylings to the big screen. His head held with nose high in the air, and with a swishing mincing step, Brooke-Taylor is the selfish queen dealing out bitchy quips. Unfortunately, I lack the fashion expertise to describe what Jackie’s wearing in the first scene, but it’s certainly nothing a straight man would attempt. You’ll notice Rosie, his new “partner”, is a fashion designer with his oh-so groovy swinging boutique.

Jackie then becomes the film’s antagonist, a rival to find the jewels, and keeps popping up throughout the rest of the film chasing and being chased for the chairs in the film’s pursuit of slapstick. Throughout the film, Jackie has an eye for attractive or masculine men, making appreciative little “mmm”s, and constantly jealous of the interest men show other women.

0.00 – 1.10, 5.30- 6.20
These are Jackie’s scenes during the longer segment in a grand guignol theatre run by Orson Welles’s character. The better scene (to wit,. he’s actually doing something) is when Jackie escapes and intrudes upon the play then in performance with some outstanding prissy swanning about and effete cocktail bar mannerisms – this then degenerates into just a load of crappy slapstick

7.10 – 9.24
Here we a get slightly more extended instance of eying up another man with some camp insinuations. His gleeful cantering across the lawn with the two chairs isn’t too bad either. There then follows extended farcical chasing with an inevitable tumble into a swimming pool.

5.12 – 5.19 – Jackie’s pleasure at being saved by a handsome man
5.54 – 6.20 : a cry if “Hello Cheeky” when being revived

If you have just spent the last 8-10 minutes watching rather fuzzy excerpts of Tim Brooke-Taylor camping it up in this stinker, why? Historical it may be, hysterical it’s not.

433: Jules Feiffer 4 - Little Murders

Little Murders – 1971

Alfred Chamberlain – Elliot Gould
Patsy Newquist - Marcia Rodd

Little Murders is an expansion of Jules Feiffers 1967 play. What is original to the play and what is new to this adaptation I don’t know.

The film is a nightmarishly comic view of a contemporary paranoid New York City that is disintegrating into an inferno of violence and corresponding anomy. The film is punctuated by random violence to which the bypassers have become inured. The corresponding sexual element is exemplified by a fear of homosexuality which pervades the film. Seriously - cries of “fag” and insinuations of homosexuality recur throughout the film. Whatever laughs the film wins are at the expense of modern fears and hysteria. Homosexuality is prominent as a disturbing modern element – and the writers and director are quite conscious of their intent.

The film opens with Patsy being phoned by one of her former lovers to be informed he is getting married. (Later in the film we discover that every single one of her boyfriends to date has been “swish”.) Patsy’s morning is then disturbed by the cries of “faggot” from a group of thugs outside her building who are beating up a man. Patsy eventually sets out and rescues their victim, Alfred. Elliott Gould’s character, a photographer who takes pictures of shit, is the exemplification of affectlessness and anomie, a man who feels nothing, and unresistingly allows people to beat him up for lack of any alternative:

“Those guys in the park, they said 'Hey, fatface! What are you staring at?' If I told them I wasn't staring at them, they would've beat me up for being a liar. And if I told them I was staring at them because I wanted to take their picture, then they'd beat me up for being a cop. So I told them I was staring at them because they looked familiar, and they beat me up for being a fag. There's no way of talking someone out of beating you up if that's what he wants to do.”

Having saved him physically, Patsy sets out to rescue him emotionally and they become girlfriend and boyfriend. She takes him home to her comically Jewish family. The first scene with her mother and father is a litany of her former gay boyfriends.

Father: Bet he’s a fag!

He’ll be a fine boy. I know it in my bones

Father: What was the name of that interior decorator she went to Europe with?

Mother: Howard. He was delicate.

Father: Swish. And that actor... the one she went camping up in Maine with.

Roger. He was very muscular.

Father: Swish. And the musician and the stockbroker and the Jewish novelist.

Mother: Oh, they're not like that.

Father: Swish, swish, swish, swish. I can spot them a mile away. She draws them like flies. She's got too much stuff. Too much stuff. You wait. You'll see. This new one, what's his name?

Brother: Alfred.

Mother: A swish name if I ever heard one.

We also meet her brother, in his early twenties, who still lives at home. Besides being an oddball, he is given to constantly abusing people and things he disapproves of as “fags”.

1: 48 – 2.08

Eventually Patsy and Alfred get married. At the wedding several of Patsy’s gay boyfriends make brief cameos. The second one in particular is camp. We then get a long, and marvellous monologue, from the opportunistic countercultural reverend, played by Donald Sutherland. Contemptuous of society’s hypocrisies and yet equally and arrogantly hypocritical himself, his speech comes to its conclusion when he addresses himself to each of the members of the family:

“And to Patsy's brother, Kenneth Newquist, with whom I had the pleasure of a private chat, I beg you feel no shame, homosexuality is all right, really it is.. it is perfectly all right.”

Kenneth Newquist: (screaming) Sonovabitch!! Aarrggghh!! (Kenneth assaults the minister and the marriage ceremony descends into a brawl, while Kenneth screams almost unintelligibly.) I’m not a faggot! I’m not a faggot!

There’s nothing obviously camp, fey, or gay at all in the brother’s performance. The revelation of his homosexuality is only another further facet of his oddness. If you want, you can see his constant aggressive cries of “fag” as a kind of projection. A little later though there is a scene where the brother is hiding in a closet, and talks about his attraction to his mother’s clothes.

Eventually the surviving characters find satisfaction and happiness by coming together to take sniper shots at passersby.

Apparently in the original play there’s some comment about Kenneth the brother also wearing his sister’s shoes, and the line in the minister’s monologue is different:

“And Patsy's brother, Kenneth Newquist, in whose bedroom I spent a few moments earlier this afternoon and whose mother proudly told me the decoration was by your hand entirely: I beg of you to feel no shame; homosexuality is all right”

so that in the play there are more transvestite / interior decorator allusions to Kenneth’s nature than in the film. Of course the play was from 1967 when assumptions about gay nature were even more restrictive than the early 70s.

411: Gay Bar 12 - Eraser

Eraser, 1996

Directed by Chuck Russell Screenplay by Tony Puryear and Walon Green

Arnold Schwarzenegger as John Kruger Robert Pastorelli as Johnny Casteleone Rick Batalla as Kevin, the Bartender

Kruger, a Witness Protection specialist, goes to see Casteleone, a mob witness who has been given a new identity.

Outside the bar we see a fair number of men, some in vests or with arms around each other.

To the strains of the opening to “It’s Raining Men” cuts to three drag queens in the bar miming to the song.

Cuts to dance floor entrance – gym bodies but not overly masculine dancing – some with Arms around one another

Pans across floor to an extravagant pair in in polka dot lycra costume and pink fur stole dancing at one another who separate to let Arnold Schwarzenegger pass.

He makes his way to the bar and speaks to one of the men behind the bar who is Casteleone.

Let’s finish this particular saunter down memory lane with this unexpected appearance in a 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger film. And if it’s surprising to me, then it’s probably equally surprising to the audience of the time. However it fits in, as this is about the time that gay films or films with gay characters go mainstream / inoffensively acceptable with “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994), “The Adventures of Priscilla - Queen of the Desert” (1994), “Jeffrey” (1995), “The Birdcage” (1996), “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (1997), “In and Out” (1997). A thriller like “Copy Cat” (1995) can feature a personally pleasant gay character who frequents gay bars if only so he can be killed off.

So this particular scene exemplifies the standard gay bar / disco as it will appear for the next fifteen years to the current day. From being something secretive, faintly grubby, now we have all these gay bars that flatter audiences that gay life is just a little more glamorous and exciting: “Absolutely Fabulous”, ”Sex and the City”, “Will and Grace” , and “Queer as Folk”.

What you get here are as many disparate, but non-controversial aspects of the gay club scene as can be crammed into one scene in as short a time as possible. So you get flamboyant drag queens performing, and also one or two female impersonators in the general audience. The extravagantly dressed pair are not drag queens but instead evocative of the more avant-garde club scene, reminiscent of Leigh Bowery or the Club Kids in the early 90s (and I’m old enough to remember seeing Michael Alig and co on various NYC talk shows when I did homework after school). Otherwise the rest of the clientele are gym-toned and either in revealing or tops or else in waistcoats. What there aren’t are any clones of leather daddies. This isn’t “The Blue Oyster”.

The flipside to this openness is a corresponding ease on the part of the two straight men. This is lightly humorous scene, where the characters are just amused that they are in a gay bar and nothing more. The characters tease each other but aside from the opening “Was it your idea to leave me with the Village People?” line from Pastorelli, they don’t mock the gay men. They’re not uncomfortable being there. There’s no sense of their masculinity being threatened or fear of sexual assault.

410: Gay Bar 11 - Tough Guys

Tough Guys 1986
Directed by Jeff Kanew
Written by James Cruikshank and James Orr

Harry Doyle (Lancaster)
Archie Long (Douglas)

Harry Doyle and Archie Long are gangsters who have served a 30-year prison sentence. The two are paroled, now in their 70s. Will they be able to rehabilitate, will they team up for one last job, and how will they adapt as fish-out-od-water/time in the changed America of the 1980s? These are the premises from which this genial comedy builds. Since the two actors largely insist upon the dignity of their roles, there isn’t too much of the “rapping grandma” shenanigans which typically make old age / modern lifestyles culture clash comedy such a nightmare – although in this case it’s the La New Wave scene.

Having been released, one of the first things Archie does is visit his old bar, Mickey’s. When he enters everything appears as it should - Glenn Miller-style music is playing, and the bar still seems to be popular.

Douglas looks pleased, approaches the bartender and asks if Mickey is still around but is told Mickey has been dead for the last 20 years. Archie orders a beer, “one of those new light beers”, and downs it, only to observe that it tastes “watery”.

A man sat to his left says the beer “only has 95 calories”, and slides over to Douglas offering to buy him another. Douglas accepts, and the two briefly sit in silence nodding along to the music. The two start talking about how it’s good music.

Man:
Some people think it’s out of date.

Archie:
You kidding? I grew up on that music.

Man:
It’s great dance music.

Archie:
Yeah. (wistfully) I haven’t danced in thirty years.

Man:
(slight pause). Shall we?

Archie:
Shall we what?

Man:
Shall we dance?

Archie looks surprised, looks away from man. Cuts to bartender, who winks rather blatantly at him.

Cuts back to Archie’s wary face. His eyes shift to the left.

Cuts to other end of bar where two couples are dancing to the music.

Cuts back to man who realises nonchantly that his offer is not going to be taken up. Archie collects his hat and coat and leaves. Last shot in bar is of man having a drink.

Cut to street outside as Archie leaves bar, ruefully shaking his head and muttering “I can’t believe it”. Harry appears and Archie advises him “You don't want to go in there.”

This only lasts a minute or two and it’s a relatively underplayed scene. The jokes are about the change in mores, not about homosexuals. The joke has to work as Archie only gradually realises the changes, so these are very straight-seeming gay men. Not straight-seeming for the “relatively normal” arguments of the 1977 episode of Maude, but because if the bar was full of camp queens or leather bears there’d be no drama because Archie wouldn’t enter it. The bartender winking is bit crass. It’s more a wink meant for the audience rather than anyone in the film. The men dancing is a bit of a cheat since we had the full-view shot at the beginning, but since the rest of the scene has been shot to the right, a sudden cut to the left makes it seem as though this dancing has been off the radar in everyway.

409: Gay Bar 10 - Police Academy

The Police Academy film spanned the summer movie schedules of the 1980s. These popular films were the final drip-drip of the rowdy frat rebellion and party-hard hijinks that first scored big audiences in the late 70s “Animal House” and then numerous bandwagon-jumpers for the next decade or so. A franchise in the same way a Macdonalds is a franchise The somewhat under-achieving “Police Academy” films offered a standardised diet of good-natured misfits and underdogs, bosoms, parties and pranks with the same recurring cast for the better part of the decade to an easily pleased audience. Amidst all the repetitions of characters and situations, one of the gags that would soon become as familiar as a Big Mac was a visit to the Blue Oyster Bar which appeared in the first four Police Academy movies

In each film a straight character, usually some kill-joy petty authority figure, is directed to The Blue Oyster Bar, all unsuspecting of its real nature. Entering they find themselves in a dark bar confronted by a large array of leather-men: burly, hairy-chested, beards, mutton-chops, handle-bar moustaches, biker outfits, leather caps. The rough-sex stereotype of the contemporary gay lifestyle which had become more familiar to the general audience since the Village People and Cruising. The straight character is intimidated by the silent mass of leering gay men. Anxiety, anxiety at this perverse threat. What assaults will they be subject to? Tension builds….and then - just as the straight character is about to flee the bar - they are grabbed by one of the gay patrons. And forced to tango.

Because men dancing together is FUNNY. It disturbs the natural order, for any dancing insinuates sex. Whatever sweaty sexual dancing may happen in a real gay bar or disco, here it’s the highly formalised techniques and roles of tango. Yet the effete regimented nature of formal-dancing with its flamboyant flourishes is in opposition to the gritty roughness of a leather-man. The dancing is sufficient to itself for effeminacy as the leather-man maintain their facades with no mincing, lip pursing, limp wrists or other camp behaviour. Audiences get both the rough-sex stereotype and effeminate traits simultaneously, each in revolving opposition like a cat covered in butter.

Of course after the first film, the audience know what the set-up is. Thereafter no comic surprise, only watching somebosy finding themselves tricked into some embarrassing dancing. A comic interpretation of sexual intimidation
Police Academy (1984)
0.00 – 2.09

Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)
2.10 – 3.07

Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)
3.08 – 3.53

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)
3.54 -

407: Gay Bar 8 - The Pink Panther Strikes Again

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) Directed by Blake Edwards
screenplay by Frank Waldman and Blake Edwards

Peter Sellers - Chief Inspector Clouseau
Michael Robbins - Jarvis
John Clive - Chuck

This fourth outing for Sellers as Inspector Clouseau has him investigating a kidnapping. Having visited the manor home of the kidnapped scientist, Clouseau follows the butler Anisley Jarvis when he leaves the manor. The butler arrives outside a Soho club - The Queen of Hearts – from the outside of which we can hear cabaret/ bar noises. The leather-jacketed butler arrives on motorcycle, parks his bike and enters.

It’s probably too brief for audiences watching at the time to make out, but on re-watching you can make out two men on the far right in overly fashionable clothes and somewhat model-like stances. This is subliminal scene-setting. As soon as Clouseau follows Jarvis in, we cut to a bar scene with men, colourfully dressed, neckerchiefs. In the foreshot one man lights a coloured cigarette (not very butch) for his younger companion, which in its chicken connations is either daring, provocative or thoughtless.

As Clouseau walks further into the club, a tall man walks past with a parrot on his shoulder, and the parrot says to Clouseau “Hello sailor”. As Clouseau as he walks around, men eye him up, preening, simpering, and making fluttering/gesturing towards him.

By this time we’ve seen enough of the club to see that its flamboyant décor is more appropriate to a tart’s boudoir décor, very heavy on the pink. Clouseau is then greeted by Chuck, the maitre’d who wears a fuschia velour suit with open nipple who directs him to table as the cabaret act is about to begin.

Chuck, who has only a couple of line, is played by John Clive, an English character actor who had a line in fey, camp, fussy, even prissy roles. He plays an explicitly gay character in “Carry On Abroad” (1972) and has an appearance in the comic satire of fashionable London “Smashing Time” (19767), films which I may or not got around to at some point.

Then to our and Clouseau’s surprise the cabaret singer appears – Jarvis in drag. Jarvis is a drag act in the Danny La rue style, in blazing evening gown, an appearance in stark contrast to his earlier professional brusque manner. Apparently according to the internet, and who should know better, the song he sings is actually performed by Julie Andrews, the director’s wife. The song starts with some heavy emphasises on the word “queen” (ha-ha-ha).

While he performs we get several shots of the attentive audience. At certain time they touch each other’s shoulders, but there are definitely no kisses. (The two burly men in the middle are assassins and not clientele).

At first Clouseau is puzzled trying to figure out what’s happening. The performance ends with Jarvis singing his torch song to Clouseau, to his barely masked discomfort.

While Clouseau interrogates Jarvis the tall man from earlier appears. However he is now revealed to in fact be a woman dressed as a man, Bruno who has a dubbed masculine voice. So some further gender-bending there.

Meanwhile there several middle-aged couples dancing in background, their hands held highly, prissily about each other. Because men dancing is automatically funny because it’s abnormal. Just wait until we get to the Police Academy films. Then Jervis drags Clouseau into dancing with him to Clouseau’s further embarrassment. A fight breaks out when kidnappers approach. It is at least a proper fight, - there are no sissy flapping hands beating ineffectually. These two guys get knocked on top of each other.

So a gay club, eh? Pink, lots and lots of pink. Drag queen too, yep. Fashions which although 70sish – collars and colours - are stereotypically flamboyant, okay.

When you think as to what the gay bar scene was turning into in the mid-70s, this is very much a straight person’s idea of a gay bar, denatured and sexless, yet still creepily flirtatious. In its weird way this is a rerun of the unexpected drag queen in a flamboyant bar scenario in Walter Huston’s 1970 “The Kremlin Letter”. This isn’t offensive, but it isn’t realistically typical at all, and at a time when gay men were looking for positive representations this fell far short, earning some criticism in the gay press.

It’s in contrast to this sort of representation, that you get the ostentatiously normal gay bar in the 1997 episode of “Maude”

406: Gay Bar 7 - Some of My best Friends Are...

I haven’t seen it, few people have, but if I am waffling on about gay bars then I really can’t omit the 1971 film “Some of My Best Friends Are…”. A sort of counterpoint to “The Boys in the Band”, it is about all the different types of patrons who pass through a New York gay bar "The Blue Jay" one Christmas night.

Having confessed my ignorance, I shall merely direct you to this good description of the film here:

http://vinnierattolle.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/some-of-my-best-friends-are.html

and this one here: http://trashaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/some-of-my-best-friends-are.html

Some more of the history of the film, posters and various publicity materials are here:

http://www.queermusicheritage.us/jun2003a.html

1971 trailer

Because the film features Candy Darling a few of the clips have been uploaded:

405: Gay Bar 6: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972)

Unembeddable:
http://youtu.be/f5CZJGY3kQo
starts: 1.00
ends: 5.40

Directed by Bruce Beresford
Written by Barry Humphries and Bruce Beresford

Another film adaptation of a modern day Candide. In this case it’s the transfer to film of the Private Eye comic strip written by Barry Humphries and drawn by Nicholas Garland. The strip had two satirical targets: the drunken, boorish yet simultaneously priggish Australia left behind encapsulated in the character of Australian tourist Barry McKenzie and the venal, shabby, trendy, exploitative Britain he was visiting. Aside from actual satire, the strip was Humphries’s opportunity to introduce as many slang terms for sex, drinking, and vomiting. Because of this, and because it was perceived to denigrate Australians in the eyes of the world, the strip was banned by Australian censors and the notorious Australian customs board. As it had been running since the mid-1960s there’s an argument that the strip preempts many of the achievements of the American underground comix, but since it's unknown in America it falls beneath critics’ radar.

Most of the film is a fairly direct dramatisation of events, dialogue and characters in the strip. At one point Barry visits a former girlfriend only to discover that since moving to England she has become a butch lesbian with a similarly older butch girlfriend. Lesbians fall outside my remit, but in the film you’ll notice she’s a perfectly normal seeming young lady though the girlfriend is still an escapee from Radcliffe Hall. Barry and his ex then then go to visit a pub for further conversation. In the film version, more is made of it as being gay pub, and so it is that everyone in this pub is a drag queen.

Unlike the drag queens of four years earlier in “Candy” who were in modern dress and seemed relatively free and easy, these drag queens look more like doubles for Danny La Rue in some incredibly ostentatious evening gowns. Nothing else is made of them, although there is a brief appearance of a bitchy trollish bartender. They’re just a sight gag – a herd of men in frocks, to whose nature Barry is of course oblivious.

The second half of the scene in the toilet with the policeman is a direct dramatisation of the corresponding strip in “Private Eye” from November 1966, possibly one of the earliest instances of jokes about police entrapment of homosexuals in lavatories. However, his inevitable farcical transvestite turn makes more sense in the contexts of all these drag queens.

Two drag queens appeared singing the title sequence of “staircase” in 1969, a failure of a film with Richard Burton and Rex Harrison.

404: Gay Bar 5 - Candy

Starts at 8.20

Finishes at 0.35

Candy 1968
Directed by Christian Marquand
Screenplay by Buck Henry

Film adaptation of Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s satirical pornographic 1958 novel. The book was a sexual variant of Candide, in which Candy, a naïve beautiful girl makes her way through the world unwittingly arousing and almost inadvertently having sex with all the people she encounters. The book became notorious and one further aspect of Southern’s reputation for transgressing taboos.

The film features an enormous number of comics and stars making cameos in this films including Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, John Huston, Ringo Starr, Walter Matthau as doctors, politicians, generals, gurus. It’s not a good film, but it’s spottily entertaining with some weird performances and jokes to make up for longeurs, and the ten minute credit sequence in which all the characters reappear in a sort of allegorical tableau to a rock soundtrack is loads of fun like similar endings in “Buckeroo Banzai” or “The Life Aquatic”.

At one point in the book, Candy is arrested by the police, whose car then goes careering into a drag bar. So in this dramatization you get more screaming female impersonators on screen than have possibly ever been collected until “Paris is Burning” (1990). This is mostly just hysterical men in dresses running around shrieking and shrieking and shrieking amidst the rubble. Apparently a number of these are real drag performers not just actors for the days, but I’m afraid time has mostly forgotten them.

Eventually one of the stunned cops is able to declare that this is "a nest of commie, fag draft-dodgers!” and is about to start beating up the drag queens. However, the drag queens overwhelm the one cop - a little foreshadowing of what happened at The Stonewall Inn the next year.

There’s then the moment where the other cop confusedly finds himself kissing a man in a drag, and when he realises what he’s doing, knocks down his kisser, telling him “to fight like a man”. And of course, whenever a homosexual is threatened with violence, the natural response is a sadomasochistic “Yes! Yes! Give me some more!” So assorted perversity in this little scene of about 30 seconds. Actually, it's a little more significant than that. For the longest time "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1971) used to get trotted out in lists as the first gay kiss in mainstream cinema, but this mostly forgotten film preempts that by three years.

1968 also saw Frank Sinatra in “The Detective”, which was a lot, lot more seriously intended than this film. “The Detective” was a film rather overly in love with its pretensions to the gritty realities of police work. Its crime plot was about an investigation of a murder with sexual mutilation elements which ends up diving into the New York homosexual underworld including how the trucks on the docks were used as a scene for sex. So one to watch in a double-bill with Al Pacino’s “Cruising”.

397: No Way To Treat A Lady

No Way to Treat A Lady (1968)
Directed by Jack Smight
Screenplay by John Gay, based on the novel by William Goldman

Starts at 33.55

This is a black comedy, a forerunner of those 1970s Vincent Price theatricalised serial murder films.

A serial killer, Christopher Gill (played by Rod Steiger), strangles older women to death then draws a lipstick kiss on their foreheads. Gill is a theatre director who kills because of his mother fixation. To compound this he regularly phones the detective investigating the murders to taunt and mislead him and laud his own genius.

The main reason to watch this film is Steiger’s performance which is outré to say the least. Gill commits his murders by getting the old ladies to invite him into their homes, by putting on a series of disguises: priest, plumber, cop, hairdresser. So there are his oddball performances in these disguises. He then puts on other accents when on the phone to the detective. And then there’s his performance when Gill is just being himself. Steiger’s character/characters never quite manage to form a total. The character never settles into a groove and so is either all over the shop like a mad woman’s piss or deliberately unsettling. The tone never quite finds itself.

Half of this film follows Steiger. The other half follows the investigating detective, his developing relationship with one of the witnesses played by Lee Remmick, and his life with his ultra-stereotypically jewish mother. Oh, and there’s even a dwarf making a confession thrown in at one point.

Yes, it’s an odd film. But not flamboyant in such a way that one could describe it as a traditional camp classic. It’s shot in a slightly grubby manner more appropriate to a film about The Boston Strangler, say, with no showy cameos unless you count Steiger’s various impersonations. The only camp is in the scene where Gill pretends to be a gay hairdresser offering a free wig to his prospective murder victim.

Steiger’s impersonation involves a blond wig with large sunglasses and a fastidious suit – there does seem to be some sort of cliché in the 60s that gay men were dyed blond. Of course there’s a mincing walk and prissy hands. His character here is called Dorian Smith – Dorian for the Oscar Wilde allusion, and Smith for the slight gay lisp, hence also a number of effeminate “Sweetheart”s in his conversation. When he talks it’s with twitching, pursed lips, particularly immobilising the lower lip even as he speaks – which deserves some credit – and indeed the camera zooms in on his face. His speech is drawling, but emphatic i.e. “Just. Absolutely. Dreadful”. Or else everything is “lovely”, “sweet”, “marvellous”.

Then there’s this little monologue:
“Honestly, the whole world is falling into crazy little pieces. It’s getting so you can’t trust anyone anymore. I had a friend, a very close friend, I mean we lived together for three years, so you know, sweetheart, I mean we Were Close, you see. Well, I found out he was a very mean and a very spiteful person. So just yesterday I had to kick him. That’s all: Just. Kick. Him. Out”.

The character has little bitchy moment as his victim argues with him about the wig, and then latter when he realise he won’t be able to murder her, to make his escape he gets a real strop on. As he storms out his prospective murder victim’s the sister calls him “You homo!” To which he waspily replies :”That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person” and slams the door behind him.

Steiger had played at least one tortured closet homosexual role before, but this is not in the same dramatic hemisphere. This is just blowing up clichés on the big screen outrageously. Who’s in on the joke maybe another matter. Though to most of the audience at the time it would have been a novelty to see them on the big screen, as this sort of thing hadn’t made its way on to the TV.

384: Stars Wars 3

“Queer Wars”
Cheech and Chong

Gay Star Wars a la Cheech and Chong. There are at least three somewhat different versions of this sketch for your pleasure by Cheech and Chong: live performance, album, and film.

The version which most obviously starts as a Star Wars parody is the one on their 1980 album, “Let’s Make a New Dope Deal”. It opens with the following narration, which the other two versions seem to lack:

“A long, long time ago in a far-out Galaxy, somewhere around the year 2003 FM, there existed a pink planet which was inhabited by a most gay community and ruled by the popular actor-model-decorator-and-gossip-columnist Rex the Turd, otherwise known as Wex Da Toid. He was a bitchy Sagittarius and a drag out of drag, but a most kindly ruler, and life on this pink planet was fabulous: parties every night, steam baths, dancing at the discos, slave auctions, qualudes, grass, and cocaine was the order of the day. However, one day this idyllic paradise was threatened by the evil witch, Anita - ruler of the orange planet, Navel. Anita and her followers the dreaded Paranoids feared the pink planet and wanted to destroy it, wipe it from the galaxy, or at least move it out of the downtown area. But their efforts are being thwarted by our heroes, Lukie Streetwalker and his faithful companion, Dougie.

"Bum Productions along with the Kids Across the Hall Present:

"Queer Wars

"We find our Glad-e’ate-ums, Lukie and Dougie, at home in their apartment planning a surprise attack on the orange planet.”

So: topical references with the gay metropolitan clubbing lifestyle (heavy on the drug elements – this is Cheech and Chong, after all) and Anita Bryant, the orange juice spokeswoman’s family values campaign.

From there all three versions proceed into the whining, neurotic, over-emotional, petulant camp stereotype which is the late 70s /early 80s comedic formula for gay couples: are they lovers or just roommates going out to a disco – see also National Lampoon’s “Christopher Street” sketch and Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscapo in the Saturday Night Live “Dion and Blair” sketches . That the Tommy Chong character needs constant reassurance that he’s not too old, fat or wrinkled may be some sort of carry over from the characters in “la Cage Aux Folles” which was very successful as a film in 1978.

One line that’s only on the album version. Chong is complaining about his hair,
Cheech: Put some Crisco on it
Chong: (bitterly) That’s your answer to everything.

Live, 1978
I suspect they were proudest of the various gags built around the dildos as guns idea.

“Still Smokin” - 1983
In this film version, somehow the cliché that gay men dress flamboyantly has become gay men dress like circus clowns – more visual I suppose. A gays and Liza Minelli on drugs reference which may only be 6-8 years old at this point. And again, dildos appear, here used as depilators and deodorants.

358: The Gay Deceivers

Original trailer: http://www.videodetective.com/TitleDetails.aspx?publishedid=524840 (since it refuses to bloody embed)

Tagline; Is he or isn’t he? Only his draftboard knows for sure

Released in 1969, this daring-for-its time comedy (it was immediately slapped with an X) starred boyish Kevin Coughlin as Danny a preppy 22 year-old with a steady girlfriend (Brooke Bundy) and handsome Larry Casey as Elliot a lady’s man and lifeguard who get drafted. To avoid being sent to Vietnam, the friends pretend to be gay lovers who desperately want to serve their country. The two are convincing enough to be deemed unfit for active duty but wary Colonel Dixon (Jack Starrett) questions the boys' true intentions and warns them that if at any point they are found to have misrepresented themselves, they will immediately be shipped to Vietnam. Celebrating their success, they panic when Danny notices that they are being spied on by the Colonel. The duo shack up in a one bedroom apartment decorated in pink with a heart-shaped bed in a swinging gay complex and try to convince their landlord Malcolm (Michael Greer), his partner Craig (Sebastian Brook), and the resident stud, Duane (Christopher Riordan) that they are homosexuals. Both Malcolm and Craig have penchants for unannounced visits, which complicates the task of deception for the boys. Lady friends are eager to visit the new digs, which could unravel the whole scheme if the neighbors discover the truth and alert the authorities. Visiting relatives, too, want to inspect the new premises, and need to be kept in the dark, ensuring they don’t mistake the elaborate charade for reality. At the landlord’s costume party, Elliott takes a woman to bed not realizing it’s a guy in drag. A frustrated drunken Elliot then starts a fight in a gay bar, which is witnessed by Danny and his unsuspecting girlfriend, leading to further complications. Their friends and relatives become convinced that the two are gay, which is when they begin finding out for themselves about the discrimination and social ostracism that the gay community faces in the America of 1969. When Elliot loses his job as a lifeguard (because he might “be a bad influence on kids”), Danny's fiancé leaves him, and his family begins to look on them as mentally ill perverts, the boys decide that Vietnam might not be the worst case after all, and confess to the draft board, but by now, it could be too late. The twist is that even after the pair is caught, they aren't inducted. The Army investigators assigned to watch them are themselves gay and are trying to keep straight people out of the Army: “We don’t want their kind in the army, do we, Joe?”.



Really this is just a curio of gay cinematic history.
It’s an exploitation flick in several sense – both slightly raunchy and also exploiting topical social topics such as the Vietnam War and homosexuality. And so it gains retrospective attention as a forgotten trailblazer, and also for its exploration of various controversial themes. Of course, plotwise it’s basically a farce, with feigned homosexuality as its motor. It is not a forgotten treasure, but is about as good as its elements will allow. Productionwise its low budget origins are obvious. As various critics at the time pointed out, audiences will only enjoy it if they were “prepared to find homosexuals an endless source of humor”. And the film does stand out as being possibly the first comedy where homosexuality is the entire premise of the plot and humour. Other comedies during the sixties had their camp and faggy cameos, but here it is the main meal. Similarly, there are a growing cohort of dramatic films about homosexuality – although most of those finished with a dead homosexual protagonist. In summer of 1969 when this film was released, “Staircase” and “The Boys in the Band” were also appearing in cinemas. Unlike those two films, it’s homosexuals have satisfactorily accommodated their lives to their sexuality and a gay lifestyle. Also through the course of the film, the two straight men become friends with their landlord, who is in a genuine relationship, neither of whom are self-loathing. Likewise, admittedly for comic effect, it does make excursions into the gay bar scene and a drag party. The film-makers evidently realised that in presenting homosexuals, they stood a good chance of attracting an interested homosexual audience, and so they attempt to satisfy them with a number of flesh shots of the male leads
Even as the film was capitalising on the public’s willingness to be entertained by homosexuals (by the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s there is a scattering of jokes about gay men having to explain their roommates to their family and butch up their apartments), it clashed with the new political confidence in the emergent gay community. When the film opened in San Francisco, just two weeks after Stonewall, it was picketed by a dozen members of the Committee for the Freedom of Homosexuals. However the film did prove to be relatively successful – a search of the newspapers shows that it had lengthy runs and was not merely a fly by night on the screens.

And then there’s Michael Greer as Malcolm “The Gay Landlord”. It is a very large extremely swishy queeny performance that probably makes slightly more sense in a theatre, seen from seat 78HH (apparently Greer had a long successful career in cabaret). It’s a far way away from the tortured characterisations of “The Boys in the Band” and “Staircase”. Quite a few reviewers felt he added interest and zest to an often lifeless film (supposedly Andrew Sarris suggested Greer should be nominated for an Oscar). There is the sense, however, of someone attempting to steal or dominate every scene, for good or bad. It’s not a particularly nuanced performance, but then it’s not supposed to be (and is probably not a million miles away from Tim Brooke-Taylor’s performance in the 1969 film “12+1”). It’s simply a matter of how can he get a laugh out of his characterisation without actually being offensive, since this is a gay man playing gay (which can often be slightly dangerous territory). Greer stated he wanted to be overt yet innocuous, to make an audience “think it is possible to like a fairy simply for himself”. It probably comes down to individual taste as to how well viewers feel he succeeds.



This scene seems to have stuck in quite a few veiwer’s memories. For good or ill, Greer certainly makes some sort of impression at the end.

357: I’d Rather Swish Than Fight

I was going to make the title “Suck Cock, Dodge the Draft” (which was a real Gay Lib placard from 1970-71) but I thought I’d show a little decorum

One area in which homosexuality began to impinge upon the younger generation in the 1960s was its usefulness as a way of avoiding the draft. It worked for the straight Ken Tynan in the UK. It didn’t work for the American writer Tom Disch, and he was gay. Swings and roundabouts. Other than actually admitting to a homosexual act, the rough and ready method of immediately proving one’s homosexuality was a little transvestism. Because, as I’ve covered elsewhere, cross-dressing stands in fro homosexuality. And so the following couple of gags.


By Guindon
In “The Realist” April 1966


Cover to “Esquire” September 1966.
Well this is underwhelming. The English style magazine had a fashion spread in the early ‘60s with the drag artiste Danny La Rue modelling the new styles for women. That was witty and daring (some of the advertisers objected at the time). One lipstick reluctantly held by one very straight looking boy is not much of a snappy eye-catcher.

And of course there was the character Klinger in the sitcom “M.A.S.H.” (1972 – 1983). Klinger played on the “mental unfitness” rather than the “sexual perversion” line. Klinger, played by Jamie Farr, was always dressed in women’s clothing to try and prove his psychological unsuitability for the army. Apparently the character was originally written as an effeminate gay man, but then inspired by Lenny Bruce’s escapeds, they subsequently decided that it would be more interesting to have Klinger be heterosexual, but wear dresses in an attempt to gain a Section 8 discharge. So Klinger just ended up being a fast-talking heterosexual who was the go-to guy for a hairdryer with a concern for the the standard of his wardrobe.

“Greetings” (1968)
Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by Charles Hirsch and Brian De Palma




Starring Gerritt Graham, Robert De Niro and Jonathan Ward.

This rather choppy, fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants early comedy-drama effort by Brian De Palma follows three young counter-cultural sorts and their escapades attempting to evade the draft and get laid in New York City. When the Jonathan Ward character is called to attend his conscription office, there’s is a brief scene where Gerritt Graham gives him a lesson in how to mince and swish before De Niro relo-playing as sergeant – a very limp wrist, a fey lisping voice, primping his hair, some not very veiled come-ons and invading personal space. A bunch of straight guys showing each other how to act gay is never particularly rewarding, except as a display of degrees of cluelessness, and this is really just flailing around.



1.10 – 1.20
Then there’s this brief clip from a “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” episode from early 1969. A brief man-on-man kiss between an officer (Jonathan Williams) and a draftee. I suppose even just a brief peck on the cheek must be accounted relatively bold for this time. Especially because of the throwaway compliment on the kiss even as the soldier is kicked out of the army.

349: Up the Chastity Belt

Up the Chastity Belt, 1971

Directed by Bob Kellett
Written by Sid Colin, Ray Galton, Alan Simpson

Frankie Howerd as Lurkalot
Hugh Paddick as Robin Hood
Rita Webb as Maid Marion





This is the Middle Ages based spin-off film from the TV series Up Pompeii!, the vehicle for Frankie Howerd. The script is co-written by Galton and Simpson, but is hardly typical of their best work, sharp and character-based, as seen in their gay-themed 1970 episode of Steptoe and Son. Here, whatever they actually contribute is to the model already established by the TV series – a barrage of fairly obvious predictable, low-grade corny gags about sex with mild sarcasm from Frankie Howerd. It’s not terrible, it’s just slow and only middlingly written. But this really is what people wanted in the 1970s, all in the same vein as the Carry On films, Benny Hill, “Are You Being Served?”, and cheap sex-comedies which are a category by themselves but reaped enormous financial rewards.

Indeed how much is original and how much was written to order is a thought that occurs to me, since many of the characters and gags seem written in mind with the familiar actor or actress who performs them. Anyway, so we get a camp Robin Hood and his Merry (read gay) Men.
There are about 6 recognised comic actors in the UK who could possibly play gay in the early 1970s. Although Kenneth Williams was one of Julian and Sandy in the mid-60s, his comic film roles are more repressed oddballs. The effete Charles Hawtrey had become a very minor character actor and was too often drunk. And they were both caught on the Carry On treadmill. Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor who in the late 60s had often played camp were now tied to their successful TV series, and were rarely quite this end of the pier. John Clive, Hugh Walters (who was then playing what is possibly the first regular gay character in a sitcom ever) and Michael Ward are all possibilities with their respective takes on camp, effete and mimsy, but are only minor supporting part players. But luckily, for a sense of historical continuity (and that may be the very reason he was chosen) Hugh Paddick plays this gay Robin Hood. Hugh Paddick had been the other half of the popular camp radio duo Julian and Sandy, so he’s here as a slightly familiar type. He’s not just playing the same character though, since he is not as flamboyant or having as much obvious jolly fun.

The costume and physical mannerisms convey the sense of camp, but Robin himself is more in the theatrical bitch mode (and since the film was produced by Ned Sherrin, probably the preferred interpretation). Since Paddick’s first line features the word “Ducky” the audience doesn’t have to think hard about what he is. Limp wrists are unconfined (particularly in the second clip, when you just know that Howerd’s miming out of delicacy was intended to get an enormous laugh). He’s preening and vain about his aging appearance, obsessed with fashion, and coy about the touches of SM (black leather). We know what he and his men are, but there’s not much about what they do, no sexual double entendres which might be a bit much at this relatively early date for a mass audience. When Hood is gossiping about his men, there’s a little insinuation, and suggesting Will Scarlet is looking for solider action. But he’s more of a dryly camp old maid, even down to the winding his wool.

Aside from all the characterisation and explication of stereotypes above, the dialogue also works by offering various obvious key words which the audience would be expected to recognise, and which from a distance of forty years are clonkingly unsubtle:

“What do you think of our CAMP” (when barely five years earlier Alan Bennett’s sketch emphasises the novelty of camp as a known quantity)
“The Boys in the Band?”
“I’m BENT on joining them”
and a “bona drag” Polari reference, familiar from Julian and Sandy

348: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970

Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond

Robert Stephens as Sherlock Holmes
Colin Blakely as Dr. Watson
Clive Revill as Rogozhin
Tamara Toumanova as Madame Petrova

Not quite a spoof, but pushing at the boundaries of the Holmes canon with a sometimes sly wit (revisionist, if you like) and some outright comedy. As did several other Holmes films of the 70s, produced by people who loved the stories but also relished the opportunity to acknowledge certain facts of life impermissible in Victorian times. The bit I’m interested in here is a joke where even Holmes and Watson know how ambiguous their relationship seems to others. A variant on the sexual pretences of Billy Wilder’s earlier film“Some Like It Hot”. Also an early instance of some comic playing of gay by straight actors for plot reasons. Although the wholly unremembered “Gay Deceivers” about evading the American draft got there on film first. The only camp stereotypical swishing in this film is from the male ballet dancers who are a stretype unto themselves. After his confession Holmes does not alter one whit. Though the stout Watson is offended, and feels betrayed, which is also supposed to be funny. Illegality is not mentioned, since that would be a touch too far, it is merely a matter of scandal. Just as homosexuality has just recently been legalised in the previous few years, and so can be applied to Holmes in a mass market film without cries of disgrace and perversion. Though of course, homosexuality is ultimately disavowed. The use of the word pederast is rather a period detail, too.

---------------------------------

WATSON (voice-over)
It was not the first not the last time he tricked me like that. Normally, I was inclined to forgive him...But on one occasion, he did something that was so utterly unforgivable, that I would gladly have murdered him -- had it not been for my saintly disposition.




Holmes and Watson are invited to the Russian Ballet. There Holmes is introduced by the Russian manager, Rogozhin, to Petrova, an aging ballerina. Gradually it is made clear to Holmes that he has been selected by Petrova to father her child. Reminiscent of the legendary encounter between George Bernard Shaw and Isadora Duncan, Holmes is informed that he has been selected for reason of his intellect, after earlier attempts on Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Tchaikovsky.

HOLMES
Oh, you couldn't go wrong with Tschaikowski --

ROGOZHIN
We could -- and we did. It was catastrophe.

HOLMES
Why?

ROGOZHIN
You don't know? Because Tschaikowski -- how shall put it? Women not his glass of tea

Holmes attempts various arguments to disqualify himself. Meanwhile Watson has been entertaining himself at an after-ballet party with the ballet corp and suddenly pokes his head (with a flower tucked behind his ear) around the door. Brief chat ensues and then Watson departs.

ROGOZHIN
(to Holmes)
I repeat question. You find Madame attractive or no?

Holmes is still looking at the door where Watson exited, an idea forming in his mind.

HOLMES
(turning to Rogozhin)
Oh, I find her most attractive -- for a woman, that is.

ROGOZHIN
Then no problem.

HOLMES
Maybe a slight one. You see, I am not a free man.

ROGOZHIN
Not free? You are a bachelor.

HOLMES
A bachelor -- living with another bachelor -- for the last five years. Five very happy years.

ROGOZHIN
What is it you are trying to tell me?

HOLMES
I hoped I could avoid the subject. But some of us -- through a cruel caprice of Mother Nature --

ROGOZHIN
Get to point.

HOLMES
The point is that Tschaikowski is not an isolated case.

ROGOZHIN
You mean, you and Dr. Watson -- ?
(Holmes nods)
He is your glass of tea?

HOLMES
If you want to be picturesque about it.

PETROVA
(slightly agitated)
Chto on govorit? Pri chom tut Chaikovsky?

ROGOZHIN
On pederast.

PETROVA
(on her feet now; flaring)
Jescho odin? Eto stanovitsa odnoobrasno! Kakoi vi idiot!

HOLMES
(picking up his silk hat and cane)
Believe me, Madame, the loss is all mine. But I would prefer to disappoint you know than disappoint you in a gondola in Venice.

He takes her limp hand, kisses it. Then he crosses to the door.

HOLMES
(imitating Rogozhin's accent)
It would have been catastrophe.

Petrova berates Rogozhin in Russian escalating into screaming.



At the party Watson is dancing with a line of ballerinas. Holmes informs Watson he is going home but Watson refuses to leave. A shaken Rogozhin comes up to the buffet, pours himself a stiff drink of vodka. As he drinks his eyes follow the dancing Watson balefully. Watson spins off several of the girls, grabs another group. His ex-partners wind up close to Rogozhin. He whispers something to them. Their eyes widen, and they stare at Watson with disbelief. Watson again switches partners, and the first girls now whisper intensely to those who just left the floor. The same reaction. Watson, oblivious to all this, is whirling around with another set of girls. The whispering carries along a string of girls, until one of the ballerina tells one of the male dancers. His eyes light up as he cocks his head approvingly.

The other girls are dancing in a line with Watson, backwards and forwards. The male dancers come behind them. Before Watson knows what's happening, two men step forwards to replace the girls dancing on either side of Watson, and then each time the line dances backwards a further pair of men replaces the girl dancers, until Watson is dancing only with male ballet dancers, all still in their tights and make-up.

Watson dances enthusiastically with them until it gradually dawns on Watson that there is something wrong with this state of affairs. After some difficulty, he breaks away from them.

WATSON
Hold on! Just a moment!

He walks over to the massed ballerinas, who all look slightly disapprovingly disappointed. The girls shrink away at his approach, leaving Rogozhin.

WATSON
(bewildered)
What's going on? What happened to the girls?

ROGOZHIN
Why? Do you not prefer it this way?

WATSON
What way?

ROGOZHIN
You don't have to pretend. Mr. Holmes told us everything -- about you and him --

WATSON
About me and him?

ROGOZHIN
Come now, no need to be bashful. We are not bourgeois. Maybe with doctors and detectives is unusual -- but in ballet, is very usual.

WATSON
What is?

ROGOZHIN
Caprice of Mother Nature. Look at Pavel and Mischa and Boris and Dmitri --


Watson looks around at the boys in tights, who are standing in a half-circle, grinning at him. It is beginning to dawn on him

ROGOZHIN
-- And Ilya and Sergei --
(breaks off, rocks his hand back and forth)
Sergei -- half and half.

Rogozhin pours himself another vodka. Watson goes pale and looks a little weak on his legs, takes the glass away Rogozhin, then staggers slightly away to down it with a gulp and a slightly sick, horrified look.

END OF SCENE

WATSON AND HOLMES APARTMENT

WATSON
There you are, you wretch! You rotter! You blackguard! Of all the vile, unspeakable fabrications. What do you have to say for yourself?

HOLMES
From the sound of your footsteps, I gathered that you were not in a particularly amiable mood.

WATSON
(with renewed fury)
How could you do a dastardly thing like that to me? What the deuce were you thinking of?

HOLMES
Watson, you have my most abject apologies. But have you ever been cornered by a madwoman? It seemed like the only way to get out of it without hurting her feelings.

WATSON
What about my feelings? And my reputation? Do you realize the gravity of what you have done? The possible repercussions?

HOLMES
So there'll be a little gossip about you
in St. Petersburg...

WATSON
These things spread like wildfire. I can just hear those malicious whispers behind my back. I'll never be able to show my face in polite society... And if it ever got back to my old regiment -- you don't know the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers -- they'll strike me off the rolls -- they'll cut off my pension...

HOLMES
Watson, you're running amok.

WATSON
Dishonored, disgraced, ostracized. What am I to do?

HOLMES
Well, for one thing, I'd get rid of that flower.

He points to the flower behind Watson's ear. Watson grabs the flower, hurls it into the fireplace.

WATSON
You may think this is funny, but we're both in the same boat. We must take desperate measures. We must stop this talk...
(a beat, then an idea)
Maybe if we got married...

HOLMES
Then they'd really talk...

WATSON
(starts pacing)
Obviously, we cannot continue to live under the same roof. We must move apart.

HOLMES
Of course, we can still see each other clandestinely -- on remote benches in Hyde Park, and in the waiting rooms of suburban railway stations --

WATSON
(a change in attitude; defiant)
The whole thing is ridiculous. We have nothing to hide.

HOLMES
That's what I've been trying to tell you.

WATSON
Let somebody start a rumor -- just one ugly word -- and we'll sue them for slander.

HOLMES
Nobody would dare. After all, you have an enviable record with the fair sex.

WATSON
Damn right. I can get women from three continents to testify for me. And you can get women to vouch for you, too -- can't you, Holmes?

No answer from Holmes. Watson is becoming a little concerned.

WATSON
Can you, Holmes?

HOLMES
Good night, Watson.

He starts toward his bedroom.

WATSON
Holmes, let me ask you a question --

(Holmes stops)
I hope I'm not being presumptuous – but there have been women in your life?

HOLMES
The answer is yes.
(a relieved sigh from Watson)
You're being presumptuous.
(Watson's face falls)
Good night.

WATSON (voice-over)
What, indeed, was his attitude toward women? Was there some secret he was holding back -- or was he just a thinking machine, incapable of any emotion?