Hollywood Bohemians
by Brett Abrams
Summary
Garbo and Dietrich in men’s tailored suits, female impersonators drawing the stars to their nightclubs, designers bringing a gay aesthetic to dresses decades before Project Runway. This significant contribution to gay, lesbian, and film studies demonstrates that the Hollywood studios and mass media used images of these sexually adventurous characters to promote the movie industry and appeal to the prurient interests of the mass media audiences.
Wild, and outlandish, these bohemians’ “illegal” sexual activities and interests added titillation to the Hollywood Dream. They are the forerunners of today’s highly sexualized celebrity culture. The bohemians linked celebrity and their sexual life and presented culturally controversial behavior images on display, pushing the envelope of what the media showed.
Excerpt
When I was pursuing graduate work in history at Northeastern University, my interests returned to Hollywood. This time I focused on the business of the movies. I wrote a thesis about the labor strife between the artisan unions and the motion picture studios during the 1940s.
I decided to get my Ph.D. in history at American University. For my dissertation I wanted to continue my research on Hollywood before World War II. One seminal work in gay, lesbian, and queer studies, George Chauncey’s Gay New York, appeared to offer a possible avenue for investigating the worldof homosexuality and sexual identity in Hollywood. After trips to archives in Los Angeles and New York, it became apparent that written materials, the core of what historians use to delve into an era, were very limited. Many of the sources that others in this area of study had successfully used, such as court records, proved almost nonexistent in Hollywood. Another pathway became blocked when only a few of the persons from the era who were still living expressed interest in discussing the topic with me.
As part of my research, I began detailed reading of the major Los Angeles newspapers from the era. While some of the articles about the industry had
interesting information, the gossip columns proved enlightening; they contained highly suggestive material. I recognized code phrases and humorous items that appeared to indicate adulterous behavior and homosexual interests. Initially surprised at these thinly coded topics, I began to wonder why these items appeared somewhat regularly. I decided to examine other descriptions of Hollywood. I found more characters that defied the culture’s sexual
and gender norms. The focus of my possible topic shifted from a social history to a cultural history about the appearance of sexual others in descriptions of Hollywood and the movie world.
Fortunately, I received a junior fellowship at the Library of Congress in their Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. I had the
opportunity to view most of the movies the studios created that featured Hollywood as the primary location. I found several movies with sexual bohemians.
I also read nearly 70 Hollywood novels written between 1917 and 1950 and found even more adulterers, cross-dressers, and homosexuals. I continued to
research gossip columns and news stories in a number of the metropolitan newspapers in the U.S., which provided allusions to these figures in the Hollywood milieu.
Many scholars have examined images of non-conformist sexuality in mass media. The images have been far from pretty or positive. In general, movies
depicted homosexuals and adulterers as unfortunate and suicidal figures, or forced them to renounce their lives and redeem themselves before the final
credits rolled. Novels faced censorship for using such depictions or made the characters into outcasts, suicide victims, or self-loathers because they failed to follow cultural norms. The rare instances in newspapers showed homosexuals and adulterers as criminals. I realized that I had a unique group of images and descriptions about Hollywood, the place that stood apart from those described in other scholarship in both gay and lesbian history and the history of the mass media in the United States.
The images needed to be organized. I sought to relate them back to the social environment of Hollywood and Los Angeles. It proved best to relate them to the major landmarks of Hollywood. These locales included nightclubs, parties and houses; the completed dissertation included five places in all.
In the years since the dissertation’s completion, a few popular books on Hollywood have focused on homosexual stars and homosexuals in the industry. They have effectively detailed a star’s life or some activities and contributions of gays and lesbians to Hollywood. These writers observed that the people
running Hollywood generally suppressed information about homosexuals. My book differs significantly. The images of adulterers, homosexuals and crossdressers appeared in a much more positive light in fictional movies and novels about Hollywood. They also appeared in the publicity materials that the
Hollywood studios and news media released. My book provides explanations of Hollywood’s relationship to and sometimes promotion of non-conformity
that the other popular books have been unable to explain.
Reviews
"Brett Abrams provides a new take on Hollywood….should be must reading for scholars….Abrams offers documents that will be new to all"--Douglas Gomery, Professor of Journalism and Film Studies Emeritus, University of Maryland
Author's Biography
Born to a Catholic mother and Jewish father, Brett Abrams began life in New Jersey amid a diverse melange of ethnic and racial cultures.
Before settling in Washington, D.C. to earn his doctorate in U.S. History, he lived in Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Boston. Always a ravenous devourer of movies, plays and books, he focused his studies on gender, sexuality and culture in the media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which eventually led to the publication of his first book, Hollywood Bohemians.
The author also writes about sports. His 2009 release is Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, D.C.