Opposites Attract: Gender Roles in Early Cinema

Opposites Attract:

Gender Roles in Early Cinema

Abstract

Nothing shocks an audience as much as a character who intended to be one sexual orientation is played by the opposite sex. For them most part in Hollywood the reason why a studio would hire a male actor to play a female role or a female actress for a male role would have various meanings. An actress might be paid less, or the role is physically impossible for a male or female actor to play. This is something that is easily noticed in the earliest of cinema when Charlie Chaplin played the wife in the silent film A Busy Day, or when Betty Bronson played Peter Pan for the first time. Both characters are easily distinguishable for who they’re supposed to be, male or female, but their roles were played by the opposite gender.

This paper is meant to study how Hollywood used male and female actors to play roles for the opposite sex in order to understand sexuality in film. Where these characters meant to be portrayed as queer, were the actors themselves queer? Through a study of films from the early 1910’s until the Golden Era of film in the 1950’s this paper seeks to address the role of the male or female cross-dressed actor in their portrayal as well as the reason why queer actors were marketed as heterosexual during their time on screen.

Opposites Attract: Gender Roles in Early Cinema

Nothing shocks an audience as much as a character who intended to be one sexual orientation is played by the opposite sex. For them most part in Hollywood the reason why a studio would hire a male actor to play a female role or a female actress for a male role would have various meanings. An actress might be paid less, or the role is physically impossible for a male or female actor to play. This is something that is easily noticed in the earliest of cinema when Charlie Chaplin played the wife in the silent film A Busy Day, or when Betty Bronson played Peter Pan for the first time. Both characters are easily distinguishable for who they’re supposed to be but their roles are played by the opposite gender.

Gender in Hollywood was something that was interchangeable in the earliest years because they understood that being able to show something erotic towards the audience but the sexuality of the actors were closely guarded because there was a fear of the audience losing interest if the relationships on screen didn’t play out in real life. The loss of the illusion was something that Hollywood was trying to keep from happening. Through this many roles in which a female actress was dressed as a man was portraying their power over the man’s masculinity, or for roles that were meant to attract a younger audience they were just mean to display the innocence of a child. Whether the actors themselves were homosexual or heterosexual was only used as an innuendo yet all of the early Hollywood actors were marketed as heterosexual so that it wouldn’t cause controversy towards the movie studio and the actor themselves. The Hollywood machine can make or break a career and in the early twentieth century when film was new the sexual orientation of the star could cause a backlash that would see the end of their career.

            Cross-dressing became a way for Hollywood to appeal to a homosexual demographic while also appealing to male viewers. Actresses who displayed homosexual acts on screen would be seen as voyeuristic towards the male gaze because by deviating from the norms of society some men would find this attractive and hopeful that they would also become a part of the scene being played out. These actresses were also appealing towards a lesbian and bi-sexual audience that was known to Hollywood who knew that they were not directly out in the open with their sexuality. These images as well as the struggle of losing their audience if the truth of some of their stars created a sub-culture of not just queer but also of how cross-dressing men and women in these films played into the fantasy of the role they were portraying. Although to the audience it was unknown if the actors themselves were attracted to one another on screen the truth from behind the silver curtain was kept hidden for a long time even when their fellow stars knew the truth.

Cross-Dressing as a Film Genre

            Cross-Dressing in film isn’t something new, it had been done in the theater for centuries when male actors portrayed female roles when women weren’t allowed on Shakespeare’s stage. When silent film began in earnest in Hollywood it changed to allow female and male actors the chance to portray the opposite gender without question. For a male actor becoming a woman on screen isn’t strange but with film it becomes a question of whether they can act like a woman. An example of this is Charlie Chaplin who portrayed a women in three different silent films, A Busy Day (1914); The Masquerader (1914); and A Woman (1915), each time the woman he portrays becomes more and more feminine which displays how Chaplin was adapting to becoming a woman for these roles. As for a female actor portraying a male character was something different, sometimes it was the portrayal of innocence or as an act of seduction for a woman when she cross-dressed to play a male character. In some films the woman would do it as a part of an act to entice the lead male character, the portrayal of a woman as an entirely male character was almost unheard of but in the few instances in which it had been allowed it wasn’t publicized as a homosexual film. In one case the story of Peter Pan as a film would become that of a young lady portraying the male lead character as it was easier at the time for a young lady to portray the character than a young man.

            In A Busy Day, Chaplin portrays a woman who obstructs a film crew while he “is dressed as a shrewish woman whom neither her husband (Mack Swain), the film director (Mack Sennett), nor the local cop can control.”[1] In the film Chaplin’s female persona is uncontrollable she shows her undergarments and is acting unladylike while she acts as any other of Chaplin’s other personas. She’s unbecoming as a lady which shows his knack for slapstick comedy, as the character runs into the street and becomes a nuisance towards the film crew, but it is demeaning to the female audience who are still growing out of their Victorian lives as the new century begins to take hold. As the brutish looking wife goes rampant throughout the story, her dark colored clothing make her more of the villain in the tale of what went wrong in the story. Throughout the short film the character is involved in altercations with both sexes as she kicks and screams her way through the filming of the scene ending in her being thrown into the water by the people around her.

            In his second appearance as a woman, The Masquerader, Chaplin starts off as a man working on a film where he is fired because of constant mistakes only to return dressed as a woman and offered a lead role. “Charlie quickly reverts back to his familiar comedy makeup and clothes, reveals his imposture, and is chased about the studio.”[2] The second time Chaplin portrayed a woman, for the short amount of time on the film, he became a more feminine representation of a woman. As shown in Figure 2, Chaplin’s character is using his feminine wiles to seduce the director, as opposed to his other female character in A Busy Day this character is naturally beautiful and dresses in light colors that play into the sweet fantasy of a woman. Although he reverts back to being his own brand Chaplin uses his character’s feminine charms in order to gain the trust of the director including a chase around the dressing room but not without showing his true nature once left alone and bringing forth himself before being chased and landing in water just as his female persona in A Busy Day. His character, in The Masquerader, ended up landing in figurative hot water for leading them on.

            The last time Chaplin portrayed a female character was in A Woman in which Chaplin dons his feminine clothing in order to be close to his sweetheart, portrayed by Edna Purviance, in the second half of the film, “after her father has forbidden her to see him.”[3] In order to hide from his’ sweetheart’s father he finds himself in a woman’s dressing area but with the father on his tail he dons the woman’s clothing that is in front of him even showing his sweetheart who smiles and laughs at his newly donned garb only to help him with his ruse by giving him a pair of women’s shoes. She gives him a kiss for luck when he is dressed as a woman which is different from the flirtations, although their interaction with one another is very flirtatious. Although the father and other male guest of the house also flirt with this new feminine character the charade is exposed in the literal sense when his character has his dress pulled down by his sweetheart’s father. As his character in The Masquerader, this cross-dresser is dressed in light colors, he’s attempting to win the favor of his sweetheart’s father the light clothing in some films can be seen as someone who is pure or in this case pure of heart.  Chaplin portrayed a male dressed in drag in The Masquerader, this is the second time he’s in drag and not portraying a woman completely. A Busy Day would be the only one of Chaplin’s films in which he plays a female character and it is also the only one in which the character is not very feminine.

            Charlie Chaplin’s portrayal of women changed each time he represented a character of the opposite sex. In Charles J. Maland’s Chaplin and American Culture: The Evolution of a Star Image, Maland writes about women in Chaplin’s movies saying that “Women are either objects of Charlie’s lust, targets of his antics, or inconsequential to the narrative.”[4] His only true woman was unruly, noisy and unwilling to submit to the male authority in the film, the reason why could be because for the first time he was portraying a woman instead of having them as an object of his own affections. This portrayal doesn’t affect the differences between male and female cross-dressers because this is Chaplin’s own portrayal, since men have been playing women since before Shakespeare’s stage centuries before.

            Peter Pan displays a different part of the cross-dressing genre because instead of having a male actor portray the lead role of Peter Pan the role went to a young seventeen year old girl from New Jersey. In the 1924 filming of Peter Pan, Betty Bronson an unknown actress snagged the role of the lead character. Betty Bronson’s performance lead to a brief period of stardom but it is also known as a wonderful performance by all who saw the picture. Her other films didn’t garner as much attention as her role as Peter because once she played the role on screen she was branded as the girl who played the boy that never grew up. The New York Times critic found Better Bronson’s portrayal of Peter Pan to be, “a graceful and alert Peter Pan. She is youth and joy, and one appreciates that she revels in the role. Her large eyes are wide with wonder when she first greets Wendy and she is lithe, erect and straight of limb when she fearlessly fights the horrible Captain Hook on his pirate craft.”[5]

            The story behind how Betty Bronson became Peter Pan is one of the most interesting tales because she left her hometown along with her family to pursue her dreams of acting. “Paramount spent nine months looking for an actress to star as Peter Pan. J.M. Barrie's contract for the rights gave him star approval, and Paramount was unable to find an actress whom Barrie approved,”[6] it wasn’t until after Bronson gained a face to face meeting with the writer and creator of Peter Pan that “she was handpicked to play the lead role in Paramount's "Peter Pan" (1924) by the author of the novels and play James Matthew Barrie.”[7] Audiences loved Bronson’s performance of Peter Pan, James R. Quirk wrote “The more we think of Betty Bronson, the more we marvel at her perfect performance. Not only the expression in her face but the way she stood and walked, and the grace that she showed every instant caused us to feel that she was truly an ethereal child who never could grow up. And anybody who can do that is, in reality, Peter Pan.”[8] Though the sexuality of the character was never questioned because Peter is a boy the actresses did share a kiss on screen. Bronson embodied the character with each step she took because it was her first full length feature film.

            The reality of this is that Bronson’s portrayal of the character was so beloved that eventually the aspiring actress had trouble dissociating herself from the role, “I loved Peter. I am a lot of Peter myself. But I am at least a little different. It isn’t fair. They look for Peter, not for me. I am grateful to Peter. But he’s like a poor relation—he hangs around so!”[9] For many actresses this causes them to be typed cast in certain roles or they aren’t able to move away from that particular part and it follows them around. This leads many casting agents and directors to overlook the fact that the actress herself could be well suited for other roles. For Betty Bronson who was relatively new in Hollywood to have a hit on her first real movie caused many to pull back from casting her in roles that would further her talents as an actress.

            In these two instances the actors who portrayed someone from the opposite gender were regarded in different ways. Charlie Chaplin, helped create the characters that he portrayed with his own brand of humor as well as taking credits for directing some of the shorts in was in. Chaplin was already a household name and he was able to continue his career because he had the means. Even though he would never again portray a woman, the three instances in which he did created a standard for comedy that is still seen decades after. As for Betty Bronson she did go onto other roles but none were as popular as her portrayal of Peter Pan, which caused her to be “cast in wholesome teenager roles.”[10] This included her portrayal in of “Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, in the most expensive silent film ever made "Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ"[11] Although once the roaring twenties took hold the interest in the kind of family friendly roles that she had been cast in diminished in favor of more provocative roles. Though she did continue to work she didn’t have the same appeal that she once had as the girl who played Peter Pan.

The Female Mystique and the Hidden Truths about Lesbians in Early Film

            Early Hollywood actresses were seen as models of how a woman wanted to be loved, how they wanted to find love, and how they dreamed of the scenario that played out on the screen in front of them. As the film industry began to lengthen its movies to include sound and script the need for a different kind of Hollywood began to take charge.

“But beyond specific images, the rise of the cinema and especially the Hollywood star system promoted the idea that different roles and styles could be adopted by spectators as well as by actors and actresses and could signal changeable personalities, multiple identities. This new, twentieth-century theatrical sense of self was invaluable to the formation of lesbian identity. If not at the cinema, then certainly through the cinema, with its transformative powers and the allure of the theatrical, alchemical self, such fundamental twentieth-century lesbian experience as ‘passing for straight’, crossdressing and masquerade, butch/femme role-playing, gal slang, and living double lives, were encouraged and legitimized. In other words, lesbians may have gone to the movies – like everyone else – to find romance and adventure, but they came home with much more.”[12]

This new charge of Hollywood femininity helped people who weren’t used to telling the world about their own sexual preferences feel the same emotions as the other film goers. Hollywood knew that this demographic existed but in their own stars they suppressed the stars’ image from showing any signs of attraction to a different gender.

            The reasons for this was to hide any kind of backlash that would occur if the actors came out of the closet. For many female stars their hidden lives weren’t revealed to audiences because of the allure of what they did on screen. Andrea Weiss addresses this in her book Vampires & Violets: Lesbians in Film saying that “The Hollywood studios went to great lengths to keep the star’s image open to erotic contemplation by both men and women, not only requiring lesbian and gay male stars to remain in the closet for the sake of their careers, but also desperately creating the impression of heterosexual romance – as MGM did for Greta Garbo in the 1930s.”[13] For many the news of Greta Garbo’s sexuality would have taken away the allure of her heterosexual relationships but the talks of her sexuality would continue for years after. “Lesbians may well have suspected, for example, that Mercedes de Acosta and Salka Viertel were great loves in Greta Garbo’s life, but the ‘general public’ only remembered that she once agreed to marry John Gilbert. (Garbo used to answer Gilbert’s many proposals of marriage with ‘ah you don’t want to marry one of the fellows’.)”[14] Although the speculation was also that although she loved him, but she didn’t want to be controlled by a man.

            Garbo’s role in the movie Queen Christina which had brought her back to the screen after a brief hiatus the movie was about “The aloof, independent queen in the film gives up her throne for love of a Spanish nobleman and, when he dies, leaves Sweden to take her slain lover back to his native land.”[15] The plot of the film follows Garbo’s character a young queen who is dedicated to the people and wellbeing of her country. “The real Christina was a lesbian, who gave up the throne to pursue artistic studies in Italy, where she lived as a man under the name Count Dohma... The only concession to the real Christina's sexuality were some subtle hints that the film character was romantically attracted to one of her ladies in waiting and scenes of Garbo hunting and meeting with advisors dressed as a man - which only added to the star's glamour.”[16]  Nick Squires’s The Telegraph’s article on the Swedish Queen speaks about how the real Queen had a deep voice and eluded masculine behavior, and the tale of her exploits with one of her ladies-in-waiting has been a subject that has come up time and time again. This is also displayed in the movie in which Garbo’s Christina shares a kiss with her lady-in-waiting, as well as the character’s affinity towards masculine attire.

Another Hollywood starlet whose sexuality would be opened to questions after several roles was Marlene Dietrich. Claude J. Summer’s wrote “Probably no one, gay or straight, of any gender, could tear her or his eyes from the sight of Marlene Dietrich, leaning back with lewd abandon, grasping a shapely gartered leg as she growls out her signature song, “Falling in Love Again.”[17] The role in which Dietrich is most well-known for is starring opposite Gary Cooper in the movie Morocco in which Dietrich plays a night club singer. Her character is trying to dissuade the advances of Adolphe Menjou’s character wealthy Kennington La Bessière who she brushes aside. Also meeting Cooper’s character Tom Brown, a soldier in the French foreign legion, who is the main love interest for her character. The allure of Dietrich’s character in the film towards multiple audiences is in a scene early in the film where she is singing in a Top Hat and Coat Tails towards an audience of mostly men, who at first boo at her for being dressed as a man. What makes this scene expertly crafted is that after she finishes her song she approaches a female audience member, asks her for the flower in which she carries and kisses her on the lips in n front of the whole audience. Unlike the innocent kiss shared by Mary Brian and Betty Bronson in Peter Pan, this moment was clearly created for a purpose. Weiss writes about the scene saying that, “Marlene Dietrich’s famous performance in Morocco is a case in point. During the cabaret scene, dressed in top hat and tails, she turns and suddenly kisses a woman on the lips. Vito Russo has written of this scene, “Dietrich’s intentions are clearly heterosexual; the brief hint of lesbianism she exhibits servers only to make her more exotic, to whet Gary Cooper’s appetite for her and to further challenge his maleness.”[18] If this scene is watched closely it seems as though she is playing into the seduction game she’s having with Cooper’s character, who was the only one to start clapping for her in the beginning of the scene.

Another side of this argument is that she was trying to appeal to an audience that Hollywood knew existed, “Dietrich biographer Homer Dickens also, though far less critically, viewed this scene in terms of its function to provide pleasure for men: ‘the more masculinely she dressed, the more exciting [to men] her feminine appeal became.” Certainly, such an androgynous image of woman – crossdressed, performing actions and assuming looks that traditionally belong to masculine domain – was appropriated by Hollywood and made less threatening by serving male fantasy.”[19] Both sides of the argument could be correct but it could also seem that she was attempting to recreate the scene as though she were a man appealing to the masses. When she first walked on stage in the beginning she was booed because of her attire if she had been a man in that attire she wouldn’t have been addressed in the same manner. The movie is a love story but this scene can also be considered a love story that appeals to two different audiences that are watching in earnest.

An aspect that these two film stars are addressing in their performances in their movies are an appeal towards a lesbian audience, although their sexuality towards this audience ends when the ending is with their heterosexual love interest. Weiss address this as well as how they appeal towards the audience writing,

“Garbo in Queen Christina and Dietrich in Morocco and Blonde Venus each evoke aspects of Smith-Rosenberg’s description of the ‘Mannish Lesbian’ of the 1920s and 1930s as ‘sexually powerful, yet ultimately defeated and impotent.’ Yet their androgynous qualities held a sexual appeal that the ‘Mannish Lesbian’ did not. They do function within the narrative as a sexual threat that must be contained; however, their appropriation of male clothing while retaining female identity, their aloof and inscrutable manners, and their aggressive independence provided an alternative model upon which lesbian spectators could draw. This model was an appealing departure both from heterosexual images of femininity and from the images of deviance that pervaded the medical texts.”[20]

The stories that they portray in the end are not lesbian stories but because of their widespread appeal it meant that the movie studios could reach out to a wider audience than before, but it could also create a new type of film in which garnered interest in Hollywood. Unlike cross-dressing films in which the actor portrayed a person of the opposite sex these movies incorporated male attire into the female star to bring forward a different kind of star. As the world moved through the women’s movements and the first wave feminist movements where women’s liberation was a topic that was just beginning in these eras it would take years before sexuality would become an openly discussed topic. Hollywood would have to continue to catch up to the changing world.

            Though the truth of their sexual orientation is slowly being revealed, David Freeman wrote an article called “Closet Hollywood” for The New York Times on the Diana McLellan book The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood, “Greta Garbo, the most private of all the great stars, called her lesbian love affairs ''exciting secrets.'' Marlene Dietrich, Garbo's bête noire and a world-class extrovert, called a group of Hollywood women her Sewing Circle. (She sometimes referred to her male lovers as her ''alumni association.'')”[21] To the audience their portrayals of these women and whom they kissed were done to entice the audience and give their homosexual audience their own part of the Hollywood machine. During the time in which they were on screen those around them knew about their sexual orientation but this information wasn’t brought to the public eye until decades after because the film industry was trying to contain the star. By keeping it from the public they were able to continue the illusion of the character’s true love even if the actor didn’t have the same feelings. The sexual orientation of old Hollywood stars have been a mystery until recently because they didn’t want to lose the illusion of the love story on screen. Some of these revelations are coming out due to private letters that have been released over the years. As marketing them as heterosexual the movie studios kept up the illusion of the actress’s orientations even alluding to relationships with other male co-stars to continue the fascination in order to promote the movies better.

The Differences between the Cross-Dresser and the Homosexual Star

Whether Garbo or Dietrich were hiding her sexuality during these times is something that has been questioned, Weiss writes “What the public knew, or what the gay subculture knew, about these stars’ ‘real lives’ cannot be separated from their star images. Whether these actresses were actually lesbian or bisexual is less relevant than how their star personae were perceived by lesbian audiences. Not only did the Hollywood star system create inconsistent images of femininity, but these images were further contradicted by the intervention of the actress herself into the process of star image production.”[22] The Hollywood star machine created the hidden world of homosexual stars, cross-dressing actors could go out after production because this wasn’t as deviant as a full blown homosexual star. An actress who was a lesbian had to hide their own true image from the public and those who knew about her true sexuality helped create this inconsistent image of femininity because in the overall aspect of hiding their true selves they deviated by dressing in a different fashion. The public didn’t have to know the truth of the starlet, all they needed was a character on screen but unlike what Weiss is saying it also had an impact on the people who watched the film, by blurring the lines of what the Hollywood actress needed to look like they became a different kind of icon. The fashion icons of this period would set the stage for what all fashion would become in the next few years.

As for what the appeal of these kinds of characters for an audience it meant that “the public could be teased with the possibility of lesbianism, which provoked both curiosity and titillation. Hollywood marketed the suggestion of lesbianism, not because it intentionally sought to address lesbian audiences, but because it sought to address male voyeuristic interest. This use of innuendo, however, worked for a range of women spectators as well, enabling them to direct their erotic gaze at the female star without giving it a name, and in the safety of their private fantasy in a darkened theater.”[23] This gave an audience the chance to explore their own sexuality without broadcasting it to the world. For the viewer as well as the actor on the screen openly admitting their sexuality meant isolation from a world that wasn’t ready for this next step in the sexual revolution. This also created another area of film in which directors would create the illusion for these audiences and even creating movies in the future which directly addressed this audience while still having the Hollywood fantasy of two people of the opposite sex being in love, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

What made cross-dressed actor different from the thought of lesbian voyeurism was that like in Shakespeare Plays these actors portraying a male or female character was to further their acting prowess as well as to play a different type of character outside of the norms of their own world. Charlie Chaplin’s female character was something different no matter how extreme it was. Chaplin’s sexual orientation was well known, he had several affairs and numerous children. As a featured star his sexual orientation wouldn’t be questioned even if he kissed a man on screen. Costuming and make-up allowed him to play the roles in which were needed of his characters. There were plenty of movies during these years that didn’t have a romantic story line and for homosexual males they could fantasize about actors as much as they wanted because they were prominent on screen.

What made it different for female stars especially those who played into male roles is that they gave the illusion of that to their female audience even when their characters were destined to be with the male lead. In Boze Hadleigh’s The Lavender Screen: The Gay and Lesbian Films: Their Stars, Makers, Characters, and Critics, Hadleigh writes that “Marlene Dietrich was the woman who made male dress fashionable for women on-screen and off-. Several of her memorable films feature her in a tuxedo or Navy uniform. In Morocco (1930) she not only sings in top hat and tails but kisses a female spectator on the lips, then savors her bemused astonishment.”[24] This gave the homosexual female audience what they hadn’t had before a woman, or a group of women willing address their sexuality without openly expressing it to the world. Though many still questioned the way these women portrayed their characters, Bessie Smith stated in her song “Foolish Man Clues” that, “There’s two things got me puzzled There’s two things I just can’t understand That’s a mannish actin’ woman And a skipping, twisting woman actin’ man.”[25] This is in regards to characters like Dietrich nightclub singer and Garbo’s Queen Christina who was dressed as men although they acted like women. Dietrich’s real life personal often showed her in men’s clothing, as seen in Figure 10. This particular criticism shows that the world wasn’t ready for that kind of character in real life. They were fine with cross-dressing but when it came to a woman taking a role such as this, or even alluding to a relationship with the same sex crossed a very different line in the eyes of the public. Samuel Goldwyn said that “Most of our pictures have little if any, real substance. Our fear of what the censors will do keeps us from portraying life the way it really is. We wind up with a lot of empty fairy tales that do not have much relation to anyone.”[26]

As the years changed and the thoughts and mannerisms over how a sexuality was portrayed in the public eye evolved it still took nearly five decades before the world was ready for these kinds of characters to be visible on screen. Today how “Greta Garbo called homosexual affairs "exciting secrets,"[27] are no longer secrets, more and more Hollywood actors and actresses have come out of the closet. They aren’t type casted into these characters either which separates the fears that had once been set by the studios. Actors aren’t blacklisted from work because of their sexual orientation and as more of them reveal their sexuality it has also broken down that what-if wall that had been erected in the early years of the film industry in which an actor would have to hide their true selves in order to gain work.

While narrating America on Film in 1976 Charlton Heston said “The movies didn’t always get history straight. But they told the dream.”[28] This was in regards to the nature of which some actors got to kiss the people they did while the audience who followed the story got to fantasize about a world that wouldn’t judge them. Now it’s a dream for all where no one has to hide from their dreams. The differences between the star system today over the one put in place during early Hollywood is that the fear of exposure and the repercussions of what it would do to the film don’t exist. The actor can masterfully portray a role without the world criticizing the influence of their real life. The life of the homosexual actor in early cinema depended on how they were portrayed on screen, in a time before easy access media that was created in the internet age. If they were exposed they no longer had a viable career and they wouldn’t be able to master the craft that they loved. Heston’s words were the truth of the time, they weren’t allowed to be themselves so they portrayed the character of what the Hollywood star system wanted. This wasn’t the same for cross-dressing because those actors returned to their regular lives afterwards, they didn’t have to live with the stigma that would have been brought forth if they had come out as homosexual.

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[1] A Busy Day available from http://www.charliechaplin.com/en/films/keystones

[2] The Masquerader available from http://www.charliechaplin.com/en/films/keystones

[3] A Woman available from http://www.charliechaplin.com/en/films/essanays

[4] Charles J. Maland, Chaplin and American Culture: The Evolution of a Star Image (England|New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991), 21.

[5] Bruce K. Hanson. "Betty Bronson: The Silent Treatment." In Peter Pan on Stage and Screen, 1904-2010, 2d ed. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011.)

[6] Peter Pan (1924) available from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015224/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv

[7] “Betty Bronson” (1906-1971) available from http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/bettybronson.html

[8] Bruce K. Hanson. "Betty Bronson: The Silent Treatment." In Peter Pan on Stage and Screen, 1904-2010, 136.

[9] Ibid, 125.

[10] “Betty Bronson” (1906-1971)

[11] Ibid.

[12] Andrea Weiss Vampires & Violets: Lesbians in Film. (New York, NY, U.S.A.: Penguin, 1993), 28-29

[13] Ibid, 32.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Frank Miller, “TCM Film Article: Queen Christina” available from http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/29966%7C0/Queen-Christina.html

[16] Ibid.

[17] Claude J. Summers, The Queer Encyclopedia of Film & Television (San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press In, 2005) ,92.

[18] Andrea Weiss Vampires & Violets: Lesbians in Film. 33.

[19] Ibid, 33.

[20] Ibid.

[21] David Freeman, “Closet Hollywood: A gossip columnist discloses some secrets about movie idols” available from http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/01/07/reviews/010107.07freemat.html

[22] Andrea Weiss Vampires & Violets: Lesbians in Film, 32-33.

[23] Ibid, 32.

[24] Boze Hadleigh, The Lavender Screen: The Gay and Lesbian Films: Their Stars, Makers, Characters, and Critics(Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, 2001), 174.

[25] Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. (New York, Harper &

Row, 1987), 4.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Diana McLellan, The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood “Introduction” available from http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mclellan-girls.html

[28] Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. 4.