Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness

Koresky (Films of Endearment), editorial director at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image, reexamines films from the golden age that had to tiptoe around their subject matter due to Hollywood’s stringent Production Code. The book focuses primarily on the two film adaptations of Lillian Hellman’s searing play The Children’s Hour, which concerns two schoolteachers whose lives are destroyed by a vicious child’s lies. Koresky bookends his chapters with an analysis of the two adaptations, the first made in 1936 under the title These Three, in which the storyline was changed to reflect a heterosexual love triangle instead of a lesbian relationship. The same director (William Wyler) remade the film 25 years later, in 1961, this time adhering to Hellman’s original narrative and starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. Insights into Hellman’s life, gleaned from her correspondence archived at the University of Texas, add much to the book. The interior chapters cover gay-themed films from 1936 to 1961 and look at the careers and works of gay artists in Hollywood, notably the film director Dorothy Arzner and writers Richard Brooks and Arthur Laurents.