Inside 'The Celluloid Closet' Trivia Quiz

Answer: the sissy

As Lily Tomlin narrates: "The sissy made everyone feel more manly or more womanly by occupying the space in between. He didn't seem to have a sexuality, so Hollywood allowed him to thrive." Screenwriter Arthur Laurents despised the Sissy and compared it to the Step'n'Fetchit character for Blacks. Harvey Fierstein, however, called it "visibility at any cost. I'd rather have negativity than nothing".

The pathetic loser was generally a tragic figure, and the psychotic killer emerged a bit later, after gays and lesbians gained more visibility in American society.

Answer: "Morocco" (1930)

Generally speaking, women "in breeches" did not play for laughs the way men in drag would in the early twentieth century. It was generally a means of disguise (non-comical) or a matter of convenience, as in Queen Christina's decision to dress temporarily as a man. Or it may have been rather titillating, as in the case of Dietrich's portrayal of an entertainer in "Morocco". She dressed in a tuxedo and a top hat, sang in her deep, throaty voice, and even kissed one of the ladies in the audience.

By the way, Katharine Hepburn dressed as a boy in "Sylvia Scarlett" but no clips from this film appeared in "The Celluloid Closet". "The Gay Divorcee" had no cross-dressers, but Edward Everett Horton did portray a somewhat campy character, for laughs. (The divorcée in question was a lady who was supposedly happy to be ending her marriage.) "Viktor und Viktoria", about a woman impersonating a female impersonator, was a German film remade by MGM in a 1982 release starring Julie Andrews as "Victor/Victoria".

Answer: "The Maltese Falcon" (1941)

Lily Tomlin informs us in voiceover that in the novel, "The Maltese Falcon" (1930), Dashiell Hammet simply writes, "This guy is queer." The 1941 movie with Humphrey Bogart was more subtle; it is remarked in dialogue that there's a man (Peter Lorre) outside the office wearing perfume, specifically Gardenia, and Bogart and his secretary exchange glances.

In "Rebecca" (1940), the housekeeper (Judith Anderson) showed an unhealthy interest in the dead mistress, and even went through her underwear drawer, and she was quite villainous to Joan Fontaine, but the male lead was Laurence Olivier, not Humphrey Bogart. It was Alfred Hitchcock's first American film and his only one to win Best Picture Oscar.

Answer: "Rope" (1948)

Two brilliant and wealthy young men, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), murder a classmate as an experiment in committing the perfect crime, to prove their intellectual superiority. But their schoolmaster, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), has his suspicions. The film is loosely based on the escapades of the famous thrill-killers Leopold and Loeb.

In "The Celluloid Closet", Farley Granger reflects on his role in "Rope": "We knew that [the murderers] were gay... I mean, nobody said anything about it; it's 1947, let's not forget that. But that was one of the points of the film, in a way."

Answer: Red River

Montgomery Clift and John Ireland compare each others' weaponry in the 1948 Western "Red River", in which Clift, in his film debut, plays the adopted son of a cattle rancher (John Wayne), who rebels against his despotic father. Adding to the subtext is that Clift's bisexuality was an open secret throughout much of Hollywood (not discussed in the documentary). During the filming, John Wayne and Walter Brennan (who played trail hand Nadine Groot) could not stand Clift's company, and for that reason Clift declined a role in "Rio Bravo" (1959), which starred both Wayne and Huston. The role of the rebellious son was originally offered to Burt Lancaster, but he had already agreed to star in "The Killers" (1946).

"The Celluloid Closet" offers another example of such coding: a deleted scene from "Spartacus" (1960) in which Roman senator Crassus (Laurence Olivier) discusses enjoying both oysters and clams while his slave (Tony Curtis) nervously bathes him. As Lily Tomlin narrates in "The Celluloid Closet": "The indirectness of expression of homosexuality on the screen reflected the indirectness of expressing homosexuality in real life through most of the 20th century."

Answer: "Ben-Hur" (1959)

All the troubles that befell Judah Ben-Hur in this epic film of ancient Rome turned on betrayal by his old friend, Tribune Messala. Vidal believed that the homoerotic subtext was necessary to provide sufficient motivation for Messala (Boyd) to behave so spitefully toward Ben-Hur (Heston).

Some people involved with the production have since disputed this anecdote, whilst others have affirmed it; Vidal stuck to his story until the day he died. Either way, "Ben-Hur" won 11 Oscars including Best Picture, a record unmatched until "Titanic" (1997) swept the 70th Academy Awards.

Answer: "Caged" (1950)

"Caged" was the first Hollywood movie to be set entirely inside a woman's prison, and hardly a man appears at all. At the 23rd Academy Awards, Eleanor Parker received a Best Actress nomination for her portrayal of the ingenue-turned-corrupt, and Hope Emerson earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing the reprobate, sadistic Matron Harper. Agnes Moorehead played the sympathetic, humanitarian warden, but received no nomination. Over time, the women-in-prison (WiP) genre morphed from reasonably realistic depictions into pure exploitation, although "The Celluloid Closet" does not really explore this.

"Kiss of the Spider Woman" and "Papillon" depict men in prison. While no man appears in "The Women", the wealthy ladies in the movie do little but talk about men!

Answer: Some Like it Hot

"Some Like It Hot" (1959) also starred Marilyn Monroe. It was condemned by the Legion of Decency in part because Tony Curtis kisses Monroe while he is still in drag as Josephine, creating the impression of a same-sex imbroglio. Therefore, United Artists distributed it without the MPAA's seal of approval, which contributed to the decline of the Motion Picture Production Code. The movie received so many laughs during a pre-screening that some scenes were re-filmed to included pauses. In one scene, Jack Lemmon, exasperated by a widowed millionaire's proposal, rips off his wig and shouts, "I'm a man!" -- to which the undaunted suitor replies, "Nobody's perfect."

In "The Celluloid Closet", Tony Curtis had this to say of his role: "We're all half man, half woman. We all come from those two selves. So when I put together Josephine in 'Some Like It Hot', I thought of Grace Kelly, I thought of my mother, and little bit of Yvonne [De Carlo]". Whatever was on Curtis's mind, he could not keep up a high-pitched voice as Josephine, and the voice-actor Paul Frees had to overdub his lines.

Answer: "Suddenly, Last Summer" - Elizabeth Taylor falls off cliff

In "Suddenly, Last Summer" (1959), Elizabeth Taylor played a heterosexual woman who witnessed the gruesome death of her traveling companion Sebastian, a gay sexual predator, at the hands of the boys he had victimized.

Screenwriter Arthur Laurents explains in "The Celluloid Closet" that "all sexually suspect characters had to suffer" and that on-screen suffering was a question of degree. "If you're a woman who commits adultery, you're only put out in the storm. If you're a woman who has another woman, you'd better go hang yourself." And that's what happened in "The Children's Hour" (1961), a remake of the film "These Three" (1936), both of which were directed by William Wyler and based on Lillian Helman's 1934 play.

In both "Rebel" (1955) and "Rebecca" (1940), the eradication of the aberrant person (Sal Mineo and Judith Anderson) serves a purpose, to free a same-sex co-star (James Dean and Joan Fontaine) to be with the opposite-sex lead (Natalie Wood and Laurence Olivier).

Answer: Boys Don't Cry

"The Celluloid Closet" calls "Cabaret" (1972) one of the first films to celebrate homosexuality. Among other envelope-pushing aspects of "Cabaret", Liza Minelli befriends and shares a lover with Michael York, who plays a gay character (who does not die). In "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" (1976), a Black gay man (who does not die or end up terribly unhappy) is among the eccentric characters that a Jewish boy from Brooklyn befriends as he tries to discover himself. "The Boys in the Band" (1970) focuses on the camaraderie of a performing troupe. Narrator Lily Tomlin describes the plot: "A group of gay men take a long hard look at their lives, and in a refreshing twist, survive."

In "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), the transgender character played by Hillary Swank, although portrayed sympathetically, is discovered to be biologically female and in Hollywood tradition is murdered violently. (It was based on a true story.)

Answer: "Cruising" (1980)

In "Cruising", Al Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in the leather S&M bar scene to track down a serial killer targeting homosexuals. The depictions of the murders are rather gory and disturbing, and the killer says as he slays his victims, "You made me do that". Director William Friedkin deleted 40 minutes of footage from the film to change an X rating to an R rating.

In "The Celluloid Closet", at least one of the interviewees describes assaults on himself and others while the attackers made reference to "Cruising". Numerous LGBT activist groups organized protests against production screenings of "Cruising" in 1979 and the early 1980s, and the documentary shows brief clips of their demonstrations.

Answer: Harry Hamlin

Michael Ontkean plays husband to Kate Jackson, but after an encounter with Harry Hamlin, he discovers that he is really gay. Hamlin is more of a promiscuous, hedonistic figure, afraid of commitment, whereas Ontkean divorces his wife and looks for a permanent relationship with someone else. Producer Daniel Melnick said it was hard to cast the leading men for "Making Love" because actors were warned by agents that their careers would be destroyed.

After being duly warned by a LONG disclaimer, what was the public's response? The screenwriter for "Making Love" observed the following: "As the movie progressed you sensed the audience grow more and more uncomfortable." Eventually, he said, "people panicked. Pandemonium! People were just storming up the aisles, and at that point I just left [the cinema]."

Answer: "Wings" (1927)

Bear in mind that this is what "The Celluloid Closet" claims. Responses in your local cinema or community may have varied at the times the films were released. "Personal Best", "The Color Purple", and "Thelma and Louise" focused on the relationships of the female leads. "Wings" dealt with the friendship of two airmen (and received the very first Best Picture Oscar).

Susan Sarandon said of her role in "Thelma and Louise" and the final kiss: "My feeling was that they were beyond sexuality... To me it was a declaration... they were there for each other in the tradition of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' except that they didn't go down in a rain of bullets."

Answer: "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994)

"Torch Song Trilogy" (1988) is an adaptation of Harvey Fierstein's play about a female impersonator. The four-hour play was condensed to two hours at New Line Cinema's insistence. "The Wedding Banquet" (1993), directed by Ang Lee, concerns a gay Taiwanese man who marries a Chinese woman to please his parents, but really loves his American boyfriend. "Go Fish" (1994), an independent film produced on a $15,000 budget, depicts the relationships and happenings among a group of Chicago lesbians.

"Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994) is another Ang Lee film, in fact one of his first commercial successes. This one centers on a widowed master chef and his three unmarried daughters.

Answer: Vito Russo

Vito Russo (1946-1990) wrote "The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies" in 1981, and revised it in 1987. Before putting his thoughts to paper, Russo had spent 10 years on a lecture circuit presenting his material and film clips at various universities and cinemas in the United States. Russo also co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a media watchdog and activist group. Russo died of AIDS before several of the newer independent movies excerpted in the film adaptation of "The Celluloid Closet" were released.

"The Celluloid Closet" was given limited release in U.S. cinemas. It won a Peabody award and the Freedom of Expression award at the Sundance Film Festival.