LGBTQ Films in the Ithaca College Library

During the years from 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code, usually called the Hays Code, stifled filmmakers or made them creative when it came to sexuality. Through the fifties, innocence still ruled, but homoerotic subtexts and innuendoes started to proliferate.

All About Eve (1950) [in Marilyn Monroe premiere collection] DVD 9467

TheAdvocate:"A movie that practically defines gay sensibility."

Ben-Hur (1959) DVD 4049

What aren't they telling us about Ben-Hur and Messala? Gore Vidal has taken credit for inserting the homoerotic subtext without Charlton Heston having a clue.

Les Diaboliques = The devils (1955) DVD 5276

You have to look closely, but the lesbian relationship is presented more clearly than other films of its time.

Glen or Glenda? (1953) DVD 57

Its alternative titles reveal a lot: I changed my sex; Transvestite; I led two lives.

In a Lonely Place (1950) DVD 5035

Murder mystery in which a lesbian relationship is very thinly coded.

Johnny Guitar (1954) DVD 3213

Butchly feminine gun-toter seeks power in a boomtown. Said Roger Ebert: “one of the most blatant psychosexual melodramas ever to disguise itself in that most commodious of genres, the Western.”

Mädchen in Uniform (1958) DVD 10190

A girl falls in love with her teacher. Remake of a 1931 film called the first lesbian-themed feature film. In German.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) DVD 66

Sal Mineo called his character Plato "the first gay teenager on film."

Some Like It Hot (1959) [in Marilyn Monroe Premiere Collection] DVD 9467

"Nobody's perfect."

Strangers on a Train (1951) DVD 426

The homoerotic tension is there for any who wishes to see it.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) DVD 3806

Tortured hyper-masculinity meets sensitive, unstable hysteria.

Suddenly Last Summer (1959) DVD 4998

A dead gay man lies at the center of this Southern gothic tale, but, of course, he is only called vulnerable and sensitive.