Hooray for Hollywood: Gender and sexual nonconformity in the classical Hollywood era

Most historical scholarship has asserted that the mainstream motion picture industry has reflected and created images that promote very traditional gender roles and idealized versions of heterosexual romantic and sexual behavior. This study, however, takes issue with that belief. When filmic and extra-filmic representations of the motion picture industry in novels, motion pictures, and newspaper stories focusing on Hollywood between 1917 and 1941, a greater range of gender and sexual behavior appeared. A wide variety of these three media forms presented representations of people connected to the motion picture industry who adopted mannerisms of the opposite gender and exhibited romantic and sexual interest toward members of their biological sex. This dissertation argues that the depictions of nontraditional gender and sexuality played a significant role in Hollywood publicity. These images brought private activities into two public locations, a place in Hollywood and the mass media. The link between sexuality and both public locations reprivatized the image and offered audiences the thrill of receiving titillation and private information. Hollywood developed a mystique as a special place, summarized in the phrase "dream factory of the masses." This mystique, built by the movies and by the marketing of itself, occurred by showing motion picture celebrities in particular locations specifically associated with Hollywood or in places Hollywood "made" spectacular. Among the most prevalent locations were the nightlife locales, the celebrity home, the Hollywood party, and behind the scenes of the studio. This dissertation asks how these ambi-sextrous images help differentiate the representations of these Hollywood locations from the images of similar locations that also appeared in the mass media? The study also asks how these images of nontraditional gender and sexuality shaped the understanding of each of these locations and the mystique of the rich, exciting, and absurd Hollywood lifestyle. This study observes that these images have implications for current celebrity and entertainment culture. These Hollywood images represent a precursor to the depictions of the private lives of celebrities that appear in abundance throughout current day mass media. Images of nontraditional sexuality in fictional characters is prevalent in today's television programming. Like these Interwar Hollywood images, these televised depictions of gays and lesbians offer audiences peaks at the "exotic" while amusing them and enables these programs to distinguish themselves from other shows.