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Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Nonfiction
AN ALLSTORA'S QUEER HISTORY 101 BOOK CLUB PICK
"An absorbing landmark of film criticism.” --The Chicago Tribune, "The 10 Best Books of the Year"
A blazingly original history celebrating the persistence of queerness onscreen, behind the camera, and between the lines during the dark days of the Hollywood Production Code.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code severely restricted what Hollywood cinema could depict. This included “any inference” of the lives of homosexuals. In a landmark 1981 book, gay activist Vito Russo famously condemned Hollywood's censorship regime, lambasting many midcentury films as the bigoted products of a “celluloid closet.”
But there is more to these movies than meets the eye. In this insightful, wildly entertaining book, cinema historian Michael Koresky finds new meaning in "problematic” classics of the Code era like Hitchcock's Rope, Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy, and-bookending the period and anchoring Koresky's narrative-William Wyler's two adaptations of The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's provocative hit play about a pair of schoolteachers accused of lesbianism.
Lifting up the underappreciated queer filmmakers, writers, and actors of the era, Koresky finds artists who are long overdue for reevaluation. Through his brilliant inquiry, Sick and Dirty reveals the “bad seeds” of queer cinema to be surprisingly, even gleefully subversive, reminding us, in an age of book bans and gag laws, that nothing makes queerness speak louder than its opponents' bids to silence it.
AN ALLSTORA'S QUEER HISTORY 101 BOOK CLUB PICK
"An absorbing landmark of film criticism.” --The Chicago Tribune, "The 10 Best Books of the Year"
A blazingly original history celebrating the persistence of queerness onscreen, behind the camera, and between the lines during the dark days of the Hollywood Production Code.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code severely restricted what Hollywood cinema could depict. This included “any inference” of the lives of homosexuals. In a landmark 1981 book, gay activist Vito Russo famously condemned Hollywood's censorship regime, lambasting many midcentury films as the bigoted products of a “celluloid closet.”
But there is more to these movies than meets the eye. In this insightful, wildly entertaining book, cinema historian Michael Koresky finds new meaning in "problematic” classics of the Code era like Hitchcock's Rope, Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy, and-bookending the period and anchoring Koresky's narrative-William Wyler's two adaptations of The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's provocative hit play about a pair of schoolteachers accused of lesbianism.
Lifting up the underappreciated queer filmmakers, writers, and actors of the era, Koresky finds artists who are long overdue for reevaluation. Through his brilliant inquiry, Sick and Dirty reveals the “bad seeds” of queer cinema to be surprisingly, even gleefully subversive, reminding us, in an age of book bans and gag laws, that nothing makes queerness speak louder than its opponents' bids to silence it.
315 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 3, 2025
81 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
March 13, 2025
A stunningly well-researched and thoughtful account of queerness during the Golden Age of Hollywood. And, overall, a hard book to read. Not because of the sheer volume of information, which while extensive is organized so well that I never found myself lost. It’s because of the feeling it left me with. When it comes to queerness—to its representation in media, its sociological standing—we’ve come so far, but we still have such a ways to go. There is still such a pervasive sense of “otherness” that is all at once ostracizing and a point of pride. I don’t know whether to feel hopeful or jaded. It’s something I’ll have to sit with.
September 22, 2025
I love reading and learning about the history of queer films!! So this book was exactly up my alley. It was very interesting to read it after having read The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo earlier this year. Michael Koresky mentions Russo a lot and how his negative views of these older Hollywood films aren’t the only ways to look at them. It’s easier nowadays, when there are decades of movies with explicit queer representation, to see these Hollywood Production Code era films as more than just “problematic” or full of stereotypes.
This book has so much interesting information from the behind the scenes of these movies. The notes from Joseph Breen’s office and everything that they wanted to censor were fascinating (and frustrating) to read. I loved all of the tidbits of how people were still able to sneak things past the censors to have bits of queer representation even when it technically wasn’t allowed.
While reading the book I was inspired to watch some of the movies that I hadn’t seen before. Like These Three (1936), Dance Girl Dance (1940), Crossfire (1947), and Tea and Sympathy (1956). And I also ended up reading some of their source materials where the queer content was able to be more explicit. It made reading the book a very rich experience.
I’d definitely recommend this book to people who are interested in the history of queer film or in the history of film censorship.
This book has so much interesting information from the behind the scenes of these movies. The notes from Joseph Breen’s office and everything that they wanted to censor were fascinating (and frustrating) to read. I loved all of the tidbits of how people were still able to sneak things past the censors to have bits of queer representation even when it technically wasn’t allowed.
While reading the book I was inspired to watch some of the movies that I hadn’t seen before. Like These Three (1936), Dance Girl Dance (1940), Crossfire (1947), and Tea and Sympathy (1956). And I also ended up reading some of their source materials where the queer content was able to be more explicit. It made reading the book a very rich experience.
I’d definitely recommend this book to people who are interested in the history of queer film or in the history of film censorship.
October 13, 2025
Definitely a 3.5/5. Lots of interesting, important information, but the book overall feels scattered—long digressions abound (including the entire chapter that's basically just an ode to Judy Garland, which I would have loved on its own but whose presence here feels odd), plus speculative analysis, one of my own personal peeves.
August 2, 2025
Sick, and Dirty is a relatively short book about the golden age of Cinema as it relates to queerness- both in Golden age, queer actors, as well as early attempts to skirt around The Hayes code.
The book in my opinion, almost acts as a college dissertation, focusing on not a wide list of queer media- but zeroing in on a few specific writers, actors, etc.
It’s very good, although I sometimes found myself losing patience for the deep dive into certain subjects- and more frustrating…if you have any interest in these films the author addresses, he spoils all of them.
Regardless, I learned a lot, and I actually added a lot of movies to my list of movies to check out. I found myself for agitating facts about this book to everybody who would listen- which I think speaks pretty heavily on how much I actually internalized here.
It’s a really good book with a lot of extremely cool facts about Hollywood in an age when I think most of us would assume that nothing queer was happening at all.
The book in my opinion, almost acts as a college dissertation, focusing on not a wide list of queer media- but zeroing in on a few specific writers, actors, etc.
It’s very good, although I sometimes found myself losing patience for the deep dive into certain subjects- and more frustrating…if you have any interest in these films the author addresses, he spoils all of them.
Regardless, I learned a lot, and I actually added a lot of movies to my list of movies to check out. I found myself for agitating facts about this book to everybody who would listen- which I think speaks pretty heavily on how much I actually internalized here.
It’s a really good book with a lot of extremely cool facts about Hollywood in an age when I think most of us would assume that nothing queer was happening at all.
December 14, 2025
A very detailed and poignant exploration of queer film history in the era of the Hays Code. Added new layers to my own knowledge of this history (how pre-Code films pushed the boundaries precisely because of the impending Code enforcement; how Joseph Breen’s approvals were at the script stage, leaving room for artistic interpretation of otherwise innocuous dialogue). I left with a good list of movies to watch!
A note about the audiobook: mostly good, but with some key mispronunciations. “Tongues Untied” by Marlon Riggs became “Tongues United,” for example (except in the epilogue), lamé vs lame, etc.
A note about the audiobook: mostly good, but with some key mispronunciations. “Tongues Untied” by Marlon Riggs became “Tongues United,” for example (except in the epilogue), lamé vs lame, etc.
June 7, 2025
Maybe I am just not as big of a film buff as I thought. Because it definitely detracted from the book for me if I hadn't seen the film that was being discussed in any given chapter. I appreciate how well researched and thought out the book was. But I am not afraid to admit some of it went over my head.
January 3, 2026
It felt like you were reading a college paper, or maybe because Koresky is an NYU professor is what lent it a collegial feel. His in-depth analysis of these films gives them a vaulted status they haven’t received in the mainstream. I’ve seen 80% of them so there wasn’t much discovery to be made but it was enjoyable to dig in deeper to explore the creation and legacy of these controversial yet important films.
August 26, 2025
”The Children’s Hour remains Hollywoods’s most direct and notorious reflection on the irrational, very American fear that queers will infect our most vulnerable, that their “sick and dirty” perversions, once unleashed, are contagious.”
4.5 stars. Very, VERY textbook and kinda dry. It’s not a super personal or opinion based read (not until the very end, and with rare moments sprinkled throughout). It’s straightforward and feels a bit dense at times. None of these are complaints for me though. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love anything about old Hollywood but especially when it’s about LGBT history and old Hollywood. My two favorite topics right there.
This was well written and well researched and I liked how it was laid out. Everything discussed in this book is pretty much based around Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour from 1934 and the two film adaptations, These Three from 1936 and The Children’s Hour from 1961. The title of the book is from a pivotal scene from the play and second film and I liked how the author took that scene and really laid out the impact the story left on how Hollywood viewed Queer films. I also really liked the way the author dove a bit into Hillman’s life and while she always said that The Children’s Hour was NOT about lesbianism at all but about how one lie could ruin a life. I thought that was fascinating and while I disagree with her, I can see why she felt that way. It’s not about lesbianism but with Martha Dobie actually being a lesbian it is about lesbianism and about how a lie can ruin a life. Both things are true. I’ve read the play and seen both film adaptations and I have a lot of feelings about the story and I could talk about this so much more but I’ll stop now. This review is getting ridiculously long already.
We do get looks at other Queer films over the decades like Rope, Tea and Sympathy, Suddenly, Last Summer and a couple of others which was great. A lot of them I haven’t seen yet but you better believe that I will be making time to do so.
Overall, this was absolutely fascinating and delivered exactly what I wanted from it. Excellent read.
4.5 stars. Very, VERY textbook and kinda dry. It’s not a super personal or opinion based read (not until the very end, and with rare moments sprinkled throughout). It’s straightforward and feels a bit dense at times. None of these are complaints for me though. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love anything about old Hollywood but especially when it’s about LGBT history and old Hollywood. My two favorite topics right there.
This was well written and well researched and I liked how it was laid out. Everything discussed in this book is pretty much based around Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour from 1934 and the two film adaptations, These Three from 1936 and The Children’s Hour from 1961. The title of the book is from a pivotal scene from the play and second film and I liked how the author took that scene and really laid out the impact the story left on how Hollywood viewed Queer films. I also really liked the way the author dove a bit into Hillman’s life and while she always said that The Children’s Hour was NOT about lesbianism at all but about how one lie could ruin a life. I thought that was fascinating and while I disagree with her, I can see why she felt that way. It’s not about lesbianism but with Martha Dobie actually being a lesbian it is about lesbianism and about how a lie can ruin a life. Both things are true. I’ve read the play and seen both film adaptations and I have a lot of feelings about the story and I could talk about this so much more but I’ll stop now. This review is getting ridiculously long already.
We do get looks at other Queer films over the decades like Rope, Tea and Sympathy, Suddenly, Last Summer and a couple of others which was great. A lot of them I haven’t seen yet but you better believe that I will be making time to do so.
Overall, this was absolutely fascinating and delivered exactly what I wanted from it. Excellent read.
December 3, 2025
Incredibly insightful read on the queer history of Golden Age Hollywood. I think the thing I enjoyed most about this book is that films are used as a jumping off point to discuss broader implications and context surrounding said film. Other film studies books I've read feel like glorified plot summaries with the author's input mixed throughout, but this is not that. There is so much care and attention to detail by the author to give the reader the full scope of history they're trying to get across. While at the same time, there are so many different avenues in which someone can explore queer Hollywood, the author leaves almost breadcrumb-like hints for the reader to explore, that is beyond the scope of this novel. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this.
October 10, 2025
Welcome to your favorite film studies class! I feel extremely educated now on 20th century censorship (always relevant) and early filmmaking; Koresky has done his research and conveys it with intentional, interesting narration. Queer people have always been here and will continue to be; if you've ever been made to doubt that, this is the book for you.
Rounding up to 4 stars; note that this is very academic and reads closer to lit crit than ordinary nonfic!
Rounding up to 4 stars; note that this is very academic and reads closer to lit crit than ordinary nonfic!
November 19, 2025
Loved this. Been checking out some of the movies too.
December 24, 2025
I love da movies!!!
September 4, 2025
Well researched, well written, gave me a lot of good films to check out
June 8, 2025
Wonderfully insightful overview of an equally fascinating and frustrating period of film history. The Children's Hour had such a profound effect on me when I saw it at a too young age, and Koresky definitely captures some of that in his own reflections.
June 24, 2025
A good, eloquently written book of film analysis & decontextualization, perfect to hit that June/Pride sweet spot for queer film fans of the classic Hollywood era. I especially liked how the author summed up how the art we consume almost literally becomes a part of our DNA:
"I saw that even the most seemingly fanciful of these movie fixations were not reflecting the contours of my experience but creating them (...) we're jigsaw puzzles of what we watch, hear, learn, love, and hate."
Good stuff here. Have already been spurred on to rewatch Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (very rewarding!) and figure it's time to finally see The Children's Hour.
"I saw that even the most seemingly fanciful of these movie fixations were not reflecting the contours of my experience but creating them (...) we're jigsaw puzzles of what we watch, hear, learn, love, and hate."
Good stuff here. Have already been spurred on to rewatch Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (very rewarding!) and figure it's time to finally see The Children's Hour.
June 25, 2025
I have to put this on my “skimmed” shelf as I was only listening with half an ear, but I’m impressed with the research done and have several movies I have to check out. More was dedicated to Hellman that I anticipated, and I wonder what I might be missing out on because of that focus. The audiobook narrator brings an engaging spirit to their reading, but there were several mispronunciations that threw me out of the narrative.
October 10, 2025
Pretty exceptional at parts. The introduction is spellbinding and could serve as an essay on its own, particularly the paradox of how being queer is inherently an intersection of pride and shame - and how that feeling is played out on the silver screen.
A sad reality of the book is basically how so many stories had overtly queer plots and how they were diluted or changed completely to meet the rules of the Hays Code....and many of these movies ended up halfway decent. But to know so many films had gay beginnings is both depressing and liberating.
I was also hollering through the whole ROPE chapter. It's like a Gay Avengers with all these perfect homosexuals coming together to make a perfect film. Ditto SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. I can't believe I went my entire life not knowing the plot of that play/movie and I need to see it stat.
My one issue with it is just how much space is dedicated to THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. On one hand, I agree - it's a conflicted, but really affecting film. It's also a very useful framing device of the two movies being at the beginning and end of the Hays Code. But it takes up like a third of the book, if not more. It's just a little too much. I get it! It's a good argument, but it's quite repetitive by the book's end - and there were many other movies referenced that could have been expanded on.
But still, I had a blast and I can't wait to watch each and every one of the films detailed in the chapters. I've already got my Letterboxd list created and the films queued up.
A sad reality of the book is basically how so many stories had overtly queer plots and how they were diluted or changed completely to meet the rules of the Hays Code....and many of these movies ended up halfway decent. But to know so many films had gay beginnings is both depressing and liberating.
I was also hollering through the whole ROPE chapter. It's like a Gay Avengers with all these perfect homosexuals coming together to make a perfect film. Ditto SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. I can't believe I went my entire life not knowing the plot of that play/movie and I need to see it stat.
My one issue with it is just how much space is dedicated to THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. On one hand, I agree - it's a conflicted, but really affecting film. It's also a very useful framing device of the two movies being at the beginning and end of the Hays Code. But it takes up like a third of the book, if not more. It's just a little too much. I get it! It's a good argument, but it's quite repetitive by the book's end - and there were many other movies referenced that could have been expanded on.
But still, I had a blast and I can't wait to watch each and every one of the films detailed in the chapters. I've already got my Letterboxd list created and the films queued up.
November 18, 2025
I unfortunately am not (yet) a connoisseur of Golden Age Hollywood, but I do like reading books from people who have a lot of knowledge and I like reading about queer history. So this worked well for me! It was also so interesting to be reading this so soon after reading Daughter of Daring by Mallory O'Meara, because the timing of their storytelling was coincidentally so closely associated. Sick and Dirty almost picks up where Daughter of Daring leaves off, including covering the trial of Fatty Arbuckle as a sign of the "degenerates making movies."
The exploration and examination of the queerness of films in Golden Age Hollywood, especially before and after the Hayes Code and its impact on how upfront or subtle those undertones could be, was so interesting to read. Now I have a long list of movies that I feel compelled to watch (some may have to wait until I'm emotionally prepared...) I do feel like there were some parts that were a bit repetitive and I couldn't tell if that was because they had been repurposed from other shorter pieces or what. But I really appreciated the thoughtfulness that was evident here, as well as the referencing to other materials about the same or related topics, adding to my TBR in addition to my TBW (to be watched). Definitely worth a read if you're interested in movie history, or queer history, or both.
The exploration and examination of the queerness of films in Golden Age Hollywood, especially before and after the Hayes Code and its impact on how upfront or subtle those undertones could be, was so interesting to read. Now I have a long list of movies that I feel compelled to watch (some may have to wait until I'm emotionally prepared...) I do feel like there were some parts that were a bit repetitive and I couldn't tell if that was because they had been repurposed from other shorter pieces or what. But I really appreciated the thoughtfulness that was evident here, as well as the referencing to other materials about the same or related topics, adding to my TBR in addition to my TBW (to be watched). Definitely worth a read if you're interested in movie history, or queer history, or both.
July 16, 2025
Thoughtful and interesting. It was VERY centered on The Children's Hour, both in its original movie form (These Three) as well as the 1962 version. There were several other movies that Koresky examined (such as Rope, Tea and Sympathy, and the work of Dorothy Arzner, particularly Dance, Girl, Dance, among others) but generally, the focus was on The Children's Hour. I would have liked to see a slightly more expansive book, but it was interesting as is.
November 1, 2025
So well researched and organized. A lot to digest both from the amount of content put into one page and the emotional weight of it all. I loved it I want to watch every movie it discusses and read every play and research every actor and director more and more.
June 23, 2025
actual rating: 4.5 stars
July 1, 2025
(review to come but)
September 10, 2025
4.5 stars
A definite recommend to anyone interested in queer film history. Very well researched and goes into depth about a number of films and people I knew little to nothing about. I would periodically stop reading to watch the movies being discussed at length, which was a very fun way to engage with both pieces of media.
A definite recommend to anyone interested in queer film history. Very well researched and goes into depth about a number of films and people I knew little to nothing about. I would periodically stop reading to watch the movies being discussed at length, which was a very fun way to engage with both pieces of media.
Read
October 24, 2025dnf for now. only covered one movie for the 30% i read and how is the audiobook 14 hours long??
July 5, 2025
This book is a very worthwhile read. Koresky is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the history of cinema. I enjoyed their insights and have a deep respect for the amount of work that went into this book, but apart from a few fantastic name drops there isn't a whole lot of content, especially if you're not new to film history. I did appreciate the new insights he brought to viewing from the closet, and representation through proxy, but for me where the book really shone, was with Koresky's incredible knowledge of the history of the film code and censorship in general. I'm hoping that now the they've told the story of the queer side of things that they'll write full book on just the code!
Having read this book I now want to go back in time and high-five the following people
-Dorothy Arzner (What a Titan!)
-Alfred Hitchcock (he already had one coming so now it's going to be a double five)
-Tennessee Williams ( I had no idea he was so prolific, beyond his two most well known works!)
Recommended-
Especially if you're excited by, or willing to take the time to watch/re-watch the films mentioned.
Having read this book I now want to go back in time and high-five the following people
-Dorothy Arzner (What a Titan!)
-Alfred Hitchcock (he already had one coming so now it's going to be a double five)
-Tennessee Williams ( I had no idea he was so prolific, beyond his two most well known works!)
Recommended-
Especially if you're excited by, or willing to take the time to watch/re-watch the films mentioned.
Read
June 7, 2025Would have been better if it was an overview of queer cinema from the era as the cover and synopsis suggested OR a deeper look at the context, history, and afterlife of the various adaptations of Children's Hour, which took up nearly 1/3 of the book.
April 5, 2025
This review first appeared on my Substack newsletter, Omnivorous.
My thanks to NetGalley for a review copy of this great book!
If you know anything about me and this newsletter, you know that I adore classic Hollywood. I love watching it, I love reading about it, I love writing about and talking about it. You’ll also know that I am particularly enamored of anything having to do specifically with queerness in old Hollywood, which continues to be a fruitful site of research and writing. No matter how much we dig into the period, there’s always something more to see, some new way of understanding the ways in which classical Hollywood, for all of its avowed hostility to queer people, often proved remarkably amenable to evoking its specter.
Enter Sick and Dirty, the new book from noted film historian Michael Koresky. The book runs from roughly to the 1930s to the 1960s, documenting the many ways that queerness managed to manifest itself in Hollywood films of the period, whether as a structuring absence–as happened during the 1930s to the early 1950s–or more blatantly, as came to be the case the more that the Code became detached from broader American society. In Koresky’s capable hands we meet some of the most remarkable queer figures of classic Hollywood, from directors like Dorothy Arzner (one of the few women directors to have a notable career during the period) and George Cukor (whose sexuality was an open secret and who was known for his parties) to queer, or queer-adjacent, stars like Farley Granger and Judy Garland. In one way or another, these creative folks managed to imbue even the most conservative of film texts with an undeniable queer frisson.
There are some writers who have a knack for combining scholarly and historical rigor with accessibility, and I think it’s safe to say that Korseky is very much in the ranks of such talented film writers. He has a real knack for finding important details about the lives and work of his subjects, weaving together a fascinating tale that situates the films of classical Hollywood against the broader backdrop in which they were created. Obviously he draws our attention to what was going on in the US at large–including, notably the House Un-American Activities Committee and its action–but he also focuses in particular on the Production Code which, for most of its existence, mandated against the presence of homosexuality in the movies.
As Koresky notes, the Production Code–which came into effect in the early 1930s and exerted a stranglehold on the movie industry as a whole–was a remarkable institution. For much of its heyday it was the province of the notoriously prissy and fussy and domineering Joseph Breen, who didn’t pull any punches when it came to imposing his will on the studios and their output. Due to the fact that almost all of the studios needed the Production Code Administration’s seal in order to get mass release, it’s easy to see how Breen came to wield so much influence.
In some cases, as Korseky documents, the Code ensured that even stories that were about queerness in origin were ultimately turned into something else entirely. The first screen adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, for example, became the film These Three, in which the ruinous central secret is adultery rather than sublimated lesbian desire. Even more egregiously, Crossfire (released in 1947) was based on the novel The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks, went from being about militant homophobia to antisemitism. In both cases, however, the cultural awareness of the presence of queerness in the original text ensured that it became notable in the films precisely by its structuring absence.
Some authors and filmmakers, however, delighted in thwarting the PCA. Take, for example, the blazingly queer Suddenly, Last Summer, based on the play by Tennessee Williams (for my own take on that particular film, click here). At first glance it might seem like just the type of film that the PCA would forbid, and Koresky provides a fascinating and enjoyable chronicle of its path to the screen. As with so many other films produced under the Code, queerness becomes ever more noticeable by its very absence. Only a very obtuse viewer, or one that was quite willing to engage in the same kind of blindness and prudery as Breen, would find themselves unable to see and sense and hear the queerness in a film like Suddenly, Last Summer (the same is true of many of the other film adaptations of Williams’ work, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
As the 1950s bled into the 1960s, however, it became harder and harder to enforce the Code, meaning that studios and directors were able to show more and more queerness. Even with the relaxation, though, it was still more often for queer folks to meet tragic endings–as Shirley MacLaine’s Martha Dobie does in The Children’s Hour–or for queerness to be a trembling but ephemeral presence, as in Vincente Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy. Even as American culture more broadly came into contact with queerness in the arts, Hollywood continued to drag its feet.
Even so, the queer figures in these films tantalize and beguile us, whether as murderous monsters as in Rope or as doomed heroines as in The Children’s Hour. The power of a book like Sick and Dirty lies in its ability to deeply excavate the painful and conflicted histories of queerness in Hollywood. As Koresky repeatedly reminds us, it’s far too simplistic to dismiss these films as relics of an earlier period. Instead, their importance stems in no small part from the fact that we can still feel their pull and their allure. They may be “problematic,” and they may represent an age of repression, but queerness still has a power that even the PCA and its zealots could never entirely eradicate. If anything, their very attempts to repress it merely gave it that much more potency.
Korseky ends by arguing that these films still have much to teach us, even in an age in which queerness in the cinema has become rather banal and accepted (though this could well change now that Trump and the anti-queer right is in the ascendant). Indeed, I very much appreciated the way that he frequently drew on his experience teaching them to show how films like Tea and Sympathy, with its story about a young man lost in a soup of toxic masculinity and trying to find his way, continue to resonate with today’s similarly lost youth. Though it’s been quite a while now since I taught in a college classroom, I do remember the joy I felt at seeing my students experience such gems as All About Eve and All That Heaven Allows for the first time, and it’s good to see that this continues.
If I have a complaint about this book, it’s that it does belabor the point a bit when it comes to The Children’s Hour and its various adaptations. Obviously it is a very important film, and it’s one that has clearly shaped the way that Koresky engages with queer cinema from old Hollywood, but his engagement with it does tend to overshadow some of the other films with which he engages.
Aside from this small nitpick, I found Sick and Dirty to be a worthwhile addition to the existing scholarship on queerness in old Hollywood, and I appreciate Korseky’s engagement with some of the major figures in feminist and queer film theory and history. For all that the powers-that-be attempted to expunge all sorts of “perversion” from the world of the moving image, the presence of the films discussed in this book put the lie to their power. Queerness, then as now, is a force that can never totally be eradicated.
My thanks to NetGalley for a review copy of this great book!
If you know anything about me and this newsletter, you know that I adore classic Hollywood. I love watching it, I love reading about it, I love writing about and talking about it. You’ll also know that I am particularly enamored of anything having to do specifically with queerness in old Hollywood, which continues to be a fruitful site of research and writing. No matter how much we dig into the period, there’s always something more to see, some new way of understanding the ways in which classical Hollywood, for all of its avowed hostility to queer people, often proved remarkably amenable to evoking its specter.
Enter Sick and Dirty, the new book from noted film historian Michael Koresky. The book runs from roughly to the 1930s to the 1960s, documenting the many ways that queerness managed to manifest itself in Hollywood films of the period, whether as a structuring absence–as happened during the 1930s to the early 1950s–or more blatantly, as came to be the case the more that the Code became detached from broader American society. In Koresky’s capable hands we meet some of the most remarkable queer figures of classic Hollywood, from directors like Dorothy Arzner (one of the few women directors to have a notable career during the period) and George Cukor (whose sexuality was an open secret and who was known for his parties) to queer, or queer-adjacent, stars like Farley Granger and Judy Garland. In one way or another, these creative folks managed to imbue even the most conservative of film texts with an undeniable queer frisson.
There are some writers who have a knack for combining scholarly and historical rigor with accessibility, and I think it’s safe to say that Korseky is very much in the ranks of such talented film writers. He has a real knack for finding important details about the lives and work of his subjects, weaving together a fascinating tale that situates the films of classical Hollywood against the broader backdrop in which they were created. Obviously he draws our attention to what was going on in the US at large–including, notably the House Un-American Activities Committee and its action–but he also focuses in particular on the Production Code which, for most of its existence, mandated against the presence of homosexuality in the movies.
As Koresky notes, the Production Code–which came into effect in the early 1930s and exerted a stranglehold on the movie industry as a whole–was a remarkable institution. For much of its heyday it was the province of the notoriously prissy and fussy and domineering Joseph Breen, who didn’t pull any punches when it came to imposing his will on the studios and their output. Due to the fact that almost all of the studios needed the Production Code Administration’s seal in order to get mass release, it’s easy to see how Breen came to wield so much influence.
In some cases, as Korseky documents, the Code ensured that even stories that were about queerness in origin were ultimately turned into something else entirely. The first screen adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, for example, became the film These Three, in which the ruinous central secret is adultery rather than sublimated lesbian desire. Even more egregiously, Crossfire (released in 1947) was based on the novel The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks, went from being about militant homophobia to antisemitism. In both cases, however, the cultural awareness of the presence of queerness in the original text ensured that it became notable in the films precisely by its structuring absence.
Some authors and filmmakers, however, delighted in thwarting the PCA. Take, for example, the blazingly queer Suddenly, Last Summer, based on the play by Tennessee Williams (for my own take on that particular film, click here). At first glance it might seem like just the type of film that the PCA would forbid, and Koresky provides a fascinating and enjoyable chronicle of its path to the screen. As with so many other films produced under the Code, queerness becomes ever more noticeable by its very absence. Only a very obtuse viewer, or one that was quite willing to engage in the same kind of blindness and prudery as Breen, would find themselves unable to see and sense and hear the queerness in a film like Suddenly, Last Summer (the same is true of many of the other film adaptations of Williams’ work, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
As the 1950s bled into the 1960s, however, it became harder and harder to enforce the Code, meaning that studios and directors were able to show more and more queerness. Even with the relaxation, though, it was still more often for queer folks to meet tragic endings–as Shirley MacLaine’s Martha Dobie does in The Children’s Hour–or for queerness to be a trembling but ephemeral presence, as in Vincente Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy. Even as American culture more broadly came into contact with queerness in the arts, Hollywood continued to drag its feet.
Even so, the queer figures in these films tantalize and beguile us, whether as murderous monsters as in Rope or as doomed heroines as in The Children’s Hour. The power of a book like Sick and Dirty lies in its ability to deeply excavate the painful and conflicted histories of queerness in Hollywood. As Koresky repeatedly reminds us, it’s far too simplistic to dismiss these films as relics of an earlier period. Instead, their importance stems in no small part from the fact that we can still feel their pull and their allure. They may be “problematic,” and they may represent an age of repression, but queerness still has a power that even the PCA and its zealots could never entirely eradicate. If anything, their very attempts to repress it merely gave it that much more potency.
Korseky ends by arguing that these films still have much to teach us, even in an age in which queerness in the cinema has become rather banal and accepted (though this could well change now that Trump and the anti-queer right is in the ascendant). Indeed, I very much appreciated the way that he frequently drew on his experience teaching them to show how films like Tea and Sympathy, with its story about a young man lost in a soup of toxic masculinity and trying to find his way, continue to resonate with today’s similarly lost youth. Though it’s been quite a while now since I taught in a college classroom, I do remember the joy I felt at seeing my students experience such gems as All About Eve and All That Heaven Allows for the first time, and it’s good to see that this continues.
If I have a complaint about this book, it’s that it does belabor the point a bit when it comes to The Children’s Hour and its various adaptations. Obviously it is a very important film, and it’s one that has clearly shaped the way that Koresky engages with queer cinema from old Hollywood, but his engagement with it does tend to overshadow some of the other films with which he engages.
Aside from this small nitpick, I found Sick and Dirty to be a worthwhile addition to the existing scholarship on queerness in old Hollywood, and I appreciate Korseky’s engagement with some of the major figures in feminist and queer film theory and history. For all that the powers-that-be attempted to expunge all sorts of “perversion” from the world of the moving image, the presence of the films discussed in this book put the lie to their power. Queerness, then as now, is a force that can never totally be eradicated.
June 28, 2025
Sick and Dirty is DENSE in both context and information and I found the pace incredibly slow. I struggled through the writing, which is elaborate and academic and not always interesting, and found it difficult to take in the sheer amount of facts and information. I love love love the subject matter and thesis and the author’s knowledge and compassion about film and queer representation is evident. I did appreciate the movies noted and examined (majority of which I’ve never even heard of, so the book provided additional materials for me to consume) and feel like I do have a better understanding of the navigation of queer themes, histories, and stories during the golden age. Though, I feel the book’s promise of a deeper understanding of (the) “making of modern queerness” is less fulfilled in the film highlighted and more in the sidenotes of queer historians, and that reality feels like two separate narratives.
June 28, 2025
Sick and Dirty was a lot more academic than I expected going in—definitely one I’ll need to revisit. It’s incredibly well-researched and thorough, and if you're looking for something that reads like a deep-dive research paper in book form, with thought provoking statements, this is exactly that.
That said, it was a bit hard to stay engaged throughout. While the message is clear and the arguments are solid, I felt like it was missing some human connection or narrative flow to break up the heavy analysis. Still, I really respect the work that went into this and think it's a valuable read for anyone studying film or media seriously or how a marginalized group has been effected by Hollywood (kind of like Katie Gee Salisbury's Not Your China Doll does for Chinese community around the same time period).
That said, it was a bit hard to stay engaged throughout. While the message is clear and the arguments are solid, I felt like it was missing some human connection or narrative flow to break up the heavy analysis. Still, I really respect the work that went into this and think it's a valuable read for anyone studying film or media seriously or how a marginalized group has been effected by Hollywood (kind of like Katie Gee Salisbury's Not Your China Doll does for Chinese community around the same time period).
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