In one of the first posts I made in this blog, I talked about Franklin Pangborn, who appeared in two of W. C. Fields's last films: The Bank Dick and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. He was also on my mind at the time because I was viewing a series of Preston Sturges's movies, and Pangborn was a member of Sturges's "stock company."
I have always been the type of movie-watcher who relishes learning the names of what used to be called "character actors," so I had been familiar with Pangborn for years. He's a comic foil, I thought, often playing frustrated characters, such as the movie executive in Never Give a Sucker... or an event co-ordinator in Hail the Conquering Hero (in the above still, Pangborn is on the left). But according to Turner Classic Movies, the American cable network that has been running the series "Screened Out: Gay Images in Films," Pangborn's characters were supposed to have been meant as portrayals of a "sissy" (code term "prissy") in his films. I remembered Pauline Kael declaring that once too.
Then I read this excerpt from 1941 Production Code Authority memo by Joseph Breen on the script for Never Give a Sucker... in James Curtis's biography of Fields:
"If Pangborn plays his role in any way suggestive of a 'pansy,' we cannot approve any scene in which this flavor is present."
Huh? Whose gaydar--or taste, considering that weird use of the word "flavor"--is being used to ascertain the "pansiness" present? In both above-mentioned movies, Pangborn's character blew a whistle to quiet down a chaotic scene and give orders. Was that a signal too? Why were the Hollywood censors so afraid of any characterization that carried the faintest hint (or tang) of homosexuality?
Fast-forward to this week, and I'm reading John Heilpern's biography of John Osborne. I was mainly familiar with Osborne from his seminal play, Look Back in Anger, and Luther, which helped propel Albert Finney into stardom. I had not heard of a slightly later work, A Patriot for Me, about the blackmail of an Austrian army officer into spying for Russia in the 1890's because of his homosexuality. At the time of Osborne's play (1965), the Lord Chamberlain's office in England had the power to censor plays, and they certainly wanted to forbid certain parts of this one, especially a drag ball scene. "Omit the whole of this scene" was the command. Why?
The Official Reader declared that the scene "would certainly attract all the perverts in London and might even persuade the young and ignorant that such a life might not be so bad, after all." The Assistant Secretary warned that "presenting homo-sexuals [sic] in their most attractive guise dressed as pretty women will to some degree cause the congregation of homosexuals and provide the means whereby the vice may be acquired." The assistant comptroller called the play "the Pansies' Charter of Freedom."
If you made this stuff up, no one would believe you. You can say that English youth rebelled at the time because of a hide-bound, class-ridden, blinkered, morally bankrupt society, but until you read the evidence, you do not realize the depths to which these people, as well as the Hays Office in America, would sink. Canny directors like Hitchcock and Wilder ("I'm a man!" "Nobody's perfect") could get around the censorship, and the Court Theatre got around the Lord Chamberlain by becoming a "club theatre" during the run of A Patriot for Me, but why wouldn't countries that touted themselves as the cradles of liberty realize that art needed freedom too? The Lord Chamberlain's office was gotten rid of three years later, homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, and the Production Code lost its force in America during the same decade.
No wonder the records of the Lord Chamberlain were kept secret until 1991.
Note: pansy is the name of a flower that the English called "heartsease," and the word pansy, as Ophelia suggests, comes from the French: "And there is pansies: that's for thoughts." Another pensee: according to the OED, the first recorded use of the word to denote a male homosexual took place in 1926.
I have always been the type of movie-watcher who relishes learning the names of what used to be called "character actors," so I had been familiar with Pangborn for years. He's a comic foil, I thought, often playing frustrated characters, such as the movie executive in Never Give a Sucker... or an event co-ordinator in Hail the Conquering Hero (in the above still, Pangborn is on the left). But according to Turner Classic Movies, the American cable network that has been running the series "Screened Out: Gay Images in Films," Pangborn's characters were supposed to have been meant as portrayals of a "sissy" (code term "prissy") in his films. I remembered Pauline Kael declaring that once too.
Then I read this excerpt from 1941 Production Code Authority memo by Joseph Breen on the script for Never Give a Sucker... in James Curtis's biography of Fields:
"If Pangborn plays his role in any way suggestive of a 'pansy,' we cannot approve any scene in which this flavor is present."
Huh? Whose gaydar--or taste, considering that weird use of the word "flavor"--is being used to ascertain the "pansiness" present? In both above-mentioned movies, Pangborn's character blew a whistle to quiet down a chaotic scene and give orders. Was that a signal too? Why were the Hollywood censors so afraid of any characterization that carried the faintest hint (or tang) of homosexuality?
Fast-forward to this week, and I'm reading John Heilpern's biography of John Osborne. I was mainly familiar with Osborne from his seminal play, Look Back in Anger, and Luther, which helped propel Albert Finney into stardom. I had not heard of a slightly later work, A Patriot for Me, about the blackmail of an Austrian army officer into spying for Russia in the 1890's because of his homosexuality. At the time of Osborne's play (1965), the Lord Chamberlain's office in England had the power to censor plays, and they certainly wanted to forbid certain parts of this one, especially a drag ball scene. "Omit the whole of this scene" was the command. Why?
The Official Reader declared that the scene "would certainly attract all the perverts in London and might even persuade the young and ignorant that such a life might not be so bad, after all." The Assistant Secretary warned that "presenting homo-sexuals [sic] in their most attractive guise dressed as pretty women will to some degree cause the congregation of homosexuals and provide the means whereby the vice may be acquired." The assistant comptroller called the play "the Pansies' Charter of Freedom."
If you made this stuff up, no one would believe you. You can say that English youth rebelled at the time because of a hide-bound, class-ridden, blinkered, morally bankrupt society, but until you read the evidence, you do not realize the depths to which these people, as well as the Hays Office in America, would sink. Canny directors like Hitchcock and Wilder ("I'm a man!" "Nobody's perfect") could get around the censorship, and the Court Theatre got around the Lord Chamberlain by becoming a "club theatre" during the run of A Patriot for Me, but why wouldn't countries that touted themselves as the cradles of liberty realize that art needed freedom too? The Lord Chamberlain's office was gotten rid of three years later, homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain in 1967, and the Production Code lost its force in America during the same decade.
No wonder the records of the Lord Chamberlain were kept secret until 1991.
Note: pansy is the name of a flower that the English called "heartsease," and the word pansy, as Ophelia suggests, comes from the French: "And there is pansies: that's for thoughts." Another pensee: according to the OED, the first recorded use of the word to denote a male homosexual took place in 1926.
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