David Ehrenstein

Gossipy and rather unfocused account of the way gay and lesbian people (and gay and lesbian fictional characters) were treated by the US film and TV industry in the 20th century. It wanders around through a series of interviews rather randomly, and it falls far too easily into the fallacy that Hollywood is the centre of the universe, but some of the oral testimony Ehrenstein quotes is quite entertaining.

His main point, insofar as he has one, seems to be that for a long time there was a big difference in Hollywood between what "everybody knows" and what it was acceptable to say in the press. Hollywood people (and the journalists who wrote about them) only got into trouble if that line was crossed somehow, hence bizarre situations like Liberace successfully conducting a libel action against a British newspaper columnist who used language implying that there might be something not quite heterosexual about his stage persona.… (mehr)