Introduction

This chapter mentions New York police commissioner James P. O’Neill, who during a safety briefing for the 2019 WorldPride festival apologized for an event that took place on June 28, 1969. It recounts the raid of the Stonewall Inn in 1969, a bar in Greenwich Village that provided a safe environment for LGBT people to gather and socialize. The raid turned into a violent clash that spread around the bar’s vicinity and lasted for several days. It also speculates what prompted the rioting at the Stonewall Inn, exploring the theory that the death of singer-actress and gay icon Judy Garland put gay New Yorkers on edge. The chapter discusses the paramount importance of the Stonewall Riots to the rise of the contemporary gay rights movement. It points out that conventional wisdom considers the Stonewall rebellion to have been the first instance of gay resistance in American history.

The ruby slippers at the V&A: an odyssey

In this chapter, a curator from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London tells of efforts to track down the iconic ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz for the major exhibition Hollywood Costume held at the museum in 2012. Once the shoes were located, they travelled to London from Washington, D.C. in their own seat on a plane, handcuffed to a security guard and accompanied by the curator of the Smithsonian Institution. Their arrival at the V&A prompted a top-secret security operation. The resulting exhibition remains one of the most successful in the V&A’s history.

The Theatricality of Gender and Drag Performance

This chapter attends to a seemingly disparate trio of films, the romantic adventure Sylvia Scarlett (1935), the theatrical Western Heller in Pink Tights (1950), and the melodrama-with-music A Star is Born (1954). The three are bound by scenes in which the female protagonist appears in male drag. Katharine Hepburn plays male for almost an entire film that went on to flop hideously at the box office, while Sophia Loren impersonates Old West stage presence Adah Isaacs Menken, with outrageous impact. Perhaps most unexpected of all, Judy Garland dons boyish drag for a song-and-dance number just before breaking down over her alcoholic husband’s disastrous life. While the films’ purposes and impacts differ, together they illustrate the concept of gender-as-performance, as it bends but does not break classic Hollywood cinematic traditions.

What Price Hollywood?

A prolific director of classic Hollywood cinema, George Cukor was known for his romantic comedies and dramas and his work with difficult leading ladies. For such work, he was labeled a “woman’s director.” He did build or enhance the careers of many strong, independent actresses, including Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Judy Holliday, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe. However, the tag was also derogatory, referencing the fact of Cukor’s homosexuality. He was also called an “actor’s director,” for he emphasized his connections with his stars to draw out compelling performances even within his less effective films. Taking a queer feminist approach to these labels, the director, and his directing style, this volume explores issues of gender and sexuality within groups of Cukor pictures. Chapters reach across and among eras and genres to study small groups of films by theme, nuanced by ethnicity, class, and race. Topics covered include female friendships, the male alcoholic, domesticity and ethnic assimilation, gender performance, drag acts, and queer musical excess.

“Friends of Dorothy”

This chapter explores the cultural value of the MGM Wizard of Oz as an artifact of queer culture. Using insights from personal discourses and queer theory, it appraises how The Wizard of Oz facilitates individual assimilation and celebrates nonnormative identities for generations of audiences. Through this lens, it highlights how tangible details manifested in the film musical transcend Baum’s original series of novels, facilitating both aesthetic and emotional assimilation for its audiences. Drawing on ideas of camp, the symbolism of Harburg and Arlen’s iconic “Over the Rainbow,” and the iconic performance delivered by Judy Garland, it considers how MGM’s The Wizard of Oz has become intertwined with public and personal symbolism surrounding modern queer identities.

Vanished Dreams

After purchasing various film properties that went nowhere, Curtiz decided to produce a Technicolor musical, Romance on the High Seas. Flummoxed in his attempt to cast stars, including Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, Kathryn Grayson, and Betty Hutton, he gambled on a little-known band singer, Doris Day, whom he nurtured to stardom.Curtiz’s My Dream Is Yours followed Romance. Although both pictures appeared to be successful, Curtiz’s production company was sinking in a sea of red ink because of his own financial mismanagement and Jack Warner’s predatory business practices.His final production, Flamingo Road, was a box-office success that Curtiz was forced into making after a major confrontation with Warner Bros. that went public. As the studio cut back under the dual assaults of television and the antitrust divestiture of its movie theaters, Curtiz sold his company to Warner and signed an exclusive contract with the studio. After being forced to make the abysmal Lady Takes a Sailor, Curtiz directed Young Man with a Horn (1950), a critically acclaimed film whose success was tempered by Jack Warner’s obdurate insistence on a happy ending.