If Hollywood is in love with anything more than it is with itself, it’s with, well, it’s with love itself. From comedic to sweeping to lush to musical to historical, romance has been the backbone of the American film industry … not to mention its heart, its teat, and its moneymaker.

Historical romance is no small part of that equation. Hollywood has struck three-hankie gold with true-life romance in classics like Out of Africa (1985), Reds (1981), Cleopatra (1963), and even Bonnie and Clyde (1967). And an even more popular strategy of placing fictional lovers in the crossroads of history has paid off in spades with epics like Dr. Zhivago (1965), Titanic (1997), Casablanca (1942), Pearl Harbor (2001), The English Patient (1996) and Atonement (2007).

Biopics about gay and bisexual men are rare enough, and those that are told rarely focus on the love lives of these men (Capote) and sometimes remove the subject’s sexuality altogether (A Beautiful Mind, Lawrence of Arabia). Meanwhile, historical gay romances like Maurice and Brokeback Mountain have become classics of the romance genre. So why not combine the two?

In honor of Valentine’s Day, AfterElton.com takes a look at some of the greatest true gay love stories in history and makes a few gentle suggestions as to how these forgotten romances could become the breakout romance films of tomorrow.

Abe Lincoln Slept Here
The Love Story: A somewhat comic look at the possible same-sex loves of our nation’s greatest President, Abraham Lincoln.

The possibility that Abraham Lincoln was gay or bisexual is a topic that gets people on both sides of the fence worked up into a froth worthy of a prizewinning macchiato. So why not have some fun with it?

A screwball romantic comedy about the many gay loves of Lincoln seems rife with possibilities, especially given some of the hilarious accounts recounted in the recent C.A. Tripp biography The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (which already sounds like a sex comedy). For example, Billy Greene, with whom a 22-year-old Lincoln shared a narrow bed in New Salem, noted, “His thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.” Indeed!

Another companion, Joshua Speed (this time in Springfield), was noted to be closer to the soon-to-be-Prez than one might expect (Lincoln’s letters to him read “Yours forever”) and while in the Oval Office, Lincoln’s relationships with Col. Elmer Ellsworth (who died on the battlefield, crushing the President emotionally) and Capt. David Derickson (who guarded the Lincolns and reportedly slept in Abe’s bed with him when Mary was away) have come under scrutiny.

It’s impossible to know, of course, what truth there is to these rumors, but that doesn’t mean that a skilled filmmaker with a flair for satire couldn’t have fun with the topic in some way. And what’s more of a cinematic challenge than making Abe Lincoln into a sex god? Come on, Hollywood – step up.

The Pitch: The American President meets Tom Jones
The Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen as Lincoln (come on, we already know he can share a bed with another man … and those thighs!)