Hollywood's Long History of Straightwashing Bio Pics

Almost as soon as it was announced that J. Edgar Hoover would be getting a new biopic, speculation has been rife over how his relationship with Clyde Tolson would be portrayed.

Although there's no definitive proof either way, it's widely assumed that Hoover, long-term director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Tolson, his assistant director, were lovers. Director Clint Eastwood sparked concern that Hoover's story would be “straightwashed” when he told The Wall Street Journal that the script “didn't quite go down [the] road” of addressing rumors of Hoover's being closeted and a cross-dresser. (Eastwood later confirmed with The Hollywood Reporter that he included a scene showing Hoover wearing his mother's dress.)

Meanwhile, out J. Edgar screenwriter Dustin Lance Black assured AfterElton that Hoover and Tolson would not be “de-gayed,” saying “To think that somehow you’re going to make a movie about somebody like J. Edgar and you’re not going to learn what’s in his heart, that’s just not going to happen in a script that I write.” 

Unfortunately, Hollywood has a long history of "straightening" depictions of historical figures. From the earliest days of filmmaking, homosexuality was rarely presented on-screen directly. With the adoption of the Motion Picture Production Code in the U.S. in 1930 it was forbidden to portray “sex perversion” in the movies (film industries in other countries were subjected to similar restrictions). Coincidentally or not, very few biopics about people known to be gay or bisexual were made, and those few that were made, like the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day, were scrubbed clean of any suggestion of homosexuality.

With the relaxation of the Code beginning in the 1950s and its eventual abolishment in 1968, filmmakers were freed to present a wider array of subject matter, but gay content remained rare. The biblical figures of David, Jonathan and Ruth, who have been interpreted as gay, made no mention of it over the course of several films in the 1950s and 1960s. The FDR biopic Sunrise at Campobello (1960) included Eleanor Roosevelt as a character but left out her rumored liaisons with women. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) eliminated the homosexuality of its hero, T.E. Lawrence, but used the sexuality of the sadistic Turkish bey (chieftan) as a means of illustrating the character's evil. Clyde Barrow of 1967's Bonnie and Clyde was portrayed as impotent where the real Barrow was bisexual. There was something of a breakthrough in 1968, the same year that saw the demise of the Production Code, with The Lion in Winter preserving the purported homosexuality of Richard the Lionheart, the past sexual relationship between Richard and Philip II of France and mention by Henry II of England that his sexual conquests included “young boys” from the source play.

In the intervening decades, filmmakers have gained the freedom to make biopics that honestly and accurately portray the sexuality of their subjects. While many have chosen to do so, there were some who have not. While we wait to see exactly how gay J. Edgar is, let's take a look at some other biopics with gay subjects to see some of those choices.

Milk

Probably the highest profile gay biopic ever and the one most people think of when considering the genre, Milk tells the story of the life, political career and assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. With a screenplay by J. Edgar's Dustin Lance Black and directed by the out Gus Van Sant, Milk premiered in October 2008, its storyline about the campaign against the anti-gay Briggs Initiative strongly paralleling the battle in California against the anti-gay Proposition 8. It is a stirring, almost operatic film, appropriate because of Milk's lifetime love of opera. Milk was at the top of many critics' “Best of” lists for the year and was nominated for eight Academy awards, winning for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor for Sean Penn's portrayal of Milk.

Attempts began in 1991 to bring Milk's story to the screen. Oliver Stone wrote a script called The Mayor of Castro Street and Van Sant was attached to direct, with if you can believe it Robin Williams set to play Milk. The script languished in “development hell” for over a decade and a half, with everyone from Richard Gere to Al Pacino to James Woods under consideration for the lead role. Out director Bryan Singer eventually signed on to direct but the 2007 writers' strike coupled with Van Sant's forward motion on Milk finally stuck a permanent pin in the project.

Capote and Infamous

Two biopics of notorious gay author Truman Capote were released within a year of each other. Each covered the same period in Capote's life, the years he spent working on his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. First was Capote, released in 2005. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the author and the film was nominated for four additional Oscars. Despite being six inches taller and overall much larger physically than Capote was, Hoffman expertly projects both Capote's physical smallness and his overpowering personality.

Coming in 2006, Infamous was inevitably compared to Capote and Toby Jones as Truman to Hoffman. Most gave the advantage to Capote and Hoffman although Infamous and Jones had their defenders. Many questioned whether two biopics covering the exact same period of the author's life was necessary, but the two films took very different approaches. Infamous spent much more time examining Capote's life in high society. He was fascinated by society and valued his connections with society women, whom he called his “swans.” Infamous also expanded on something that Capote only hints at, the likelihood that Truman was in love with one of the murderers he was writing about, Perry Smith.