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Paper Trail: Great American Couple

In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Hollywood Bohemians: Transgressive Sexuality and the Selling of the Movieland Dream, Brett L. Abrams explores the relationship between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, who led homosexual lives right under everyone's nose.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted January 5, 2009
Paper Trail: Great American Couple

In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Hollywood Bohemians: Transgressive Sexuality and the Selling of the Movieland Dream, Brett L. Abrams explores the relationship between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, who led homosexual lives right under everyone's nose.

Newspaper and magazine articles, Hollywood novels, and Hollywood movies featuring Hollywood between the late 1910s and early 1940s showed audiences homosexuals, adulterers, effeminate males, and butch females. Actress Greta Garbo defined herself as a bachelor. Screenwriter Mercedes De Acosta wore mannish attire. A trio of male heartthrobs attended a party and showed no romantic interest in women. Homosexual designers picked up men in nightclubs. The industry and the media covering Hollywood developed and disseminated these real and fictional characters, whom I call Hollywood’s bohemians.

The Hollywood bohemians appeared because they contributed significantly to the construction of the movie capital’s image. They helped forge the perspective of Hollywood as the most racy, risqué and unconventional place in the country. Hollywood was the dream factory, a place to project our fantasies and reflect our dreams, no matter how outlandish. The usual Hollywood publicity enabled audience members to develop a sense of intimacy with the celebrity so that readers could imagine themselves as having a greater understanding of the star.

Hollywood bohemian images increased the appeal to audiences’ prurient interests with sexual naughtiness. As homosexuals, adulterers, effeminate males, and butch females, the bohemians embodied the pleasures of the forbidden and the taboo. Hollywood bohemians linked the industry to exposure of (previously) guarded secrets. They played an important role in developing Hollywood’s image as a place of sexual abandon, further enhancing the Hollywood “mystique.” The brilliance of these images was that they set the bohemians at familiar Hollywood locations. The presence of the sexual “other” makes the location more exciting, and the familiar location makes the “other” less threatening.

The bohemians are the forerunners of today’s highly sexualized images. They highlighted celebrity and public figures’ personal lives, which has become the focus of extensive coverage now. They represent an early example of the media presenting culturally controversial behavior images to attract audiences.

The first publicity images containing information about Grant and Scott began after they became friends while filming the movie Hot Saturday in mid–1932. Press reports during the first two years described the actors’ shared celebrity home and domestic life through phrases including, “Hollywood’s twosome” and “the happy couple.” The innuendos provided details about the two actors’ personal lives which thrilled fans, making the actors appear to be two men sharing more than lodgings. 

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Reader Comments

These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.

  • Name: TeeDee
    Date posted: 2009-01-10 11:03 PM
    Hometown: San Luis Obispo

    Comment:

    Wow, such snippy responses to this article. LB refers to the author's interpretation of the record as a 'kind of fiction' and wants to know when people will stop fantasizing. Mec makes a bunch of criticisms that are clearly contrary to what is available in the article, then claims to be bored by the whole thing. Niles sniffs that the writing style is like that of a college paper, using language that is grammatically incorrect. Geez guys. Lighten up.


  • Name: mec
    Date posted: 2009-01-09 12:37 PM
    Hometown: geneva

    Comment:

    Mmm. Pretty hack writing filled with generalities, few examples, few specifics, and no sources. Furthermore, its the lightest "cultural or critical studies" writing imaginable. What's the point, really.


  • Name: Alan Brickman
    Date posted: 2009-01-06 11:48 PM
    Hometown: Winnipeg

    Comment:

    Outing an dead actor doesn't accomplish anything...outing an politician who denies your rights...priceless...


  • Name: Bill
    Date posted: 2009-01-06 5:04 PM
    Hometown: Los Angeles

    Comment:

    To LB: It's been well documented in books by other gay men who lived during that period and who knew Cary Grant personally that he had sexual relationships with men when he was an actor in NY before coming to Hollywood, as well as after becoming a movie star. I haven't read this book, so I can only judge from this excerpt what the intent of the author is. He could just be commenting on how the "Bohemian" images were portrayed by the studios' publicity machines rather than trying to make a case one way or the other re. the actors' sexuality.


  • Name: LB
    Date posted: 2009-01-06 9:38 AM
    Hometown: Tucson

    Comment:

    You write with incredible authority that Grant meant this or that in certain statements, and that their living arrangement must be what you want it to be. Unless you were there to witness sexual activity between the two men, or are in possession of certified documents by them, it is impossible to know what their relationship was. It is a lovely fantasy that two beautiful, athletic, charming and successful men led the life of a loving couple, but it is just that: fantasy. When are people going to stop writing this kind of fiction?


  • Name: Tom Kidd
    Date posted: 2009-01-06 12:30 AM
    Hometown: Decatur, Illinois

    Comment:

    Hmm. Interesting excerpt. But, did this relationship do anything to prevent the murders of Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Lawrence King, and many other of our brothers and sisters who happened to be gay? No. It had zero effect on the American populace, except (to those who lived in their era) to twitter and gossipate.


  • Name: Niles Davenport
    Date posted: 2009-01-05 10:09 PM
    Hometown: Santos Brazil

    Comment:

    interesting, but frankly your writing style is more like that of a college term paper.


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