IntroductionBohemians in the Depictions of Hollywood

Thelma Todd was pleasure-loving and temperamental, not the domestictype at all. Miss Todd and Roland West frequently participated in the gay par-ties at Miss Catherine Hunter’s Hollywood bungalow. Miss Todd oftenremained overnight with Miss Hunter at her home. West, who had testified onbusiness matters twice, refused to answer questions about Miss Todd’s lovelife. “I am determined at all costs to protect her memory.”1

Movie star Thelma Todd’s sex life took center stage during the grand juryinvestigation into her death. The movie industry, newspapers, magazines, andbook publishers produced endless publicity. Their articles fed and stoked audi-ence members’ desire to connect with the stars and other people in the movieindustry. Most of this publicity showed virile men and virtuous women, dat-ing males and females, and faithful husbands and wives in Hollywood. How-ever, the newspaper articles on Thelma Todd hinted that the actress was notcontent as a wife and had a romantic life that her friends wanted to keep secret.

The image of Thelma Todd was not unique. Newspaper and magazinearticles, Hollywood novels, and Hollywood movies featuring Hollywoodbetween the late 1910s and early 1940s showed audiences a whole lot more.Actress Greta Garbo defined herself as a bachelor. Screenwriter Mercedes DeAcosta wore mannish attire. A trio of male heartthrobs attended a party andshowed no romantic interest in women. Homosexual designers picked up menin nightclubs. The industry and the media covering Hollywood developed anddisseminated these real and fictional characters, whom I call Hollywood’sbohemians. In an era when many thought there was a connection between aperson’s sexual interests and their gender behavior, why did homosexuals, adul-terers, effeminate males, and butch females appear in all these depictions of Hol-lywood?

The Hollywood bohemians appeared because they contributed signifi-cantly to the construction of the movie capital’s image. They helped forge theperspective of Hollywood as the most racy, risqué and unconventional place in

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the country. Hollywood was the dream factory, a place to project our fantasiesand reflect our desires, no matter how outlandish. The usual Hollywood pub-licity enabled audience members to develop a sense of intimacy with thecelebrity so that readers could imagine themselves as having a greater under-standing of the star.

Hollywood bohemian images increased the appeal to audiences’ prurientinterests in sexual naughtiness. As homosexuals, adulterers, effeminate males,and butch females, the bohemians embodied the pleasures of the forbiddenand the taboo. Hollywood bohemians linked the industry to exposure of (pre-viously) guarded secrets. They played an important role in developing Holly-wood’s image as a place of sexual abandon, further enhancing the Hollywood“mystique.” The brilliance of these images was that they set the bohemians atfamiliar Hollywood locations. The presence of the sexual “other” makes thelocation more exciting, and the familiar location makes the “other” less threat-ening.2

Most publicity images and descriptions of Hollywood in novels and moviesused Hollywood as their setting. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hollywood was knownfor its nightclubs and restaurants, movie premieres and the Academy Awards,private parties, star homes, and the giant studio lots. A movie about Hollywoodfrom the era, Warner Brothers’ Hollywood Hotel (1937), offered audiences atour of Hollywood and revealed each of the important locales.

As a newcomer landed at the airport in Hollywood and drove toward thestudio, the audience saw what they envisioned as the movie capital of the world;a building shaped like a derby hat and another with engravings and pillars atthe entry passed by. The Brown Derby and the Cafe Trocadero were two of thetop restaurants and clubs that formed the Hollywood nightlife. Along Holly-wood Boulevard, the car passed Grauman’s Chinese Theater, one of the placeswhere the staged events and semi-public affairs that composed the public Hol-lywood parties happened. A sign selling personal guides to movie star homesflashed past. The panorama of Hollywood ended with an image of the studiogates, and inside them were the stage sets, dressing rooms, and studios of Hol-lywood—behind the scenes.

Unlike all the other images of Hollywood, the bohemians linked thesefamous movie industry places with unusual people and behaviors. By bindingthese places to things that the culture viewed as taboo, the Hollywood bohemi-ans made those locations appear wild and spectacular. Bohemians made Hol-lywood, the town and its industry, stand apart and appear to be something thatpeople thought they had to see and experience—more intriguing than any otherplace in the country.

Each chapter will examine one of these important Hollywood locations andshow how the Hollywood bohemians made the place stand out. Beginning withthe most public locations, the restaurants and nightclubs that formed Holly-wood nightlife, each chapter will center on a three-part examination of media

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images: A presentation of the media images of the location in other cities andtowns will provide a standard for how the location usually appeared in themedia; a focus on the way the location appeared in most Hollywood publicityand many novels and movies that described the movie industry and its townis the second part of this examination.

This focus will show how Hollywood publicity worked, with its elaboratedescription of a location and the revelation of information about a star’s per-sonality. The focus will display the publicity’s emphasis on showing how boththe location and star conformed to society’s expectations. The publicity andimages that form Hollywood novels and movies with Hollywood bohemianswill demonstrate how the bohemians made each location appear fun and crazy.

The first chapter covers female impersonators and women in men’s cloth-ing who lit up Hollywood’s neon night scene. The second describes how Hol-lywood stars emoted at the Hollywood public parties of the Oscars and moviepremieres. The middle chapter discusses the beautiful people making all kindsof love at Hollywood private parties. Chapter four shows how chic bachelorwomen and odd bedfellows made happy homes. Finally, the fifth chapter revealstemperamental artistes plying their trades behind the scenes at the studio lots.

The Hollywood bohemians worked within almost every profession in theindustry. They included actors and actresses, screenwriters and publicists, direc-tors and producers, and costume designers and makeup artists. Actors andactresses formed the most publicized group in Hollywood and they appearedin the majority of the images.

The performers and other professionals who composed the Hollywoodbohemians appeared in three types of media material. The novels featured Hol-lywood as the primary setting for the story and a major character who workedin the movie industry. Known as Hollywood novels, these books spanned acrossgenres, including drama, romance, farce, and musical comedy.

Hollywood novelists ran the gamut of the writing profession. Theyincluded literary lights such as F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Last Tycoon, 1941) andthe currently respected authors, like James M. Cain (Serenade, 1937). The groupalso featured popular writers of the era like Vicki Baum (Falling Star, 1934) andvirtual unknowns such as John Preston Buschlen (Screen Star, 1932).

Movies that centered on Hollywood and its workers, “Hollywood on Hol-lywood” motion pictures, also slipped Hollywood bohemians into scenes. Likethe Hollywood novels, these movies crossed genres and types and includedmoney-making pictures such as Going Hollywood (MGM, 1933) and box-officefailures such as Hollywood Party (MGM, 1934). Some achieved critical acclaim,such as Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (Paramount, 1941), while others like Stunt Pilot (Republic, 1939) were B-movies intended to be minor timefillers.

Newspapers and magazines, including metropolitan dailies and tabloids,depicted Hollywood bohemians in feature articles and gossip columns. The

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magazines that carried these images ranged from trade types such as the Hol-lywood Reporter and fan magazines such as Photoplay to general interest types,including Life and Time.3

The novels, movies, newspapers and magazines used different words anddegrees of detail to describe the Hollywood bohemians and their activities. Gen-erally, only the novels used the word “homosexual.” The movies and newspaperand magazine articles opted for code words or phrases, such as “pansy” or “thehappy couple.” Rarely did any of the media use the word “adulterer,” and all threetended to show effeminate males and masculine females through the clothingthat they wore. The three types of media rarely depicted the “illicit” activities ofthe adulterers and homosexuals. Instead, they usually hinted at the action.

The vast majority of the images of Hollywood bohemians showed peoplewho appeared to enjoy rich and happy professional and social lives. The starsand character actors and behind the scenes artisans all earned high salaries. Theyalso worked on some of the best Hollywood productions. They owned homes,cars, and beautiful clothes. The bohemians received respect from their fellowmovie people and formed friendships and loving relationships inside and out-side the industry. Hollywood bohemians lived like few others.

Readers and viewers occasionally encountered images of adulterers andhomosexuals in the mass media during the first half of the twentieth century.Depictions of these figures in books, such as in Upton Sinclair’s Oil! (a girlseducer) and William Faulkner’s Sanctuary (rape and voyeurism) and Rad-clyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (masculine women, lesbianism), sparkedcensorship efforts to keep them from being printed and distributed. The sup-porters of censorship saw these images as vulgar and disgusting. They believedthat the people who saw these images, particularly the young and the simple-minded, would have their morals corrupted. This corruption of morals woulddestroy the civilized world, so they saw it as their job to stop the images beforethe world as they knew it was lost.4

The legal efforts failed to stop the presentation of adulterers and others inthe media. Still, books were not awash in these images. The images that didappear, including those in the books previously mentioned, showed that thesecharacters’ activities made them feel miserable. No character escaped experi-encing emotional turmoil because of their sexual behavior. The figures appearedoccasionally in the newspapers and magazines of the era usually because theyengaged in criminal activity.

Otherwise, their appearance in articles carried a pejorative tone. When thenewspapers ran stories about a Hollywood celebrity whose scandalous behav-ior sparked a public outrage, the industry responded by firing or demoting theirnonconformist stars and other employees. Writers, including David Ehrensteinin Open Secret and William Mann within Behind the Screen, noted the studios’negative responses, but did not discuss the industry’s promotion of theirbohemian employees.5

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Characters who did not conform to the culture’s norms for sexuality alsoappeared in movies that did not feature Hollywood as the main setting. As inthe non–Hollywood books and newspapers, the adulterers and homosexualsencountered a hostile world and negative experiences. Adulterers, gold dig-gers, and other “fallen woman” either met unfortunate ends or redeemed them-selves at the end of the movie.

Even before the increased reviewing of movies that occurred under the Pro-duction Code Administration, scripts eliminated the racy woman. The movieseither tried to marry the racy woman off to a good man at the end of the movieor sought to show that she learned a life lesson. Male and female homosexualimages in general Hollywood productions from the early 1910s to the mid–1970sled lonely lives. These figures experienced derision and sometimes became vic-tims of murder or suicide. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, effemi-nate males appeared in a range of movies where they faced derisive commentsand were linked to members of other groups viewed unfavorably in the cul-ture. Books, including Vito Russo’s Celluloid Closet and Richard Barrios’sScreened Out and Janet Staiger’s Bad Women, documented these findings whilemissing the Hollywood bohemians.6

These negative presentations in literature, news, and general Hollywoodmovies of adulterers, homosexuals and others strengthened the status quo. Theimages provided entertainment for audiences. They laughed at the charactersin comedies and rooted against them in dramas. The images gave audiencemembers the opportunity to feel personally superior and feel the satisfactionof knowing that they did not occupy the bottom rung of society.

Indeed, scholars who studied these negative images argued that theyappeared in the media to maintain the dominant gender and sexual norms inU.S. society. The images presented stereotypes of homosexuals and adulterersso audience members would supposedly know about them. The stereotypesexperienced horrible lives to establish sharp boundary definitions for whomand what the culture considered unacceptable. The depictions indicated thatrewards came only from following behaviors the culture considered acceptable.This system of reward and punishment aimed to keep audience members fromwanting to or believing that they could cross the lines.7

Hollywood bohemians composed a distinctly different set of images. Whilemany portrayed similar gay and lesbian stereotypes, others did not. Mostuniquely, this book shows us that Hollywood presented figures who success-fully suggested to audience members that crossing the lines was not fatal orharmful. The Hollywood bohemians illustrated that those who did not followthese norms could lead successful lives. At least in Hollywood, they could obtainmaterial goods, be a part of a community, and have friends, lovers, and spouses.

The Hollywood bohemians had a complexity that made them more thansimplistic stereotypes of homosexuals and cross-dressers. The Hollywoodbohemian images appeared similarly to the main character in a novel, a fully

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realized person who changes over time. They were figures who created success-ful lives beyond the culturally mandated boundaries of acceptable behavior. Thissuggested to audience members that crossing the lines was fun and exciting.The bohemians undercut the system of reward and punishment and made theboundary lines appear less firm.

The need to solidify gender and sexual boundaries was particularly impor-tant during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A variety of cul-tural and economic forces resulted in an era of impressive change. The woman’smovement promoted more educational, work, and political opportunities forwomen and led to more females engaging in experiences outside the home.Industrialization and technological developments sparked the expansion ofbureaucratic work environments, resulting in men having less control overtheir work lives.

The waves of new immigrants brought their different cultural traditionsinto American society. Together with the women’s movement, they created amuddle of the appropriate behaviors for men and women. These developmentsspurred the need to create new definitions for appropriate male and femalebehaviors. Factors including rising divorce rates and the expansion of commer-cial leisure activities promoted greater discussion of sexuality and changes inthe behavior and expectations regarding sex. Men and women discovered thatolder avenues for demonstrating masculinity and femininity and proving sex-uality had closed and entirely different venues had emerged. The medical andpsychological professions informed everyone in society that sexuality had greatimportance in human lives. This made the desire to demonstrate masculinityand femininity and prove sexuality become even more important to individ-uals in this era.

The mass media blossomed amid this time of transition. New innovationsin communications led to new and different mass media forms. These prod-ucts ranged from phonographs to movies to radio. The emergence of a con-sumer culture offered plentiful goods and services.

This new mass entertainment media became the prime location for thepresentation of both male and female behavior and sexuality. The media beganto establish appropriate behaviors for men and women of all classes. It also pre-sented a greater amount of sexual discussion and titillation.

The working and middling classes gained larger incomes and leisure timeduring the early twentieth century. They spent a good portion of these resourceson their enjoyment of the movies and related publications. Hollywood providedthis audience with fantasy lives and celebrity images. Many people desiredhuman images and identified with stars to escape the stresses and anxieties ofdaily life and the limitations and restrictions of the culture.8

This growing mass media presented more images in general and racierones in particular immediately after World War I because of changes in thecountry. The United States witnessed the breakdown of genteel culture and its

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restrictions on topics of discussions in the aftermath of the war. The new “mod-ern” culture invited greater presentation of sexual innuendo and sexuality inthe mass media. Indeed, as the first era to revise notions of sexuality arounddesire and fulfillment, the culture interpreted sex as central to personal iden-tities. The entertainment for this culture would logically focus on presentingsuch an important topic to its audiences.

Around this same time, changes in the movie industry resulted in the pro-duction of both more celebrity and more risqué imagery. The studios changedtheir publicity approach. The divorces and other off-screen activities of severalmajor stars forced the industry to shift away from promoting stars as picturepersonalities. Picture personality publicity used the star’s on-screen characteras a mirror image of their off-screen lives. The studio publicity featured thestar’s supposed everyday life and developed stories about their personalities.The beginnings of the cult of personality necessitated the discussion of the star’ssexual behavior since that was considered central to personal identities.9

The number and variety of media that featured Hollywood peopleexpanded significantly during the era. Newspaper coverage included regulararticles about the industry’s personalities and featured daily gossip columnsfrom the six major syndicated writers on the beat. General interest magazines,such as Time and Life, and the fanzines, like Photoplay and Silver Screen, reachedmillions of readers with their weekly photographs, features, and gossip itemson Hollywood. The Hollywood novel changed its focus during the late 1910saway from the technology of movie making to presenting readers with storiesabout characters within the industry. Hollywood movies about the industryincreased as movie production solidified itself in the southern California cul-tural climate.10

Hollywood was not alone among places to present themselves in the massmedia. Other cities perceived the advantage of reaching a wide variety of audi-ences through the mass media. Cities like Paris, France, and Atlantic City, NewJersey, used the press, wax museums and postcards to depict their spectacularrealities and sensual pleasures. This enabled individual businesses to promotethemselves and also the entire area to become known as a destination point.11

Like the media that featured Hollywood, these mass media depictionsoffered their audiences stories. They contained narrative suspense, novelties,and a faithful depiction of the city and industry. Each city’s presentation of thissensationalized reality contained a familiarity that promoted audience mem-bers’ sense of participation and belonging in that reality. The depictions alsocontained enough celebrities and fantastic events to prompt audience mem-bers to wish that they were there and desire to find out what more there wasto know. While Paris sensationalized crime coverage and Atlantic City pre-sented bathing beauties, only Hollywood depicted itself as populated with“bohemians.”

None of the other mass media businesses in the era associated themselves

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with adulterers or homosexuals. Vaudeville presented female impersonatorsand male impersonators on stage. However, the publicity for these performersdescribed the first as tough and virile and the second as sensitive and demure.The Broadway stage might have had homosexuals in its ranks. Yet neither playsabout the theater nor the publicity about theatrical people ever mentioned theirpresence, nor the presence of other breakers of the culture’s sexual norms.When producers such as the Charles Froham Company and Mae West put playsfeaturing lesbians and drag queens on stage, the city government closed downone production and no theater owner would offer a Broadway location to theother. Immediately afterwards, the New York state legislature passed the WalesPadlock Law in early 1927, granting municipal authorities the power to lock upany theater if its owner put a play with homosexuals in it on its stage.12

Hollywood successfully accomplished something that other cities and massmedia industries could not. Hollywood was a wild place. As one contemporarynoted, “I lived in Hollywood because as a kid I got used to carnivals.”13 Hol-lywood studios, insiders and newspapers and magazines focused on sellingcharacters to attract audiences. One of its most marketable assets was the pres-ence of different people and outsiders in its midst.

However, Hollywood’s marketing of these characters differed from carnivalsand sideshows in key ways. Sideshows featured people with physical and culturaldifferences within bizarre environs to showcase their inability to adapt to the pre-vailing cultural norms. Audiences experienced reactions of superiority to the“freaks of nature” or, at best, pity. Hollywood bohemians appeared as understand-able figures in recognizable yet fantastic environments with whom audience mem-bers could forge and build an identification. Indeed, Hollywood bohemians offeredaudience members the opportunity and motivation to identify with the “other.”

This book will motivate us to reconsider what we think about Hollywoodduring the studio era. Hollywood was the dream factory of the masses becauseof its great climate, wealth, and glamorous romances between a man and awoman. But the Hollywood bohemians revealed another part of the equationthat has been omitted from the Hollywood story. The dream included peoplepursuing wild, outlandish, and “illegal” sexual activities and interests. Audi-ences enjoyed being exposed to the culture’s marginalia, and the bohemiansillustrate that the movie industry humanized these outsider images. HollywoodBohemians will show that one of the primary image-makers in the world usedthe images of “bohemians” not only for purposes of entertainment and deri-sion but as an integral part of its self-definition.

Hollywood Bohemians will offer us the opportunity to understand howentertainment industries work and what audiences enjoy. The discovery of Hol-lywood’s intentional use of risqué and racy images provides an explanation for why so many religious and other groups opposed the movie industry thenand today. The images helped the movie industry sell both its product and Hol-lywood in general.

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The Hollywood bohemians influence our current media. They are the fore-runners of today’s highly sexualized images. They show us how we arrived attwo controversial features of the way our media operates: The bohemians high-lighted celebrity and public figure’s personal lives, which has become the focusof extensive coverage now. They represented the media presenting culturallycontroversial behavior images on display, pushing the envelope of what themedia showed. This “cutting edge” then built and maintained audience size andinterest. The Hollywood bohemians appalled some groups of audiences, butthey appealed to many more, and they kept everyone watching and talking.Hollywood Bohemians shows us the background for how the U.S. culture arrivedat contemporary attitudes about the media and sexuality.

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