In 1934 Louis B Mayer, the autocratic head of MGM studios, told Hollywood's first openly gay actor, William Haines, that he would have to get married if he wanted to continue in the movies. Haines, who had become a silent movie star after being discovered in a "new faces" competition, reportedly replied: "Sure - if you dump Mrs Mayer." Haines's contract was torn up and his career was finished.
Nearly 70 years later no studio chief would dare behave that way, might well be openly gay himself, and might be producing one of the 38 new films with gay and lesbianthemes that are currently in the pipeline. That is the conclusion of a special "Gay Hollywood" supplement published this week by Variety, the entertainment industry's daily paper.
But gay performers and activists say many actors are still reluctant to come out because of the perceived commercial risks.
The fact that a growing number of senior executives are openly gay has led Variety to conclude that the "gay glass ceiling" is slowly vanishing. They cite the DreamWorks co-founder Dave Geffen, Fox 2000's executive vice-president Carla Hacken, and Disney's animation chief, Thomas Schumacher, as examples of senior industry figures who are openly gay, but note that many others in similar positions have chosen not to come out.
The producer Randy Barbato told the paper: "I think a lot of gays and lesbians in powerful jobs misperceive what people will accept. America is gayer than Hollywood thinks."
The growth in the number of television shows with gay leading characters is cited as evidence that old barriers are finally breaking down. Will & Grace, which features a leading gay character, continues to enjoy both critical and commercial success. Yesterday it received 12 Emmy nominations.
The new HBO cable series Six Feet Under, written and produced by Alan Ball, who won an Oscar last year for his American Beauty screenplay, features two gay characters in lead roles, although one of them has not come out to his family. The American version of the British Queer as Folk has also pushed back boundaries in the US, while a new sitcom, The Ellen Show, starring Ellen DeGeneres, will tell the story of a lesbian who returns to her home town from the city.
The days when the Oklahoma legislature condemned Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1994) and ABC refused to show an episode of two men in bed together in Thirtysomething seem to have passed.
Alan Poul, producer of Tales of the City, says that the atmosphere has changed but adds: "Now even same-sex open-mouthed kisses seem to have lost their shock value ... We have to be willing to provoke, to disturb, even to offend, whatever it takes to dig deeper into the narrative possibilities of gay (and straight) life."
This week sees the opening of Outfest, the annual gay and lesbian film festival in Los Angeles which drew an audience of 500 when it started 19 years ago and is now catering for 40,000. The festival will honour Robert Downey Jr and Vanessa Redgrave as winners of the Outfest Screen Idol Awards.
Among new or forthcoming films with gay themes are Who Shot Victor Fox? in which the openly gay Rupert Everett stars as the lover of a murdered pop star; In the Boom Boom Room, about a go-go dancer, with Ellen Barkin, Patricia Arquette and James Caan; and Gaudi Afternoon, a comic-noir romp in which Juliette Lewis and Lili Taylor play lesbians.
Support
But while actors' agencies have shown their support for the festival and the supplement in the traditional Hollywood way of taking out whole-page ads in Variety, the studios have been reluctant to do so. Of the main ones, only Paramount placed an ad.
This, said Scott Seomin of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, was an indication that some senior executives still shied away from public support for gays.
"The studios always clamour for who can buy the cover for Women in Showbiz," he said yesterday. "I hope in three or four years' time it will be the same [for the Gay Hollywood issue]."
He said that while there had been great changes in the past few years, there was still an atmosphere of "homophobia and ignorance" in the studio system. A lot of gay folks had crashed through the glass ceiling, but many did so without coming out. "The glass is thicker for lesbians," he said.
Robin Tyler, a producer and comic who was one of the first openly gay television performers back in the 70s, said that she was having a party tomorrow for lesbians in the film industry, something which would not have been possible a decade ago.
But Tyler, who is helping to form a caucus of gay and lesbians in her union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said that it was still hard for major actors to come out, and many were understandably reluctant to do so.
"It's a very scary thing when you know it's going to affect your work," she said. She believed the studios were reluctant to hire young openly gay actors because they were concerned about the possible financial impact.
She commended Sir Ian McKellen for his openness, but said many younger actors were aware that to be openly gay still involved commercial risks.
"It's still an industry where there is tremendous fear," she said.
