Alonso Duralde Connects the Queer Dots in 'Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film'

Recently, as part of Turner Classic Movies Pride presentation of six LGBTQ+ films, host Dave Karger spoke with film critic, author, and historian Alonso Duralde about the 1950 prison exposé "Caged," a movie he writes about in his new book, "Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film."

The lurid film has long been a queer cult classic in its depiction of the queer subculture in the prison where naïve Eleanor Parker is incarcerated, but that subculture is never directly addressed. "I think there are a history of films that have a queer subtext whether or not they address the elephant in the room," Duralde tells Karger. "And those are films that deal with gender-specific surroundings, so whether its men in a submarine or women in prison, the absence of the other gender provide often a LGBTQ+ reading."

In the case of "Caged," the women-only setting has "a sexual subcurrent....This is the period of the Code when they [filmmakers] couldn't deal directly with LGBTQ+ lives or story lines, but they [the censors] always looked the other way if it was presented as a negative or scary thing."

Queer individuals were faced with a double whammy for most of the 20th century in Hollywood: Not only weren't they able to be public about their sexuality, but they couldn't tell their own stories on screen. Yet, they found ways, not necessarily able to come out (witness Rock Hudson), but to inform films, such as "Caged," "Laura," and "Rope" (amongst others) with coded subtexts that some in the audience picked up on.

Duralde follows those threads, and examines how queers in Hollywood have evolved in a deeply homophobic industry. From the silent era, when actress Nazimova coined the phrase "sewing circle" to refer to closeted female actors, to subsequent Hollywood eras, Duralde examines the ways in which queer artists found ways to express themselves. He includes such pioneers like William Haines, who quit acting because he wouldn't deny being gay, and George Cukor, who built strong relationships with such stars as Joan Crawford and Katherine Hepburn during his long career while famously hosting gay pool parties at his Beverly Hills home. He looks at how fear of exposure affected the careers of such stars as Hudson and Greta Garbo, and examines how the breakup of the studio system led to a more open climate, represented by the work of such underground directors as John Waters and Kenneth Anger.

Illustrated with more than 175 full-color and black-and-white images, "Hollywood Pride" looks back at LGBTQ+ representation in Hollywood filmmaking by revealing the story of the community's inclusion and erasure, its visibility and invisibility, and its triumphs and tragedies.

Author Duralde, who has been a film critic and editor, wrote "101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men" (Advocate Books), as well as a book about Christmas in the movies ("Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas" [Limelight Editions]). As a film critic, he has reviewed for The Wrap/Reuters, and has written about film for Movieline, Salon, MSNBC.com, and HitFix, among many other publications. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on "What the Flick?!"(on The Young Turks Network). He also serves as Senior Programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles and as a pre-screener for the Sundance Film Festival; he is also a consultant for the USA Film Festival/Dallas, where he spent five years as Artistic Director.

A former Arts and Entertainment Editor at The Advocate, Duralde was a regular contributor to "The Rotten Tomatoes Show" (on Current) and has been seen in more than 30 documentaries and television series, including "Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror," "50 Documentaries to See Before You Die," and "Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema," as well as on the special features of the "Brokeback Mountain" and "Valley of the Dolls" DVDs.

EDGE spoke to Duralde about "Hollywood Pride," his life as film critic and historian, and what a non-queer person would get from his book.

EDGE: Tell us about your love of films and when it started.

Alonso Duralde: I often relate it to [this]: Did you ever see that movie "Searching for Bobby Fisher," where the little kid sees chess being played for the first time and comes home and re-creates a chessboard in his room? I was obsessed with movies before I was even going to the movies. I learned to read partially by combing the film listings in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution every day. I could tell you what was playing at any theater near our house, even though I wasn't going to the movies, but I was fixated on it. It's been a lifelong passion. When I was about nine, my brother came home from college with all of these books about the Golden Age of Hollywood, and I just devoured them. I've been on this path ever since.

EDGE: What inspired the idea for your book?

Alonso Duralde: It was pitched to me, actually, which I thought was a cool idea. TCM and Running Press had previously done two books focusing on specific avenues of film history. They published "Hollywood Black" in 2022, and then "Viva Hollywood," which focuses on Latina artists and films coming out of the studio system. My editor, Randall Litz, came up with the idea of publishing a queer one.

EDGE: Is there an era of film that fascinates you the most?

Alonso Duralde: There was a learning curve for me in terms of early cinema, especially digging into who were the queer artists and what sort of glimmers of queer visibility were there. That was probably what I knew the least about, going into this. I'm old enough that I was witness to the new queer cinema because I was working at a film festival in the early nineties, and I knew that was going on, and I met a lot of the filmmakers at the time. I do have a smattering of knowledge about the silent era and early talkies, but to delve into it from an LGBTQ+ angle brought me to places I was not familiar with.

EDGE: Is there somebody that you didn't realize was part of the LGBTQ+ community until you were writing this book?

Alonso Duralde: I owe a lot to the historians and writers who came before me. William Mann's book "Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood" was illuminating, because you have heard over the years about this actor or that director, so I found it to be fascinating to get into the weeds and learn about them. I loved learning about James Crabe, who was the cinematographer of "Rocky" and "The Karate Kid," and who was part of this very loose affiliation of gay men who were working in the industry in the 1960s and had this group called the Gay Girls Riding Club. They would get together and film these very campy shorts that were sort of satirical takeoffs of well-known movies. They had titles like "What Really Happened to Baby Jane?" or "The Roman Springs on Mrs. Stone," and they would show them in bars or at parties. It was all very kind of underground, but it was just a fun thing for people who were working in the industry to get involved in. Then Crabe goes on to become part of these essential films that are in no way queer, but he's one of the main artists who makes them happen. These gay artists made these gay movies, but a lot of these same gay artists made these not-so-gay movies that are nonetheless canonical and historically important, and beloved by audiences everywhere. I love connecting those dots.

EDGE: Has writing this book changed the way you see yourself as a member of the LGBTQ+ community?

Alonso Duralde: Not really. If anything, I feel like this is a gong that I have been banging on for a long time. For anybody familiar with my work at The Advocate or from my first book, my worry is always [the reaction will be], "Oh her again." From the moment I came out, I had already been steeped in cinema, and I was the closeted kid in high school reading "The Celluloid Closet" off the shelves in the library – never checking it out, but just standing there and reading it for as long as I could. Having worked in queer media and queer film festivals, I feel like this is the next logical step for me.

EDGE: Although film is the focus of this book, how do you think television compares in terms of LGBTQ+ representation?

Alonso Duralde: I think television has had the opportunity to take a lot of bigger swings, especially in the last couple of decades. When we talk about studio filmmaking, how every so often they'll announce, "We're introducing the first gay character," and then you blink, and you missed it. Whereas, I think TV is less concerned about getting banned in this country or other countries. TV has progressed beyond the three-network [era], and now with streaming and YouTube you can narrow down and find more niche content to reach a larger audience. That's has opened up a lot of opportunities for different communities to be more represented. It is still an uphill battle, and more strides need to be made for us.

Overall, I think the representation on TV has taken huge leaps and bounds [of] the kind that, as children, my generation would have never expected to see happen.

EDGE: What movie helped you the most when you were growing up?

Alonso Duralde: [There was] a catalog of some very bleak titles that did the opposite, but I will say seeing "Victor/Victoria" when I was in high school was one of the first times I'd ever seen a movie that had characters who were unapologetically gay, and characters who were not the butt of the joke or the object of violence. That movie is not perfect, but I think that there's a lot that it does get right, especially for someone who was 15 and watching it in 1982.

EDGE: If you could spend a day with someone from "Hollywood Pride," whom would you choose?

Alonso Duralde: Oh, good one. So many choices. It would be actor/director James Whale, because I know he has stories and he was pretty comfortable with himself. When we look back at one of the things that William Mann says about people from the '30s and '40s in Hollywood, they didn't use the paradigm of "in the closet or out of the closet," because out of the closet was not an option. I think the words used were discreet, overt, or circumspect. George Cukor was very circumspect, and then you have James Whale, who was overt. James was not leading a pride parade or anything, but I think he was an incredible artist who created some great stuff. I think they all were comfortable in their queerness and understood the parameters within which they lived, especially for the era that they were living in. So, I would love to hang out with either of them.

EDGE: Is there one film that you recommend for everyone to watch?

Alonso Duralde: "The Celluloid Closet," which does a great job at covering the ups and downs of Hollywood's representation of LGBTQ+ characters, particularly in classic Hollywood cinema, but it goes all the way up to the nineties. I would also check out the Netflix documentary "Disclosure," which does a great job of capturing trans representation in pop culture, movies, and television, for better or for worse. For example, Katie Couric's interview with Laverne Cox where she says, "We're not going to talk about your surgery, and we're not going to talk about the things that people think are somehow appropriate to ask trans people." I think it not only reshapes that conversation, but reshapes the larger way in which these issues are discussed in the media and in culture.

I would say start with those two documentaries. They cover a lot of ground, and they're super informative. They will also give you a lot of titles that you'll want to chase down and watch for yourself.

EDGE: I believe I know what someone from the LGBTQ+ community is going to get out of this book, but what are you hoping that non-queer individuals will walk away with?

Alonso Duralde: There's always that joke about how if you talk about movies or TV with a Canadian and you bring up an actor who happens to be Canadian, they will immediately tell you that William Shatner's Canadian. I would love for non-queer people to read this book and learn something that they didn't know about a director or an actress they love, or someone that they've always admired. I want them to come away with a larger understanding of that person's life and how they were able to not only exist during periods where their very being was being quashed, but flourished and created art that continues to live today. For a lot of queer people, especially if you're a queer person who loves movies, you'll know a lot of the names and titles in this book. For people who love film, or even just casually enjoy film because they watch TCM, I would love for them to come away with a larger sense of the fact that queer people have always been here, and we've made your life better by making these incredible performances, stories, or even costumes.

"Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film" is available at Amazon and other online booksellers.

For more on Alonso Duralde, follow this link.