by Vito Russo
Praised by the Chicago Tribune as “an impressive study” and written with incisive wit and searing perception–the definitive, highly acclaimed landmark work on the portrayal of homosexuality in film.
The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies is a non-fiction book by film historian and LGBT activist Vito Russo, first published in 1981 by Harper & Row. The book examines the history of depictions of homosexuality in film, particularly in Hollywood films, from queer coded to overt portrayals. A revised edition of the book was published in 1987, with 80 additional pages.
The book was released after two books of the same subject Parker Tyler‘s 1972 book Screening the Sexes and Richard Dyer‘s 1977 Gays and Film, even though Russo complain at the time of the release that no gay writer had produced any meaningful criticism of homosexuality in the movies.
The Celluloid Closet book was prefigured by a live lecture/film clip presentation of the same name, which Russo first presented in 1972 and would go on to deliver at colleges, universities, and small cinemas. After Russo’s death in 1990, The Celluloid Closet book was adapted into a 1995 documentary film of the same name directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981Literary awards
Stonewall Book Award (1982) Original title
The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies
368 pages, Format: Paperback Published
September 20, 1987 by Harper & RowISBN
Language English
About the Author – Vito Russo
Vito Russo was an early gay activist whose work at the Museum of Modern Art and love of movies led to the ground-breaking book The Celluloid Closet, which takes a look at the coded representations of gay men and women in the movies. He was also a vocal AIDS activist who helped found both GLAAD and ACT UP in response to the Reagan Administrations inaction at what is still a global epidemic.
Review
When Vito Russo published the first edition of The Celluloid Closet in 1981, there was little question that it was a groundbreaking book. Today it is still one of the most informative and provocative books written about gay people and popular culture. By examining the images of homosexuality and gender variance in Hollywood films from the 1920s to the present, Russo traced a history not only of how gay men and lesbians had been erased or demonized in movies but in all of American culture as well. Chronicling the depictions of gay people such as the “sissy” roles of Edward Everett Horton and Franklin Pangborn in 1930s comedies or predatory lesbians in 1950s dramas (see Lauren Bacall in Young Man with a Horn and Barbara Stanwyck in Walk on the Wild Side), Russo details how homophobic stereotypes have both reflected and perpetrated the oppression of gay people. In the revised edition, published a year before his death in 1990, Russo added information on the new wave of independent and gay-produced films–The Times of Harvey Milk, Desert Hearts, Buddies–that emerged during the 1980s. –Michael Bronski
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