Latitude in Mass-Produced Culture's Capital: New Women and Other Players in Hollywood, 1920-1941

Frontiers, 2004 by Abrams, Brett L

When Your Urge's Mauve, [go to] the Café International on Sunset Boulevard. The location offered supper, drinks, and the ability to watch boy-girls who necked and sulked and little girl customers who . . . look like boys.

The 1940 guidebook How to Sin in Hollywood offered tourists this description of a commercial establishment that they could see when they visited the Hollywood area. On the opposite page, a cartoon featured two women in tuxedos above the caption "the little girl customers."1 One smoked a cigar and both wore prominent lipstick. The description and cartoon presented images of women in the Los Angeles area who defied the culture's gender and sexual norms.

The description and cartoon of Café International suggested that the book's creators and readers accepted a link between the urban area of Hollywood, cross-dressing females, and homosexual women and men. Hollywood, the town, offered nightspots and other locations where Hollywood industry figures could act upon their non-normative gender and same-sex interests. Between the early 19205 and early 19405, the Hollywood industry publicity departments and movie-making personnel, novelists of Hollywood, and the newspaper reporters and gossip columnists capturing Hollywood industry people's daily lives placed cross-dressing females and other people who defied the cultures prescriptions about proper gender and sexual behavior in their depictions of Hollywood people and places. These figures-in this article called Hollywood players-did not adhere to the automatic link between biological sex and gender behavior, such as females behaving in a conventionally feminine manner. They eschewed heteronormativity, or the cultural prescription that bound sexual activities to a man and a woman who were already married or soon intending to be wed. These female Hollywood players used nightspots, homes, parties, and studio lots in downtown Hollywood, along Sunset Strip, and in the exclusive areas of Hollywood Hills and Malibu Beach to pursue their interests, and they forged a concept of Hollywood as a place of latitude for unconventional figures. The representations of these female Hollywood players portrayed them as complex, successful figures, an unusual depiction for living persons and fictional characters who defied conventional sexual and gender norms.

These images flourished immediately after World War I because of changes in the culture and the industry. The United States witnessed the breakdown of genteel culture and its restrictions on topics of discussion in the aftermath of the war. The new "modern" culture invited greater presentation of sexual innuendo and sexuality in the mass media. Indeed, in the first era to revision sexuality around desire and fulfillment, the culture interpreted sex as central to personal identities. The entertainment for this culture would logically focus on presenting such an important topic to its audiences, and news media outlets attempting to describe celebrity personalities would focus on sexual identities, as well. By 1920, the movie studios changed their publicity approach. The divorces and other off-screen activities of several major stars forced the industry to shift from promoting stars as picture personalities, reflections off-screen of their on-screen characters. Instead, the studio publicity featured the star's supposed everyday life and personality, with the latter necessitating the discussion of the star's sexual behavior, which was considered central to personal identities.2

The number and variety of media that featured Hollywood movie people expanded significantly during the era. Newspaper coverage included regular articles about the industry's personalities, occupations, and products and daily gossip columns from the six major syndicated writers on the beat. General-interest magazines, such as Time and Life, and the fanzines, such as Photoplay and Silver Screen, reached millions of readers with their weekly photographs, features, and gossip items on Hollywood. During the late 1910s, the Hollywood novel changed its focus away from the technology of movie making to stories about characters within the industry. Hollywood movies about the industry increased as movie production solidified itself in the southern California climate.3

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the development of places in urban areas where people with same-sex sexual feelings could pursue their interests and even establish a degree of community. Some locations, including parks and bathhouses, offered only temporary and clandestine opportunities, predominately to males. Other locations, such as bars in vice or tourist areas, always faced the threat of official repression. A few spaces, including the social club Heterodoxy and basement apartments in areas like Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Chicago's South Side, offered regular meeting places for a subsection of the nonconformist population of these cities for a short time.4 These places rarely appeared in the media, except during local authorities' efforts to drive the people who defied gender and sexual norms from local bars.5