Was alfred hitchcock gay

Hitchcock cast gay actors John Dall and Farley Granger as the murderers, and the whole thing unfolds like a tense dinner party hiding a body. Much later, Landau acknowledged that he played Leonard as a homosexual, albeit subtly.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

The ambiguous nature of gay coding is well illustrated in Strangers on a Train.

Charters and Caldicott are wonderful examples. Something phallic is going on. They both join in a gunfight with fascists when their train is stranded, and Charters bravely assists the principle romantic hero, Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave), with restarting the train and escaping.

Charters and Caldicott are not sissy sidekicks, the most common gay male characterization allowed in American movies of the time (such as Edward Everett Horton’s roles in the Ginger Rodgers-Fred Astaire movies).

He used Granger again in Strangers on a Train. In the 1940s especially, lesbians were portrayed as dangerous and threatening, so the character of Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) was designed to fit that description. The last shot of the film is the monogrammed pillow case going up in flames.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Almost all of Hitchcock’s references to gay people reflect the intense homophobia of the time.

Hitchcock is strongly equating murder with sex. Hitchcock was aware of both possibilities.

Strangers on a Train (1951) — Three scenes: the pick-up scene at the beginning, the scene with mother in the middle, and a very brief carousel scene at the end.

The second scene has Hitchcock’s strongest gay codes in the movie.

Farley Granger was bisexual when making the movie and then was in a lifelong gay relationship starting in 1963. Caldicott has pajama tops on, but Charters is bare chested with only the matching pajama bottoms on. Most audiences of the time, especially British audiences, would have interpreted their relationship simply as one between eccentric, middle-aged bachelors.

Charters and Caldicott are cricket-obsessed Englishmen trying to get back to London as they are entwined in a typically complicated Hitchcockian spy thriller.

The word was never mentioned. Her male roommates will have none of that and retreat so quickly that, in a minor comedic flourish, one of them mistakenly carries out a coat hanger.

The Lady Vanishes (1938) — The introduction to the maid scene near the beginning, the bed scene later that evening, and then multiple cuts from the ending of the movie.

The most persuasive gay coding, however, occurs in the bed scene.

It can be read as Charters and Caldicott acting as proper, heterosexual English gentlemen. But Hitchcock wasn’t without his quirks; he was infamous for his practical jokes, like sending friends bizarre gifts or staging fake scares, which some folks link to a playful, maybe even flirtatious side.

He hobnobbed with gay artists right from his early days in England, buddies with actor Ivor Novello and his partner, attending their wild parties where the vibe was openly queer.

Some critics, however, simply leave out any mention of Bruno’s possible sexual orientation. Not by Hitch, not by anyone at Warners.