Behind the Screens

Behind the Screen

Viking, 422 pp., $29.95

For a history of Hollywood subtitled How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969, it's a little surprising that by page 128 (by which point we've arrived at the year 1933) the official justification for the suppression of homosexuality has already appeared in the form of the domineering Hays Code, the agent of censorship in old Hollywood. That's one way to give the heave-ho to nostalgia! The many unexpected twists and turns in the historical record are actually what give this well-researched account its readability. If the Hays Code had stamped out effeminacy by 1933, it certainly failed in eradicating homosexuality (see page 343, where Mann begins describing the Gay Girls Riding Club, an early Sixties group of creative gay men who worked and partied together). Mann, the author of Wisecracker: The Life and Times of Williams Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star, doesn't skimp on the lowdown (hello there, Nicholas Ray!), but he's not exactly out to name names. This thoroughly comprehensive account is guided by Mann's instinct that the nobodies -- the set designers, make-up artists, writers, editors, producers -- were crucial in two intriguing ways: fashioning Hollywood's image of itself and subtly challenging its guardians of morality. Scholarly and a little sassy, Behind the Screen is a much-needed book that thankfully doesn't always read like one.