. . . most gender-confused major-studio American movie of all time. Maybe the writers felt guilty about being male civilians in wartime, maybe they were just homophobic or closet cases; the fact is that the cast-list of this film falls into three gender categories: macho men who nance around at the smallest excuse; nelly men (and I do mean nelly: the butchest item among them is Hollywood-fey icon Richard Haydn); and neuter (Ilka Chase). Oh, make that four categories; at this point in her career, Claudette Colbert deserves one of her own.
This is not a good movie; the comedy is lame, the drama lamer. But for anyone interested in Tinseltown's erratic progress toward self-knowledge in sexual matters, it is required viewing. It certainly confirms the long- time rumor that director Mitch Leisen was gay. And for gay males of a certain age it includes a precious (in both senses of the word) sequence in which one of those pectoral-less Charles Atlas-style "strongmen" flexes for Colbert's camera in (I'm not making this up) a leopard-pattern posing peplum, on a set featuring (I tell you I'm not making this up) a plaster "broken" Greek column that must have been borrowed for the day from Athletic Model Guild. (No that can't be right; Bob Mizer didn't set up AMG until '45. Do you suppose he snapped it up after Paramount was through with it? If so, it's even more historically significant.)
Point for further study: 30s and 40s male stars like Clark Gable, Johnny Weissmuller, and Fred Macmurray were all pretty flat-chested. When did Hollywood discover pectorals?
This is not a good movie; the comedy is lame, the drama lamer. But for anyone interested in Tinseltown's erratic progress toward self-knowledge in sexual matters, it is required viewing. It certainly confirms the long- time rumor that director Mitch Leisen was gay. And for gay males of a certain age it includes a precious (in both senses of the word) sequence in which one of those pectoral-less Charles Atlas-style "strongmen" flexes for Colbert's camera in (I'm not making this up) a leopard-pattern posing peplum, on a set featuring (I tell you I'm not making this up) a plaster "broken" Greek column that must have been borrowed for the day from Athletic Model Guild. (No that can't be right; Bob Mizer didn't set up AMG until '45. Do you suppose he snapped it up after Paramount was through with it? If so, it's even more historically significant.)
Point for further study: 30s and 40s male stars like Clark Gable, Johnny Weissmuller, and Fred Macmurray were all pretty flat-chested. When did Hollywood discover pectorals?