The Broadway Melody
The era of gay actors in Mysteries Mainstream Has Come
Tamara Kaye Sellman Writer's Rainbow Literary Services says on the cover of my detective novel Gay Crimes DVD, "The time for gay actors in all kinds of commercial fiction has come." Have? Is the world really ready for heterosexual an invasion of gay heroes in all genres of fiction outlets, such as fantasy, romance and mystery? Is the girl next door into the boy next door, Plain Jane, Jim floor, or the clueless husband, the couple in fact or idea?
Homosexual characters have made great strides in television network. The character of Jodie Dallas as played by Billy Crystal in soap at the end of 1970 is generally regarded as the first openly gay man as a regular cast member in a series. The thought has advanced to now have such credible figures as early gay Justin Suarez in Ugly Betty and the sociopath Andrew Van De Kamp on Desperate Housewives.
Sometimes you may get the impression that everywhere you look on television these days appears a gay, lesbian or bisexual. Not really. Of According to estimates by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), these characters represent only 2.6 percent of all regular characters on the show TV in the 2008-2009 season. Although this is from 1.1 percent the previous year and was a positive sign, more work is needed to achieve the right balance. Cable, with its two gay-oriented channel, Logo and here, normally offers a greater number of GLBT characters.
Hollywood, on the other hand, has not kept pace and seems stuck in the twentieth century. It is true that the big studios have become in many films with gay characters in recent years. Most of them, however, have been of minor roles, such as costume designer on Broadway Melody elusive, contained characters such as female school teacher at The Children's Hour, jokes stereotype, as police in Wild Hogs, or victims as the AIDS patient in Philadelphia.
In the four years since the groundbreaking Brokeback mountain, the major studios have produced only a gay film, award-winning milk. Hollywood executives claim a lack of high-quality gay scripts or the Television has a lot more time over a number of developing a character whose sexuality is only part of his life, while a film has only two hours. Others suggest movie executives tend to be older and therefore less comfortable with homosexuality.
Whatever the reason, Hollywood is out of touch. The Attitudes have changed, especially among young people who tend to be more receptive to alternative lifestyles. Unfortunately, so far, this acceptance has not been more of the major mysteries. Ask any typical mystery lover: when was the last time you read a crime story was a detective gay?
Gay characters have appeared in novels of mystery for a long time, but like the movies that were released mostly in minor roles as villains, victims or monsters. It was not until Joseph Hansen, Dave Brandstetter series showed that we had a detective – here an insurance investigator – who was blatantly and unapologetically gay.
The relative success of the novels Hansen paved the way for other gay actors and was followed by the mysteries of the breeze gay detective Aldyne Nathan Daniel Valentine, the lesbian amateur detective Jane without law on the books of Ellen Hart, and many others. However, few have made the crossover to the mysteries mainstream, unless you count the Alex Delaware novels of Jonathan Kellerman who have Milo Sturgis, a gay policeman friend of the protagonist or the adorable bisexual psychopath Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith's novels.
Despite the many advances made for gays and lesbians, and in particular the legalization of same-sex marriages a growing number of states, some readers because of their religious beliefs or prejudices are not just willing to accept a gay protagonist in a mystery novel or any another work of fiction. That's too bad, especially if you're a fan of mystery, as these novels not only give us more rounded and realistic images of gays and lesbians some of them are simply Crackerjack mysteries.
About the Author
Bob Frey has been an advertising copywriter for many years, has served as copy chief and creative head for several Los Angeles advertising agencies and received several awards for his creative work.Find more information on Bob Frey.
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2.75inch x 2 inch (7.5cm x 5cm) Fridge Magnet Sheet Music Broadway Melody $2.99 Brand new item despatched quickly from our warehouse…. |
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Broadway Melody of 1929 [VHS] $2.41 “100% All Talking! 100% All Singing! 100% All Dancing!” If the math is slightly off, the now-legendary ad campaign for The Broadway Melody can be excused. After all, sound had just come in, and a full-scale musical film was still a novelty. This tuneful 1929 production became a smash hit and won the Best Picture Academy Award® in the second Oscar® ceremony. The story is a creaky tale of two… |
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Broadway Melody of 1940 [VHS] $12.00 One of the most famous tap numbers in film history distinguishes Broadway Melody of 1940, the fourth and final installment in MGM’s Broadway Melody series. When Clare Bennett (Eleanor Powell, who had appeared in Broadway Melody of 1936 and 1938) needs a new partner for her hit Broadway show, small-time hoofers Johnny Brett (Fred Astaire in his MGM debut) and King Shaw (George Murphy) get their bi… |
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Cole Porter Collection (High Society / Kiss Me Kate / Les Girls / Broadway Melody of 1940 / Silk Stockings) $25.37 The Cole Porter Collection provides an overview of the swellegant songwriter’s witty lyrics and well-known melodies through five MGM musicals. The black-and-white Broadway Melody of 1940 features the brilliant dancing of Fred Astaire (in his MGM debut) and Eleanor Powell (in her fourth Broadway Melody picture). By the 1950s, we recognize the splashy colors that would become MGM’s distinctive styl… |
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Singin’ in the Rain $19.98 Decades before the Hollywood film industry became famous for megabudget disaster and science fiction spectaculars, the studios of Southern California (and particularly Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) were renowned for a uniquely American (and nearly extinct) kind of picture known as The Musical. Indeed, when the prestigious British film magazine Sight & Sound conducts its international critics poll in the se… |
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