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weekend watch

Uncover the hidden queer history of Old Hollywood with these streaming docs

By Lee Meyer September 13, 2024 at 4:00pm
Image Credit: ‘Tab Hunter Confidential,’ The Film Collaborative

Welcome to your weekend streaming recommendations, a.k.a. the Weekend Watch, a handy guide to the queerest film and TV content that’s just a click away!

In select theaters this week is Studio One Forever, directed by Marc Saltarelli, is a fabulous new documentary about Studio One, a gay nightclub in West Hollywood that opened in 1974. The critically acclaimed documentary tells the story of the legendary disco—housed in the same building where the cameras for The Wizard Of Oz were once made—where gays and some of the town’s biggest stars intermingled.

The secret gay Hollywood is a fascinating subject; with mainstream queer films at the fore more than ever, it’s easy to forget there was a time where a movie studio wouldn’t touch a gay-themed film with a 10-foot pole (no pun intended). But even during the Golden Age, a number of queer stars & stories managed to carve a path for themselves, even if their truths wouldn’t be told for many decades still.

With that in mind, read on for documentaries about Hollywood’s queer history to stream this weekend.

Scotty And The Secret History Of Hollywood

In this 2017 documentary by Matt Tyrnauer, viewers meet Scotty Bowers, a self-proclaimed unpaid pimp to the stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Scotty’s stories are wild, claiming that many, many supposedly straight Hollywood stars and starlets were up to all sorts of queer sexual shenanigans. The documentary is fascinating—even if all of Scotty’s claims aren’t totally true, he clearly knew the Hollywood elite, and his own sexuality was flexible and fluid, especially for the time.

Now streaming on Prime Video, Hulu, Roku, Tubi, Kanopy, Pluto, Plex, and Freevee.

Tab Hunter Confidential

Based on Hunter’s book of the same name and directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, Tab Hunter Confidential features interviews with the gay actor about his storied career, his relationships, his struggling to come out of the closet and more. Included in the film are interviews with Clint Eastwood, Laine Kazan, Robert Wagner, Don Murray, John Waters, Debbie Reynolds and various other heavy hitters, as well as archival footage of Natalie Wood, James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Anthony Perkins. Fans of the Hollywood heartthrob need to check this one out.

Now streaming on Prime Video. Available to rent or buy digitally on Apple TV and Amazon.

The Silver Screen – Color Me Lavender

This fascinating 1997 documentary by Mark Rappaport explores the gay underground of Hollywood’s golden age. In Color Me Lavender, gay actor Dan Butler narrates and hosts an interesting look into Hollywood’s very repressed studio system, and the hints of queerness that permeated many mainstream films. Don’t expect a boring dissertation, though — The Silver Screen – Color Me Lavender is often hilarious, with cheeky nods to queer-coded Hollywood movies, including those starring the most “macho” of men, like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Now streaming on Kanopy. Available to rent or buy digitally on Amazon.

The Celluloid Closet

This seminal 1997 documentary, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and based on the book by Vito Russo, takes a deep dive into Hollywood’s history of gay representation. A comprehensive look at LGBTQ+ representation from the silent film era to the 1990s, The Celluloid Closet explores the queer themes in films like Rebel Without A Cause, goes into the “bury your gays” trope of gay characters dying, that permeated many studio pictures, the Hays Code censorship, and eventually shows some of the more positive representation. While The Celluloid Closet is a little dated today—Hollywood has come a long way—it’s a vital piece of critical queer cinema.

Now streaming on Tubi. Available to rent or buy digitally on Apple TV, Microsoft Store, and Amazon.

The Kicker…

In this clip from Saturday Night Live featuring Bowen Yang and Jason Momoa (swoon), a PBS show about silent films goes weirdly wrong.

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