The Silver Screen Oasis

This is a continuation of a discussion that began on another thread about something else.

First, TCM continues its Saturday morning presentations of Falcon movies on Sat., Jan. 7 with The Falcon's Brother. This is the one where George Sanders real brother Tom Conway takes over the Falcon role.
Second, I do not believe Gay as in Gay Lawrence or The Gay Falcon had the connotation that it has now. It was used in movie titles as well, such as The Gay Divorcee, etc.

Regardless, these are movies that I thoroughly enjoy re-watching. Nothing great, but good entertainment in about 60 minutes. I actually purchased both DVD sets.

Well, according to Wikipedia, "gay" as a synonym for "homosexual" didn't come in to fashion until the 1950s. Although, Gertrude Stein used "gay" in the homosexual sense in her "word portrait" Miss Furr and Miss Skein, published in 1923.

Fifteen years later in Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant used the term in a way that is open to interpretation.


It's obvious from The Falcon series that "Gay Lawrence" is not homosexual; au contraire, he's quite the ladies' man. Nonetheless, the name "Gay" for a male character strikes me as an odd choice.

Off hand, thinking of The Gay Divorcee, The Gay Caballero (2) and Gay Lawrence, I believe the thinking was the characters were happy, carefree, dashing (for men), etc. Nothing to do with homosexuality. Arlen probably just used Gay to reinforce the dashing, carefree man about town persona of The Falcon.
This was pretty much the definition of gay going back to the 1200's, before the homosexual community adopted it in the 1950's.

https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/85927/o ... ng-and-gay I think your right.

Marysara1 wrote: ↑December 27th, 2022, 3:18 am https://thrillingdetective.com/2019/05/ ... -lawrence/

MarySara: As with the TCM site, I do not open links unless the poster provides information as to why I should. Even then, I may be reluctant to open one.

The Falcon returns. 10:08 AM Saturday morning, TCM will be presenting The Falcon's Brother. This is the one where George Sanders steps out and his actual brother Tom Conway steps into the Falcon role. It is based on WW II German activities in US. A nice little movie.
Personally, I have always preferred the Tom Conway movies to those of his brother George Sanders.