ABSTRACT
In 1941 Europe was at war, Depression misery was receding at home, and the movies were forged of lush brass. The possibility of war, for the United States, resembled that fabled elephant in the living room—not to be addressed, impossible to ignore. Speculation, that most useless of irresistible pursuits, enters the stage here. How much would the movies have changed if there had not been a World War II? How different would the lives of gays and lesbians be if that war had not happened? For all its obscene horror, the war gave them an opportunity to escape, to meet, to find themselves and be themselves. After the war, there was no turning back—instead, there was the exodus to such urban centers as New York and San Francisco. Film, in its garish audacity, charted this emergence, unwittingly reflecting gay life by evoking some of the closeted and open stirrings that so many servicemen and servicewomen effected through their time away from home.
