The Secret Gay Love Affair Behind Alfred Hitchcock's Rope

there's a pair of killer homosexuals on the loose at this party and nobody knows it but Jimmy Stewart that's the last time you'll ever see him alive Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film rope is a tense Thriller that starts with a murder but the tension isn't about whodunit we see that in the opening shot it's about whether the killers will get away with it after they stuff the body in a trunk and then throw a party in the very same room Brandon you don't think the party's a mistake do you the film is famous for how Hitchcock filmed it to look like one continuous scene playing out in real time with no cuts it was a madhouse you know it was just crazy but there's something else that makes it an even more audacious movie which is the unstated fact that its main characters are a gay couple what is extraordinary about it is it streamed into homosexuality slipping queer characters Past film sensors in the 1940s was no easy task in fact they nearly didn't get away with it and it was marked in big blue pencil homosexual out out out and what Hitchcock didn't know at least not at first is that the writer of the film was secretly having an affair with the leading man how clear their clandestine romance lent a whole new level of real-life danger behind the scenes of this iconic Thriller because if their secret was discovered they'd face the end of their careers or much worse it's the mid-1940s and Alfred Hitchcock is pissed after working in England for years Hitchcock had recently moved to Hollywood with his family to make big budget films in the studio system he'd signed a seven year contract with mega producer David O Selznick which he quickly came to regret Selznick had a reputation for being loud obnoxious and insisting on having creative control over every director's work he was a very cruel boss because he didn't hesitate to speak his peace salesman kept demanding major changes to films like Rebecca and Spellbound in the Paradigm case in one instance writing a 3 000 word memo to Hitchcock listing all the changes that he wanted he could dictate for hours and often did aided by a constant supply of Benzedrine which he carried in his pocket like loose change once in a while I'd say give me one of those things to stay awake I would go in there and type all night long Hitchcock was getting exasperated and in the mid-1940s he traveled back to the UK in part to work on anti-fascist films for the British government but also to meet with British producer Sydney Bernstein there they formed a plan to create a new company that would allow Hitchcock to get away from Selznick and make whatever movies he wanted while still working in Hollywood their company was to be called transatlantic pictures and before long Hitchcock had quietly started working on his own projects anticipating the end of his contract with Selznick who was Furious when he found out but powerless to stop him so with this newfound Freedom what movie did Hitchcock want to make an adaptation of the controversial play ropes end which is about a pair of murderous gay men a little background here the play ropes end is about two young men who are convinced that they're smarter than everyone else around them and that that gives them the moral right decide who should live and die they kill a schoolmate but they leave careless Clues and are eventually caught by a friend who turns them in the playwright Patrick Hamilton said that the play was based on a 19th century essay about crime but as someone who closely followed true crime stories of the time Hamilton was almost certainly influenced by the real-life case of Leopold and Loeb two teenagers in Chicago who'd killed a neighbor in 1924. just like the killers in ropes and Leopold and lo believed that their intellectual superiority entitled them to kill the whoever they wanted and they were embroiled in a sexual relationship with each other now there's nothing explicitly gay in the text of rope's end but Hamilton himself acknowledged that his dialogue conveyed homosexual subtext and that certain parts were in his words really cut out for a pansy his dialogue suggests a very close relationship and his description of their friend who turns them in is fopish exquisite and verges on effeminacy clearly patterned on Oscar Wilde not only that but as the play was performed over the next few years the queer subtext was clear to audiences reviewers openly described The Killers as homosexuals and perverts who commit a sex actual crime so that was the first story that Hitchcock was going to tell under his newly formed banner and not only that but he wanted to give it an extra Twist by doing something never before attempted with a feature film he wanted to shoot it not just on one set but to use some clever camera techniques to make it look like the entire thing was shot in a single continuous 80 minute span with minimal Cuts after years of feeling constrained by Hollywood's by the books Studio system this was Hitchcock's way of experimenting with something new and to show how daring and Cutting Edge you could be once he was Unshackled from producer interference but there was a good reason that nobody ever tried to do this it was nuts cameras of the time could only hold about 10 minutes worth of film so they'd have to find some way to hide the beginning and end of a take the solution to that was relatively simple every 10 minutes or so an actor would just walk in front of the lens briefly disguising the end of one take and the start of another but a bigger challenge was moving the camera through the planned multi-room set at the time Technicolor cameras were huge about the size of a refrigerator and the setting a New York City Apartment would have doors that were too small for a camera to fit through the solution to that everything would be put on wheels including the walls and a small army of stagehands would be just off camera sliding everything in and out of position as the camera went by aside from all the technical issues that the film presented an even bigger hurdle was the motion picture production code also known as the haze code starting in the 1930s film sensors had begun forcing directors to scrub content from films that they considered controversial stuff like interracial relationships characters showing disrespect to priests and homosexuality what they referred to at the time as sex perversion sensors had forced other recent movies to eliminate queer content like Billy Wilder's the Lost weekend which was based on a book by bisexual author Charles Jackson and originally implied that the main character was bi the sensors forced them to straighten the character out for the movie and it seemed that they'd probably do the same thing with rope but Hitchcock was determined to make this movie his way he'd long included queer subtext in his films starting with his very first movie 1925's pleasure Garden which featured a mincing dressmaker who flirts with another man hitch did it again in 1927's the lodger in which the characters comment on the queerness of the main character who's played by openly gay actor Ivor novello and then again in 1938's the lady vanishes which features two male companions who share a bed come in now Hitchcock can set his sights on making rope his most audaciously queer project yet for the script he hired Arthur Lawrence a playwright who'd had some success in New York but was struggling to break into film in La Lawrence was also struggling in his personal life he knew that he was attracted to men and for years he tried to straighten himself out through Psychotherapy he hadn't met with much success since every time that he thought it worked he found himself hooking up with another man he knew that adapting a play with gay characters would draw risky attention and Lawrence privately wondered if Hitchcock had hired him because he suspected that he was gay what was curious to me was rope is obviously about homosexuals that wasn't just his opinion everyone on the project knew what it was about we know that we that they were gay yeah sure but that was one of the the points of the film in a way but because of the stigma and the intolerance of the time Lawrence knew they all had to be careful about how they talked about it it was referred to as it they were going to do a picture about it and the actors were it as he started working on the script Hitchcock started casting he wanted all the main characters to be played by queer actors and had his eye on Montgomery Clift to play one of the killers Monty Clift was a major star who'd started out in theater and recently enjoyed major success in Red River and the search and although the public didn't know it his homosexuality was an Open Secret among friends in Hollywood money came over and just grabbed me by the back of him head and gave me this extraordinary kiss and then he said can I see you later for the part of the friend who catches The Killers Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant because I just went gay all of a sudden there had been persistent gay rumors about Grant going back to the 1930s when he lived with actor Randolph Scott pictures from the time show their happy household and close relationship and Studios did what they could to quash the rumors by saying that the two actors shared a house in order to save money even though by this point they were both exorbitantly paid movies stars who could each have afforded their own Mansions the rumors about Cary Grant being queer have never been definitively confirmed they're saying that Cary Grant was gay and you said of course everybody knew that well everybody talked about it yeah I didn't know for sure trust me but hitch's writer Arthur Lawrence did have an encounter with Grant that added to the speculation and if you want to hear that story I'll be posting a bonus video with that and more over on patreon you can find that at patreon.com Hitchcock lobbied hard for these two actors but they both turned him down according to what he told me they both turned it down because they didn't want to be identified with it that's when Jimmy Stewart got involved Stewart was recently back from serving World War II and was a huge bankable star he was interested in the role of the friend who catches The Killers and even though he wasn't gay he was too much of a sure thing for a Hitchcock to turn him down from there they soon locked in the rest of the cast John Dahl a gay actor who'd worked primarily in theater would play Brandon the overconfident Mastermind of the murder the power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create his partner in crime would be played by an up-and-coming Hollywood heartthrob named Farley Granger you just Astound me as always nobody knew it yet but Granger's involvement was about to complicate the project even further Granger was the child of a once wealthy family from San Jose that had been financially ruined by the Great Depression one of Granger's earliest childhood memories was locking himself in his bedroom one night listening to all of the family's possessions being auctioned off in their living room and then his father stealing a car and driving the family across California to start over again in Los Angeles struggling his parents hoped that their kid could make money in pictures and they enrolled him in an acting school he appeared in a play where a talent scout happened to be in the audience and offered him a contract with Samuel Goldwyn one of the biggest producers in town at first Granger appeared in a few small roles as a teenager and then took a break from acting to join the Navy in World War II there he found himself working in an entertainment division alongside Maurice Evans the gay actor you may recognize as Samantha's father on Bewitched thank you with daughter your charm is Ageless so sad about the rest of you and Ranger also explored his sexuality one night at a brothel he hooked up with a woman and then immediately after with a fellow service member an experience that left him confused at first but afterwards he later wrote he gradually came to realize he was bisexual and in a rare move for the time he didn't feel bad about it he later wrote I finally came to the conclusion that for me everything I had done that night was natural and good I didn't care what others might feel or think but I wasn't stupid I knew discretion was important then but I look forward to the time when and I could be myself but it would be a long time before he could truly be himself it certainly wasn't safe to be out in the military and though he made a few gay friends in the Navy he didn't hook up again until he was out of the service and when he came back to Hollywood to resume acting he knew he'd have to be careful there too at the time Studios went to Great Lengths to present actors as straight and when Granger returned to La after the ward resumed his contract with Goldwyn the studio did what they could to get in front of any rumors they planted stories about him in Gossip magazines explaining that he was single because he was just too picky to find the right woman when he went out to dinner with gay composer Aaron Copeland he was summoned to goldwyn's office the next day and yelled at for being seen in public with a homosexual the studio insisted that he start dating certain women and there was a threat that they'd arrange a sham marriage for him as they had a few years earlier for the actor Van Johnson I won't dance Mata I'm with you meanwhile Granger was struggling to establish a career for himself I wanted to work in the theater and I was under contract with Sam Goldwyn he didn't want me to do that he wanted me to do films Goldwyn just didn't seem to like him and kept putting him in terrible flops and that's when he heard that Alfred Hitchcock was working on a new film and wanted him for one of the leads so I had to go to the studio and pick up the script of rope I had no idea what it was Farley knew as well as Montgomery Clift and Cary Grant that there was a risk to taking on a role with queer subtext but working with Hitchcock was a great opportunity and his agent was able to convince Goldwyn to loan him out for the production soon there was another opportunity that Granger couldn't pass up after his initial meeting with Hitchcock Granger was more excited than ever about making rope and then he was introduced to the screenwriter Arthur Lawrence the attraction was instant they got together one night ostensibly to discuss the film and the gay subtext which turned into dinner which turned into an invitation to stay the night with that the two of them began a relationship that they knew they had to keep Secret at all costs if they were found out it would mean the end of their careers and there were potentially other consequences in the 1940s homosexuality wasn't just illegal in California it was punishable with surgical sterilization by the late 1940s around 20 000 people had been sterilized by California more than every other state combined Lawrence in particular was terrified of being found out and later wrote it was always on my mind in private they were both head over heels for each other but in public they resolved to keep their relationship Under Wraps but that plan wouldn't exactly go how they hoped as Lawrence worked on the script for rope he and Granger got even closer at the same time Lawrence was in the process of looking for a new place to live and Granger helped in a house hunt they found a cozy place in Laurel Canyon and as Granger helped Lawrence move in Lawrence noticed that Granger was also moving his own stuff in as well it just seemed to make sense given that they were already spending their time together and just like that they became more than a forbidden hookup now they both realized they were a couple meanwhile Lawrence was still working feverishly on the adaptation they've called for more changes than I anticipated the original play is full of British phrasing and needed a lot of work to make the American characters sound natural that led to trouble when the script went to the sensors for review before filming Hitchcock's producing partner Sydney Bernstein kept pushing Lawrence to make the script as he put it more literary that vague instruction drove Lawrence crazy and he took a break and flew back to New York to recharge he said now my boy you have to make every sentence a gym I said I'm going to New York you can make it a gym when he came back he found that Bernstein had inserted a bunch of the original language from the play back into the script and it sent it to the sensors for approval many of the lines between the two main characters in the original British script included the phrase my dear boy which threw the sensors into a fit well every my dear boy was marked in big blue pencil homosexual out out out so it had to be cleaned up from all those English remarks Lawrence quickly purged the my dear boys and maybe it's a good thing that those lines had drawn so much attention because the sensors missed a bunch of other innuendo lines that were far more suggestive Brandon how did you feel when during it I don't remember feeling very much of anything until his body went limp and I knew it was over if you arrive late to this movie and didn't know they had just done a murder you'd think they were talking about a hookup but with all the My Dear Boy lines getting all the attention that his office missed what was going on just below the surface they didn't have a clue what was and what wasn't that's how it got by and with the script approved rehearsals began the technical demands of the long takes made rehearsing crucial Hitchcock devoted almost all his attention to coordinating all the moving equipment and he was pounding on how much he rehears and Jimmy Stewart said the only damn thing that's been erased around here is the camera but something that the actors done extensively was how they were going to handle the gay subtext between the two leads played by Granger and doll they knew that they had to strike a delicate balance between playing the relationship in a way that audiences might pick up on while still being plausibly deniable in case the sensors noticed what they were doing meanwhile Farley and Lawrence were confident that they had successfully kept their relationship deniable as well or maybe not according to Lawrence as filming Drew near he knows that Sydney Bernstein the producer was unusually hostile at a party one night Sydney's wife Zoe who'd had a few drinks wait until her husband had left and she was alone with Lawrence to tell him he's in love with Farley too you idiot Lawrence later wrote that it was a chilling moment a sign that people were starting to notice how much time he and Granger were spending together and we're starting to suspect them he was terrified that soon it would go beyond rumor and gossip and that their careers would be ruined and they'd be forced into sham marriages to protect themselves then the weekend before shooting Lawrence and Granger received invitations to dinner from Hitchcock and his wife Alma Lawrence was looking forward to it a gathering he assumed with the entire cast before cameras rolled he and Granger arrived in separate cars just so nobody would suspect that they were together but they needn't have bothered when they showed up they discovered that it wasn't a dinner for the whole cast it was just Hitchcock his wife and the two of them Lawrence realized in that moment what Hitchcock had intended a double date Lawrence later wrote that Hitchcock probably didn't know about him and Granger when they started their relationship but he wrote he certainly knew now as it turns out though Lawrence didn't need to worry about Hitchcock finding out Hitchcock never raised it as a problem he didn't give a hoot in Hell whether I was gay Lawrence later wrote In fact it tickled him that we had a secret he knew because it was a slightly kinky touch and kink was a quality devoutly to be desired and when shooting got underway the next week there was plenty more kinkiness to go around the movie opens with a man crying out foreign and then a close-up on the face of the murder victim in a particularly post-coital pose and then the shot widens to show men embracing and strangling him we learned that the murder victim is named David and the two killers are his friends Brandon and Philip just as in the play the two leads believe that they're smarter than everyone else and are therefore entitled to decide who should live and die so they've killed their friend David simply for pleasure well The Davids of this world merely occupies space which is why he was the perfect victim for the perfect murder also as in the play they hide the body in a trunk and then Brandon wordlessly lights a cigarette which at the time movies often used as a sign that two characters had just had sex a few minutes later Brandon boasts about how successful their murder was while fumbling with the neck of a champagne bottle in a way that looks rather suggestive and their dialogue that gets even more sensual I vote tremendously exhilarated standing so close they're touching they start panting as they think about what they just did this scene absolutely lives up to what made theater critics call the play perverse and sexual how did you feel as part of their murder plot Brandon and Philip have invited over some people for a party so they can get a thrill out of being the only ones who know that there's a dead body in the room the guests are all family and friends of David the murder victim and among them is Rupert in the play this character was the effeminate mincing poet and if you think Jimmy Stewart isn't the first actor who comes to mind for an Oscar wild styled role you're not alone when he hired Jimmy Stewart I knew we were dead everyone thought that he was miscast including Jimmy Stewart himself who played the character as Gruff and restrained the film also changes him to be their former prep school teacher and according to Lawrence likely to have been Brandon's lover at one point a bit of that gay subtext still lingers in the script Brandon will sit up till all hours at the Master's feet Brandon at someone's feet who is this Rupert but it's mostly abandoned by Stewart's play at straight performance he was supposed to be the head homosexual in the picture well Jimmy Stewart Jimmy Stewart has no sex the audience also learns that his character is the unwitting inspiration for the boy's murder when they were students Rupert was a philosophy teacher and introduced the boys to the philosophical theory that certain people are superior to others and should be allowed to commit murder it's an idea that he still likes to share as a little thought experiment like the trolley problem no you don't really approve of murder Rupert if I may you may and I do think of the problems it would solve unemployment poverty standing in line for theater tickets but now unbeknownst to him Brandon Phillip have taken the thought one step further and actually carried it out the party proceeds with everyone wondering where David is is David here I expected him to come with you and Rupert getting more and more suspicious especially when Philip gets unusually upset by someone telling a story about him choking a chicken I never strangled a chicken in my life now look here Phillips because I strangled a chicken and you'll know it there are also a few more hints that Philip and Brandon are a couple such as the fact that they live together and share a bedroom hey I use the phone of course it's in the bedroom I have cozy and then just as everyone's leaving and it seems like the killers are going to get away with it Rupert finds a clue David's hat left behind in a closet suggesting that at some point in the day he arrived and never left after everyone else departs Rupert confronts the boys and Brandon proudly confesses thinking that Rupert will be impressed we've always said you and I that moral concepts of Good and Evil and and right and wrong don't hold for the intellectually superior but he's not and you've thrown my own words right back in my face Brandon but you've given my words a meaning that I never dreamed of the film culminates in a speech in which Rupert realizes the harm of his ideas you've made me ashamed of every concept I ever had of Superior or inferior beings and he wholeheartedly rejects what they've done by what right do you dare say that there's a superior Feud which you belong this film came out just a few years after the end of World War II during the war German leaders had used these theories about superiority to justify their atrocities and now here's a furious rebuke of those ideas written by a gay Jewish man delivered by an actor who fought in World War II in a film by a director who had spent the war making anti-fascist films for the British government it's at this point that the message of rope becomes clear that people who think that they're entitled to decide who should and shouldn't be allowed to exist are wrong and that Society cannot tolerate their intolerance what are you doing it's not what I'm going to do Brad and it's what society's going to do I don't know what that will be but I can guess you're going to die Brandon both of you the film ends with Rupert summoning the police by firing a gun from the window as they all sit in silence with the film done Warner Brothers was slated to distribute it and as it came together Executives got increasingly nervous according to one Hitchcock biographer they hadn't realized how clear the homosexuality would be but now that it was on the screen it was a lot harder to miss they were also concerned about the clear parallels to Leopold and Loeb and some worry that since the real-life killers were Jewish the movie could Stoke anti-Semitism in addition to strongly hinting at homosexuality as the release date approached Warner Brothers pulled back on their publicity Jack Warner distances company from the project saying he had no knowledge of its content and just as it hit screens the national board of review slapped it with the mature rating which severely restricted who could see it local film boards went even further the movie was banned completely in numerous cities like Memphis and Seattle it was restricted in Chicago and it was banned in countries like Italy and France a few of those censorship boards said that they banned the film because of the violence but there's actually very little even the shot of the murder is bloodless and Mild for the time even compared to Hitchcock's prior films other sensors said that it was because the killers aren't punished in the end which isn't really true since it ends with the police coming and a pretty clear indication about what's going to happen to them and most of the boards provided no reason at all saying it was just Brazen and immoral and unfit for decent people meanwhile many other movies that year came and went without any censorship despite being far more violent there were movies like Kiss the blood off my hand which also opens with a killing or cry of the city which features multiple on-screen murders or Raw Deal which ends with a particularly gruesome death given that those all came out around the same time what was it about rope that was particularly unfit for decent people most sensors never Spilled Out their exact reasons but it's hard not to see what they were objecting to if not the queer subtext between the drop publicity the ratings The censorship and some particularly harsh reviews in the end rope was a flop and a big disappointment for Hitchcock and the company that he had hoped would give him the freedom to pursue his own projects in Hollywood the culture at that time was trying to deny that homosexuality even existed so the best thing but let's not talk about this picture about it I think that was sort of the general reaction meanwhile things were rough for Arthur and Farley too the closet was taking a toll on both of them keeping their secret relationship hidden was a strain and Arthur was still struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality he started seeing a psychiatrist who promised that he could make him straight and Arthur insisted that Farley go as well Farley reluctantly agreed but in the end he just couldn't he told Lawrence that he was going to the sessions but wood instead just go for long drives instead he simply didn't think there was anything wrong with being bisexual and finally he told Lawrence that with one of them comfortable in his skin and the other trying to change them both it obviously couldn't work the two of them soon drifted their own separate ways Arthur went back to New York and Farley stayed in La still under contract to Goldwyn and trapped making awful movies he didn't want to be in it was the lowest point of his life Hitchcock was at a low Point too rope was followed by another flop under Capricorn and Stage Fright both of which reviewed pretty poorly transatlantic was losing a ton of money and clearly couldn't last hitch depressed stopped working for a year he retreated to a farm he bought in California and started drinking heavily but then he read a book that reignited his spark it was by Patricia Highsmith a queer novel whose books occasionally featured same-sex couples the book was strangers on a train and it's about two men who meet on a train and talk about committing murders for each other essentially swapping victims so that neither one is caught the idea fascinated Hitchcock and he started planning a film version but who would produce it now that he'd burned his Bridge with Selznick and his own company was ruined well as luck would have it Hitchcock still had a good relationship with Jack Warner and Warner Brothers was in need of talented directors since business had been pretty rough for the company that allowed hitch to cut a very favorable deal with them to make his next few films and with the studio paying but offering minimal interference he once again cast Farley Granger as the lead and shot the scene where a main characters meet as though they're cruising each other well this is wonderful you know having you as company all the way to New York there's lots of fleeting body contact close gazes suggestive friendliness I like you I I do anything for you it comes off as two men picking each other up in fact Hitchcock shot even more cruisy footage which he wound up cutting in the U.S but he left in for the UK version Oh we do talk the same language don't we show Bruno we talk the same language strangers on a train was a huge hit and it marked the return of Hitchcock's career after a series of flops it was the start of his most successful period And in the span of just a few years he made the movies he's most remembered for dial M for Murder rear window vertigo North by Northwest psycho the birds at Warner Brothers he had the clout to do what he wanted and the budget to see his vision through he was also able to start building his brand as the self-styled master of suspense and put his name above the titles of his pictures he also launched a successful television series where he introduced a new suspenseful story every week good evening do you believe in ghosts with these hits he turned himself into something very rare at the time a star director as for Farley Granger the success of strangers on a train showed him just how much he could accomplish when given the right roles something he'd never gotten a chance to do on a gold one he was desperate to get out of Hollywood and work on Broadway one of the last straws for him came one day when Granger was told to report to Harry Cohn the head of Columbia Pictures cone was one of the most hated men in Hollywood and years later when Cohn died and a large crowd of people showed up to his funeral actor Red Skelton commented that it proved the old saying give the people something they want to see and they'll show up every time when Granger arrived at Cohen's office he learned why he was there Goldwyn had gambled away Granger's contract in a poker game and now Cohn expected Granger to work for him Furious Granger was nearly at the end of his rope his only option was to buy out the remainder of his contract an astronomical amount of money that left him completely flat broke but he was also finally free of Hollywood from Executives managing His Image and from the pr campaigns that tried to sell him as a heterosexual heartthrob Granger moved to New York settled in next door to his gay friends Monty Clifton Roddy McDowell and was determined to become a stage actor his Hitchcock Fame was helpful for landing a few small roles in touring Productions and from there he worked his way into the burgeoning Off-Broadway movement and over the next few years he worked up to bigger and bigger stage roles and then in the 1960s director John fearley approached him about appearing on Broadway in The King and I it was the culmination of years of dreams for Granger and it marked his arrival as a Broadway star it was shortly after that that he met a production supervisor named Bob Calhoun Calhoun was part of the touring Repertory that Granger had joined and as they traveled the country over several years the 1960s the two realized they were falling in love they remained together for the rest of their lives in his Memoir Granger wrote that by the time he'd grown old and could look back he saw that all his life's Ambitions had finally come true there are big changes ahead for Arthur Lawrence too not long after rope he also returned to theater where he wrote a string of hits starting with a little show called West Side Story I was very much surprised it was a success I thought the show would run three months and close that was followed by another hit Gypsy he directed I can get it for you wholesale the show that introduced a promising young 19 year old singer named Barbara Streisand and then in the early 80s Lawrence decided to adapt a French film into a new musical at La Casio fall the outrageous is commonplace and nothing is ever what it seems the film was lakhajafal a story about two gay dads whose adult son falls in love with a woman and brings her parents over to meet the family but he's worried that they'll reject his dads for being gay in the 90s it would be adapted into the movie The Bird Cage and Lawrence's musical version featured a dramatic end of act one song I am what I am with lyrics written by Harvey fierstein but a damn till you can't you can't shout out loud what I [Music] the song and in fact the whole show is a rejection of bigotry and shame a declaration of Pride it was about as far as possible from the secretive dialogue that Lawrence had to employ 40 years earlier on rope now he could write a show about rejecting the closet and throwing off censorship and embracing yourself openly and honestly the play was a huge success La Casio fall has been the most joyous and affectionate experience I've ever had in the theater the biggest change for Lawrence though was meeting Tom Hatcher Tom was an actor working in a clothing store when Arthur happened to stroll in they struck up a conversation and realized they both had plans to attend the same Ethel Merman show that night and they fell instantly in love and they were together for over 50 years from 1950s to the 2000s across that half century they witnessed the steady dismantling of the intolerance that had once kept them in the closet made them try to change who they were they witnessed a change from having to hide and lie for their own safety to not only enjoying Newfound freedoms but using their talents to help that freedom grow for everyone Lawrence and Granger both passed away in 2011. shortly after writing memoirs about their careers in their books they revealed that they had drifted apart after rope but decades later after finding love in their own lives and success in their own careers they reconnected and rekindled a friendship now older wiser and happy with who they were in the lives that they'd made the movie rope didn't go down as one of Hitchcock's greats like the birds or vertigo when people think of it today they mainly think of the Innovative camera work but at the heart of the film is a story about tolerance versus intolerance and about hiding in plain sight told by people who were themselves forced to hide because of the intolerance of the time and who by the end of their lives were able to live honestly openly and with pride you have to live what you believe and to be proud that you have and to enjoy the lives and the love that they had always deserved love is the most important thing in life love and people I had the most marvelous life that anybody could have with another person that I'm proud of that's an achievement because most people quit on each other and we never did in making this video I dug up a lot more stories about the making of rope including these surprisingly dangerous technique they used to make the skyline which included bomb components salvaged from the military and also at the time Alfred Hitchcock got in Drag and some more clues about whether Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were really more than just roommates I'll be posting those stories in bonus videos over on patreon check those out at patreon.com mattbound huge thanks to everybody who makes these videos possible and now if you'll excuse me Alfred Hitchcock left his pants in my closet and I want to see what he's got in there Alfred Hitchcock wouldn't be all dead with a bubble gum in his pocket

Channel: Matt Baume

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Length: 33min 41sec (2021 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023