Queer History 114: Before The Fucking Hay's Code, The Golden Era

The Queer Golden Age: LGBTQ+ Representation Before Hollywood's Great Erasure: The forgotten era when queer characters thrived on screen before censorship killed the party

You think the 1930s was all straight-laced puritanism and sexual repression? Think a-fucking-gain. Before Will Hays and his moral crusaders stormed the gates with their production code in 1934, early Hollywood was a goddamn queer paradise compared to what came after. For a brief, glorious moment in cinematic history—roughly 1927 to 1934, known as the "Pre-Code era"—American films featured openly gay characters, gender-bending performances, same-sex kisses, drag performances, and discussions of homosexuality that wouldn't be seen again until decades later. This wasn't some underground cinema movement either—this was mainstream Hollywood, baby, playing in theaters across America to audiences who apparently weren't clutching their pearls nearly as hard as history would have us believe.

Let me be crystal clear about something: the systematic LGBTQ+ erasure caused by the Hays Code didn't correct some temporary deviation from the norm. It violently interrupted what was becoming a remarkably …