oh-sewing-circle: “A good example of a historical queer response to a film from this era occured wit
oh-sewing-circle: “A good example of a historical queer response to a film from this era occured with the exhibition of The Uninvited (1944). The film drew so many lesbians to it that several pundits actually commented upon it. Although the film had been passed by the Production Code Administration (as well as by other state and local censor boards), it quickly became obvious that queer viewers were flocking to it because they ‘had been previously informed of certain erotic and esoteric elements in this film.’ While no character in this filmic ghost story is explicitly homosexual, its emphasis on female relationships lays a groundwork for a lesbian reading. Most pronouncedly, the character of Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner) is a rather butch matron who rhapsodizes over the dead Mary Meredith, recalling her beauty and how ‘the two of us dreamed and planned our lives, what we would do together.’ Even though Mary never appears in the film and is reported to have been married to a man before her untimely death, the evidence suggests that a sizable number of filmgoers were reading an implied lesbian relationship between Mary and Miss Holloway. The era’s film critics also picked up on the film’s lesbian subtext: 'Cornelia Otis Skinner is quite chilly as a Mrs. Danvers by remote control,’ wrote Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, comparing Miss Holloway to another of the era’s quasi-lesbian characters, Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940).”-From Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America by Griffin Benshoff -- source link