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A blazingly original history celebrating the persistence of queerness onscreen, behind the camera, and between the lines during the dark days of the Hollywood Production Code.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code severely restricted what Hollywood cinema could depict. This included “any inference” of the lives of homosexuals. In a landmark 1981 book, gay activist Vito Russo famously condemned Hollywood's censorship regime, lambasting many midcentury films as the bigoted products of a “celluloid closet.”
But there is more to these movies than meets the eye. In this insightful, wildly entertaining book, cinema historian Michael Koresky finds new meaning in "problematic” classics of the Code era like Hitchcock's Rope, Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy, and-bookending the period and anchoring Koresky's narrative-William Wyler's two adaptations of The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's provocative hit play about a pair of schoolteachers accused of lesbianism.
Lifting up the underappreciated queer filmmakers, writers, and actors of the era, Koresky finds artists who are long overdue for reevaluation. Through his brilliant inquiry, Sick and Dirty reveals the “bad seeds” of queer cinema to be surprisingly, even gleefully subversive, reminding us, in an age of book bans and gag laws, that nothing makes queerness speak louder than its opponents' bids to silence it.
Author: Michael Koresky
Hardcover Published 3 June 2025 320 page
“Revelatory.... Koresky wears his erudition lightly, teasing out the mixed messages of code-era films with aplomb. It's a sterling work of film criticism.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Koresky analyzes Judy Garland as a gay icon and probes the portrayal of the social outcast in Tea and Sympathy and in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer. Such movies resonate for queer viewers, Koresky asserts, because they capture the longing for acceptance … A sensitive response to a rich trove of movies.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“An emotional celebration of artists gay and straight who bucked the Motion Picture Production Code of the twentieth century that aimed to erase queer lives. In a new age of censorship and book bans, Sick and Dirty feels itself like a glorious act of defiance. Koresky's writing crackles with urgency, and thank goodness because it's a history we're in danger of repeating.
” ―Steven Rowley, New York Times bestselling author of THE CELEBRANTS and THE GUNCLE