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“Suddenly Last Summer”
A Tennessee Williams play adapted by Gore Vidal starring Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and closeted actor Montgomery Clift. Does it get any gayer than this?
It does, actually: Hepburn played Violet Venable, a socialite who “procures” young men for her gay son, Sebastian. (Taylor, as cousin Catherine, picks up the slack when Violet gets too long in the tooth.)
Released in 1959, Summer never overtly mentions homosexuality directly, but the Production Code Administration gave filmmakers a “special dispensation” to depict Sebastian as a predatory gay.
The Legion of Decency concluded, “Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a lifestyle, it can be considered moral in theme even though it deals with sexual perversion.”
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