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Rumors abound about Salomé, and have since before the film had even been released. It’s said that Alla Nazimova, who stared in, produced, and funded the film, insisted that it have an all gay cast, as both an homage to Oscar Wilde and because the emotion necessary to the characters simply wasn’t possessed by heterosexuals. Whether or not the rumors were started to disparage the film (thoroughly unnecessary, the film tanked all on its own—art film was still very new to America; very few people knew what to make of Salomé on seeing it), there is some grain of truth to it. Beyond Nazimova herself, who was a lesbian, and director Charles Bryant, who was gay, an extra in Salomé reported that, while certainly not the entire cast, several members, both featured and extra, were indeed homosexual.
On the screen, there is no explicit gay activity, but it’s implicit enough to drown in. The two guards, the Captain and the Page—half-naked, wearing silver lamé loincloths, fishnet stockings, and heavy makeup—are played to the very height of gay stereotype, and many, perhaps all, of the female courtiers in the background are men in drag.
[ Gay feature | Lesbian feature | Trans feature | Queer feature ]
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