PLAGUE DIARY 30: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Neptune’s Daughter  (1949)
As Keenan Wynn (the narrator) says: “It’s the story of a guy, a girl and a bathing suit.” It’s actually quite funny as these musical comedies go, there are several cases of mistaken identity, and lo and behold Esther Williams (the queen of all swimming musicals) ends up getting along swimmingly with Ricardo Montalban, and they both look pretty fabulous in bathing suits. I keep stumbling across these movies written by women, and I’m beginning to think that maybe the notion that Hollywood was created by men and for men, is a myth. The screenwriter of this movie — Dorothy Kingsley — also wrote the screen plays for Kiss Me Kate, Pal Joey and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Okay I’m gay and I admit I find heterosexuality very confusing, and I can’t understand how it would not be frustrating for all those involved. Because with gay men it’s a matter of just doing it, or perhaps doing it too much, but it usually doesn’t take very much time to get down to doing it — unless the gay men are trying to act like heterosexuals  (which they do sometimes, dammit) — whereas with straight people, it seems to me like it’s all about the getting down to it, so much so that they sometimes forget to actually do it. You don’t have to listen to my opinions about feminism, unless you decide to read on, but most of them were formed by my friendship with desiring women. My mentor was Sue Golding, — now Johnny Golding — who when I asked her so many years ago about female agency in pornography, sent me a postcard (we were fond of have discussions through postcards) featuring a bunch of women in some old Hollywood movie spanking each other. I remember when I questioned her about it — ‘how do you know some man didn’t tell them they had to spank each other?’ She just looked at me in that way she had -- bold, challenging, and kinda quirky: ‘Who says?” Sue would always assume that every woman was a lesbian; I think it may have gotten her into trouble, but it was the kind of trouble she liked. I know this because she started a story once with ‘I was talking to my bank teller, who I assume, of course, is a lesbian,’ and I asked her ‘Why do you assume that?’ And she said  ‘Because I always automatically assume every woman is a lesbian.’ That was the kind of lesbian Sue was (and still is; she’s called Johnny now, but she’s a woman called Johnny, not a man). Not all lesbians are like Sue/Johnny. There are also lesbians like Susan Cole — a journalist acquaintance of mine, who generally acts as if lesbians don’t have desire, or if they do, it’s very different from the the desire gay men have — not just different, but as if we are another species. Once I met Susan Cole at the live concert performance of Elaine Stritche’s one woman show. I didn’t really want to talk to her, but she was sitting in my seat. Once we worked that out, she said  leaned over with condescending, pedantic interest, and asked: ’I’ve always wanted to know — what is it you gay men love so much about Elaine Stritch?’ 'The fact that she’s fucking talented,’ I said. It wasn’t so much the question, as how it was posed — are we really so different from you Susan, us gay men? Well desire is what I want to talk about, especially women’s desire, and I also want to clear up a whole pile of crap that has been spewed about the song ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ which if you remember was recently banned by the politically correct #MeToo thought police. Apparently that song is supposed to be all about rape, and so we’re not allowed to sing it anymore. Well the song was written by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls). He first sang it with his wife (a musical comedy actress) for a gaggle of friends at a ski resort. It first appeared before the public in Neptune’s Daughter, performed by Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban, Betty Garrett and Red Skelton. Riccardo Montalban sings the song to Esther Williams, who is wearing a fur coat on a cold night. He is trying to get her into bed (shocking, I know!). It is a song about flirtation between a man and a woman, in which the man is using every persuasive method at his disposal to get the woman into bed. But that’s not all. In the middle of the duet between Williams and Montalban, the screen cuts to Betty Garret and Red Skelton. Only in this case it is Betty Garret who is chasing Red Skelton around the couch. During the song, Red Skelton dresses up like Betty Garrett, and does a bit of a drag turn (which he repeats in a slightly different situation where he dresses in a woman’s swimsuit -- in a big Esther Williams synchronised swimming number -- because he’s trying unsuccessfully to pretend he’s a pretty girl to hide from gangsters. Where did the gangsters come from? Who knows. It’s that kind of movie) . If that isn’t enough fo you, have a look at Betty Garrett’s character. She is a man-hungry man-chaser (and she's really the funniest thing in the film, though Red Skelton is actually pretty funny too). When she hears that the men’s polo team is coming to town, she says “It’s my chance to meet a romantic Latin. I’m madly in love with the Whole American Polo Team” When her staid sister Esther Williams. (Yes she’s staid, even though she works out all her emotional problems by swimming in sexy bathing suits. For Esther Williams, a good swim is akin to a Shakespearean soliloquy, it calms her down.) Anyway Esther Wiliams challenges Betty Garrett, and Betty says “What’s wrong with a woman chasing a man?” and uptight swimsuit Esther says well it’s usually the other way around, and Betty Garrett replies, rather pithily, I think: “I don’t want to change it, I just want to get in on it.” Betty Garrett is like all those women who have ever asked me --  ‘why aren’t their bathhouses for women?’ When you call 'Baby, It’s Cold Outside' a rape song you wipe out the history of female desire, which goes further back than screenwriter Dorothy Kingsley — as far back as Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (and further). 'Baby, Is Cold Outside' is not a rape song, it wasn’t written or performed as a rape song, it’s a song about men and women and desire. Women have rape fantasies and rape flirtations and want to rape and be raped just like men, even though no one in their right mind ever wants anything in real life but consensual sex. And that’s all ok. Cuz you can’t police desire.  And I’m sure Betty Garrett would agree with me (if she hadn’t died, dammit). And, I think Esther Williams (after giving it a few moments of thought in her swimming pool) would agree with me too.