Leslie Howard and the "gay doorman"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

I see from the archives that there has been extensive discussion on the
shifting senses of the term "gay" in the first half of the 20th century.
Quoting a 1999 post from Ron Butters:

     I have found that most such uses of GAY before the
     earlier 1940s mean 'homosexual' only to latter-day
     viewers but did not mean 'homosexual' to the person
     using the term at the time (though in the late 1930s
     GAY probably did have a queer-subculture meaning as
     'homosexual' for a coterie in New York and perhaps
     other big cities in the US).

So I was surprised to see the following in a recent Entertainment Weekly
review of the new _Gone With the Wind_ DVD:

     http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/dvd/0,6115,767420_2_0_,00.html
     Also included are historian Rudy Behlmer's exhaustive
     commentary track and the 1989 doc "The Making of a
     Legend," which showcases hilarious Scarlett wannabe
     screen tests (pip-squeaky Jean Arthur was a finalist?)
     and costume fittings for miserable costars Gable and
     Leslie Howard — at one point Howard supposedly bemoaned
     looking like a "gay doorman up at the Beverly Wilshire."

I'd imagine that the documentary is quoting the reminiscences of a costume
designer well after the fact, so this isn't the most reliable source.  But
could Leslie Howard have been familiar with the subcultural sense of "gay"
in the late '30s?  Or is it possible that Howard simply meant that the
doorman in question was 'decadent and fashion-conscious', as "gay" was
often construed to mean in the '20s and '30s?

--Ben Zimmer