Use of "fag" in a 1933 movie to mean "gay"?

[Christopher Philippo]

On Mar 20, 2014, at 1:30 PM, Jocelyn Limpert <jocelyn.limpert at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> if “fag” was used to mean gay, and then vanished from movie scripts for 30 years, it would have been because of the Code and censorship, not to spare anyone’s feelings or even to be politically correct.
> Does anyone agree or disagree?

“Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden,” if it were strictly enforced in 1933 and if the censors understood what the word “fag” meant or implied, would have probably have prohibited the use of the word.  The Production Code Administration didn’t come about until 1934, so your theory seems reasonable - though the Code and censorship were a way of being politically correct.

Richard Barrios’ Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall mentions that Robinson’s character in Little Giant uses both “pansy” and “fag” (72).  “Preliminary scripts [for Blood Money] give the [George] Bancroft character a line that didn’t make it to the final cut.  'Listen, Fag,' he threatens a nosy cab driver, 'how would ya like to make bubbles in the river?'  The F word did turn up that same year in Edward G. Robinson’s Little Giant, loaded with some, not all, of the connotations it would later acquire “ (119 n. 14).  I’m guessing “some, not all, of the connotations” refers to the meaning of the word not being explicit: “handkerchiefs up their sleeves” may have been understood to mean effeminate in 1933, but may have only implied homosexuality.

"the crowning mark of effeminacy, the ultimate badge of shame, is the wrist watch.  What howls of hearty masculine laughter arise at the mention of that girlish trinket!  What would become of vaudeville if it were deprived of its perfectly killing jokes about folk who wear wrist watches and carry their handkerchiefs up their sleeves?”
Taylor, Deems. "The Fiction of D-As-You-Please." N.Y. Sunday Tribune Sunday Magazine. July 2, 1916. (in Deems Taylor: Selected Writings. NY: Routledge, 2006. 15.

You might try checking state and local censorship board records as to how they handled the line.  NYS required eliminations - I can check what without too much difficulty tomorrow, possibly.

Christopher K. Philippo

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