"Another of the main reasons why early cinemas were so suspect was that they often catered to female customers. Social reformers feared that unescorted women in a movie house could be drugged, kidnapped, sexually assaulted, or turned toward prostitution. While actual proof of these fears was hard to come by, many believed the stories at the time, and theater owners were forced to react. Thus, a greater emphasis on supervising women at the cinema (ostensibly for their own safety) may have worked against queer women developing a clandestine social environment in theaters. That gender disparity lessened a bit during World War II, as women began to compose the majority of movie theater audiences. With so many women working odd factory shifts for the war effort, theaters began running late-night screenings of films aimed at those women. Lesbian communities grew rapidly during the war years, due partly to the interaction of women both in factories and in social spaces such as the movies. At least some people noticed this development, if disapprovingly. In 1944 the Catholic Legion of Decency wrote to the Breen Office that “large audiences of questionable type” were going to see certain films, often those with pronounced lesbian subtexts.
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As these few examples show, Hollywood movies were important to the era’s growing queer subcultures. Shared appreciation of certain films and stars was a way for queer communities to coalesce and feel a sense of connection. As one lesbian of the era put it, “I was just enthralled [by Marlene Dietrich]. She has a sustaining quality about her that I know has turned on thousands of women in this world.”15 Similarly, when critic Margie Adams was introduced to Greta Garbo’s films, she responded by saying, “[I] knew, right down to my molecular structure, that the shimmering beauty with such a jawline up there on the screen was a dyke, just like me.”16 Such cinematic tastes, icons, and reception practices were handed down from older to younger generations of queers, and acquiring them often served as part of one’s coming out process. In this era, “coming out” did not refer to an individual’s announcing his or her sexuality to the straight world but was more like a debutante’s ball: one came out into a queer subculture. Coming out meant becoming adept at reading queer subtexts, being able to bend straight culture (in film as well as the rest of the material world) into something new, and learning the often clandestine and coded practices of the era’s queer subcultures. The sense of kinship created through such shared activity helped queer people begin to conceptualize themselves as both a community and a culture."
Harry M. Benshoff, Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America
