Did Hitchcock ever admit that the characters were gay?
Like in an interview or article?
shareNot that I know of--he only talked about the gay theme to the screenwriter, Arthur Laurents, in Laurents' memoir called "Original Story By", and even then, Hitch just referred to the gay theme as 'it', like everyone else back then. What fascinated him was not just the controversial gay theme, but that the two gays were also murderers. Laurents' also said that he wrote the Jimmy Stewart character as being gay, too, but that Stewart's down-home character did not convey gayness at all, to Laurents's disappointment.
shareStewart was fantastic as always but the part was also offered to Cary Grant, who would have been PERFECT. Rex Harrison would have been great in this part as well, come to think of it. Neither of them were effete, but they had that well bred tone of voice that would have fit well against Brandon's somewhat feminine mannerisms.
shareCary Grant would have been better than Stewart (who admitted himself was miscast) but better than either of them would have been the ever charmingly sinister and ambiguous James Mason, as put forward in the documentary "Rope Unleashed". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXjTByzECE0
Funnily enough, Mason played a rather similar role -that of the arrogant murderer who thinks he's achieved the perfect crime- in The Upturned Glass, which has quite a Hitchcockian feel to it. Also on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ju6_d80vFs