'Brokeback Mountain' 1959 style

thank you

as i was playing around with my new tv turner card, i taped tcm's recent repeat of warlock and after fonda and quinn are introduced to the town fathers they are lead upstairs and shown a room ,as i watched the film i could have sworn quinn said "throw out all this trash furniture and we can have a nice room with a bed here and a parlor over there " implying they were sharing that room and i was amazed i had never caught that before, however i went back and replayed the file and maybe quinn says "rooms" anyway i suppose that in the fifties no one would have ever been thinking along with a gay subtext in mind but today we look for different interpretations that reflect deeper psychological motivation for characters actions and it does somewhat enrich the viewing experience-anyway it was a interesting question

" Just because two strong men, Fonda and Quinn in the story are friends and contemporaries..in our modern world we have to always tag them as "gay" or "homosexual"."

Well, I'm not certain that I agree with this "gay" interpretation here, but I AM sure that I don't agree with what you say here. They seemed a lot more than "friends". I mean it's one thing to be friends, even to be willing to die for your friend, but another thing to kill everyone who threatens to disrupt the friendship. Morgan's behavior definitely has heavy strains of jealousy, and his devotion to Blaisedell goes far beyond what we would consider normal "buddies."

"Why do the modern films always want to smear and stain our beloved classics with the great Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn as playing gay men."


Whoah! That isn't a "smear" or a "stain" unless you believe that gay men are evil. Certainly these men are killers, but they aren't "villains." The "stain" is coming from your own negative preconceptions or dare I say prejudices.


"They are now giving old western movies a bad name now implying because two men like buddies are really gay!! Other western movies like 'Two Rode Together' with James Stewart and Richard Widmark and 'War Wagon' with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas....are they GAY too??!!!"

Again these guys seem like more than "buddies", and sure there are some implicitly gay relationships in various westerns. I haven't seen "War Wagon", and I don't think I would agree about "Two Rode Together", but say for example "Johnny Guitar" with the McCambridge and Crawford characters.


"Most of those classic movie actors of the past would not be associated with many of the so called new art films of today...they go too far in my opinion!!"

And this film didn't really go that far, but from what I've heard Fonda and Widmark were both pretty liberal compared to John Wayne.

"Men were men and women were women...they grew up hard, strong, tough, and resilent, not weak, sentimental, sissy, gay men as they are now portrayed on the screen."

wow, you are really revealing your prejudices here, sorry to say. "Gay" does not mean the same thing as "sissy" or "sentimental" or "weak". Try saying that on the corner of Castro street and Market in San Francisco, and see how long you still believe that gay men are "sissies." You'll find yourself well bloodied by a few "true men" before the day is over. Anyway what you're talking about makes it sound like you really cling to the old sexist notions about men and women's true nature, that men are strong and women are weak and that men who love other men are inherently feminine. This is all very old school and at this point old hat, at least in my opinion.

"I'm sorry, I was raised back in the 50's and 60's when strong leading actors were portraying our heroes...who do we look up to today?!!!"

I'd rather look up to Johnny Depp than John Wayne myself.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

There are male/male relationships that are not gay. People forget about the fact that sometimes a Beta male will pal up with an Alpha male. In the case of the Old West the Beta male (sometimes refered to as a side-kick) watches the Alpha male's back. (After all there are back-shooters everywhere.) Beta males also receive benefits from associating with Alpha males. They get leads for jobs, they have an easier in with women that the Alpha male reject or castoff, and they don't the responiblity that the Alpha male has to shoulder.

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