Talk:Bringing Up Baby

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1 1938 or 1950
2 "Gay"
3 Capitalization
4 Trivia

[edit] 1938 or 1950

Released: June 16, 1950. Isn't this a 1938 movie?

[edit] "Gay"

I've seen this film many times (one of my favourites), and I've always taken the use of "gey" to be its older use ("merry", "giddy"), which just happens to resonate with the modern use ("homosexual") because Grant's character is wearing women's clothes at the time. Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:44, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Look at the Cary Grant and Gay articles. Also: [1], [2], [3]

'Gay' as an adjective may have been used as far back as the 1500s in England's theaters for a young man or boy wearing the costume of a woman in a play ("send in the Gay"). A suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back to 1637. The Oxford dictionary defines one of the seventeenth-century meanings for gay as "addicted to social pleasures and dissipations, often euphemistic: of immoral life." John Ayto in 20th Century Words calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by a U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays. Hugh Rawson in Wicked Words notes a male prostitute using 'gay' in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. The word 'gay' in the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a 'gay house' was a brothel. Like "molly," which was originally slang for a female prostitute, "gay" may have been extended to describe male prostitutes or transvestites who often frequented the same neighborhoods (the "gay" quarters).

The term 'gey cat' (gey is a Scottish variant of gay) was used as far back as 1893 in American English for "young hobo," one who is new on the road and usually in the company of an older tramp, with catamite connotations (they formed protective, often sexual, alliances). But Josiah Flynt in Tramping With Tramps (1905) defines 'gay cat' as, "An amateur tramp who works when his begging courage fails him." Gey cats also were said to be tramps who offered sexual services to women. Gey cat, "homosexual boy," is attested in N. Erskine's 1933 dictionary of Underworld & Prison Slang.

Robert Chapman's The Dictionary of American Slang reports that 'gay' (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Donald Webster Cory writes in The Homosexual in America, "Psychoanalysts have informed me that their homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use by homosexuals themselves." About this time, English speakers began to use "gay" as a playful, double-entendre code word. An early example of this usage in print is Gertrude Stein's characteristically repetitive language in her short story Miss Furr and Miss Skeene (1922): "They were quite regularly gay there, Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene, they were regularly gay there when they were gay. They were very regularly gay."

'Gay' was first used to refer to a male homosexual in the book The Young and Evil which was co-authored by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler and published by Obelisk Press in 1933. It depicts their life in Greenwich Village in 1930-31. It was one of the first novels that dealt with homosexual characters in a nonjudgmental way and was a cause celebre for a whole circle of bohemian modernists. Published in Paris, it was banned in both the United States and Great Britain and any copies found in the possession of travelers was seized by customs. It first appeared in the United States in 1960 as a reprint by Olympia Press.

New Yorkers were using 'gay' by 1939 as a alternative to 'queer,' 'pansy,' and 'fairy.' Gershon Legman & G.V. Henry mentioned the term in their book Sexual Variations (1941). In the 1940's, Lisa Ben could discreetly call her lesbian friends "gay pals" and her publication, Vice Versa, "America's gayest magazine," knowing that most heterosexuals would not grasp the full implication of the word. Similarly in 1951, Donald Webster Cory wrote that it was such an insiders' term that "an advertisement for a roommate can actually ask for a gay youth, but could not possibly call for a homosexual." The term was also recorded in Australia in 1951, in which the term 'gay boy' was used. In Dr. Richard C. Robertiello's book Voyage from Lesbos (1959) he details the analysis of a lesbian patient named "Connie," Connie uses the world "gay" to describe a girl in one her dreams.

The term "gay" did not become widely familiar to the general public, until the Stonewall riot in 1969 and became synonymous with a (usually male) homosexual in 1971 but by 1974 the word was expanded to mean both male and female homosexuals. In the 1980's many writers, ignoring the word's history, attacked the "new" usage as a corruption of a useful, "innocent" adjective.

References: [4], [5], [6], [7]

Books:

According to Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, the script actually had Dexter (Grant) saying "I. . . I suppose you think its odd, my wearing this. I realise it looks odd. . . I don't usually . . . I mean, I don't own one of these." However Grant ad-libbed his own line, "No. I've just gone gay . . . all of the sudden." pg. 47. Vito Russo had pointed out that this was an indication that people in Hollywood, at least in Grant's circles, were already familiar with the slang connotations of the word.

Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia by Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson, pg. 229

Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present by Neil Miller, pgs. 358-359

Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Ned Katz, pgs. 188-189 -- WiccaIrish 15:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

That's all very interesting (if that sounds sarcastic, it isn't meant to be; it really is interesting), but it doesn't answer my question. It shows that the use of "gay" to mean "homosexual" wouldn't have been anachronistic, and that Grant probably knew of that usage, but not that that was how he meant it. Is there any evidence that that was how it was meant? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

That's the problem. Grant nor anyone connected to the film ever confirmed this, that I know of. Of course Grant was speculated to have been bisexual, and may have avoided the question altogether. The question may have never been asked in the first place. -- WiccaIrish 02:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a condensed version of this discussion could be placed in the article. Obviously it's not a huge issue, but if it could be explained accurately and concisely it would be relevant and of interest. (There are echoes of the Goon Show here; they got away with murder on the BBC in the 1950s, because the BBC executives weren't familiar with forces slang.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

How about:

Arguably, this was the first film to use gay in a homosexual context. Robert Chapman's The Dictionary of American Slang reports that 'gay' (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Donald Webster Cory writes in The Homosexual in America, "Psychoanalysts have informed me that their homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use by homosexuals themselves." Donald Webster Cory wrote that it was such an insiders' term that "an advertisement for a roommate can actually ask for a gay youth, but could not possibly call for a homosexual." According to Vito Russo the script actually had Dexter (Grant) saying "I. . . I suppose you think its odd, my wearing this. I realise it looks odd. . . I don't usually . . . I mean, I don't own one of these." However Grant ad-libbed his own line, "No. I've just gone gay . . . all of the sudden." Vito Russo had pointed out that this was an indication that people in Hollywood, at least in Grant's circles, were already familiar with the slang connotations of the word. However, Grant himself nor anyone involved in the film ever confirmed this. Of course Grant was speculated to have been bisexual, and may have avoided the question altogether. The question may have never been asked in the first place. The term "gay" did not become widely familiar to the general public, until the Stonewall riot in 1969.

I added the above to the article (with source added). Feel free to edit it or take it out. It's entirely up to you. -- WiccaIrish 16:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization

I'm pretty sure this should have been left at Bringing Up Baby (capital "U"). Generally accepted usage is that prepositions are capitalized if they're part of a verb phrase. —Chowbok 03:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)