Ben-Hur (1959): Gay Reading; Gay Subtext
Director William Wyler said to writer Gore Vidal about the friendship between Ben-Hur and Massala (Stephen Boyd): “Don’t Ever tell Chuck (Heston) what it’s all about, or he’ll fall apart.”
with James Dean all the more painful.
Moving into the 1950s, the documentary heralds the arrival of tough lesbians behind bars (Hope Emerson as a tough ward in Caged), but also the sleek socialite model, like Lauren Bacall in Young Man with a Horn, interpreted by screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (Cabaret) as a warning for women to get back to the kitchen.
During the Golden Age, censors set about removing any obvious homosexual elements from the movies, but traces often remained. In one of the film’s best sequences, Gore Vidal hilariously recounts his introduction of a gay frisson between Ben-Hur and Massala into his Ben-Hur scenario. Knowing the conservative, humorless politics of his lead actor, Charlton Heston, director William Wyler consented, but asked Vidale not to tell him about it, though co-star Stephen Boyd was aware of it.
Watching the scene today, with Boyd longingly–and campily– looking at Heston straight in the eyes, while holding his hand, gives the scene an entirely new meaning.
Similarly, Tony Curtis wryly explains the deletion of his erotic hot-tub scene with Lawrence Olivier in Spartacus (The scene was reinserted in later versions of the picture).