Call Her Savage (1932)

The 1932 pre-code Hollywood film CALL HER SAVAGE is one of the earliest mainstream films in the USA to feature a scene inside a gay bar, or a gay friendly establishment.

In the 1932 pre-code Hollywood film CALL HER SAVAGE, “It Girl” Clara Bow visits what is likely a Greenwich Village gay bar – if you look closely, you can see multiple same-sex couples with their arms around each other. The scene also features two gloriously camp pansies, or “chamber maids,” prancing through the packed bar and singing about desiring sailors. According to film historian Richard Barrios, this moment was written into the original script to include “a few pansies and a scattering of lesbians.” 

If you’re wondering about the usage of the word “pansies,” CALL HER SAVAGE was released during the pansy craze - from 1930 – 1933 pansy characters were at peak popularity on stage and screen in America. Later, in 1934, queer characters like these would be banned from the silver screen due to a rising conservatism in America and pressure from religious groups. The Hollywood studios created the Hays Code as a means of self-censorship to avoid boycotts of their films, outside censorship, as well as to avoid the government stepping in.

The Hays Code had been around since the early 1920s as a list of “don’ts and be carefuls,” but it was largely ignored until mounting pressure became too strong. It banned all sorts of topics, such as mixed-race coupling, abortion … and “sex perversion,” their category for queerness; from 1934 onward queer characters would be reduced to subtext, or erased completely. The Hays Code would slowly weaken through the decades, eventually being replaced by the modern film rating system in the late 1960s.

Two same-sex couples in the bar scene (bottom right in each image).

CALL HER SAVAGE

1932. USA.

Director: John Francis Dillon

Screenwriter: Edwin J. Burke

Based on: “Call Her Savage” (1931) by Tiffany Thayer

Starring: Clara Bow, Gilbert Roland, Thelma Todd, Monroe Owsley, Estelle Taylor, Weldon Heyburn, Willard Robertson, and Anthony Jowitt

CALL HER SAVAGE is available streaming on YouTube.