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[Poll #666716]

Found a great article about gay cowboy movies if you know how to look link to cache'd article

First gay cowboy movie? We reckon not

January 26, 2006

One of the producers of "Brokeback Mountain," James Schamus, was quoted recently boasting, "There has never been a homosexual cowboy movie."

Girl ain't seen many cowboy movies.

While "Brokeback" may have broken the back of the Western code that forbade such sexual openness on the open plain, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist are hardly the first two cowpokes to consider each other's saddlehorns.

Here's a look at a few Westerns practically pink with gay subtext.

"BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID" (1969)
The couple: Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford)

The scene: Two astonishingly gorgeous cowboys leave the country to find the solitude they desire for a life together. Etta Place (Katherine Ross) tempts Sundance; Butch tries to live up to his name but is clearly jealous ("My, we seem to be a little short on brotherly love 'round here").

The subtext: All they want is to be together. Can't you guys just leave us alone? No? Well, then, as Morrissey sang, "To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die ..." (Is that any more anachronistic, or gay, than the film's theme, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"?!)

"LONESOME COWBOYS" (1969)
The couple: A strange mixture of about half a dozen curiously streetwise cowhands, including Brother (Julian Burroughs) and Little Joe (Joe Dallesandro)

The scene: Take your pick, from the cowboy practicing ballet moves against a hitching post to the one who delivers a bitchy lecture about the misuse of mascara.

The subtext: Nothing sub about it. Director Andy Warhol went for baroque in this campy send-up of the hombre genre. When it replaced "Gone With the Wind" in an Atlanta theater, police confiscated it.

"BEND OF THE RIVER" (1952)
The couple: Glyn McLyntock (Jimmy Stewart) and Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy). Rock Hudson also appears, as a gambler dealing queens.

The scene: Adapted from a novel called Bend of the Snake (ahem), the film finds McLyntock telling bad men, "Every time you bed down for the night, you'll look back to the darkness and wonder if I'm there. And some night, I will be. You'll be seeing me!" He growls it like half threat, half Hallmark card.

The subtext: Kennedy gets sweet ol' Jimmy Stewart to crawl in the mud and do dirty things -- nasty things. The wet-chaps contest at the end is a baptism for Stewart's character: His straightness is born again.

"THE WILD BUNCH" (1969)

The couple: Gang leader Pike Bishop (William Holden) and Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan).

The scene: The boys have their last night together in a segment cut from the original but available on the director's-cut DVD. As Stephen Hunter from the Washington Post described it, "they do the most intimate thing men can do together and not be called gay, and that's go whoring."

The subtext: Hunter again: "Like Ennis and Jack in 'Brokeback Mountain,' they have no vocabulary to discuss what they feel." They even recall the evening at the same moment. If one of them had the other's shirt, he'd sniff it.

"RED RIVER" (1948)
The couple: Matthew "Matt" Garth (Montgomery Clift) and Cherry Valance (John Ireland)

The scene: Matt and Cherry pause on the prairie to admire each other's pistols, stroking each other's barrels and murmuring, "Nice, awful nice." Cherry grins at Matt (Clift was gay in real life) and adds, "You know, there are only two things more beautiful than a good gun. A Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. You ever had a good ..." -- their eyes meet -- "... Swiss watch?"

The subtext: "Red River" is the fountainhead of homos on the range. The Village People were subtler.

Thomas Conner tconner@suntimes.com