Great Moments in Gayness: Dietrich in Morocco
Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 9:11PM 
[Editor's Note: Please welcome Anne Marie to the blog! You've probably read her Golden Age Cinema musings before if you've been playing along with Hit Me With Your Best Shot (returning July 3rd!) but here is her first piece for the Film Experience! - Nathaniel]
Happy Gay Pride Week Everyone!
This is Anne Marie, writing to you directly for the first time. Today we have three things to celebrate: Pride Week, the Supreme Court's historic decision against DOMA, and my first chance to write for The Film Experience. If you followed me at all on Hit Me With Your Best Shot, you know that I always love to relate current themes to Old Hollywood. And guess what? I'm going to do it again, this time for Pride Week!
Looking for lesbian icons in Classic Hollywood is not always pleasant... [more]
Hays Code censorship demanded that queer women be portrayed as outright evil, morally bankrupt, and/or ultimately doomed. But for one brief, shining moment in 1931, before the Hays Code forced everybody back into the closet, we got MOROCCO, featuring Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo, kissing ladies. Swoon.
Everything that’s best about Dietrich is on display here: those cheekbones, that swagger! the curves, the tux, the androgyny! the playful sexuality with a hint of danger! the not-so-stellar singing voice we’ll forgive her for because of the rest of it! To modern eyes, Dietrich’s roguish flirtation and quick kiss may not seem like much, but let’s put it in perspective: Later gay and lesbian characters will be vilified under the Hays Code, but Dietrich is actually applauded. This is because, like modern drag queens, Dietrich plays her sexuality as an act. The kiss, the swagger, and the tux are all part of a carefully constructed persona. When Dietrich tosses the flower to Gary Cooper at the end of the scene, she’s supposedly restoring straight order to the universe, but ultimately the joke is on Cooper; the rest of MOROCCO is mostly forgettable, while this scene has become one of the most iconic moments of queer cinema.
Marlene Dietrich is one of those rare gay and lesbian icons, thanks to her theatrical gender-bending and downright sexiness in tails or taffeta. She has inspired countless later gay icons, including Film Experience-favorite Madonna. (Remember that "Like A Virgin" performance?) Dietrich also inspired a certain dress-loathing Catholic school student to wear a tux to her senior prom in 2006. Alas, my tux-wearing, like Dietrich’s, was halted by interference from the Church, which still does not take kindly to cross-dressing. (That’s not an anti-Catholic joke; that’s a history joke. The Hays Code was started by a Catholic league.)
Beyond mere fashion choices, Marlene Dietrich remains an icon and an inspiration because she lived her life on and offscreen on her own terms. In a time and place mostly unkind to homosexuality, she tossed on a tie and tails, kissed whomever she liked, and made people love her for it. Would that we all could have that kind of swagger.
Reader Comments (6)
Is Cameron Diaz doing a Matthew McConaughey first The Counsellor now she's playing Miss Hannigan in Annie.
Choosing to wear a Dietrich-inspired tux to Catholic school prom is so very badass. There just aren't enough words.
Oh, I'm so glad someone wrote this up. It was on my shortlist of great moments in gayness, and I chose another.
I saw Morocco several years ago and liked it. There's a scene that I liked where Dietrich, with her wonderful delivery, says something like:
"There is a Foreign Legion for women, too. But we get no comfort when we are wounded, and we get no medals when we are brave."
Wait, Marlene Dietrich was in this? I was too busy staring at Gary Cooper at his peak. ;-)
I always thought the main gay text in Morocco was the bearding of the two officers who are gay lovers.
When the first officers wife (who has to sleep with lovers because her husband will not have sex with her) becomes lazy in her adultery (threatening to expose their marriage as a sham) the unmarried officer who is his lover tries to avoid controversy by wedding Dietrich (offering her money and comfort). Dietrich realises she will be nothing more than a beard and refuses.
If you thought the rest of Morocco was largely forgettable you should re watch it with this in mind.