Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, and George Macready star in Director Charles Vidor’s 1946 film noir classic GILDA, which features a (barely) subtextual bisexual love triangle between its three lead characters.

Would it surprise you to learn that the 1949 musical ON THE TOWN, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin, has some very queer roots? Given that it’s a musical featuring sailors on leave, probably not.

The 1941 Disney animated short THE RELUCTANT DRAGON features a gay (technically queer-coded) dragon who is a reclusive pacifist living in the mountains, avoiding conflict by spending his time conducting songbirds and writing poetry.

Gay star Clifton Webb plays the queer-coded villain Waldo Lydecker in the 1944 film-noir classic LAURA.

Clifton Webb is the queer-coded wealthy “bachelor” Elliott Templeton in Edmund Goulding’s 1946 adaptation of queer author W. Somerset Maugham’s 1944 novel “The Razor’s Edge.”