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.

Katharine Hepburn finds herself in some queer situations while disguised as a young man in gay director George Cukor’s 1935 film SYLVIA SCARLETT.

Agnes Moorehead and Lenita Lane are “roommates” in the 1959 thriller THE BAT.

Physique model Gary Conway becomes the monstrous object of fixation for the queer-coded Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell) in Herbert L. Strock’s 1957 horror film I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN.

The 1935 Hollywood Hays Code-era Astaire & Rogers musical TOP HAT features three queer-coded side characters.

Jean Engstrom plays a stylish queer-coded interior designer in the 1957 horror flick VOODOO ISLAND.

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dress in drag, and find themselves in some queer situations, in Billy Wilder's classic 1959 comedy SOME LIKE IT HOT.

Lauren Bacall is Amy, a queer-coded heiress, in the 1950 Michael Curtiz film YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, based on Dorothy Baker’s popular 1938 novel of the same name.

The 1950 women-in-prison flick CAGED! was based on notes and observations made by writer Virginia Kellogg who spent time undercover in the US prison system.

Rex O'Malley plays the queer-coded gay best friend in queer director Mitchell Leisen’s 1939 screwball comedy MIDNIGHT.

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.”

Candice Bergen, in her screen debut, plays a lesbian named Lakey in Sidney Lumet’s 1966 adaptation of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 bestselling novel “The Group.”