Editing James Whale (section)

==Sexual orientation==
James Whale lived as an openly gay man throughout his career in the British theatre and in Hollywood, something that was virtually unheard of in that era. He and [[David Lewis (producer)|David Lewis]] lived together as a couple from around 1930 to 1952. While he did not go out of his way to publicize his homosexuality, he did not do anything to conceal it either. As filmmaker Curtis Harrington, a friend and confidant of Whale's, put it, "Not in the sense of screaming it from the rooftops or coming out. But yes, he was openly homosexual. Any sophisticated person who knew him knew he was gay."<ref name = fir /> While there have been suggestions that Whale's career was terminated because of [[homophobia]],<ref>Bryant, p. 46.</ref><ref>Russo, pp. 50–51.</ref> and Whale was supposedly dubbed "The Queen of Hollywood",<ref>Benshoff, p. 41.</ref> Harrington states that "nobody made a thing out of it as far as I could perceive".<ref name = fir />

With knowledge of his sexuality becoming more common beginning in the 1970s, some film historians and gay studies scholars have detected homosexual themes in Whale's work, particularly in ''[[Bride of Frankenstein]]'' in which a number of the creative people associated with the cast, including [[Ernest Thesiger]] and [[Colin Clive]],<ref name=Bright>{{cite journal| last =Morris| first =Gary| title =Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein| journal =Bright Lights Film Journal| issue =19| date =July 1997| url =http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/19/19_bride1.html| archive-url =http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20020913151908/http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/19/19_bride1.html| url-status=dead| archive-date =13 September 2002| access-date =7 January 2008}}</ref> were alleged to be gay or bisexual. Scholars have identified a gay sensibility suffused through the film, especially a [[Camp (style)|camp]] sensibility,<ref>Skal, p. 184.</ref> particularly embodied in the character of [[Doctor Septimus Pretorius|Pretorius]] (Thesiger) and his relationship with [[Henry Frankenstein]] (Clive).

Gay film historian [[Vito Russo]], in considering Pretorius, stops short of identifying the character as gay, instead referring to him as "sissified"<ref>Russo, p. 50.</ref> ("sissy" itself being a Hollywood's gay stock character<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mislak |first=Mikayla |date=1 August 2015 |title=From Sissies to Secrecy: The Evolution of the Hays Code Queer |url=https://filmicmag.com/2015/08/01/from-sissies-to-secrecy-the-evolution-of-the-hays-code-queer/ |access-date=25 June 2023 |website=Filmic |language=en |archive-date=21 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201121053256/https://filmicmag.com/2015/08/01/from-sissies-to-secrecy-the-evolution-of-the-hays-code-queer/ |url-status=live }}</ref>). Pretorius serves as a "gay [[Mephistopheles]]",<ref>Skal, p. 185.</ref> a figure of seduction and temptation, going so far as to pull Frankenstein away from his bride on their wedding night to engage in the unnatural act of non-procreative life. A novelisation of the film published in England made the implication clear, having Pretorius say to Frankenstein "'Be fruitful and multiply.' Let us obey the Biblical injunction: you of course, have the choice of natural means; but as for me, I am afraid that there is no course open to me but the scientific way."<ref>Egremont, Michael, quoted in Skal, p. 189.</ref> Russo goes so far as to suggest that Whale's homosexuality is expressed in both ''Frankenstein'' and ''Bride'' as "a vision both films had of the monster as an antisocial figure in the same way that gay people were 'things' that should not have happened".<ref>Russo, p. 49.</ref>

Whale's partner David Lewis stated flatly that Whale's sexual orientation was "not germane" to his filmmaking. "Jimmy was first and foremost an artist, and his films represent the work of an artist—not a gay artist, but an artist."<ref>Quoted in Curtis, p. 144.</ref> Whale's biographer Curtis rejects the notion that Whale would have identified with the Monster from a homosexual perspective,<ref name = curtis144>Curtis, p. 144.</ref> stating that if the highly class-conscious Whale felt himself to be an antisocial figure, it would have been based not in his sexuality but in his origin in the lower classes.<ref>Curtis, p. 143.</ref>