This gigolo drama united queer legends David Bowie & Marlene Dietrich on screen—so why isn’t it any good?
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we revisit 1978’s Just A Gigolo, a drama that brought together two of the biggest queer stars of their respective generations.As queer representation on screen has continued to grow over the years, so has the conversation revolving around the value of having queer roles being played by queer performers.
This can exist more easily now, and not just because there are more queer stories being told, but also more openly gay actors to embody them.And while this discussion is ever-evolving—and controversial—it really only began recently.
It was barely a conversation at the beginning of the century, and practically nonexistent beforehand. For the first two thirds of cinema history, queer narratives and openly gay actors were so few and far between, there was no place to question or interrogate who got to tell them.However, there were a handful of celebrities that were widely understood to be queer during that time; by the persona they build for themselves on stage or on screen, or by loud-enough rumors, anecdotes, and hearsay.
Two of the bigger ones of their respective generations were David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich. Although there were decades in between them, these two performers became known for their gender-bending, androgynous aesthetic; Bowie with his music and performance style, and Dietrich with the characters she hand-picked, costumes she wore on screen, and the way she carried herself off it.
