Franklin Pangborn in A Star is Born (William Wellman, 1937)

Franklin Pangborn’s been called an aesthete, prissy, flighty, a nance, a pansy, an effeminate fussbudget. Along with Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, and other beloved character actors of the classic era, he made queerness affectionately visible at a time when it couldn’t even be mentioned. This bit part in A Star is Born illustrates why: listen to the intonation on the first line ‘Flash!’, the stress he puts on the word ‘peak’, the phrasing  – does he change divine to devone? — the way he holds his hands, the passion for the inconsequential, the evocation of a slight superiority to what he’s doing, the uppity accent and the careful phrasing; the kind of guy who’d visit your home only to offer proof that your antiques are really repros: watching him speak, a whole other way of being, one then unmentionable, materialises and edges its way into representation.

José Arroyo