Queering Kirk Douglas and Hoagy Carmichael in Young Man With A Horn

I’m going to make it a project to acquire some photoshop skills over Easter….but in the meantime here’s Kirk with Hoagy in ‘Young Man With a Horn’

It was actually quite difficult to put lipstick on Kirk. It’s not only that he’s got thin lips, usually wrapped around a trumpet here, but that his stance and look are so macho and self-possessed. It made me think that my previous choices were all in moments when Henry Fonda or the others were anguished or troubled or in pain, as if that was somehow the necessary factor to ‘queer’ them. So this time I took moments of pleasure and blissed them, though with difficulty.

José Arroyo