Pride of the Pansy Craze

Exclusive to MeierMovies, June 1, 2025

It’s Pride Month, when we recognize “queer” culture and act like LGBTQ celebration is a new thing. It isn’t.

As with other social movements, the general public is mostly unaware of what came before. For many, gay rights began with the Stonewall riots in 1969. Its roots go much deeper, of course, to ancient times. But because I’m a film critic and not a general historian, let me point out just one small but fascinating historical episode: the Pansy Craze of the late 1920s and early 1930s, during which drag performers and overall gay culture briefly gained mainstream recognition.

The queen of this movement was Gene Malin, an actor, emcee, singer and drag performer who became the face of the gay world, at least to straight audiences, during the Speakeasy era. Malin died in a car accident in 1933, at age 25. His death, followed by the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, or the Hays Code, starting in 1934, put the kibosh on the Pansy Craze just when it was reaching its peak. Gay culture in American cinema was thereby essentially shut down until the Code began to weaken in the late 1950s and early 1960s as an eventual result of the 1952 Supreme Court “Miracle Decision” giving First Amendment protection to film. (That decision overturned a 1915 ruling denying First Amendment protection to movies and opening the door for eventual censorship.)

Malin is mostly forgotten today. But had he lived, he would have been witness to — and likely participant in — not just Stonewall but an accelerating series of events culminating in the large-scale acceptance of LGBTQ life we see today.

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For another discussion of LGBTQ culture before it was labeled LGBTQ, check out the February 2021 episode of the In a Manner of Speaking podcast, which I co-produce. In this episode, Paul Baker discusses Polari, the secret language of gay men in England.