Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies on TV [Paperback]

A writer casts an acerbic, queer eye on the greats and the not-so-greats of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Ronnie Reagan's bizarre legs are sufficient reason to watch John Loves Mary (1949), a picture so ordinaire it needs this bizarre touch. When the faces in this historic still from the Museum of Modern Art are cropped, Reagan could pass for a butch lez from the Women's Army Corps who is about to put the old make on a fluff (Patricia Neal).
from Cruising the Movies

Cruising the Movies was Boyd McDonald's "sexual guide" to televised cinema, originally published by the Gay Presses of New York in 1985. The capstone of McDonald's prolific turn as a freelance film columnist for the magazine Christopher Street, Cruising the Movies collects the author's movie reviews of 19831985. This new, expanded edition also includes previously uncollected articles and a new introduction by William E. Jones.

Eschewing new theatrical releases for the "oldies" once common as cheap programing on independent television stations, and more interested in starlets and supporting players than leading actors, McDonald casts an acerbic, queer eye on the greats and not-so-greats of Hollywood's Golden Age. Writing against the bleak backdrop of Reagan-era America, McDonald never ceases to find subversive, arousing delights in the comically chaste aesthetics imposed by the censorious Motion Picture Production Code of 19301968.

Better known as the editor of the Straight to Hell paperback seriesa compendia of real-life sexual stories that is part pornography, part ethnographyMcDonald in his film writing reveals both his studious and sardonic sides. Many of the texts in Cruising the Movies were inspired by McDonald's attentive inspectionls5