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Though we tend to look at the history of queer media as a series of “firsts” or an array of cautionary tales, the annals of cinema aren’t always that dramatic. Many of the movies made in the first half of the 20th century are just okay, not to mention all the unwatchable films lost to fires and decay.

Take, for example, 1962’s Walk on the Wild Side, a movie that should (or could) be titillating and significant, but instead falls on the side of mediocrity. Still, despite its failure to launch, the film has something to teach us about censorship, authorial intent, and the convoluted business of moviemaking.

Ostensibly a romantic drama, Walk on the Wild Side struggles in the romance department, and its most interesting bits involve characters who aren’t given enough screen time. Set in the 1930s, (though you wouldn’t know by looking at it), Edward Dmytryk’s film follows Dove (Laurence Harvey), a man pining over his lost love, Hallie (Capucine). Journeying from Texas to New Orleans, Dove meets an energetic teenage grifter, Kitty (Jane Fonda), who proves too much for him to handle.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Dove, Hallie has started a new life working at the Doll House, an upscale brothel run by an exacting Madam, Jo (Barbara Stanwyck). Anne Baxter, for some reason, appears as Teresina, a Mexican cafe owner who has the bad luck of falling for the unavailable Dove.

For our purposes, the most interesting aspect of the film is Stanwyck’s character – Hallie’s boss and an icy lesbian. It’s obvious from the first moment they interact that Jo is in love with Hallie. Her attempts to be cutting or dismissive of Hallie only highlight the love simmering underneath. Whether or not Hallie shares Jo’s proclivities isn’t clear, though she does sculpt a bust of Jo in her room. For her part, Jo is jealous, possessive, and at times cruel. This behavior alone illustrates Jo’s queerness, as do many of her most heated exchanges with Hallie.

While talking to her husband, Jo admonishes him for believing he can love her properly. “Can any man love a woman for herself without wanting her body for his own pleasure? Love is understanding and sharing and enjoying the beauty of life without the reek of lust. Don’t talk to me about love! What do you know? What does that young fool know? What does any man know?” Though Jo seems to be referencing platonic love between women, it’s apparent that her feelings for Hallie are more than friendly ones.

Hallie knows this as well, and though Jo is her boss, Jo’s feelings for her give Hallie a certain amount of power. She knows what she can get away with, and she knows just how to wound Jo. After Jo tries to convince Hallie to break things off with Dove – more for her sake than for Hallie’s – Hallie refuses to obey. “Get your claws off me,” Hallie exclaims when Jo asks to have a drink with her. Jo is burned by Hallie’s words, and her anger leads to the film’s tragic conclusion.

Though Stanwyck brings her to life with a typically penetrating performance, Jo exemplifies an archetypical lesbian character, particularly during this era. An older woman who is possessive, cold, and obsessed with a younger woman is something we have seen before. On the melodramatic side of things, think of characters like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940), or June from The Killing of Sister George (1968).

Lesbian or lesbian-coded characters tasked with looking after young women is another common trope. Think of the French film Olivia (1951), Mädchen in Uniform (1931), or The Children’s Hour (1961), all of which depict lesbian teachers. We’ve seen queer prison matrons like Mama Morton in Chicago or the ruthless matron in Caged (1950). Belle de Jour (1967) features another lesbian-ish madam – this one takes a liking to Catherine Deneuve. Oftentimes characters like these are depicted as repressed or self-hating in some way, leading to their cruel behavior.

Despite Stanwyck’s winning performance, Walk on the Wild Side never really leaves the ground. A young Fonda is great in the film as well, and the screen crackles with energy every time she appears. The problem is that when Stanwyck or Fonda aren’t on screen, there’s not much to hold one’s attention. The writing isn’t up to snuff, and the romantic leads fail to deliver any sense of desire or even personality (unlike Stanwyck, who delivers both).

Neither Laurence nor Capucine are any good, and their scenes together are terribly dull. Capucine, though beautiful, is one of the film’s worst offenders. Her wooden acting means Hallie has no depth or originality, and her role in the film makes little sense. Dove is a humble Texas farm boy who knows the elegant, French Hallie from…where exactly? Though set in the 1930s, her glamorous styling is such that there’s not a moment where you forget Hallie is played by a French fashion model in the 1960s.

Nothing about the film is wild, apart from Anne Baxter’s perplexing casting as a Mexican woman. Indeed, though the film purports to depict the seedy underbelly of American life, its more scandalous elements are only alluded to, never shown. There are no explicit references to the sex work they do at the brothel, and it takes Dove ages to comprehend his beloved’s profession. The same goes for lesbianism, which is at least moderately important to the plot yet always tip-toed around.

The film was largely panned upon its release, and the surviving reviews paint a bleak picture. A 1961 review in Variety notes, “It’s obvious that in their treating of prostitution and lesbianism the filmmakers did not want to be offensive to anyone,” leading to a “watered-down” version of the book of the same name. In 1962, The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther wrote that “Everything in this sluggish picture [...] smacks of sentimentality and social naïveté.” Later, commenting on the film’s lack of truly adult content, he remarks that the film is “as naughty as a cornsilk cigarette.” A 2017 article in The Advocate suggests that the film nevertheless “helped move the needle on representation,” though it’s difficult to find any evidence for this.

So what went wrong? In essence, the film is a knock-off Tennessee Williams play, but without the good writing and a dilution of its gay elements. (To be fair, this unfortunate fate has befallen film adaptations of Williams’ plays as well, such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which excised the play’s gay themes, and which Williams noted would “set the industry back 50 years.”)

When you look at the trials faced during production, it becomes clear that the problems were numerous. The film went through six writers before it was completed, and by then it bore little resemblance to the source material. Notably, the intention was to capitalize on the recent changes in the Production Code that allowed for more leniency in regard to homosexuality and sex – changes brought on by the release of The Children’s Hour the year prior. Yet little of these liberal aims made their way into the finished product – perhaps the result of there being too many cooks in the kitchen.

In many ways, the behind-the-scenes drama is more interesting than the film itself. Producer Charles K. Feldman cast the film using actors he represented as an agent and earning himself an agent’s commission – a practice that is no longer allowed today. This helps explain Capucine’s out of place role in the film, as she was one of his clients as well as his rumored lover. (You can blame Feldman for the anochristic fashion as well – he demanded that Capucine wear the newest designs by Pierre Cardin while playing Hallie.)

Capucine was not well-liked on set, and rubbed both Harvey and Stanwyck the wrong way. During an argument, Harvey once told Capucine that “kissing you is like kissing the side of a beer bottle.” But it’s Stanwyck and Capucine’s legacies that spark our queer curiosity. Stanwyck was long rumored to be queer, though she denied such allegations. Still, she had no qualms about playing a lesbian character. Responding to a journalist’s amazement that agreed to play such a person, Stanwyck responded: "What do you want them to do, get a real madam and a real lesbian?"

Though her acting skills leave something to be desired, Capucine led an interesting life behind closed doors. The actress spoke openly about her queerness in the 1994 book Hollywood Lesbians, in which she mentions her time shooting Walk on the Wild Side with Stanwyck. "She did not flirt with me, I'm not sure if she even liked me, she was very businesslike. I think at that time, she had a lady friend, and she was not looking for someone else,” she told author Boze Hadleigh. Laurence Harvey was also rumored to have been queer, though his sexual orientation has no bearing on his stale performance.

Sadly, little of these intriguing backstories shows up on screen. We can attribute the film’s failures to poor casting decisions, too many discordant voices, and a lack of commitment to its “racy” subject matter. But did it, as proposed in The Advocate, “move the needle on representation?” It seems unlikely that the film had a significant impact in that regard, especially because it was The Children’s Hour that sparked those initial changes in the Production Code. What we are left to ponder here is what goes into the creation of “representation,” and how sometimes, intentions aren’t enough.

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