"Rapacious dykes, self-loathing closet cases, hustlers, ambiguous sophisticates, and sadomasochistic rich kids: most of what America thought it knew about gay people it learned at the movies.".

"Screened Out is a look at sexuality in the Great Age of Movie-making. Spanning popular American cinema from the early 1900s until today, Richard Barrios offers a compulsively readable analysis of how Hollywood has used and depicted gays, and the mixed signals it has given us: Marlene in a top hat, Cary Grant in a negligee, a pansy cowboy in The Dude Wrangler - iconoclastic images that could shock and entertain simultaneously.

The screen, Barrios argues, offered powerful messages about tragedy and oppression and, sometimes simultaneously, could also strike notes of freedom and compassion.".

"Mining studio records, scripts, drafts and cut scenes, censor notes, reviews, and recollections of viewers, Barrios paints our fullest picture yet of how gays and lesbians were portrayed by the dream factory. He also offers a pointed warning: we shouldn't congratulate ourselves quite so much on the progress movies - and the real world - have made since Stonewall."--BOOK JACKET.