The Smiling Lieutenant is mostly about Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins being in love with Maurice Chevalier, which is very straight, but they share one very charged scene with each other, which is very gay. In it, they go from enemies to friends over the course of a song, mainly through Colbert teaching Hopkins how to be a bad girl. A slap fights leads to weeping and then comforting each other and then showing each other their underwear and then singing about lingerie and then kissing. It’s basically the gayest makeover montage ever.
Colin Clive and Amelia Earhart on the set of The Woman I Love. The photograph is from a book of 700 photos by Alex Kahle which sold at auction for $3,000.
Description:
Photograph album comprising approximately 700 gelatin silver photographs of various sizes mounted on heavy stock paper. 36x31 cm (14¼x12¼"), bolt-bound cowhide-covered album
Signed by Alexander Kahle, the principal cast members (including stars Miriam Hopkins, Paul Muni, Louis Hayward, et al.), and crew (including producer Albert Lewis, writer Mary Borden, et al.). Directed by Anatole Litvak, The Woman I Love is a 1937 American film about a romantic triangle involving two World War I fighter pilots and the wife of one of them. It was based on the novel by Joseph Kessel. Photographs by Alex Kahle. According to Mary Mallory, “When most people think of motion picture stills photographers, they think of such renowned portraitists as George Hurrell, Ruth Harriet Louise, Clarence Sinclair Bull, and Eugene Richee, who created the glamour and iconography of the classic film stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Often forgotten are the lensers who concentrated on scene stills, establishing a film’s mood or theme as they also developed character. German Alex Kahle brought dynamism and verve to his work as a scenes and off-camera stills photographer by shooting for the angles, making his images often “pop” off the page.” Kahle is perhaps most notable for his work on the set of Citizen Kane. According to Harlan Lebo in Welles, Toland and Citizen Kane, “Alexander Kahle, the RKO still photographer who shot almost daily on the Citizen Kane set, was a constant observer of the Welles-Toland professional relationship. “The two,” said Kahle, “saw eye to eye from the first.” The present album presents a wide variety of film stills in various sizes with behind the scenes shots, some cut and arranged in collage.
The album includes a page with four on-set photographs of Amelia Earhart. The film’s director, Anatole Litvak’s biography refers to the day she came to the set, "During the shooting of the picture, famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart visited the set. A fan of Paul Muni, the two posed together for a photograph. The actor remarked later, "it was the only time during the making of the film that I really felt like an aviator - by association!”
