The seventh annual Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, opens today in Los Angeles taking over several venues in Hollywood. A few of the movies at the festival provide a look at the time when homosexuality could not be spoken of, or a little later, when it could be spoken of, but only negatively. According to The Advocate, The Closet on Celluloid is a particularly interesting segment,

Tea and Sympathy (above), from 1956, is about a young man (John Kerr) bullied for being “sensitive” and the older woman (Deborah Kerr) who takes it upon herself to prove he’s not gay. Darryl Hickman, who played John Kerr’s roommate, will be in the house for the film, showing at 2 p.m. Friday at the Chinese Multiplex.

Private Property is a noirish 1960 entry, also involves a man trying to prove his heterosexuality, with Warren Oates and Corey Anderson as drifters who try to seduce a beautiful woman. It’s on at 5:15 p.m. Friday at the Chinese Multiplex. In a different vein is an earlier noir with supernatural touches, 1947’s Repeat Performance, with Joan Leslie, usually an ingenue, in a more serious role as an actress who kills her unfaithful husband (Louis Hayward) but wants the universe to grant her a do-over. Richard Basehart, in his film debut, has a supporting role as a maybe-gay poet. Catch it Friday at 10 p.m. at the Egyptian.

And 1954’s All That Heaven Allows features not a closeted character but a closeted star — Rock Hudson — in a tale that served as at least partial inspiration for out director Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven. Hudson romances older woman Jane Wyman, despite her family’s disapproval, under the direction of Douglas Sirk. See it at 9:45 a.m. Sunday at the Chinese Multiplex, with indiefilmmaker Allison Anders providing commentary.

For more info, check out TCM’s lineup here.

(T/Y Tad; via The Advocate)