Pedro Almodóvar’s short film Strange Lifestyle opens a broader conversation about the Western genre and its treatment of sexuality. The recent release questions whether the late 19th‑century frontier era was truly free of queer identities, suggesting that both American and European Westerns historically erased or overlooked queer presence even as melodrama, comedy, horror, or thriller genres allowed intimate stories to surface. The film centers on a reunion between two former gunmen who once loved each other, a tale that unfolds in a landscape shaped by caution and restricted access for many Western titles.
In the purest classicism, same‑sex longing appears through allegory and subtext. Consider the 1948 film Red River, where an intergenerational power struggle unfolds between John Wayne, the emblematic masculine hero of Westerns, and his godson, portrayed by Montgomery Clift, an actor known for portraying fragile and ambiguous characters. The climactic moment features a fistfight that ends without a clear winner, while a later dialogue subtly reveals a double meaning: a gunfighter, played by Clift and John Ireland, speaks of his own reach with his guns.
The director Howard Hawks—known for his themes of male camaraderie and professional loyalty—also shaped stories that placed gendered performance at the center. In some narratives, Cary Grant dresses in drag within scenes from La fiera de mi niña and La novia era él, while the comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes includes a high‑gloss, muscular display that foregrounds performative sexuality. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell contribute to that sensibility, as a form of visual flirtation that challenges strict masculine codes.
Earlier explorations, such as King Vidor’s 1940 The Outlaw and related discussions around Billy the Kid, treated queer implications as an undercurrent rather than secretive subtext. George Cukor, a director celebrated for exploring relationships, added his own mark to the genre with The Cheyenne Gunslinger, suggesting a broader spectrum of gender presentation. The era’s conservatism is further contrasted in the 1950s, where actors like Rock Hudson embodied complicated masculine roles, and films such as Race of Violence (1954) touched on themes tied to Indigenous figures and power dynamics.
Yet none of these works matches the singular approach of Nicholas Ray’s Westerns. In The True Story of Jesse James (1957), Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter present outlaw figures who share a bond as tight as the one between James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause. Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954) goes beyond genre boundaries with an austere political undercurrent and lesbian subtext, while Joan Crawford’s character wrestles with publicly masked passions and a feminine persona that may clash with masculine ideals.
As the Western shifted toward a twilight mood, sexual ambiguity became more visible. The line separating romantic affection from homoerotic longing grew thin, paving the way for films like The Wild Bunch (1969), Two Men and a Destiny (1969), and Two Men Against the West (1971). These works feature rivalries and alliances among men, with Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross creating a triangular dynamic that resonates with contemporary questions about identity and desire.
Independent cinema and underground movements pushed the boundaries even further. Andy Warhol’s Lonely Cowboys (1968) and the collaborations of Andrew Herbert and Scott Hanson, including Song of the Loon, cast unconventional cowboys in bold new lights. The mid‑1980s saw Paul Bartel’s Lust in the Dust, which reimagined a classic Western premise around a bar dancer and a gunslinger, inviting trans performers such as Divine from John Waters’ circle and Tab Hunter into the conversation. Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) introduces Iggy Pop slipping into disguise and negotiating relationships that complicate the film’s uneasy emotional landscape.
Later entries like Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) broadened the discussion beyond traditional Western plots, while contemporary titles such as The Power of the Dog (2021) and Cowboys (2020) place repressed impulses and personal freedom at the center of American Western storytelling. The evolving lexicon of masculinity and desire continues to challenge earlier norms and invites viewers to rethink what the West represents. Scholarly works such as The Feather and the West: Homosexuality’s Fascinating Journey in the West (2019) and Queers & Cowboys: A Straight Year on the Gay Rodeo (2014) document these shifts, offering historical context for the ongoing conversation about sexuality in frontier narratives. These sources have helped illuminate a facet of cinema that was often buried or overlooked.