This document is a research essay analyzing representations of gender and sexuality in classic film noir films through the characters and lives of actors like Clifton Webb. It discusses how films like The Maltese Falcon, Laura, and The Lady from Shanghai used uniforms and performances of gender/sex roles to both promote and subtly challenge postwar social norms. It also explores how queer actors like Webb were able to authentically portray ambiguous characters because of their own lived experiences, yet still reinforced stereotypes through their performances. The essay examines the blurring lines between public and private identities for both characters and actors.

1. “National Uniforms:
Pretend-play, Performance, and Projection of Gender/Sex Identity in
Film Noir.”
CINE 486A: Film Noir
Student: Garrick Givens
Professor: Dr. Brian Wall
RESEARCH ESSAY FINAL DRAFT
(5/12/2014)

2. Contents ............................................................................................................................... p. 2
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... p. 3-5
The Subject/Object Project …………………...................................................................... p. 5-7
-“The Maltese Falcon” (Huston, 1941)
The Queer Web of Webb .................................................................................................... p. 7-12
- “Laura” (Preminger, 1944)
Rita: Viva the Shiva Diva .................................................................................................. p. 12-17
- “The Lady From Shanghai” (Welles, 1947)
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... p. 17-18
Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... p. 19

3. Children are encouraged by their guardians to “play” for recreation. During this said
playing children often “pretend” to be those they are not. This “pretend-playing” in adult-world
is better known as “acting”. The repetitions of these fictional activities desensitizes children to
the notion of a “singular-self”. One can be intrigued by the “spell” of their personality and the
varieties of self that lie within their Being. This voluntary participation in fantasy blurs the
realms of real and artificial. One must fear, and recognize, the queer notion that acting is then
perhaps not acting. When a thespian successfully portrays a figure contrary to their “true” self
their Being is inadvertently acknowledging the character resides somewhere within them; not as
a binary but as a continuum. In short, for one to act an identity their Being must contain that
identity in some partial degree.
Performance is not just a state of acting or playing. It is also the qualitative
measurement
of the playing; the post-propagated ability of the actor to pretend. An actors “true”, real, self-
perception is comprised of various exhibition reviews. The public persona created by the culture

4. industry shapes the private identity because, in the Lacanian sense, “true” knowledge of the self
or others is unobtainable (though if “truth” has a structure, or shape, of fiction then in a respect
all works of industry are “true”). Moreover, a comparable difference between playing and
performing is setting. An actor, or persons in general, pretend-plays identities with their friends
in private settings for child-like fun and recreation. While one is then inclined to perform
identities when exposed and relatively compared to the rest of society in the public sphere.
These differing types, styles, of performance permeate most notably with regard to
gender and sex constructs. The post-WWII queer of the “Film Noir” that Richard Dyer details
brings arise to the ever persisting subject/object dilemma of sociological construction. Aesthetic
experience is the resultant of the subject/object crisis and less an experience of the subjective
gaze (Wall, 17). Dyer’s and Wall’s writings help lay a framework to comprehend the subject/
object’ role in the formation of identity and it’ influence upon public performance. Ambiguity
of subject/object identification will be soon analyzed with the character Sam Spade in John

5. Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). I will explore the centralization of sexual, political,
“performances”, and their role in cultivating desirable identity in relation to Spade. Then, later
in the essay I will focus on the “public” and “private” lives of queered hollywood icons Clifton
Webb and Rita Hayworth. Detail of Otto Preminger’s “Laura” (1944) and Orson Welles’s “The
Lady From Shanghai” (1947) will not concretely analyze any particular cinematographic
sequence of the works but rather detail the queerness that comprised the tribulations of the
productions themselves. First, with Preminger’s extensive re-shoots and then with Welles’s need
to fund his theatre company’ current production. Utilizing means from one performance for
another performances end. This notion is key with regard to the development of actors like
Webb
and Hayworth.
Aesthetic presentations of character relations in the films previously mentioned allow
one
to note the underlined uniformity of gender/sex constructs. Definitive understanding of intent for

6. uniformity is somewhat unclear like the genre itself. This essay will only pander to the “noir” of
the “Noir” a bit as the focus must remain in the environmental disparity of playing and
performing. The “Noir” is much more than a world that establishes the emerging post-war
“American Dream”. The “Noir” playfully performs, stylizes, gender/sex roles in a uniform
manner to dilute the threatening presence of domestic Others such as homosexuals, blacks and
mexicans. Amidst Cold War hysteria Hollywood, and the government interest groups funding
them, realized the benefits of promoting new nationalism. Moreover, this intricate construction
of gender/sex relations in the post-war “Noir” glorifies the intrinsic value that lies within image,
identity, performance.
The Film Noir depicts femininity, sexuality, as a powerful tool utilized more for
sustainment of social status and less for advancement of status (Dyer, 129). This notion of Dyer’
alludes to the “blurred borders” that result from the subject/object conflict. For example,
Huston’s Sam Spade is pulled between the various prerogatives and stories of the other

7. characters like Cairo and Gutman. Between the worlds of law and crime the detective is
“...beholden to neither but resolutely, impossibly subjective and free. He is at the merest remove
from the world as it is” (Wall, 18-19). The hero of the “Noir” roams about to the tune of their
own individual codes and laws that maneuver and transgress the normative collective codes of
society. Wall’s notion of the detective can also be applied to actors themselves. Culture industry
figures, like actors, enjoy the benefits that accompany western culture’ excessive value of
entertainers. Actors also seem to adhere to their own ethics and laws un-inhibited by the
potential
consequences of their actions. It is this projected excessiveness of freedom that makes these
figures and lifestyles so attractive.
Within the context, world, of the Film Noir it is this excessiveness of feminine-like
sexuality that disturbs and threatens male security of dominance (Dyer, 127). It is this
suggestion
of Dyer that later comes to help detail the creation of Rita Hayworth as a prized sex object of the

8. nation6. Moreover, Dyer’s passage suggests males of the industry understood the intrinsic value,
power, of sexual identity performance. Femininity, sexuality in general, is threatening because
women can offer men a commodity men cannot (the “power of the purse” if you will). Though
not all males in the “Noir” desire women carnally. Queered or homosexuals characters, often
played by Clifton Webb, aestheticise the feminine figures. They “adore” them without really
desiring them sexually (Dyer, 124). Homosexual male characters moreover envy the beauty of
the females because of their centrality as objects of desire. In this respect envy of identity is a
projection of desire (projection of the “green eye”). The desire to be the desired; the desirable.
Male characters who are not even supposed to be seen as homosexual in the slightest are often
seen buying for the affection of male comrades (for example, Archer’s latent attempts to impress
and support Spade). The continuum thickens so to speak.
This notion is key with regard to Huston’s film. The stylizations of stories appear and
sound very significant (like “arts”, or performances, themselves”) to heighten the tense

9. interrelations of the characters (Wall, 22). Spade and the supporting characters interactions are
detailed with close-ups to parallel the transparent intimacy these proximal desired identities
intend to represent. The events of Huston’s film subtly present the frictions between the realms
of heteronormativity and homosexuality. The “stories” utilized by characters to attract, cement,
the teamwork of Spade can be viewed as verbal actings. Verbal maskings and renderings of
intent (“true” identity) whether sexual or platonic, that contribute to the overall blurriness of
uniformed identity in the film and the “Noir” in general.
The extent of this “uniformed intent” for universal androgyny is difficult to accurately
measure because of the epistemological disconnect between public and private livelihood.
Actings of the public sphere are the tiny bits of information cultural spectators have to form
images, perceived identities, of the figures. One is left with little space to distinguish between a
actor’ public and private identity due to the suggestion I made in the introduction. In order for an
identity to be performed the identity must exist in some residual form of the individual’ persona.

10. For example, a character of a film may happen to have a favorite drink, let’s say
Jeffrey Lebowski and his “white russians”. Then, if the actor who played the “dude”, Jeff
Bridges, is seen drinking a white russian at a bar their public and private identities as the “dude”
and “Jeff” could thereby be confused as one in the same (I could continue detailing the
queerness of Kris Kristofferson, whoops, I mean Jeff Bridges but I digress). It is more or less
these instances in which actors resemble their on-screen personas off-screen that contribute to
the haziness of their “true” self. Moreover, the ability of Clifton Webb, and queered actors alike,
to successfully play androgynous queers stems from the societal queering and overall discontent
of homosexuals, any Other, during the time period. Webb’ subjective experiences as a societal
outlier provided for the “honest” translations of excessively queered characters like Waldo
Lydecker in Preminger’s “Laura” (an immensely queer production itself to be detailed soon).
Analysis of Webb as an openly queer cultural figure further expands upon the political
undertones of the post-war Film Noir.

11. Webb was cast as a “queen-like” pimp of a young girl in his first feature film (Leff, 4).
This is incredibly significant with regard to Dyer’s previously mentioned notion of queer and
homosexual characters adoration, cultivation, of “Noir” femme fatales as central objects of
desire. Webb’ character is “literally” pimping an impressionable young girl within the context of
a studio production. This allows one to speculate that perhaps Webb is desensitized to sexual
objectification due to his acceptance of the offered role (of both himself, a male proprietor of
objectification, and the girl; the commodified object). Webb and the film do this during the
“playing” that takes place within the “private” production of the film (shooting, rehearsing, etc.).
Then the “performance” or public exhibition of the film that propagates the given spectacles
influence.
One can easily attest that finding Webb for the unique role of Waldo Lydecker fully
birthed his iconic queer status within the industry and publicly. In the context of the “Noir” the
role of Waldo encoded threats and promises of indecency (Leff, 6). Support that this role,

12. identity, had a premeditated intent to be distasteful. A character that must portray a certain
degree of queerness in relation to the rest of the figures. Thusly, creating an obvious focal point
of corrupt, or “strange”, morality for the spectator. A part Webb knew he could masterfully
“play” thereby oddly “perform”. For Webb, the line between his queerness and sexuality were
one in the same. Industry friends, professionals, closer to Webb’s “private” life were reportedly
“quite aware” of Webb’ pursuits. While the public could only speculate based on his public
queer campaigning within the industry (Leff, 3).
While the questions surrounding Webb were perhaps in question the immense
queerness
of Preminger’s production was unknown at the time. Webb sat pretty with a fifty-thousand dollar
production delay fee amidst Preminger’s trials to re-shoot a majority of “Laura”. For many
method actors delays may perhaps disrupt their ability to perform or “get in the zone”. But not
for our buddy Webb. This “queen” comfortably followed through as hired and “disturbed” the
masses of the mainstream with his performance. Under Preminger’s direction the “...queerness

13. was becoming more the pivot and pole of the film” (Leff, 7). The central “pole” of the film
became queer to extenuate the supposed lack Preminger saw within the footage. A choice to
parallel the film’ material with the queered, delayed, process of the production itself (unlike
Waldo, Preminger seemingly not so fragile with respect to his arts). The unique fragility of
Waldo also parallels the miasmic chaos that afflicted the production’ completion. The thin,
“muscle-tone lacking”, Webb provides an astute physical representation for the uniquely queer
persona, work, being cultivated.
The opening scene of the film Waldo sits comfortably nude typing the story of the late
idolized Laura. The fatal attraction to the beautiful femme. Although as mentioned Waldo’s
attraction to Laura is not sexual. Waldo, and perhaps Webb, adore the feminine beauties they are
not. The lustful desire to be the prime desirable (to hold “the keys” of carnal power if you will).
“If one deconstructs the word “laura” some intriguing notions can be drawn in relation to
the character and film. In French, l’ (e/a) translates to “the”. “Aur” is the future tense

14. stem of the verb “to have”. While “a”, conjugates the verb in the masculine singular, he,
form. So, all together, the phrase “L’aura” can be literally interpreted as “the will have of
the man”. Laura Hunt (the image of search for future treasures and possessions). Then,
also, if one were to drop the “l” one would be left with the english word “aura”. Aura,
defined as an intangible atmospheric like quality derived from the presence of a person,
place, or thing. The apparent “aura” of “l’aura” is what structures and drives the
characters motives and presented events in Preminger’s film” (Givens, 5).
A “Noir” queer is mockingly perverse and eloquently farfetched; elitist, powerful, and
cruel (Dyer, 123). One can apply Dyer’s detail of the “Noir” queer to all of Webb’ characters
from Lydecker to Belvedere. The figure, object, meant to be perverse and thereby feared. An
attractive danger that is exotic, erotic, or foreign. Queer, Other, roles were given to minorities
like gays, blacks, and mexicans to further queer them domestically. The goal being to include
the
social minorities in this post-war national sense of unity but only indirectly and as the “butt of

15. the joke”. This was pointedly done through, as Dyer mentions, the characters dress and speech.
The image and the sound. The elongated vowels, “tongue and cheek”, usage of “youuu” by
Webb’ Belvedere (Leff, 15). The blatant “foreignness” of the queers’ very dialect. A speech and
language that distances itself from the mainstream tonal code the film presents. A dialect that is
intently stylized to appear alluring yet tacky and unsettling all at once.
It seems as if the productive motives that comprise the “Noir” queer parallel the
contradictory nature of the genre itself. Narratives, stories, that are stylized to captivate interest
only to leave this intrigue “cliff-hanging” with bewildered speculation by the end. The residual
effects of queer character “aura” in general seem to pivot upon their own contradictory appeal.
Appeal in which stems from their Other or minority social status. Could attraction to these
characters be directly correlated with the social status? Or, more bluntly, is it cool to be a
minority (downtrodden, the underdog, etc.)? To delve a little deeper here, could the
presentation and production of minority characters as minorities in the post-war “Noir” (and
film

16. in general) be done to glorify these positions within society? It seems as if Hollywood has been
cooking up some domestic distractions for, dare I say, the sake of propagating more fear and
drama. Hollywood’s utilization of figures like Webb to diversify the social spectrum represented
in the industry was an extraordinary tactic of appeasement to induce national unity. The
ambiguous gender/sex relations in films increased during the war because many minority
spectators became conscious of the characters queered “contours of desire” (Leff, 10). The
careful outline or shaping of the “irregular figure”. Small sects of the populous were aware of
this larger construction but not in a critical manner. The allure to these characters peered through
the lens of amusement and entertainment. The main tools of distraction utilized to downplay
minority alienation with the increasing ideological ambition of universal uniformity. These
characters, actors, were literally the “color” entertainment or the colorful comedy that lined the
perpetual productions of the studios.
The queer feats to entertain and shock the public drew from their speech but also the

17. unexpected situations they were involved in. The unstableness of the post-war world enabled for
the on-screen presences of characters like Elliott Templeton from “The Razors Edge” (Goulding,
1946) (Leff, 12). One of many films listed on the studio contract that further extenuated Webb’s
public queer status. I note this role because it purportedly mimicked the “performance” of his
private self off screen in public. Webb’ persona, like I mentioned with Bridges earlier, has to
seemed to converged into one identity blurring the line between the public and private; the acted
and the performed.
The entrance into the nineteen fifties and exit from the immediate postwar years
slowly
diminished the availability for the continuance of queer roles to be represented (Leff, 22). The
cemented dominance of heteronormative culture subsumes the glaring identity of the post-war
American man or father figure. For a majority of moviegoers Webb fit into these hetero-father
type roles adequately enough (Leff, 22). This, largely due to his acting, playing, experience.
From stage chorus member, to lead. Webb then eventually transitioned, or crossed over, from

18. supporting queer to the thwarting, threatening, accomplice or “pimp” of the leading “Noir”
femme fatale. Then, finally, Webb found his way to the hetero-father. The one is who has seen
and experienced it all. The “father”, the “sansei”, or shepherd, of identity performance.
Quoting Barry King, the pivot of identity performance “lies in the suppression of those
elements
of the actor’s appearance and behavior that are not intended to mean at the level of
characterization” (Leff, 23). The technique of performance lies within the ability to carefully
mend and utilize unconscious projections of the personality to ones advantage. Thusly, creating
the more “honest”, real, character performances we deem exhibition worthy. Spectators
identification with these “truer” images is an identification with the images resemblance to prior
subject/object attachment. The subtle intentions of uniformity in the “Noir” are facilitated and
projected by the various wants and wills of these represented fathers. The masterful
manipulation
of identity performance by male father figures in the culture industry cannot be overlooked or

19. taken lightly in any respect. Just ask the friends, families, and fans of Margarita Carmen Cansino
(or better known publicly as Rita Hayworth).
The cultivation of the hollywood icon, “goddess”, known as Rita Hayworth can be
attributed to the various triple-threat lessons from male Svengali figures (notably Fred Astaire)
(McLean, 8). “Rita” was a more “full-figured” girl who had to be whipped into stardom shape.
Voice diction training and singing lessons were important in the process of Americanizing
Margarita. Her dark complexion and eccentric accent was a ripe commodity to be profited from
(but first must come the molding or the American tutoring). Voice training was also utilized in
the cultivation of Webb as a starlet (Leff, 5). Although, unlike Webb, Hayworth’ performance
skills were not that natural. Rita was the progeny of entertainers but here skills in the
performative realms of acting, dancing, and singing needed serious improvement for her to be
the racially-loaded queer her body gave potential for.
The combination, convergence, of public and private identity I alluded to earlier is

20. similar to what Dyer deems “magical synthesis” or unity of the star (McLean, 12). Cansino’s
body cannot separate from the form of Hayworth because the body is unable to reconcile certain
contradictions of its own. Rita’s poor, less attractive, “performances” at the beginning of her
career are resultants of the persona’ “in progress” transformation. As McLean thematically
emphasizes throughout her essay the transformation of Hayworth was easily attributed to the
cultivation of the culture industry but simultaneously to her want and will to “cross-over”.
Margarita’ desire to enter the sphere of public spectacle, world of entertainment, cannot be
dismissed. The choice to enter the theatrical realm is a voluntary suppression of self, identity. A
paradox of personal performance that distances and buries the ”true” self from public sphere of
reality.
The post-war hollywood “father” is the notable overlord that subliminally subsumes
“individual” identity and encourages construction of mass uniformity. The influence of the
“hollywood ethnicity” overshadows the privileges of hereditary means (McLean, 14). In the
case

21. of miss Cansino this helps affirm the flexibility of Hollywood in the post-war era to “extensively
work” on the diversification of their subjects. Cansino’ complexion and hair could all be
manipulated via cosmetics means to “make her white”; make her marketable to the masses. One
can further speculate as to Cansino’ opinion of her transformation. The “quick to do” attitude to
diminish the visible traits of her Hispanic ethnicity suggests a skewed personal identification. In
the Freudian sense Cansino, like any racial minorities residing in the United States at the time,
may have developed self-hatred for their own racial group because of its subjected status as
public Other.
This obviously not the case for many minorities but in Cansino’ construction an
eagerness to conform, and be one of the “white” herd, is more notable. “Rita” was purportedly
quite shy when accosted by fans in public (McLean, 17). Now, this somewhat opposes what I
was leading up to (Cansino’ urge to be an exploited star) but allow me to expand. “Rita” was run
ragged morning to night by the male-mentors of the industry. A strict schedule to motor,

22. monitor, the little worker bee of the hive that is Hollywood. I would suggest that the purported
shyness of the starlet was the resultant of being incredibly exhausted from her rigorous
“sculpting schedule” via the industrial machine. Though, these efforts of both Cansino and the
industry were not in vain. The cultivation of this starlet would soon prove for profitable
exhibition.
By 1942 Hayworth became an American cover girl (“gal back home” or a “specialist
in
leg art”) for the men of the military (McLean, 10). A “pin-up” worthy image that contributed to
the successful portrayal of the righteous American government and film business. The queer
irony is palpable (white American men fantasizing about a red-headed Hispanic). The industry
would soon experiment with the “true” power of their creation. The ceiling of Hayworth’s
cultivated queerness is reached with the role of Elsa Bannister in Orson Welles’s “The Lady
From Shanghai”. A film in which Cansino was transformed once again.

23. This time the women was morphed into a little “androgynous aryan” that blurred the
fine
line of masculine and feminine. Elsa, as a character, represents the coerced exit of womanly
“Rosie the Riveter” types within the public sphere. Government agencies such as the Office of
War Information enlisted a “media blitzkrieg” to glamorize untraditional female work that they
knew would be soon discouraged once again as the nineteen fifties neared (McLean, 11). The
industry knew that the moral ethics they had cultivated since entrance into the war would not die
down so easily. The cultural eccentricities of the time would need to be carefully ironed out and
pampered. The foggy dream of individual feminine prosperity must be entertained and “took for
a stroll”. One can speculate that Welles’s film was produced for the precise utilization of
facilitating this transition and mirroring this mixture of gender/sex roles (or “feminized
masculinity”). The “lady”, or masculine looking women, from a foreign land utilized to “shock”
and subtly alert the domestic masses to the present dangers that linger abroad. International
agreements and pacts such as the Good Neighbor Policy coerced the utilization of Hispanics

24. (“brown people”) like Cansino in Hollywood films to deceptively promote the ethnic diversity
the country campaigned (McLean, 13). This detail more or less emphasizes the notion that the
United States was primarily concerned with the “red enemy” of the east and not so much the
“domestic Others” of the Americas.
Welles’s “The Lady From Shanghai” is notably queered like Preminger’s “Laura”
because of the eccentric measures taken to produce and complete the work. The film openly
mocks the constructed definitions of identity through the campy, highly stylized, choices of the
cartoonish character actors. Michael' silly accent and Elsa’ subdued sense of androgynous
eroticism are received rather strange (strangely appealing and captivating). Many productions of
Hollywood at the time were chalk full of diverse ethnic “types” or representations. But overall
these figures emphasized cultural uniformity (McLean, 15). Any depicted forms of descent
against “morally superior” American culture via the means of race, religion, etc. were carefully
premeditated to illicit the intended purpose of the producers. As previously mentioned, to

25. accurately account for the “true” intent behind the promotion of performative uniformity is
uncertain. The extent of identity intervention is unclear but the presence of the lingering father
figure in these productions cultivation of gender/sex roles in the “Noir” is unavoidably visible
with regard to historical hindsight.
The plague, and influence, of visibility is significant with regard to gender/sex identity
conformity in the “Noir”. The ambiguous tension that resides in the noir of the “Noir (and
gender/sex relations) is the mediated focus on the visual. “... the paranoia of the noir universe is
primarily visual, based upon the suspicion that our vision of reality is always already distorted
by
some invisible frame... “ (Zizek, 152). The “invisible frame” that Zizek refers to is an allusion to
the unknown influence of a third party producer. Spectators of the cinema are constantly
spectators of identity performances via actors. Repetitive exposure to the material facilitates the
playful suspension of disbelief from reality by the viewer (a playful submission to buy into the
performance) causing perception of thespian performance to only come into view by the relative

26. relation of the subjective spectator. This notion again presents the problem of subject/object
conjecture. Late Lacanian theory suggests similar notions of the women, or object, functioning
as
a “symptom” of the subjected gaze. The subjects “symptom” or projected identity of the object
is
externalized in their own symptom (Zizek, 155). Moreover, the perception of identity lies within
the subjects own perception of the “true” self. An “honest” identity that is unconsciously cast
away during childhood recreational “play”. The extent to which “play-acting” by in large is not
“pretend” is an investigation to sort out another day. For the focus remains upon the uniformed
portrayal, construction, of “Noir” gender/sex relations.
Speaking of depicted androgynous men Kinsey states “... they may be better used to
describe the nature of the overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual
erotically responds” (Leff, 20). This passage, another reference to the externalized projection of
suppressed and repressed desires offered via the post-war queer. Moreover, the passage

27. underlines the significance of mastering, cultivating, of identity performance. Mastering the
ability to manipulate want and will of desire regardless of ones economic or sexual prerogatives.
Clifton Webb was a notable queen of hollywood that earned large sums of money and utilized
gossip surrounding him to augment his pubic image (Leff, 21). The entity of Rita Hayworth also
utilized the discrepancies of her artificially morphed identity when profitable for her image and
the image of the industry (McLean, 22).
It is evident that Hollywood “Noir” stars such as Webb and Hayworth were adequately
“taken care of” in exchange for their contractual “queer image services”. Manipulation of the
“look”, the aesthetic, is evidently motored by the capital self interests of the stars, producers,
and
government agencies that fund the industry. In a post-war period subject to desolate loss of
identity, for persons and nations alike, the reconstruction of image was of great significance.
Mass image rehabilitation utilized the influences of audio-visual communiqué to propagate
domestic Other hysteria during the famously heated Cold War. Trials and tribulations of

28. heightened, eccentric, overacted, identity performance in genres like the Film Noir became a
focus of industry experimentation to build this “new Nationalism”. These performances,
evocatively strange in their presentation, are primarily meant to reproduce a stigmatized fear of
lingering “Otherness” and coerce a uniformed subjectivity. To play or not to play, perform or not
to perform, etc. these carefully constructed identities harness the ability to “act” as a national
uniform. A national face, costume, or role, to all of those who pledge allegiance to the flag; and
the “will haves” it represents from thereafter.

29. Works Cited:
- Dyer, Richard. Women in Film Noir. London: BFL Publishing, 1998. 123-29. Print.
-Givens, Garrick. "The Aura of "L'aura"." FILM NOIR: THE INVESTIGATORY JOURNAL OF
“NOIR” FILMS (Part I), (2014). 5. Print.
- Huston, John, dir. The Maltese Falcon. Perf. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George,
Peter Lorre, and Barton MacLane. Warner. Bros., 1941. DVD-ROM.
- Leff, Leonard. "Becoming Clifton Webb: A Queer Star in Mid-Century Hollywood." Cinema
Journal 47.3 (2008): 3-28. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
- McLean, Adrienne L. "I'M A CANSINO': TRANSFORMATION, ETHNICITY, AND
AUTHENTICITY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF RITA HAYWORTH, AMERICAN LOVE
GODDESS." Journal of Film and Video 44.3/4 (1992/1993): 8-26. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
- Preminger, Otto, dir. Laura. Perf. Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price,
and Judith Anderson. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1944. DVD-ROM.
-Wall, Brian. Theodor Adorno and Film Theory: The Fingerprint of Spirit. N.p.: Palgrave
MacMillian, 2013. 7-39. Print.

30. -Welles, Orson, dir. The Lady From Shanghai. Perf. Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett
Sloane, Glenn Anders, and Ted de Corsia. Columbia Films, 1947. DVD-ROM.
- Zizek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out. 2nd ed. London:
Routledge, 1992. 149-65. Print.