The Greatest Gay Love Stories

If Hollywood is in love with anything more than it is with itself, it’s with, well, it’s with love itself. From comedic to sweeping to lush to musical to historical, romance has been the backbone of the American film industry … not to mention its heart, its teat, and its moneymaker.
Historical romance is no small part of that equation. Hollywood has struck three-hankie gold with true-life romance in classics like Out of Africa (1985), Reds (1981), Cleopatra (1963), and even Bonnie and Clyde (1967). And an even more popular strategy of placing fictional lovers in the crossroads of history has paid off in spades with epics like Dr. Zhivago (1965), Titanic (1997), Casablanca (1942), Pearl Harbor (2001), The English Patient (1996) and Atonement (2007).
Biopics about gay and bisexual men are rare enough, and those that are told rarely focus on the love lives of these men (Capote) and sometimes remove the subject’s sexuality altogether (A Beautiful Mind, Lawrence of Arabia). Meanwhile, historical gay romances like Maurice and Brokeback Mountain have become classics of the romance genre. So why not combine the two?In honor of Valentine’s Day, AfterElton.com takes a look at some of the greatest true gay love stories in history and makes a few gentle suggestions as to how these forgotten romances could become the breakout romance films of tomorrow.