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This chapter offers an account of Wyler's first film for Samuel Goldwyn, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's hit play The Children's Hour — now renamed These Three. Changes in title and content were mandated by Joseph Breen because of the controversial nature of the play's subject matter, which touched on a lesbian relationship; the film eliminated that relationship and instead focused on a ménage à trois. The chapter also pays considerable attention to playwright Hellman's numerous script revisions in her attempt to refashion and refocus her play. There is also a visual analysis of key scenes, as well as a discussion of Wyler's first collaboration with cinematographer Gregg Toland.

This chapter details Wyler's involvement in political activities that were organized to protest HUAC's influence over the content of motion pictures and its blacklisting of film artists accused of being subversive. Along with three others, he co-founded The Committee for the First Amendment, which sent a delegation to Washington, D.C. There is also a detailed accounting of government activity against Wyler and of his attempts to clear his reputation with Paramount. The chapter also provides production histories of three films made by Wyler that deal, directly or indirectly, with that political situation: Detective Story, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley, which deals with a fascistic police officer; The Desperate Hours, based on a best-selling novel, which stars Humphrey Bogart and Frederic March; and Wyler's remake of The Children's Hour, which centers on the persecution of two teachers fueled by the accusations of a child. Also touched on is Roman Holiday, which was written by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (whose name was removed from the film but restored after his death).

This chapter argues that the early history of homosexuality resembles what might be referred to today as situational homosexuality. A history of situational homosexuality relocates the underpinnings of sexual identity from psychology and desire to the less savory foundations of boredom and starvation and recasts the proximity between homo—and heterosexuality. Because situational homosexuality understands sexuality as behavior rather than psychology, it illuminates the operation of psychopathia sexualis—the psychologization of sexual aberrations—as dependent on an unchanging psychology. This chapter examines Thomas Dickinson’s Winter Bound: A Play in Three Acts and Nine Scenes (1929) and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) in order to theorize how object choice is stabilized temporally and geographically in the all-female environments depicted in the plays. These plays think through the clash between congenital and acquired forms of sexuality at the moment that congenitality is becoming increasingly codified and acquisition is becoming a minor perversion. In short, this chapter theorizes a nonsubjective homosexuality: a homosexuality not of persons, but of place—one that circulates like rumor attaching to bodies rather than one that emerges from within them.

This chapter details Rupert's life between 1936 and 1937. He signed an agreement with Methuen for yet another publication, to be called A Book of Marvels, to be part of their Fountain Library series. This was in fact simply a re-publication of seven of the chapters from Oddities and Enigmas, mostly just reprinted, but occasionally with footnotes added. Owing to his great popularity on Children's Hour, Gould was invited to contribute articles to the Radio Times, several appearing in 1936, and one in each of the Children's Hour annuals in 1935, 1936, and 1937.

Dring’s musical education took place at the Royal College of Music, beginning in the Junior Department at the same time as her formal education in Roman Catholic grade schools. Her mentors included Percy Buck and Angela Bull, who together directed the Department. Dring also benefited from the encouragement of the directors of the RCM, Hugh Allen and George Dyson. Principal teachers included Betty Barne and Freda Dinn for violin, Jewel Evans and Lilian Gaskell for piano, and Stanley Wolff and Leslie Fly for composition. Important first performances of her music took place on the BBC radio broadcast of the “Children’s Hour” and at a concert at Lambeth County Hall. As an actor, Dring’s participation in the yearly Christmas play is documented, and as an example of her musical style, her Fantasy Sonata (In one movement) is examined in detail. The effect of the beginning of World War II is considered from Dring’s point of view, specifically in the way it affected a teenage girl at the Royal College of Music.