GLR January-February Supplement 2024

was revealed, as in the famous episode of Dallas , to be a dream, so the show could continue with its original premise.) The task E. M. Forster set for himself in Maurice was simpler: to give two gay characters a happy ending. His inspiration was the gay activist Edward Carpenter, whose live-in, working-class lover Forster met on a visit to their cottage in England— an encounter whose highlight was a friendly hand on Forster’s butt. But in Forster’s novel the happy ending is not marriage and a cottage, it’s escaping into the “greenwood”—that mythic, storied England of Sherwood Forest, where two lovers can live free of social disapproval. Maurice and Alec Scudder may be headed off to some cottage in the Cotswolds, or to Buenos Aires, or to World War I; we do not know. But they’ve found each other, and that’s all they need. It’ll be them against theworld. The trustees of the Forster estate

Jhabvala, declined to work on the project because she felt the same way. Nor was Maurice —which is analyzed almost scene by scene by Greven—well-received even by the gay English film critics when it came out. Merchant-Ivory had already ac quired the reputation of making “heritage” films—too faithful to their sources, too full of beautiful clothes, rooms, country houses. Maurice was subject to the same reproofs. A Room with a View had made over $23 million; Maurice made just over two. (Their next film, Howards End , re turned them to commercial success.) David Greven, however, makes clear in an autobiographical note that Maurice had a tremendous effect on people like himself: lonely gay men who were still closeted when they saw it. Since Maurice , we’ve had Brokeback Mountain and Call Me By Your Name .As for Will & Grace ’s legacy, Pugh credits it with not only making Americans more

James Wilby as Maurice Hall in Maurice.

balked when Merchant and Ivory—who had just had a big suc cess with A Room with a View , with its famous scene of men skinny-dipping in a pond—asked permission to make a movie of Maurice . The trustees felt the work was not up to Forster’s best. Merchant-Ivory’s frequent screenwriter, Ruth Prawer

comfortable with homosexuals but with removing the stigma of actors playing gay roles. “As with every groundbreaking pro gram,” he concludes, “ Will & Grace leaves behind a complex and contradictory legacy, as it shifted the television landscape for the better simply by depicting gay characters.” /0DE/FG DF DHIGJFDIG JGDH/IK L G

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January–February 2024

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