Next I watched the first TCM movie on their "gay images in cinema" festival. This one was a 1955 film noir called THE BIG COMBO. Great cast: Cornell Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Whit Bissell, but the two of greatest interest were Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman playing lovers in the film. Van Cleef was astonishingly beautiful then, and they made a very sexy duo. And when one was killed and the other was beside himself with grief, these killers actually ended up being the key to the downfall of head man Conte. Some really stylish things about the film, too, made for Allied Artists on an obviously low budget.
This is a movie that deserves to be better known.