William Williams in Repeat Performance (1947)

Joan Leslie and Richard Basehart

Repeat Performance (1947) is unusual among film noirs. First, it blends elements of fantasy (namely time travel) with film noir. Second, among its characters is William Williams (played by Richard Basehart in his movie debut), a coded homosexual who is distinct in that he is portrayed somewhat sympathetically at a time when many coded homosexuals were portrayed as villains. 

Repeat Performance (1947) opens with actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie), standing over the body of her dead husband, Barney (Louis Hayward). She flees to a party where she asks her friend William Williams for help. William suggests that they visit theatrical producer John Friday (Tom Conway) to seek his advice. As Sheila and William are going up to John's apartment, she suddenly finds herself thrown back in time to exactly a year ago, from New Year's Eve 1946 to New Year's Eve 1945. She then finds herself living 1946 again and seeking to change things for the better.

Repeat Performance (1947) was based on the 1942 novel of the same name by William O'Farrell. The novel differs a great deal from the book. In the book it is actor Barney Page who strangles to death his costar Fern Costello and is then forced to live the past year over. In the movie, Barney is a playwright and  he is killed by his wife Sheila Page. As to Sheila, in the book she is an alcoholic who committed suicide. William Williams is also dramatically different in the book. He is a mildly insane cross-dressing poet who goes by the name "William and Mary." For the movie, he remains a poet who apparently has some mental disorder, but he was changed from a crossdresser to a coded homosexual. For those unfamiliar, with queer coding, it is assigning traits stereotypically assumed to be queer to a character without coming out and saying that they character was queer. 

In Repeat Performance (1947), Williams Williams is Sheila's friend and close confidant. When she realizes she has killed Barney, it is to William she goes for help. Along with theatrical producer and friend John Friday, he is one of two people to whom Sheila confides that she believes she has jumped backwards in time. Overall, William is portrayed very sympathetically. He has a good deal of with and seems bemused by most situations. William is sensitive to the needs of others, so it is little wonder that Sheila confides in him. He is fiercely loyal to his friends, and stands by Shelia throughout the movie.  William is also a bit eccentric, and even claims to be "quite mad." In truth, as a poet who lives for his art, it might be more accurate to say that the is just little out of touch with the harsh realities of life. To wit, William has no difficulty accepting that Sheila travelled back in time or that Destiny may just guide people's lives. Despite his empathy for others, William may also be a bad judge of character in some cases.  He makes the mistake of accepting the patronage of Mrs. Eloise Shaw (Natalie Schafer), a rich woman who supports young male artists, presumably in expectation that she will get something in return. 

While William is largely portrayed sympathetically, to some degree William Williams conforms to a trope quite common from the Thirties well into the Seventies, where by homosexuality was related to mental illness. He tells Sheila very early in the film that he is "quite mad." Of course, here it must be kept in mind that homosexuality itself was considered a mental disorder in 1940s. It would even be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a sociopathic personality disturbance when it was first published in 1952.  By the standards of the 1940s, William would have been considered mad simply because he was gay.

As it is, despite Willliam's claim to be "quite mad," he often seems to be the most reasonable person in Repeat Performance. While he is eventually committed to an insane asylum in the film, the circumstances under which this is done seem suspect to me. First, we are told that "it was Mrs. Shaw's fault" that William was committed. Earlier in the film, when Mrs. Shaw offers a concert tour to a pianist, she comments how some young talents she had "inspired" have been "ungrateful" while looking directly at William. It seems possible that Mrs. Shaw got William committed merely out of spite and that, despite William's claims, he really isn't crazy at all. Quite simply, as a homosexual (and possibly a poet as well), he was a victim of the times. 

While William may or may not be mad, in the end he is portrayed much more sympathetically than other coded homosexuals in movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood, to the point that it can be argued that he was one of the heroes of Repeat Performance (1947). His portrayal is certainly much more positive than that of other coded homosexuals in films from the era, from Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944) to Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan in Rope (1951).  Even given the movies plays with the trope of homosexuals and mental illness, the portrayal of William Williams in the film was a small step forward for the portrayal of gay men in American films.