The fake romance of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy

Was an “epic love story” staged to conceal queerness?

This Pride month, I’m thinking about that classic feature of LGBT life: the staged romance. Like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

It was a major media narrative for a half-century. Most any American from the 1940s to the 1990s knew that Hepburn and Tracy were in love, and wanted to marry — but couldn’t.