page_title: Dracula's Daughter
section_title: Lesbian implications
hierarchical_section_title: Dracula's Daughter / Lesbian implications
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenshot of en:Nan Grey from the film en:Dracula's Daughter.
context_page_description: Dracula's Daughter is a 1936 American vampire horror film produced by Universal Pictures as a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula. Directed by Lambert Hillyer from a screenplay by Garrett Fort, the film stars Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden in the title role, Marguerite Churchill and features, as the only cast member to return from the original, Edward Van Sloan – although his character's name was altered from "Van Helsing" to "Von Helsing".
  Dracula's Daughter tells the story of Countess Marya Zaleska, the daughter of Count Dracula and herself a vampire. Following Dracula's death, she believes that by destroying his body she will be free of his influence and live normally. When this fails, she turns to a psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Garth. The Countess kidnaps Dr. Garth's fiancée, Janet, and takes her to Transylvania, leading to a battle between Dr. Garth and the Countess in an attempt by him to save Janet.
  Ostensibly based on a deleted chapter from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula – published in 1937 as a short story under the name "Dracula's Guest" – the film bears no resemblance to the source material.
context_section_description: The lesbian vampire has been a trend in literature dating back to Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's 1872 novella "Carmilla". Dracula's Daughter marked the first time that the trend was incorporated into a film. The lesbian implications of Dracula's Daughter were obvious from the start and were of great concern to the Production Code Administration. PCA head Breen took special notice of the scene between the Countess and her model, Lili, writing, "This will need very careful handling to avoid any questionable flavor." The day before the scene was to be shot, Universal's Harry Zehner asked Breen to read a draft of the scene. In response, Breen wrote:
  The present suggestion that ... Lili poses in the nude will be changed. She will be posing her neck and shoulders, and there will be no suggestion that she undresses, and there will be no exposure of her person. It was also stated that the present incomplete sequence will be followed by a scene in which Lili is taken to a hospital and there it will be definitely established that she has been attacked by a vampire. The whole sequence will be treated in such a way as to avoid any suggestion of perverse sexual desire on the part of Marya or of an attempted sexual attack by her upon Lili.
  Gay film historian Vito Russo noted in his book The Celluloid Closet that Universal highlighted Countess Zaleska's attraction to women in some of its original advertising for the film, using the tag line "Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!" He further cited Countess Zaleska as an example of the presentation of the "essence of homosexuality as a predatory weakness". Some reviewers of the day picked up on and condemned the lesbian content, including the New York World-Telegram which noted the Countess's tendency to wander around "giving the eye to sweet young girls". Other reviews missed it entirely, including the aforementioned The New York Times which advised "Be sure to bring the kiddies." Entertainment Weekly describes the encounter between the Countess and Lili as "so hot it's impossible to imagine how it ever got past '30s censors" whereas Time Out London finds only a "subtle suggestion" of lesbianism. Horror scholar Skal notes that the scene has come to be seen as a "classic 'lesbian' sequence, although of a decidedly negative stripe". The scene between Countess Zaleska and Lili was included in the 1995 documentary film adaptation of Russo's book.
  Another lesbian-tinged scene which has received less critical attention comes when the Countess is holding Janet captive. Described as "the longest kiss never filmed", Countess Zaleska "hovers lovingly over Janet ... hovers ... and hovers ... slowly descending to kiss the recumbent Janet ..." until interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Garth.
  Bright Lights Film Journal, after noting that "Gloria Holden in the title role almost singlehandedly redefined the '20s movie vamp as an impressive Euro-butch dyke bloodsucker", draws an implicit comparison between Countess Zaleska's seeking to cure her vampirism through psychiatry and the former position of mainstream psychiatry of homosexuality as a mental illness. Zaleska's cruising the streets of London is seen as parallel to cruising for sex (although that tends to be a gay male activity) and as suggesting "society's image of the lesbian as soulless predator" but the conclusion is that "Holden's striking, masklike face and haunting, luminous eyes [are] the intoxicating essence of transgressive lesbian power."
caption: Nan Gray
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