Long before – like centuries before — “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” there were Molly Houses, queer underground clubs that operated in London in the 1700s.
Yes, the 1700s.
By day, these houses were regular coffeehouses, but at night, they turned into secret same-sex watering holes that included drag performances, sexual activity and more. There were up to more than two dozen houses throughout London at the height of their popularity.
Molly Houses — molly was a slang term for gay men in 18th century England — are brought to life in “Sweetheart,” a scripted short about a young man (Eben Figueiredo) being introduced to London’s secret queer subculture in 1723.
Directed by Luke Wintour and written by Alastair Curtis, the film premieres Thursday, Jan. 23, at the Sundance Film Festival.
“There are some people who say that Molly Houses is where camp or the notion of camp began,” Wintour told me during a Zoom video interview from his London-area home. “It’s definitely where drag in the U.K. took hold in the queer community. It’s kind of mind blowing that it was 300 years ago.”
‘Sweetheart’ director Luke Wintour
Much of the story is based on court records of countless men who were arrested during police raids of Molly Houses. “Everything you see in the film comes from historical records,” Wintour said. “They did mock weddings and baptisms. Sometimes they would pretend to give birth to a doll but sometimes to a cheese wheel or a [fireplace] bellow.”
Wintour hopes to expand the short into a full-length feature. “We’re working on the story around this when bribery and blackmail started to happen,” he explained. “You had these amazing queer gangs that would go around to these cruising grounds and they would try and solicit sex, but then three of their mates would come out of the bush and they say, ‘Give us 50 pounds or we’re going to take you to court.’ You’d have these incredible court cases starting to emerge of bribery and blackmail, and then countersuing cases because it was also illegal to extort and to blackmail at the time.”
Wintour’s aunt is none other than Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. “She’s very supportive of my queerness and filmmaking,” he said. “I showed ‘Sweetheart’ to her for the first time this summer…She loved it. There was a bit of sort of coughing at the sex scene at the beginning of it — as any aunt or uncle would do.”
He added, “She has done a huge amount for the queer community in many ways across the years, so it’s definitely a big inspiration in many ways.”
