A Good Run For ‘is Money: The Leather Boys

Reggie (Colin Campbell) and his gal Dot (Rita Tushingham) are in love the intense way that only teenagers can be. If they want to have sex as much as Reggie does, there’s only one way for them to do so: Get hitched. So, they get married. What starts out great, quickly sours—the salad days ending on their honeymoon, in fact, and only getting worse with each passing day. Reggie works at the local garage to make ends meet, Dot is a stay at home wife who shops, gets her hair done regularly, and goes to the movies a couple of times a week. Maybe she does the cooking. Reggie has less time to hang out with his fellow leather boys—motorcycling youth—but he still dreams of getting a bigger bike and winning this or that endurance race. The groove of regular married life only builds their bickering. Each, it turns out, was in love with an idealized version of the other. Real life and close proximity erases ideals and leaves only the truth shining through.

It’s at the caf where the leather boys hang out that Reggie meets the blond Pete (Dudley Sutton). The two become fast friends, because Pete listens where Dot argues, and Pete is generally more sympathetic in the way true mates can be. When Reggie’s granddad dies, he wants to move in with his Gran (Gladys Henson) to help her out. Dot is opposed, but Pete is all for it. In fact, Reggie and Pete move in, share a bed, and their lives. When Dot realizes she’s losing her husband, she tries a desperate ploy to convince him to move back in with her, but it backfires amazingly.

Reggie is unaware of the subtle pull-of-war Dot and Pete are playing for him. However, in time he will become quite aware, having to choose between a nice, normal marriage and something far less common with Pete. Director Sidney J. Furie helms a wonderful mashup of romance and biker film with the early addition to British queer cinema, The Leather Boys (1964).

Although it’s billed as a vital part of queer cinema, the elements that make it let it fit under that umbrella do not show up for some time. Instead, we initially get an eyeful of fiery, teenage love. A guy and a girl who are hot for one another, he wanting to stay in and screw, she wanting to do all the things couples do—go out to the movies, enjoy holidays for the sights and entertainments, and sure some screwing too. Their relationship doesn’t seem too troubled from the start, but of course youth is another word for stubbornness, and so Reggie and Dot have their flare ups. These get worse and worse over time, so that Pete’s appearance is all the more notable. He’s the calm, the cheer, the winning smile. That he and Reggie are soon shooting off fireworks from Pete’s day job at the dump is rich in metaphor. There’s a lot of coding to the visuals foreshadowing what’s to come, but Reggie is utterly blind to it. His growing affection for his mate is all the more real as is his disillusionment with marriage and Dot’s actual, abrasive personality. By the time this piece reveals its gayness, we are already invested in the conflict to come, which culminates in Reggie’s decision to go with one or the other, or to strike out on his own.

Gillian Freeman freely adapts the material from her own novel to the screenplay. The novel was much more explicit in the queer elements, making both Reggie and Dick (the latter’s name changed for the film) openly gay. This was jettisoned for a more subtle shades of queerness. As well, the novel featured a crime angle that is completely absent from the adaptation. Instead, the film’s story is strong, with equal measures of humor, drama, and heart but applied in a more real context. The main characters are clear and layered, the dialogue is good. I wish some more attention were paid to some of the other characters—in particular, Johnny Briggs’ character of Boy Friend as a rival for Dot’s affections is pretty thin. Dude doesn’t have a name or much personality, and therefore feels far more artificial than the three central characters.

How the talent makes use of that script is where much of the magic arises. As it turns out, the dialogue was often improvised in order to give the thing a more authentic young, Cockney sound.

Rita Tushingham pretty well owns the opening half hour of the movie. She’s got this out front quality to her performance, which is carefully evoked. As the play progresses, and her character gets shunted into a secondary role in Reggie’s life, she nevertheless still stands out front.

Likewise, Dudley Sutton has a terrific presence as the gay love interest. His is a more subtle performance, which brings out the cheery cattiness of the character. His physical presence is impressive and the attention to nuance (from the way he holds his cigarette, to the way Pete putters about tending after Reggie’s needs) is canny, well crafted.

Colin Campbell plays a loud character. He’s essentially the protagonist whose decision is what the entire story hangs upon. However, his performance often sticks him in the background. He is a prize to be won for the first half of the film. Argumentative and brash as he might be, he’s reacting throughout. It’s as he starts to feel responsibility weighing in that he steps into the protagonist role far more assuredly.

Sidney J. Furie draws out the performances like a pro. He also assembles his cast in clever ways on the screen, using distance, angles, and shapes to clue us in on who has taken the dominant role in Reggie’s life and who is being relegated to the wings. The movie just looks good.

Cinematographer Gerald Gibbs already had a strong career by the time he came to The Leather Boys. His eye for capturing the bikes speeding along highways is good. The lighting of interiors such as the apartment at Gran’s, the caf, as well as the many exteriors evokes a kind of naturalistic quality. It takes  a lot of effort to make things look this natural, and Gibbs does a fine job with it.

The locations are a treat. We get lovely shots of The Ace Café, an actual hangout popular with the bikers of the day. The black and white photography grants these locations a timelessness.

The film itself employs an attentiveness to the realism of the times. It’s often lumped into the “kitchen sink realism” school, which emphasizes disillusionment with societal mores and working class aesthetics. The character of Reggie certainly appeals to the qualities of the “angry young man” model. The Leather Boys is anything but escapism, though it still manages to tell an entertaining and thoughtful story. Fun fact: The term “kitchen sink realism” might suggest an origin of “anything goes” but in fact it arises from the paintings of John Bratby, which depicted kitchen and bathroom-themed scenes in order to explore banality and the frustrations of day-to-day life.

The Blu-ray edition from American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) and Shout! Factory includes a lovely transfer, a commentary track from director Furie and biographer Daniel Kremer, as well as audio interviews with both Dudley Sutton and Rita Tushingham. The disc also includes a short film, Consenting Adults: A Study of Homosexuality (1967). The thematically appropriate menu names on the title screen are cute, as well.

The Leather Boys has a lot of heart, a lot of emotional intensity, and a terrific eye for its visuals. It’s an engaging piece of cinema, thrilling in all the best ways, and given weight with an honest approach to its subject matter. Although many a queer cinema piece from this era would end with death, The Leather Boys opts for something a bit truer to life and ultimately more heartbreaking.

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The Leather Boys is available in Blu-ray and streaming editions. The novel from Gillian Freeman is available in eBook and paperback editions.

Writing for “A Good Run For ‘is Money: The Leather Boys” is copyright © 2022 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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