Queen Christina

This pre-Code MGM film starring Greta Garbo featured bold queer themes that would have been censored after the Hays Code was enforced. Released before the code stipulated that "sex perversion [homosexuality] or any inference to it is forbidden," the film depicts Queen Christina in masculine attire throughout, shows her kissing her lady-in-waiting Ebba Larsdotter (played by Elizabeth Young) on the lips twice—not chaste pecks but full, tender kisses grasping her face—and portrays her resistance to marriage.

The character Ebba is based on the real-life lady-in-waiting and possible lover of Queen Christina of Sweden. While not explicitly about lavender marriage, the film explores themes of concealed sexuality, gender fluidity, and societal pressure to conform to heterosexual norms that were central to the lavender marriage phenomenon. Garbo swaggers across the screen, drinking beer with the boys and embodying a sexually fluid monarch.