Chaotic gay hookups, a legendary director, and Angela Lansbury—why isn’t this a queer classic?

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we revisit 1970’s Something For Everyone, a forgotten gem that deserves its chance to shine again.

Every week in this column, we take a deep dive into an older film that has somehow made a mark on gay culture; popular or forgotten, acclaimed or critically panned, obvious in its connection to our community or more ambiguous. We’ve been choosing movies that are already assumed to be (in one way or another) part of the queer film canon.

This week, we’re asking the question: What exactly makes a movie appeal to our sensibilities? What makes it worthy of being part of this growing, evolving, living canon?

This week’s film—the little-known and little-seen 1970 dark comedy Something For Everyone—may have given us a checklist in identifying what makes the queer community gasp, empathize, clutch our pearls, and immediately want to watch a movie again after it’s done.

The Set-Up

First, there’s the story.

Something For Everyone follows Kondrad Ludwig (Cabaret‘s Michael York), a young man with seemingly no past who arrives in the German countryside with nothing but a fairytale storybook and a plan.

He is immediately taken with the magnificent Castle Ornstein, a property owned by the mysterious, widowed Countess Herthe von Ornstein (icon Angela Lansbury). The castle cannot legally be sold, and has dilapidated since the financial troubles and deaths in the family.

As it turns out, it’s been Konrad’s lifelong dream to live in a castle—and live in a castle he must. So, he befriends the Countess’s footman, who he tracks at a local pub, and manages to get himself a job interview at the castle.

What follows is a series of plot machinations from Konrad that would, like the tagline of the movie itself suggests, make “the Macbeths seem like just plain folks and the Borgias like a nice Italian family.” Konrad schemes, seduces, manipulates, and eventually kills his way through practically every person in the castle, until he manages to become the Lord of it… although not in the way he envisioned.

The Textbook “Chaotic Queer”

After the footman “mysteriously dies” near some train tracks on a late night stroll, Konrad takes his position. With his mouth in the Countess’s ear, he plots the marriage between her naive son Helmuth (Indiana Jones‘ Anthony Higgins), who he is secretly bedding, and the young heiress of a nouveau riche family that the Countess despises but that could save them from ruin, Anneliese Pleschke (Austrian actress Heidelinde Weis)—who he is also bedding.

Konrad slowly guides this doomed marriage towards an even more doomed fate, all while keeping his Machiavellian personal goals at the forefront.

Konrad is, in many ways, the quintessential “evil queer” protagonist; someone whose actions we condemn, but also cannot help to empathize with. He is a reflection of our own journeys. We can relate too well with striving for more than what we are given. Though we’ve hopefully never turned to blackmail, deceit, and murder to get our way, the feeling of having to go far and beyond to get what we think is owed to us is often familiar.

A Broadway Legend

Second, there’s the talent in front and behind the scenes.

The film was helmed by legendary Broadway director and producer Hal Prince, who counts among his credits little-known shows like West Side Story, Fiddler On The Roof, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd and Phantom Of The Opera.

Something for Everyone was the only other movie he directed apart from the adaptation of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. The screenplay was written by Hugh Wheeler, who also wrote the books for A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and Candide.

The ruthless ambition of Konrad is not unlike Sweeney Todd’s quest for revenge. The many pairings and bits of mischief that he orchestrates echo a lot of what happens during the weekend in A Little Night Music. The artistic voices behind the film already had plenty of experience exploring themes and issues that resonated with queer audiences. 

A Dame At Her Best

Then, there’s Angela Lansbury—one of the biggest stars of stage and screen, with her own catalog of queer classics under her belt.

Here, she evokes a richer and sexier Norma Desmond: a woman that desperately wants her status back, but bitterly discovers that what she really longed for is long gone. When she is able to finally reopen her beloved castle, and gets reacquainted with her friends that left her after she lost her money, she faces the frivolousness of a society that she once took pride in being part of.

She gets her own grand dame monologue, flying furniture and all, and there is nothing that resonates more than an actress letting her emotions soar with the dramatic flair we rarely let ourselves have.

The Game Of Seduction

And then there’s the actual queer text in the movie; it goes beyond mere sensibilities and projections and gasping at old ladies in furs. Konrad is living the embodiment of what many queer men wish they could be like—and often are.

He is a shamelessly sexual being and utilizes that to his advantage. He will sleep with whoever he needs to in order to get his way. He seduces the son. He seduces the heiress. He seduces the Countess. He is in love with no one and with everyone. He lives with an openness that drives people around him mad, but also makes him endlessly alluring.

The short shorts he wears around the castle or the skinny dipping at the lake don’t hurt either. 

A Forgotten Gem

It’s a bit of a mystery why Something For Everyone isn’t ingrained as deeply in the gay lexicon as other films, especially since it contains so many elements that the community has gravitated towards for years. It’s quite hard to find online to watch, and everyone involved has had much more notable projects that we seemed to have held onto instead.

But like the title suggests, there is something for everyone in this film. For the hopeful boys that dream of a fairytale life. For the ruthless villains that we sometimes wish we could emulate. For everyone who has once dreamed of moving to the European countryside with Angela Lansbury.

Unfortunately, Something For Everyone is not currently streaming online. You may have luck finding rough uploads on YouTube, or it can be purchased on DVD and Blu-ray via Amazon.