Night and Day

This Technicolor fictionalized biography of composer Cole Porter starred Cary Grant as Porter and Alexis Smith as his wife Linda Lee Thomas. Warner Brothers paid $300,000 for the rights to Porter's best-known songs. The film was a heavily sanitized version of Porter's life that completely obscured his homosexuality and presented his marriage to Linda as a conventional romantic love story—the exact opposite of the truth.

In reality, Porter's marriage to Linda Lee Thomas (whom he met in 1918 and married in 1919) was widely considered a lavender marriage, with Linda fully aware of his homosexuality and his numerous relationships with men. Their marriage was based on mutual affection and protection rather than romance. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music—Scoring of a Musical Picture (music by Ray Heindorf and Max Steiner), though it did not win. This represents how Hollywood sanitized its own history of lavender marriages even while many were still ongoing.