Adapted from the book "Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theatre" by Jordan Schildcrout

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The earliest dramatic version of the Leopold and Loeb story is also the one furthest removed from the facts of the actual case, and although it was an English play with English characters, it has a significant impact on the representation of the homicidal homosexual in America. The playwright Patrick Hamilton denied that he had heard of the infamous American murder when he wrote his three-act melodramatic thriller Rope, retitled Rope's End for its American production in 1929, just five years after the Leopold and Loeb case. Nevertheless, nearly every drama critic dismissed Hamilton's disclaimer and interpreted the play as "inspired by" Leopold and Loeb. Rope takes place over the course of a single evening and is set entirely in a posh Mayfair flat shared by two Oxford undergraduates, Brandon and Granillo. To prove their Nietzschean superiority and experience the sheer thrill of it, they strangle their classmate Ronald Kently, put his body in a wooden chest, then invite Ronald's friends and family over for a party, serving food and drinks from their chest. One of the guests, however, is Rupert Cadell, the boys' former housemaster, and he grows increasingly suspicious of foul play, piecing together the clues until he confronts the killers and exposes their crime. The play is not a whodunit, since the audience knows the crime and the killers from the start. Rather, the tension of the play concerns whether the killers will get away with it or whether Rupert the amateur detective can find out the truth.

It should come as no surprise that the text of Hamilton's play makes no direct reference to any sexual relationship between the two killers. The Lord Chamberlain maintained the prohibition of the depiction of homosexuality on the British stage, and in 1927 the New York legislature had introduced the Wales Padlock Law, which prohibited "depicting or dealing with the subject of sex degeneracy or sex perversion." The young killers' sexual relationship is an unspoken secret, one constructed only by insinuation, merely hinting at a physical intimacy between the two boys. The first time we see them in full light, Brandon puts his arm around Granillo as he lights his cigarette from the other boy's batch, making this postmurder cigarette seem very much like a postcoital cigarette. As Alan Sinfeld has noted, Hamilton also creates the killers as a masculine/feminine couple. Brandon is blond, athletic, and "paternal", and will become more assertive and threatening as the play progresses. Granillo is dark, slim, and courteous, and, in stereotypically Spanish fashion (i.e., as someone from an "intemperate" country), he will become more hysterical as the play progresses, even emitting falsetto screams when he is caught.

Like Rupert, the audience can search for clues. Isn't Granillo rather effeminate? Doesn't Brandon stand too close to him? Isn't there something they are hiding from us about their relationship? We search for clues to ascertain their guilt, but we cannot know for sure. In a world where homosexuality is criminalized and cannot be directly acknowledged onstage, the violent act of murder stands in for the sexual act, merging to become a "sex crime" made up of a sexual murder and a murderous sexuality. Both consist of two men together performing an intimate and pleasurable physical act that they must keep secret within the privacy of their home. The conspiracy of criminals mirrors the conspiracy of secret lovers. This point was made extravagantly clear in a 1994 London revival of the stage play. The director, Keith Baxter, staged an opening tableau featuring three naked men (the murderers and their victim) sprawled by the chest. Has there been a murder or an orgy? Is there a difference? In either case, Brandon and Granillo are a couple with a secret, hoping no one will find out the criminal act they have committed together.

Interestingly, and perhaps most surprisingly to those familiar only with Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film adaptation of Rope, the queerest character in the play is the starring role, the amateur detective-hero Rupert Cadell. This poet, who is also a veteran of the Great War, is, according to the playwright's character description, "foppish, affected, [and] verges on effeminacy", sprouting quips in the Wildean manner and professing a complete disdain for traditional moral standards, as well as for the mawkishness of heterosexual wooing. New York critic Robert Littell praised Ernest Milton, who received top billing in the role on both sides of the Atlantic, for masterfully presenting "a warped orchid of an effeminate Oxford decadent." Rupert is very much coded as queer in the mold of Oscar Wilde, the most famous "effeminate decadent" to ever come out of Britain. But what does the cynical, perfumed poet have to do with our homicidal homosexuals? In Hamilton's play, everything. Brandon and Granillo have learned their moral, ethical, and aesthetic philosophies from Rupert, and the playwright both figuratively and literally places the boys' murder at Rupert's feet. Upon discovering the corpse of Ronald, Rupert is confronted with the results of his freethinking philosophies, and, like Dr. Frankenstein, he is forced to reckon with the monstrosity that he has created.

The decadent poet, thrust into the role of criminal detective and enforcer of justice, shreds his world-weary pose to reveal a firm moral conscience. Hamilton creates a telling theatrical metaphor for this transformation when Rupert unsheathes his walking cane, previously a symbol of his effeteness and lameness, to reveal a pointed metal sword, a phallic symbol of strength and justice, with which he uses to hold the boys at bay. In order to claim this new role, Rupert must atone and reform, and he does so by destroying his malformed progeny, renouncing his previous teaching, and reestablishing a clear moral order. Using terms like sin and blasphemy, Rupert condemns his former pupils, extols the sancticity of individual life, and places his faith in society's system of justice. As he delivers the play's final words, he predicts what society will do to the boys, sounding no unlike a judge himself, handing them their sentence: "You are going to hang, you swine! Hang!—both of you!—hang!". In Hitchcock's film version, Rupert is a dry, intellectual, American oddball rather than a flamboyant English decadent, and the role is further normalized by the star persona of Jimmy Stewart. Bringing his "average guy" charm to the role, Stewart re-created Rupert as a normative (and presumably heterosexual) hero who contains and condemns queerness in order to preserve the moral order.

Rope, then, allows for its audience to enjoy the homophobic fantasy of eliminating homosexuality. Rupert renounces his decadent morality, while Brandon and Granillo are condemned to die. Thus Rope offers a cleaner, less complex fantasy version of the Leopold and Loeb case. Since the narrative is constructed through the conventions of detective fiction, the detective-hero's success in exposing the crime and capturing the criminals is the end of the story. The detective's fantasy of justice has no room for the lawyers' arguments or the judge's sentencing; it presumes eye-for-an-eye retribution, from the society of "normal" people. This fantasy avoid the seemingly outrageous possibility that Brandon and Graniilo might somehow escape the death penalty and eventually find a place in society. But justice is not as simple as this melodramatic thriller would have it, especially when it comes to condemning the homicidal homosexual. In the real world, Judge Caverly sentence Leopold and Loeb to life in prison, and Leopold earned parole in 1958. Some historians believe that he achieved his freedom thanks in part to the novelist and playwright Meyer Levin, who argued for a different understanding of the link between homosexuality and criminality.

By the time further retellings of the Leopold and Loeb case appeared on stage, several events had occurred that would influence and radically reshape new versions of the story. During the interim, the Supreme Court struck down stage censorship, the Stonewall Riots gave a major push to the modern gay rights movement, Leopold died, and the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality should no longer be classified as a mental disorder, and a few states began to repeal their sodomy laws. Furthermore, our culture "discovered" the existence of gay plays, gay films, and (most stunningly) gay audiences. All of these events created an atmosphere in which finally there could be a dramatic retelling of the Leopold and Loeb case that (1) used people's real names, (2) did not have to fear censorship, (3) could consider homosexuality as something other than a sinister crime or pathetic mental illness, and (4) did not presume the heterosexuality of the audience. Presented early in the century as ruthless killers whom the audience is encouraged to condemn then in midcentury as juvenile delinquents whom the audience is encouraged to pity, in recent decades Leopold and Loeb have been presented as romantic lovers with whom the audience is encouraged to spot in the narrative. In these later narratives, Leopold and Loeb are the stars of their own story, with no detective, lawyer, or would-be girlfriend to direct the audience's response. Some versions are even deconstructions of the artistic medium and lineage of this story.

Different narrative elements may inspire different reactions, depending on whether the narrative foregrounds "positive" qualities (e.g., romantic longing) or "negative" qualities (e.g., horrific violence). Audiences can also choose to focus more on the positive or the negative, creating their own understanding about the guilt or innocence of the characters. An audience member's verdict may also depend on how they interpret "the crime", which functions not just literally but also emblematically. Leopold and Loeb murdered Bobby Franks, but they are on trial for much more than that. A contemporary audience of Rope, then, might view the murderers as villains to be condemned, victims to be pitied, and lovers who can be spotted or identified with, all at once.