Lawrence of Arabia is a four-hour Oscar-winning epic film (1962) starring Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence, the British army officer who led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. It won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.The real Lawrence was an open secret in his own lifetime. He wrote in his memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his complex devotion to Arab men, dedicated the book to a young Arab known only as S.A. (widely believed to be a boy named Dahoum), and lived a celibate-coded life that biographers have long read as deeply closeted. Director David Lean filmed it the only way he honestly could. O'Toole's Lawrence is luminous, otherworldly, and clearly more drawn to the men around him than to anything else in the desert. The film never shows him with a woman. It does show him devastated when his young servant Daud sinks into quicksand, and later shoots his other young servant Farraj himself to spare him from Turkish capture. The Academy gave the film Best Picture and never once mentioned that it was actually about a gay man. Have you ever seen this awards winning movie? (The photo is the real T.E. Lawrence)