Arm linking

Watching old movies, particularly those of comedian pairings such as Laurel and Hardy, you can't help noticing how often is the physical contact between men. Arm linking in particular was a very common practice among straight western men (men in Arab and some African nations don't generally do this, but are still quite happy to hold hands etc.). Today, we can have the 'acceptable' image of two men leaving a pub, and being drunk, supporting each other, but the idea that two straight men went in like that does not currently fit at all with our ideas of normal behaviour.

If one looks at footage of soldiers off duty or on leave during WWII you can see a myriad of images of men literally in arms. Only from the prism of cinema and television viewing can I see that there appears to have been a change sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s - I suppose once homosexuality became more prominent and the behaviour maybe became identified with it.