I would like to add The Birdcage (1996) to this list of drag queen movies (mind you, it’s based on a French stage play from 1973).
Which starred Nathan Lane as a drag queen just two years after he had voice Pumba in “The Lion King”:
And we ESPECIALLY need to remember Victor Victoria from 1982 (during the REAGAN administration) which is SET IN THE 1930S and stars everyone’s favorite curtain-sewing nanny as a struggling soprano who decides to pretend to be a boy doing drag (DOUBLE THE DRAG FOR YOUR MONEY). I mean look at this photo:
Count Victor Grazinski isn’t putting up with your transphobia (or you being a dick to Robert Preston).
Unfortunately, the representation of drag and female impersonation (as it was often called pre-Stonewall) is scant in mainstream American cinema due to the Hayes Code. There are definitely more, but these are biggest, “family-friendly” names I can think who have starred in major motion pictures as drag performers.
can I add another?
Some Like It Hot (1959), it got in trouble with censors and still went ahead, but it featured a lot of Gender and a character getting really into this whole “being a girl for real” thing, as well as the implication of a a gay engagement being on the table
but like? It has Marilyn Monroe in it and banger music and it’s a classic! I only know from my mother bringing it up and also a tiny bit of exposure to russian tv channels, but I think it was also popular in the Soviet Union? So she’d seen it as a child and loved it so much she watched it with me when I was also just a child.
(not to mention big traditions of children’s theatre with drag performance)
And NOT ONE of you has mentioned
2005 movie adaptation of 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical! Lesbian couple! Kind-of-gay-kind-of-het-with-a-side-of-trans-it-was-the-90s-the-definitions-are-squishy couple! Every single couple in it is interracial!
1999 teen comedy satire about being a lesbian! Ridiculously fucking funny!
YOUR MOM’S CHICK FLICK COMEDY-DRAMA!! 1991!! The woman on the top left was in love with the woman on the top right! It’s implied that the woman on the bottom right is the elderly woman on the top left! In the book the two women on top are explicitly lovers! It won two Oscars and three Golden Globes! This movie passes the Bechdel test basically every thirty seconds!
YOUR MOM’S ROMANTIC FANTASY-DRAMA! 1992! A young bride switches souls with an old man and she and her newlywed husband have to figure out how to connect! Those are two of the biggest stars of the era on that cover!! You will notice the word “joke” appeared nowhere in this description!
1994! The only “it’s a man in a dress” humor comes from a male bus driver developing a crush on the titular character! There’s nothing dark or deviant about the fact it’s Robin Williams in drag even if the plot wouldn’t pass muster today! The comedy comes from a very cishet American dude trying to navigate life both as himself and a “cishet British nanny who’s a widow” at the same time!
1982 comedy! Christmas release! Similar plot to the abovementioned Victor/Victoria! Main character actually learns and grows due to his experiences as a woman!
Legal drama! 1993! You probably STILL know the names on this poster! That’s Tom Hanks playing a gay man with AIDS who’s suing his former employer for sexual discrimination! That’s a Black man playing his lawyer!
1973! If you’re wondering what the fuck a Jesus movie is doing here, it portrays Judas as being in love with Jesus! Judas is Black! He’s also a sympathetic character who’s doomed by the narrative! My mom remembered seeing it in theatres and told me there were massive protests, not because of Judas, but because Jesus is shown being royally pissed off! And by the way…
THEY DID IT FUCKING TWICE!! The remake is from 2000 and it kinda sucks but it also garnered basically no outrage (except from musical theater fans pissed about the weak casting) in spite of the fact it’s significantly more explicit than the original and suggests that whole “in love” thing was reciprocal!
Now let me tell you what ties all of these movies together, except for the second Jesus Christ Superstar and also But I’m A Cheerleader because my mom was deeply biased against teen comedies:
THEY WERE ALL ON MY SHELF WHEN I WAS GROWING UP. A VERY AVERAGE MIDWESTERN FAMILY OWNED ALL OF THESE.
And you’ll notice I didn’t mention Angels in America, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Brokeback Mountain, Jennifer’s Body, Saved!, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Flawless, or Torch Song Trilogy. I only provided movies my family owned.
In many ways, we have moved forward. But in a very real way, here, we also need to go back.
Honorable mention to:
Also the Reagan years. And you can lean into the fact that the guy is in a relationship he has to hide because people wouldn’t understand it, but the real standout is the character of Hollywood Montrose.
He’s not gay. He’s thrilled. And yes, it’s played for laughs– but he is very much the Gay Best Friend to a male character, and the only person who says anything negative about him is one of the villains, who is nothing but an assholes, and gets called a bigot to his face by the lead. (And is too dumb to realize that it happened until he walks away.)
Another honorable mention, since it wasn’t as mainstream as those other films, but this honest-to-gosh gay RomCom took a humorous and heartfelt look at gay culture at the height of the AIDS crisis (Patrick Stewart, playing a gruff gay elder, is predictably, brilliant):
Jeffrey (1995), tagline “Love is an adventure when one of you is sure and the other is positive”
amhrancas 