Drag in Film.

Drag became an essential part of director John Waters' repertoire from the beginning, in the person of his friend, Glenn Milstead, whom he dubbed "Divine", taking a cue from Warhol's self-proclaimed, one-name "superstars" like Viva and Ondine. Their first attempt, the "experimental" short Roman Candles (1966) basically hasn't seen the light of day since, though Waters recently mentioned to TCM host and Academy president Jacqueline Stewart that it's been preserved in the Academy archives. One of the big regrets of my life is that I didn't cut out of work when John showed the next film, Eat Your Makeup (1968), in the hall of the local Methodist church, a standard practice in those days of hauling his films around himself. It doesn't get shown either, but has the notoriety of having depicted the Kennedy assassination, with Divine as Jackie. John insisted on pushing just about every button he could find and that's a good example of both his intention and talent to offend.



From there John got more ambitious and more serious with the ultra-black comedy Mondo Trasho (1969), featuring Divine in a series of very surreal adventures around Baltimore, taking its cue from the popular "Mondo"-themed movies of the 60's by being as tasteless as possible. This is the one in which Divine became both the actress and the character, fusing the identity onscreen and off. Much of the film is played in a tight two piece gold lame outfit, part of John's intention to create his own version of a bombshell a-la Jayne Mansfield.



Next came Multiple Maniacs (1970), the first one to get real attention from the press and the first with a semi-coherent script as opposed to being an improvisational free-for-all.



This is the one which started to position the character as "the filthiest person alive", which she would officially become in the next film. Divine is proprietor of Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions, a travelling tent show putting down stakes in suburban neighborhoods to lure in housewives and then rob them. The rest of the movie follows her trajectory from master criminal to a literal monster after being ravaged by a giant lobster, sending her foaming at the mouth into the streets of Baltimore to be gunned down by the National Guard. Just a normal day in Waters world.



Next, of course, was the biggie which put Waters and Divine on the map, Pink Flamingos (1972), modestly billed as an exercise in bad taste. It almost single-handedly created the Midnight Movie phenomenon and led to international interest. The movie centers on Babs Johnson (Divine) and her family, whose raison d'etre as the filthiest people alive is threatened by a couple bent on supplanting them. If you've seen it, I'm sure your memory will serve you better than my words could. If not, be prepared for some pretty gross stuff if you do watch it. The whole point was to test limits and that it did. Who can forget this image, variations of which still appear in new contexts today?



Next came John's big pivot toward the mainstream, Female Trouble (1974), in which his development as a director showed in a more coherent script, stable as opposed to hand-held camera setups, and more formal screen compositions. This is the one which finally looks more like a low-budget movie than a home movie and Divine reaped the rewards by looking the best he ever had in drag, from teenage years, to young motherhood, to a life of crime, to the electric chair. Eat your heart out, Susan Hayward. The teenage Dawn Davenport and her high school buds Cookie Mueller and Susan Walsh perfectly capture that spirit of teenage alienation most of us can understand.



This movie also featured "the walk", John's homage to Jayne Mansfield's walk in the street in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956), which he had also used in Pink Flamingos, featuring Divine free-styling in the streets of Baltimore. Definitely worth a look. Here it is as part of the longer scene.



Lots of professional opportunities started to open up for Divine, including live theater, recording and live performances, so John made his next movie, Desperate Living (1977) without his main attraction. By the time of their next project, Divine's public profile had grown so much as to deserve an equally compelling lead for Polyester (1981), Tab Hunter, whose game courtship (and ultimate betrayal) of Divine's character Francine Fishpaw elevated the whole project into something which could actually play in the multiplexes springing up all over the country. The role of the hapless housewife who can't catch a break was a real acting challenge, which Divine met in a way which changed some minds about his potential in the industry.



The character of the put-upon mother helped pave the way for Divine's next film with John and their greatest success, Hairspray (1988). Here's poor Francine trying to reason with wayward daughter Lulu. John specialized in stilted dialogue and purple prose, at which Divine was especially adept, making them a perfect team.



Following the success of Polyester, Divine was onboard for a project launched by Tab Hunter and his partner, Lust in the Dust (1985), playing a dance hall girl caught up in a hunt for treasure in the old west. The movie was popular, but didn't have the same impact as John's.



That same year Divine made an appearance out of drag, still using the professional name of Divine, in the Alan Rudolph movie Trouble in Mind 1985) with Kris Kristofferson and Keith Carradine, definitely signaling his intention to branch out acting-wise. Divine comes in at about 1:45.



The reunion with John came in Hairspray (1988), by far their most successful collaboration and a popular movie still today, having inspired a hit Broadway musical and a screen version of that show. Following the pattern set by Polyester, Divine again appeared as a drab matron who ultimately underwent a glamor treatment. That scene in particular, shopping with daughter Tracy at The Hefty Hideaway, is a standout for me.



Divine got to enjoy the premiere of Hairspray and the critical and popular acclaim, but died in his sleep of heart failure three weeks later, on the eve of taping a guest appearance as a male relative on the popular sitcom Married with Children, which might have turned into a recurring character if things had been different. As mentioned, Divine found success in areas other than film and in the process received world-wide fame and an indelible legacy as a pioneer of drag in mainstream entertainment, something which only RuPaul can claim to equal. R.I.P, Divine.

It's not a favorite of mine, but Rod Steiger played a serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). His character had a theatrical background and used disguises, including drag, to approach his victims.

Going back some years, Charlie Chaplin got into the act in a two-reel short film The Woman (1915), resorting to drag to fool the father of a young woman he was interested in, with her connivance, so I guess we're not supposed to see anything murky, though British censors apparently needed some time to mull it over before finally passing it for exhibition in England a year later. Chaplin normally used a good deal of makeup, especially eye makeup, for his Tramp character, so I suppose throwing on a dress wasn't that big a leap.





Charlie had previously worn drag in The Masquerader (1914) with Fatty Arbuckle, in which he played an actor who'd been rejected for a role but returns as a woman and gets cast, sort of an early precursor to Tootsie.



....and in A Busy Day, also from 1914, in which Charlie actually played a female character, not a man disguised in drag, a wife who becomes jealous of her husband's attention to another woman. But, after 1915, no more dresses for Charlie.

There's an incidental use of drag in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), in which James Cagney's assistant (Hanns Lothar) is used as a decoy dressed in the outfit of the sexy office secretary to divert Russian spies in a car chase through Berlin.



Some very surprised Russians finally catch up to him.

 

There was one of those soldiers-in-drag-for-fun scenes in Paramount's True to the Army (1942), in the form of a fashion show featuring the stylish "dames". 



That's not a good picture, so I'll post the whole number, Judy Canova performing Frank Loesser's "Wacky for Khaki". The story involves a witness to murder (Canova) who hides out in an Army camp (A male soldier friend helps her.), sort of like what was going on in Some Like It Hot. She's being pursued, which explains why she turns a rifle on the audience at one point, in case you were wondering, because that's not usually part of an act and thank goodness. It was later remade by Twentieth Century-Fox as How to Be Very Very Popular (1955) with Betty Grable and Sheree North hiding out on a college campus, Anyway, back to the "dames"....

Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) may have been the first (?) of the modern era to use the image of an actor (Helmut Berger) in drag to promote the film as a whole. But, since the image was tied to decadence and Naziism, it's difficult (but not impossible) to see it as a progressive use of drag. I've had opportunities to rewatch the film over the years but have never taken advantage of them, so I can't say how well it's held up. The movie was initially rated X in this country, but changed to an R rating when 12 minutes were cut.






There's also a scene where drunken members of the SA, Hitler's elite goon squad which helped bring him to power, have incorporated drag into their revelry, but by morning Hitler has had them all slaughtered, having by that time outlived their usefulness and probably because behavior such as this could compromise Hitler's ambitions. Hitler, ever the autocrat, was tolerant of things when they suited him and intolerant if they no longer did, to put it mildly. There's a lesson there.