My previous blog about the infamous Dawn Langley Hall in Charleston led me to thinking about the best Hollywood movies in which cross-dressing plays a vital role of the plot. Here's my list.
Some Like It Hot: One of the all-time funniest movies. Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe are all at the top of their game. Jack Lemmon gives what may be the greatest comic performance in cinema. And to top it off ... you also get the great Joe E. Brown in single-minded pursuit after the cross-dressing Jack Lemmon.
Tootsie: A close second to Some Like It Hot. Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Terri Garr, and Jessica Lange are all phenomenal. And kudos to the late director Sidney Pollack for his great cameo as Hoffman's exasperated agent.
Victor/Victoria: In 1930s Paris Julie Andrews plays a struggling female singer who cannot get a job. Her friend (played by the fabulous Robert Preston) comes up with a scheme: Victoria will pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman and get a job as a female impersonator in a nightclub. Then Chicago mobster James Garner finds himself oddly attracted to "Victor". Great, great movie.
Psycho: What else do you need to know? Anthony Perkins as a cross-dressing murderer masquerading as Mama.
Dressed To Kill: Michael Caine is chilling as a cross-dressing psychopath.
The Crying Game: Infamous movie about a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who executes one of his hostages and then goes on to have a relationship with the murdered man's girlfriend.
Nuns on the Run: Comic silliness with Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane as criminals who hide out in a convent dressed as nuns.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar: Hilarious movie with Patrick Swazye and Wesley Snipes as transvestites who get marooned in a small town and get involved with the locals and their troubles.
Ed Wood: Directed by Tim Burton (in glorous black and white) and starring Johnny Depp as the cross-dressing cult movie maker, and all around weirdo, Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films and also his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played with magical intensity by Martin Landau.
WORSE CROSS-DRESSING MOVIES
Glen or Glenda: Usually considered one of the worst movies ever made, it has become a cult classic due to its awfulness. Directed and starring Ed Wood (with a drug-addicted and impoverished Bela Lugosi) with such ineptness it inspired a movie that was 100 times better, Ed Wood.
Mrs. Doubtfire: Robin Williams in drag so he can see his kids ... it's even worse than it sounds, mainly because it is directed by the vapid Chris Columbus.
Yentl: Barbra Streisand cross-dresses as a Jewish man so she can study law. Bad, bad, bad ...
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
CHARLESTON and ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.
Unknown to many is the fact that an bizarre event in Charleston became fodder for a great Laugh-In joke. In October 1971 a Charleston woman named Dawn Langley Hall gave birth to a daughter Natasha. Nothing unusual about that ... right?
Well, when Dawn had arrived in Charleston in 1962 she was called Gordon Langley Hall ... yes she was a man. But on September 23, 1968, after successful surgery at John Hopkin's University's Gender Identity Clinic, Gordon became Dawn. Gordon claimed he had been a woman his entire life, but had mis-identified at birth as a man. (Yeah, right.)
Unknown to many is the fact that an bizarre event in Charleston became fodder for a great Laugh-In joke. In October 1971 a Charleston woman named Dawn Langley Hall gave birth to a daughter Natasha. Nothing unusual about that ... right?
Well, when Dawn had arrived in Charleston in 1962 she was called Gordon Langley Hall ... yes she was a man. But on September 23, 1968, after successful surgery at John Hopkin's University's Gender Identity Clinic, Gordon became Dawn. Gordon claimed he had been a woman his entire life, but had mis-identified at birth as a man. (Yeah, right.)
Dawn became engaged to a black man named John-Paul Simmons. But in 1968 the South Carolina state constitution prohibited the “marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or a person who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood.” Dawn hired a lawyer and changed South Carolina law. Charleston's first inter-racial marriage of record took place for January 22, 1969.
For several months during the spring and summer of 1971, Dawn walked the streets of Charleston wearing maternity clothes. Some claimed she would have a big belly beneath her dress one day, and a flat stomach the next. Someone claimed to see a military surplus blanket stuffed beneath Dawn’s dress. Anna Montgomery worked at a baby store on King Street and waited on Dawn. Anna claimed in the Charleston Chronicle that Dawn looked like a pregnant woman, “he forgot to tie down the strings of a pillowcase stuffed with cotton."
Dawn was convinced that white Charleston wanted to kill her unborn half-black child. She claimed there were numerous threats against her, so she decided to move seven hundred miles north to Philadelphia to give birth at the University of Pennsylvania hospital – or maybe to better hide whatever deception she was trying to pull. John-Paul remained in Charleston.
According to a birth certificate on file at the Department of Health Vital Statistics in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on October 17, 1971, Natasha Marginell Manugault Paul Simmons was born. After her return to Charleston, Dawn pushed Natasha up and down the streets in an old-fashioned British baby carrier just like the one the Queen had for Prince Charles. She kept the birth certificate handy to flash at all doubters. Even John-Paul wasn’t impressed. He knew exactly where Natasha came from – one of his girlfriends.
“I’d been going with her for eight months –constantly had sex, sex, sex, all the time with this girl,” he said. “She was about twenty-three. She got pregnant." John-Paul claimed that the girl’s daddy knew Dawn wanted a baby, and the daddy didn’t want his daughter to have an illegitimate daughter with a black man. Dawn gave the father $1000 for the baby. The first time John-Paul saw Natasha he commented, "Whoever saw a blue-eyed nigger?"
Dawn’s announcement of the birth of her daughter became the fodder for TV comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, hosts of the wildly popular Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a show with more than forty million viewers. The opening monologue contained the following exchange:
Dan Rowan: News flash: Charleston, South Carolina. Noted transsexual Dawn Simmons hast just given birth to a daughter.
Dick Martin: We can only hope she grows up to be half the man her mother was.
For the complete story of Dawn Langley Hall you can read the following:
- Wicked Charleston, Vol. II: Prostitutes, Politics & Prohibition by Mark R. Jones (yours truly) Chapter Five is titled "The Queen of Ansonborough".
- Dawn: A Charleston Legend by Dawn Langley Hall. Dawn's memoir of her life.
- Peninsula of Lies by Edward Ball. A kind of detective story that refutes some of the claims made by Dawn in her memoir.
Friday, May 23, 2008
UNFORTUNATE NAMES FOR NEWLYWEDS
These are self-explanatory.
Butts-McCraken
Poore-Sapp
Crapp-Beer
Best-Lay
Filler-QuickMonday, May 19, 2008
'WHITE-LINE 'RAVENEL "Angry' / RUSTY THOMAS Gone / TEDDY KENNEDY Alive
Thomas Ravenel, former SC State Treasurer is angry that he has to go to prison after being convicted of cocaine possession and intent to distribute. I guess being a Ravenel skewers your world view that you're not supposed to go to jail. "I've kind of resigned myself that I'm not going to get any breaks," he said.
Welcome to reality, Mr. Ravenel. Now talk to Mayor Joe about resigning ...
But it's difficult to blame Ravenel for his elitist view - growing up in the pampered good-ole-boy culture of old Charleston. The same culture that allowed fire chief Rusty Thomas (now resigned) to keep the CFD at the sterling standards of the 1970s. Chief Thomas is the perfect example of The Peter Principle - 'In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.'
On July 7, 2007, Chief Thomas defended the training and standards of CFD. He said that he trusted the department's time-honed (i.e. old, outdated) techniques, regardless of what written standards might say.
"We come from a long line of traditional firefighting, and we are never going to get away from that — never," Thomas said. "You can't read out of a book how to put a fire out. You have to go out there and do it, and that's what we do."
And people wonder why South Carolina (and Charleston County) have some of the worst public education in the United States. Here we have a public official saying that he has nothing to learn by reading about advancements in fire fighting theory and safety. CFD trained their staff to rush headlong into the building. Charleston firefighters are taught in training that if a newspaper photographer snapped their photo at a fire scene they weren't doing their jobs. That meant they were standing outside the burning building, rather than attacking the blaze head-on.
Wow. And people in this city are STILL supporting Chief Thomas and Mayor Joe. You remember Mayor Joe, don't you? The man whose job it is to keep abreast of the status of all city departments. The Mayor blames the owner of the Sofa Super Store for the deaths of the Charleston 9. Because, after all, nothing is EVER the city's fault.
I guess we should blame the flooding on the pennisula on the rain, not on the city's failure to solve the drainage problem. Blame the eye-sore trash of cigarette butts up and down Market Street every morning on the restuarant owners, not on the city who made it illegal to smoke inside privately owned businesses.
But we can keep dumping money into the abyss called the South Carolina Aquarium. By the way ... when's the last time anybody saw a movie at the IMAX? Oops, sorry, it's closed.
Just another example of the Charleston way of doing business.
****************************************************
In similar news, it seems Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D/M[arxist]-Mass) had a seizure over the weekend. And as of this writing, Mary Jo Kopechne is still dead.
Leo DeCapprio discusses the size of his brain ... or his penis ... not sure which.
Welcome to reality, Mr. Ravenel. Now talk to Mayor Joe about resigning ...
But it's difficult to blame Ravenel for his elitist view - growing up in the pampered good-ole-boy culture of old Charleston. The same culture that allowed fire chief Rusty Thomas (now resigned) to keep the CFD at the sterling standards of the 1970s. Chief Thomas is the perfect example of The Peter Principle - 'In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.'
On July 7, 2007, Chief Thomas defended the training and standards of CFD. He said that he trusted the department's time-honed (i.e. old, outdated) techniques, regardless of what written standards might say.
"We come from a long line of traditional firefighting, and we are never going to get away from that — never," Thomas said. "You can't read out of a book how to put a fire out. You have to go out there and do it, and that's what we do."
And people wonder why South Carolina (and Charleston County) have some of the worst public education in the United States. Here we have a public official saying that he has nothing to learn by reading about advancements in fire fighting theory and safety. CFD trained their staff to rush headlong into the building. Charleston firefighters are taught in training that if a newspaper photographer snapped their photo at a fire scene they weren't doing their jobs. That meant they were standing outside the burning building, rather than attacking the blaze head-on.
Wow. And people in this city are STILL supporting Chief Thomas and Mayor Joe. You remember Mayor Joe, don't you? The man whose job it is to keep abreast of the status of all city departments. The Mayor blames the owner of the Sofa Super Store for the deaths of the Charleston 9. Because, after all, nothing is EVER the city's fault.
I guess we should blame the flooding on the pennisula on the rain, not on the city's failure to solve the drainage problem. Blame the eye-sore trash of cigarette butts up and down Market Street every morning on the restuarant owners, not on the city who made it illegal to smoke inside privately owned businesses.
But we can keep dumping money into the abyss called the South Carolina Aquarium. By the way ... when's the last time anybody saw a movie at the IMAX? Oops, sorry, it's closed.
Just another example of the Charleston way of doing business.
****************************************************
In similar news, it seems Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D/M[arxist]-Mass) had a seizure over the weekend. And as of this writing, Mary Jo Kopechne is still dead.
*****************************************************
HOLLYWOOD ALERT
Leo DeCapprio discusses the size of his brain ... or his penis ... not sure which.Wednesday, May 14, 2008
BOOKS I HAVE READ MORE THAN FIVE (5) TIMES
This list does not include juvenile books like The Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer and Black Beauty since I read those dozens of times as a kid. Only adult novels make the list:
To Kill A Mockingbird / Harper Lee: I have read this book every 2-3 years since 1977. One of the best of all time. Simple and charming yet very deep. One of the best movies of all time also ...
The World According to Garp / John Irving: When this book was released I read it two times in a row! I literally finished the book and turned back to the first page and read it again. Funny as hell and sad as hell ... a difficult combination to pull off well. Decent movie too ...
The Princess Bride / William Goldman: One of the most fun books you will ever read. The early edition (pre-movie) had one of the greatest tag lines in publishing history: What happens when the most beautiful woman in the world meets the handsomest prince in the world and he turns out to be a son-of-a-bitch? The movie is good, but the book (of course) is much much better. I read this in college and tried to interest my friends in reading it ... I had no takers. When the movie was released 20 yrs later, everyone wanted to read the book and I took great delight in reminding them I tried to make that happen years ago.
Carrion Comfort / Dan Simmons: Wow! Creepy beyond belief. And some of it takes place in Charleston! The little old Charleston matron, Melanie, is one of the creepiest characters to walk through the pages of a book. A massive, multi-plotted novel about a vast global conspiracy among "mind vampires" who use the power of their will to impose it upon weaker humans. French movie is in production ...
A Town Like Alice / Nevil Shute: A great adventure romance. A WWII book, a romance, a travel story ... all rolled into one. Shute is on my list of one of the few writers who has never written a boring book. Great BBC production for Masterpiece Theater in the 1980s starring Bryan Brown.
Dune / Frank Herbert: Towering sci-fi epic that deserves its reputation as one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time. If you've read it, you already understand how detailed and complex the story is ... and how exciting. It takes place on a remote desert planet named Arrakis that is the only place in the known universe that produced the highly addictive spice melange. The plot is fueled by a massive power grab by feuding Intergalactic families with all the intrigue and double-crosses you might expect, along with a touch of mystical religion. Lousy movie directed by David Lynch in the 1980s and a tepid miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel. New version is in production currently ... I'm not holding out much hope. The book is difficult to turn into a movie.
Replay / Ken Grimwood: A classic take on the time-travel novel. In the opening paragraph 43-year old Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and "awakens" in 1963 at the age of 18 ... with all the memories of his previous life intact. He lives again to the age of 43 and then dies ... and "awakens" again ... over and over and over. Kind of hope they don't make a movie ... Hollywood would screw it up like they did Jumper.
Strangers & Watchers / Dean R. Koontz: Koontz has fallen prey to the Stephen King syndrome ... publishing books that would never see the light of day if they were written by someone who was not a "name" author. However, these two books were written when Koontz was hitting his commercial (and creative) stride. Strangers is one of the best takes of the alien-abduction story that branches out in intriguing ways. Watchers is Koontz favorite book of his ... a sweet and harrowing story about a lonely man and woman who are brought together by an unsual dog. The plot of the movie Watchers was so different I'm not sure the producers ever read the book.
Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card: My personal favorite sci-fi book. Deceptively simple but full of misdirection and narrative layers. Eight-year old Ender Wiggen is an unsually intelligent boy who is sent to Battle Schoo. Several generations ago Earth luckily defeated an invading alien force called the Buggers, did not destroy them. So Earth is busy training the best and brightest to be ready to meet the Buggers when they return ... and they may be closer than you think. Movie version is in slow developement ... Card has huge control over this material ... thank goodness. Hoepfully when and if it is a movie, it will be faithful.
Cannery Row / John Steinbeck: My favorite novel by one of America's best writers. Steinbeck's "serious" books can become preachy populism (The Grapes of Wrath) , but his comic novels are flat-out hilarious and filled with great characters. The group of bums called "Mack and the boys" are some of the best comic relief in fiction. Odd and stylized movie starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger is entertaining.
To Kill A Mockingbird / Harper Lee: I have read this book every 2-3 years since 1977. One of the best of all time. Simple and charming yet very deep. One of the best movies of all time also ...
The World According to Garp / John Irving: When this book was released I read it two times in a row! I literally finished the book and turned back to the first page and read it again. Funny as hell and sad as hell ... a difficult combination to pull off well. Decent movie too ...
The Princess Bride / William Goldman: One of the most fun books you will ever read. The early edition (pre-movie) had one of the greatest tag lines in publishing history: What happens when the most beautiful woman in the world meets the handsomest prince in the world and he turns out to be a son-of-a-bitch? The movie is good, but the book (of course) is much much better. I read this in college and tried to interest my friends in reading it ... I had no takers. When the movie was released 20 yrs later, everyone wanted to read the book and I took great delight in reminding them I tried to make that happen years ago.
Carrion Comfort / Dan Simmons: Wow! Creepy beyond belief. And some of it takes place in Charleston! The little old Charleston matron, Melanie, is one of the creepiest characters to walk through the pages of a book. A massive, multi-plotted novel about a vast global conspiracy among "mind vampires" who use the power of their will to impose it upon weaker humans. French movie is in production ...
A Town Like Alice / Nevil Shute: A great adventure romance. A WWII book, a romance, a travel story ... all rolled into one. Shute is on my list of one of the few writers who has never written a boring book. Great BBC production for Masterpiece Theater in the 1980s starring Bryan Brown.
Dune / Frank Herbert: Towering sci-fi epic that deserves its reputation as one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time. If you've read it, you already understand how detailed and complex the story is ... and how exciting. It takes place on a remote desert planet named Arrakis that is the only place in the known universe that produced the highly addictive spice melange. The plot is fueled by a massive power grab by feuding Intergalactic families with all the intrigue and double-crosses you might expect, along with a touch of mystical religion. Lousy movie directed by David Lynch in the 1980s and a tepid miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel. New version is in production currently ... I'm not holding out much hope. The book is difficult to turn into a movie.
Replay / Ken Grimwood: A classic take on the time-travel novel. In the opening paragraph 43-year old Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and "awakens" in 1963 at the age of 18 ... with all the memories of his previous life intact. He lives again to the age of 43 and then dies ... and "awakens" again ... over and over and over. Kind of hope they don't make a movie ... Hollywood would screw it up like they did Jumper.
Strangers & Watchers / Dean R. Koontz: Koontz has fallen prey to the Stephen King syndrome ... publishing books that would never see the light of day if they were written by someone who was not a "name" author. However, these two books were written when Koontz was hitting his commercial (and creative) stride. Strangers is one of the best takes of the alien-abduction story that branches out in intriguing ways. Watchers is Koontz favorite book of his ... a sweet and harrowing story about a lonely man and woman who are brought together by an unsual dog. The plot of the movie Watchers was so different I'm not sure the producers ever read the book.
Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card: My personal favorite sci-fi book. Deceptively simple but full of misdirection and narrative layers. Eight-year old Ender Wiggen is an unsually intelligent boy who is sent to Battle Schoo. Several generations ago Earth luckily defeated an invading alien force called the Buggers, did not destroy them. So Earth is busy training the best and brightest to be ready to meet the Buggers when they return ... and they may be closer than you think. Movie version is in slow developement ... Card has huge control over this material ... thank goodness. Hoepfully when and if it is a movie, it will be faithful.
Cannery Row / John Steinbeck: My favorite novel by one of America's best writers. Steinbeck's "serious" books can become preachy populism (The Grapes of Wrath) , but his comic novels are flat-out hilarious and filled with great characters. The group of bums called "Mack and the boys" are some of the best comic relief in fiction. Odd and stylized movie starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger is entertaining.
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