As a 17-year-old transvestite-in-training, The Queen blew my mind upon its release in 1968.
Here was a film about a womanless beauty pageant at a time when any information about crossdressing was very difficult to find, leaving girls like me who lived out in the boonies to wonder if we were all alone in the world. The Queen indicated otherwise.
Here is the link to Rolling Stone's story about restoration and re-release of this important documentary: The Link.
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| Wearing Jonathan Simkhai (Source: Intermix) |
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| Femulating in the 1968 documentary The Queen. |
Hi Stana,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from India! I am so glad you and your blog are back! I don't know if this might be of interest, sharing nonetheless.
Seen so few 'femulate her's from India here on your website, here's one I happened to stumble on that isn't from mainstream films: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzks0THAZoz/
The instagram account has a few more stills of the actor in the same costume.
I don't know how else I could reach you, hence this comment. Please feel free to delete the comment once you bookmark the link, if it happens to interest you.
Cheers, and thank you.
I saw The Queen during its' first release run in one of DC's indie movie houses.I was so taken by it that I stayed and watched it again. Old timers, remember when you could stay in the theater instead of getting herded out before the next screening? Some years later I saw the film again. It was part of a small tour by Harlow, the winner of the contest, "The Queen", in which she introduced the film and did a Q&A after the screening. She had transitioned by then and, while not so slender, was a lovely woman. She shed a lot of light on the very catty process that went on behind the scenes. She also didn't think she would win because she wasn't supported by one of the "in groups". Just as an aside, I asked her if she'd go to dinner with me, as she was staying in DC for another day -- but I'd been "headed off at the pass" by another attendee. She did give me her number in Pennsylvania, but I didn't follow up.
ReplyDeleteI started watching Drag back in those times, back in the late 1950's-1960's. There wasn't any technology to make us look like women back then. We had to work with what we had -- did it ever help to be small and slender!Lots of tape, home made pads for our boobs and butts. It was work! Converting a man into a beautiful woman was nothing short of a science project! And the girls were really driven back then. You had to really want to be a woman, to be beautiful. There were just too many things in our way, laws/people/rules/whatever, making things very hard for us to be our true selves. That's why places like Casa Susana worked. Those ladies would have risked arrest in NYC, and probably have lost their jobs and social status. They were safe on private property.
Had I been "a woman in a man's body" I would have been one of those women who risked it all, so to speak, to be who I was. But I was "a man in a dress" and not driven to be a woman, just to femininity. It was the easy way to go stealth and be a voyeur at Drag shows. I'll be out to yet another screening of "The Queen" when it hits the screens again in DC or Baltimore -- or both. This time Mikki will be watching the film. Hopefully others in my Meetup groups will be there, too. I'll probably have flashbacks to The 82 Club and The Jewel Box Revue.
Dear Stana,
ReplyDeleteI saw THE QUEEN in an “Art House” movie theater in Philadelphia around 1970. Being a Philadelphia native and resident back then, and just starting to frequent Gay bars, I talked to some folks who knew Harlow and said she regularly could be seen in center city walking or in some of the popular gay bars. Unfortunately, I never saw her in person. Years later, I bought the VHS video of the film, which I still have. I hope the restored 4K version will be available on Blu Ray. I will certainly buy it.
Love,
Sheila.
Dear Stana,
ReplyDeleteI found "The Queen" on YouTube..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRCjU7rEqy4
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Watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRCjU7rEqy4
ReplyDelete