Célestine Berger

Dorothy L.Sayers. “The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question” in Lord Peter Views the Body. London: Gollancz. 1928. London: Penguin Books. 1962.

Synopsis

Célestine, 'a slim singled creature with the face of a Paris gamin' but with ankles 'a trifle on the thick side', took a job in England in 1928 in the service of the Dowager Duchess of Medway.

She had the misfortune, in the queue at the Gare Saint-Lazare to have one’s luggage weighed, to be immediately in front of the English private detective Peter Wimsey. Wimsey's idiosyncratic mind was bothered by a phrase that she used: 'Me prends-tu pour un imbécile?'. He had a surreptitious photograph taken of her.

When the family diamonds disappeared just before the wedding of the Duchess's granddaughter, Wimsey, working with the police knew enough to have Célestine arrested. He explained that he was quite intrigued that a young woman would use a masculine article to describe herself, rather than saying 'une imbecile'. He had her photographed and confirmed with the Sûreté that she was indeed Jacques Lerouge also known as Sans-culotte.

Curiosities

While Dorothy Sayers(1893-1957) was an androgynous dresser, she rarely used gender variance in her plots, this being almost the only exception.

“Sans-culotte” was a expression used in revolutionary France where men wore pantaloons rather than the knee breeches of upper-class men. Here of course it means in a skirt rather than a culotte.

La Celestina was a major character in the 1499 Spanish novel by Fernando de Rojas, Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea or Libro de Calisto y Melibea y de la puta vieja Celestina. She is a former prostitute who now arranges discreet meetings between lovers, and runs a brothel.

Celestine is also the name of five Roman Catholic Popes.

Sayers regarded her translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia to be her best work. It was released as three Penguin Classics.

• Marjorie Garber. Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge. xiii, 443 pp. 1992. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993. London : Penguin Books, 1993: 190-1.

Le locataire

Novel by Roland Topor, Paris: Buchet-Chastel. 1964. English translation by Francis K. Price. The Tenant. London: W.H. Allen. 1966. New York: Bantam Books: 1966.
Film directed by Roman Polanski
English title: The Tenant.
Script by Gérard Brach & Roman Polanski, based on the novel by Roland Topor
126 mins 1976

Roman Polanski plays Trelkovsky
Isabelle Adjani plays Stella
Shelley Winters plays the concierge

Country of finance: France
Nationality of director: Polish
Location of story: Paris
Filming location: Paris.

Synopsis

In urgent need of an apartment in Paris, Trelkovsky finds one on the rue de Pyrenees that was about to become vacant as the current tenant, Simone Choule, had thrown herself out of the window into the courtyard below. He visits Simone in the hospital ward where she is dying, and becomes acquainted with her friend Stella.

After being criticized by the neighbours for a flat-warming that was too noisy, Trelkovsky became more and more paranoid about the neighbours. Some stand in the toilet across the courtyard and stare at his window, there are knocks on his door but no-one is there. The neighbours organize a petition to evict a woman with an handicapped child; they fight with each other over noise.

The cafe owner across the street insists on always serving the hot chocolate and toast that Simone Choule had always had, and pushes Trelkovsky into smoking her brand of cigarettes. The landlord persuades him to wear slippers in the apartment as she had done. One morning he awakes to find his face made up in a feminine manner. For a while he plays along with the role, going out made up, buying a wig, a dress etc., shaving his legs and enjoying the normal pleasures of transvestity. Then one morning he awakes and finds one of his upper incisor teeth missing - as Simone Choule had.

The next time that he awakes he is dressed and made up, he sees a parade of people in costume in the courtyard suggesting a ritual sacrifice. He barricades himself in, and escapes the next morning in his regular male outfit. He stays with Stella. After being knocked down by a car, he is sedated by a doctor. The driver of the car, to make amends, drives him home: however the driver was one of the neighbours from the rue de Pyrenees.

The next morning, Trelkovsky, in full drag, jumps out of his window. Surviving, he struggles back to his room, only to be stabbed, and thrown out the window again.

He awoke in hospital, to find Stella calling him Simone, and a man who looks like himself looking on.

Curiosities

Most critics point out that it was Roman Polanski’s third film about apartment neighbour paranoia (after Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby). But we could also categorize it with his occult films: Rosemary's Baby, Macbeth, The Ninth Gate.

The film is also a time loop. Time loop films, where the end is also the beginning, often have a trans or androgyny theme. A good example is Before the Rain, 1994.

Like Polanski himself, Trelkovsky was a Pole in Paris who did not know how to do things.

Trelkovsky is given no first name in either the novel or the film.

The story fitted so well into Polanski’s oeuvre that the file critic Rebecca Bell-Metereau attributes details found in the novel - such as finding Simone's tooth behind the wardrobe - as Polanski's additions. The film suggests more strongly than the book does that Trelkovsky was imagining it.

Polanski, playing the lead role, is actually uncredited as an actor.

The film has no final credits.

Although the UK cinema version was complete the 1986 video was cut by 6 seconds by the BBFC to remove a brief extract of the banned nunchaku scene from Enter the Dragon (1973) (seen by Trelkovsky and Stella during a cinema visit). The cuts were restored in the 2004 Paramount DVD.

The film is not really in either French or English. No matter which audio language you choose on the DVD, the lips never properly match.

This is the last film made by Polanski while still persona grata in the US. Two years later he fled from a paedophile charge in California and has not been back since.

Awards

Nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, 1976.
Nominated for a César Award for production design, 1977.

Transvestity in the films of Roman Polanski

This is hardly a theme in Polanski’s films. In Cul-de-Sac.1966, George (Donald Pleasence) is encouraged by his young wife (Francoise Dorleac) to put on a nightie and makeup. This is pretty minor.





In The Magic Christian, 1969, Polanski was the straight man to Yul Brynner’s drag performance.



The only real Polanski drag movie is this, The Tenant. Polanski cast himself as Trelkovsky, but we cannot assume anything about his gender identity from this. The protagonist being a Pole in Paris, who does not fit in, as was Polanski himself and also Topor, was enough reason for him to identify with the part. The themes other than the cross-dressing, especially the neighbour paranoia, are very Polanski.

However, despite Polanski using transvestity to tell a tale of madness and fear, and having little interest in real transvestites, there are moment that trans women will relate to. The days of not really knowing who you are, and that period when you do not quite pass and are the neighbours talking about you, especially when they stop and stare at you.

• Rebecca Bell-Metereau. Hollywood Androgyny. New York: Columbia University Press. 1985. Second Edition 1993: 171-2.
• Jake Euker. “The Tenant”, PopMatters 14 July 2003. www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/t/tenant.shtml
• Richard Scheib. “The Tenant (Le Locataire)” The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review. 1990. www.moria.co.nz/horror/tenant.htm

The Magic Christian

Directed by Joseph McGrath
Script by Terry Southern & Joseph McGrath, with additional material by Graham Chapman, John Cleese & Peter Sellers, based on the novel by Terry Southern.
92 mins 1969

Peter Sellers play Sir Guy Grand
Ringo Starr plays Youngman Grand

Country of finance: UK
Nationality of director: UK
Location of story: London
Filming location: London.

Synopsis

Billionaire Sir Guy Grand adopts a young man whom he finds sleeping in the park, and together they bribe people to abandon their principles, do silly things etc. A large part of the film takes place aboard the new cruise ship, The Magic Christian.

Trivia

The novel was set in the US, but was relocated to London for the film.

This is the only film that features Beatles, Goons and Monty Pythons.

This is the last thing that Polanski did before his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson gang, although the film was not released until afterwards.

Cross-Dressing

There is a short scene with Guy Grand dressed as a nun. That is not very interesting.

However there is also this with one of the uncredited stars. Note the man at the bar, who is Roman Polanski and credited. The point is that at the last moment you should recognize the female singer. A great performance by one of Hollywood’s biggest macho stars.

Lola

Lola is song written by Ray Davies and performed by The Kinks.   It was released in June 1970.   The single went to number 2 in the UK, number 1 in Ireland, New Zealand and the Netherlands, and number 9 in the US.

Ray Davies said that it was based on an incident with the band’s manager, Robert Wace:

I remembered an incident in a club... in his apartment Robert Wace had been dancing with this black woman, and he said, ‘I’m really on to a thing here.’ And it was okay until we left at six in the morning and then I said, ‘Have you seen the stubble?’ He said ‘Yeah,’ but he was too pissed [drunk] to care, I think.

Many of our readers must have had the experience, early in their experience of going out dressed, of this song being played in a public place, and fearing that it might point to themselves.

The song has been covered and parodied by many other artists.  A notable cover is by trans musician Dana Baitz, who changed the words to Lola’s perspective.

I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola [LP version: Coca-Cola]
See-oh-el-aye cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola
El-oh-el-aye Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well I'm not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said dear boy won't you come home with me
Well I'm not the world's most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
I pushed her away
I walked to the door
I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me
Well that's the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Well I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said dear boy I'm gonna make you a man
Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola

• “Lola (song)”.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_(song)

Stonewall – the 1995 movie

Produced by Christine Vachon 
Directed by Nigel Finch
Script by Rikki Beadle Blair, a fictionalization from the book by Martin Duberman
99 mins 1995 BBC

Frederic Weller plays Matty Dean
Guillermo Diaz plays La Miranda Queredis/Hector Duarte
Brendan Corbalis plays Ethan/Bruce Compton
Duane Boutte plays Bostonia
Bruce MacVittie plays Vinnie
Dwight Ewell plays Helen Wheels
Matthew Faber plays Mizz Moxie
Michael McElroy plays Princess Ernestine
Vince Cupone plays Jose/Camelia
Steven Wishnoff plays Lucy Tania
Divas:
Candis Cayne
David Drumgold
Sherry Vine (Keith Levy)
Queen Allyson Allante gives a testimonial

Country of finance: UK
Nationality of director: British
Nationality of producer: US
Location of story: New York, New York, USA
Filming location: New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Fire Island.

Synopsis

In 1969, Matty Dean arrives in New York City from somewhere in the midwest. He quickly falls in with a group of drag queens going to the Stonewall tavern. When La Miranda is harassed during a police raid he stands up for her and is beaten. They are arrested. Bostonia, a drag mother to the Stonewall queens, bails them out. Bostonia is also the lover of Vinnie, the closeted mafioso manager of the Stonewall. Matty also attends meetings of the Mattachine Society, where he becomes the lover of Ethan, a writer. Hector, La Miranda’s male persona, is called for military induction. She reports en femme, but is terrified when she is sent to a psychiatrist for evaluation. Matty wears her clothes and goes in her place. He gets her declared as ‘sexual deviant’. Vinnie arranges an appointment with a sex change doctor for Bostonia, apparently thinking that this will okay their relationship in the eyes of the straight world. She refuses: “I’m a chick with a dick who ain’t done with her dick yet”. Ethan and Matty go on the Mattachine Society demonstration at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Then they go to the gay resort of Fire Island for a few days, where at a gay dance, man are not allowed to dance face to face, and on the beach police check that swimming costumes are not too skimpy. Matty prefers La Miranda’s defiance over Ethan’s acceptance of the system, and goes back to her. After watching Judy Garland’s death on television, Vinnie takes Bostonia out in public for the first time. The next morning, after telling her that he loves her, he shoots himself. The next night there is another raid at the Stonewall Inn, and after taunting, La Miranda hits back at a cop. The riot starts.

Awards, and afterlife

1995 London Film Festival - Audience Award

1996 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - Audience Award for Best Feature

1996 L.A. Outfest - Grand Jury Award Honorable Mention - Outstanding Screenwriting - Rikki Beadle Blair
Rikki Beadle Blair turned the filmscript into a play, and it was premiered at the Edinburgh Fesival in 2007.

Cast & Crew

Christine Vachon (1962 - ) is a US film producer who has made many queer films including Poison, 1991, Swoon, 1992, Go Fish, 1994, Safe, 1995, I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996, Velvet Goldmine, 1998, Boys Don’t Cry, 1999, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 2001, Far From Heaven, 2002, Infamous, 2006.

Nigel Finch (1949 – 1995) was a BBC producer/director. He had made previous programs about such queer topics as the Chelsea Hotel, Robert Mapplethorp, Kenneth Anger, Yukio Mishima. He was suffering from AIDS as he made Stonewall. He died shortly after its completion.

Rikki Beadle-Blair (1961 – ) is a Briton of Jamaican descent. He is an openly gay actor /singer /writer /producer /director. He adapted Boy George’s autobiography, and did a documentary on homophobia on BBC Radio 4.

Martin Duberman (1930 – ) was a history professor at the City University of New York. He published the first book-length history of Stonewall in 1993.

Frederick Weller (1966 – ) is a cousin of actor Peter Weller. He can be seen in episodes of Law and Order. He is apparently heterosexual.

Guillermo Diaz (1971 – )(La Miranda) is an openly gay actor. He has played gay and straight parts. Stonewall is his only drag role.

Duane Boutte (Bostonia) has been in 7 films. Stonewall is his only drag role.

Dwight Ewell (Helen Wheels) has been in 31 films. Stonewall is his only drag role.

Matthew Faber (Mizz Moxie) has been in 23 films. Stonewall is his only drag role.

Michael McElroy (Princess Ernestine) has been in 7 films. Stonewall is his only drag role.

Vince Cupone (1972 - )(Jose/Carmilia) is a stunts person. He has also acted in 30 films. Stonewall is his only drag role.

Steven Wishnoff (1959 – ) (Lucy Tania) has been in 3 films, and played one of the prisoners in the television series Oz. He is an Emmy nominated producer. He played Albin/Zaza in the stage version of La Cage aux Folles, and has played other drag roles.

The Diva chorus, Candis Cayne, David Drumgold and Sherry Vine were well-known drag performers in New York. Candis Cayne, of course, started transition shortly after this film, and is now a woman.

Queen Allyson Allante, who with other actual participants in the real riot, is briefly interviewed during the opening credits, is transgender. She is ignored in both Martin Duberman’s and David Carter’s books on Stonewall.

Curiosities

Most accounts say that the first return blow was from a trans man (Stormé DeLarverie). There are no trans men in the film.

It is sometimes assumed that La Miranda is (very loosely) based on Sylvia Rivera. Guillermo Diaz, 24 when he made the film, looks too old to be the 18-year-old that Sylvia was in 1969. And where is the character based on Marsha Johnson?


In fact, all the persons in the film (except Judy Garland, and the testimonials) are fictional. This avoidance of the real persons in the history is the aspect that is most criticized.

The Diva chorus which lip-synchs to songs by the Shangri-Las and others are in effect a Greek Chorus commenting on the action.

Like Tales of the City, 1993, US film/television was not interested in filming the story, and a British team stepped in.

Nigel Finch had never been to the United States before making this film.

Rikki Beadle-Blair was criticized during the making of the film: “No one's going to want to see a drag queen having sex -- that's a freak show, a bad example for the youth of America.” However he and Finch stood their ground.

Blair found problems in that the alternate accounts of Stonewall disagree. See for example the two major books by Duberman and Carter which disagree significantly. He partially resolved this by having La Miranda say at the beginning and at the end of the film that this was her Stonewall, her memory of events. This partially forestalls criticism about the facts, but does not explain how she knew about events where she was not present.

The characters in the film are to some extent composites of different people; others are archetypes to tell the story. Time is also collapsed. Some of the events with the Mattachine Society actually took place earlier in the 1960s, not in 1969.

As in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, 1995 and Transamerica, 2005, the major drag roles go to cisgendered actors and the real drag performers/transgendered actors get only the small parts.

Jack Nichols, real life lover of drag star Logan Carter, was so negative about the film that he (wrongly) doubted that Nigel Finch was even gay.

Sylvia Rivera, a major real-life participant at the riots, demonstrated against the film at its New York premiere.

Conclusion

The film is annoying to some of those who want it to be a documentary, and to follow the known facts detail-by-detail. It is however a work of art, using composites, archetypes, time compression and a Greek chorus. These techniques are used in many films about historical events.

The film does re-assert the importance of transgendered persons at the riot. Transgender activists have rightly been aggravated by the efforts of some gays and lesbians to write the transgendered out of the history of Stonewall. Here a lesbian producer, a gay director and a gay writer put the transgendered back at the centre of the story.

• Martin B Duberman. Stonewall. New York: Dutton, 1993. New York: Plume, 1994.
• Edward Guthman. “`Stonewall' -- Gay History Lite”. SFGate. July 26, 1996. www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1996/07/26/DD54562.DTL
• Jack Nichols. “Stonewall: A Film by Nigel Finch. Badpuppy Gay Today. 1997. http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/071497en.htm
• “Stonewall (film)”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_(film)
• David Carter. Stonewall : the riots that sparked the gay revolution. New York : St. Martin's Press 2004. New York: Griffin 2005.

Little Richard (1932 – ) and his lyrics.

Richard Wayne Penniman was a Rock-and-Roll singer/pianist and preacher.

In his apprenticeship years, he had toured the southern US in a vaudeville show where he played in drag as Princess Lavonne, ‘the freak of the year’.


Later, as he became famous as Little Richard from 1955, he performed with make-up, flamboyance, high pitched squeals, extravagant clothing and pompadour hairstyle.

Little Richard was certainly out of line with the 1950s concept of masculinity. One of the pioneers of rock and roll, he was unique in purveying an androgynous image.

Two of his hit records have been taken to be about drag queens: bald-headed Sally, and Miss Molly who is addressed as ‘son’. The 18th-century mollies were of course transgendered.

Good Golly Miss Molly

From the early early mornin' to the early early night,
When I caught miss Molly rockin' at the house of blue lights,
Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,
A-When you're rockin' and a rollin', can't hear your mama call.

Mama, papa told me 'Son, you better watch your step',
If'n your Papa's Mama had to watch my Papa's step ,
Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,
A-When you're rockin' and a rollin', can't hear your mama call.

Long Tall Sally

Well, long tall Sally, she's built for speed,
She's got everything that uncle John need,
Oh baby, yes baby, woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.

Well, I saw uncle John with bald headed Sally,
He saw aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley,
Oh baby, yes baby, woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.

W.T Lhamon writes: “Traditional black folk figures scamper through this song in scandalous antics. Uncle John is a stock figure in black lore from the ‘John cycle’ of tales about a slave who outwits the authorities. On this level, the song’s Aunt Mary is a good wife … But ‘Aunt Mary’ is also gay argot for a possessive queen. So she operates on at least two levels, apparent nurturer and drag possessor. In any case, Uncle John in this song is ducking out on Aunt Mary’s authority, whatever she represents. It’s Long Tall sally, ‘built for speed,’ who ‘got everything that Uncle John need.’ But where did Sally come from? Nightmare to to every Aunt Mary, Sally is the newly noticed, old, subtraditional freak. Not only long, tall, and speedy, she’s ‘bald-headed.’ As such, she’s figuratively phallic, flashing in and out of alleys in the hand of Uncle John, that trickster. That is attractive enough in the male-bonding context of the studio where all this cropped up mutually among these men, but there is more. In the transvestite shows of Little Richard’s apprenticeship, baldheadedness was preparation for one’s wigs… Long Tall Sally, in addition to her other meanings, is therefore a transvestite fantasy figure slipping and and sliding through life’s niches. … A transsexual variant of Sambo, and just like this new rock form which her surfacing embodied at this mid-fifties moment of family breakdown, she represents whatever anyone wishes her to represent.”

Richard Penniman is also an ordained born-again Christian. As a reverend, he married Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.

He was one of the first seven inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

• Marjorie Garber. Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. Routledge. 1992: 302-3
• Wayne Studer. Rock on the Wild Side: Gay Male Images in Popular Music of the Rock Era. Layland Publications. 1994: p135.
• Charles White. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock. New York: Da Capo Press xvi, 282 pp 1994.
• W.T. Lhamon. "Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s. Harvard University Press. 2002: 89, 93-95.

 EN.Wikipedia       www.littlerichard.com

King Rat

Novel by James Clavell, London: Martin Joseph. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 1962
Film directed by Bryan Forbes
Script by Bryan Forbes, based on the novel by James Clavell
134 mins, BW 1965

George Segal plays Corporal King
Tom Courtney plays Lieutenant Robin Grey
James Fox plays Flight Lieutenant Peter Marlowe
Denholm Elliot plays Lieutenant G.D. Larkin
John Mills plays Colonel George Smedley-Taylor

Country of finance: US
Nationality of director: British
Location of story: Changi POW camp, Singapore
Filming location: California, US.

Synopsis.

Marlowe, whom Clavell based on himself (Clavell was three years in the Japanese POW camp at Changi), is at first aloof from the US Corporal King, the leading black marketer in the camp, but is eventually drawn into his circle. This brings Marlow to to attention of Lieutenant Grey, the Provost Marshall of the camp who attempts to arrest both of them. The film is set in 1945 leading up to the end of the war.

Sean Jennison(1923 - 1945) Fighter plane pilot and stage entertainer.

There is an extra minor character in the novel.

Sean Jennison was with Marlowe in the same RAF squadron in Java. As a fighter pilot he had shot down three Japanese Zeroes. He was then himself shot down and captured.

The commanding officers within the POW camp selected Sean to play female parts in the camp theatricals because he was one of the youngest men present and because he shaved only infrequently. Sean fought this assignment quite bitterly, but the order was repeated. We “tried to sooth Sean down, but he swore he was going to be the worst actress in the world, that he was going to make sure that he was sacked after the first disastrous performance. We told him that we couldn't care less. His first performance was terrible. But after that he didn't seem to hate it so much. To his surprise, he even seemed to like it. So we really started to work.

It was good having something to do - it took your mind off the stinking food and stinking camp. We taught him how a woman talks and walks and sits and smokes and drinks and dresses and even thinks. Then to keep him in the mood, we began to play make-believe. Whenever we were in the theatre, we'd get up when he came in, help him into a chair, you know, treat him like a real woman. It was exciting at first, trying to keep up the illusion, making sure that Sean was never seen dressing or undressing, making sure his costumes were always concealing but just suggestive enough. We even got special permission for him to have a room of his own. With his own shower.

“Then suddenly, he didn't need coaching any more. He was as complete a woman on the stage as it was possible to be.

“But little by little, the woman began to dominate him off stage too, only we didn't notice it. By this time Sean had grown his hair quite long - the wigs we had were no damn good. Then Sean started to wear a woman's clothes all the time. One night someone tried to rape him.

“After that Sean nearly went out of his mind. He tried to crush the woman in him but couldn't. then he tried to commit suicide. Of course it was hushed up. But that didn't help Sean, it made things worse and he cursed us for saving him.

“A few months later there was another rape attempt. After that Sean buried his male self completely. ‘I'm not fighting it any more,’ he said. ‘You wanted me to be a woman, now they believe I am one. All right. I'll be one. Inside I feel that I am one, so there's no need to pretend any more. I am a woman, and I'm going to be treated like one.”

Sean continued to have identity crises. He was, after all, the only only non-male in a very artificial environment. He could talk to the other actors, but no-one else was in a situation like his. He was so effective on stage that he became the lust object for the camp. Whilst he was the only prisoner to have a room to himself, he could never sleep in it because of the risk of rape.

In 1945, when the war with Japan was over, and allied troops came to free the POWs and send them home, many of the prisoners had difficulty adjusting. Sean had difficulties more than most. The beach was now open for swimming. One day Sean went to the beach, accompanied by homophobic catcalls. He found a quiet spot, put on female clothes for the last time, and walked into the sea.
____________________________________________

King Rat was filmed in 1965. The Sean Jennison episodes were in the script from the beginning, but at a late stage, Columbia Pictures executives finally realized that they were present, and Sean was completely removed from the film.

In Hollywood ‘buddy’ films there is often a possibility of reading of reading the relationship between the two leading males as homoerotic. A common diversion from this reading is to have an obvious queer character, often a trans person of some kind. The classic film of this kind is Freebie and the Bean, 1974, where cops James Caan and Alan Arkin go on at each other like a married couple. The diversion is provided by a trans criminal – without the courtesy of a name – who is beaten up and killed by James Caan in the ladies’ room. The relationship between Marlowe and King could of course be taken as homoerotic. Perhaps in 1965, upper management was simply homophobic, without the understanding of the diversions that would become common a few years later.

Given the surname Jennison, Clavell may have had some psychoanalytical theory in mind, but no such thoughts are presented or developed in the book.
__

• Vito Russo. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. New York: Harper & Row. 1981: 136,198.

Love Is a Stranger

This is a video about dressing up as a woman, and going out in an expensive car. She even takes off her wig as per the old-time drag performance tradition. And she ends up back in a suit and tie. View it here (You Tube says: Embedding disabled by request, so I can only give a link).

Except of course the person, doing the dressing up, is Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics. Society deems it to be normal when a women dresses in female drag, but a very different thing when a man does the same. A qualification is needed here. After a certain age, women are criticized. Mutton dressed up as lamb.

So what is when a woman dresses up as a woman. Two major terms have been proposed. Autogynephilia and homovestity. The first means getting off on yourself as woman. This is normal behaviour. In men as in women. Except when men do it, psychiatrists and others rush in an attempt to pathologize it. Equally normal is autoandrophilia: getting off on yourself as a man. Whether you are a man or a woman. The second term, in contrast to transvestity, means dressing up as the sex that you are.

When the single and video was originally released in 1982, some viewers thought that the person in the video was male bodied, presumably a transvestite, especially because of the wig removal.

Not that Annie Lennox is all for gender play, at least not for men. The Lyrics of “I need a man” contain:

You should know Im not impressed
cause theres just one thing
That Im looking for
And he dont wear a dress.
I need a man...
I need a man...
Baby baby baby
Dont you shave your legs
Dont you double comb your hair
Dont powder puff
Just leave it rough

• “Love Is a Stranger”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_a_Stranger

Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.

Cisgendered heterosexual that he is, the younger Mick Jagger did have an ambiance of being androgynous, although not to a degree that compared at all with real gender variance. Androgyny for the cisgendered. Steven Simels in his Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock ‘n Roll, 1985, wrote of Jagger “Hipless and emaciated, possessing lips of such astonishing lasciviousness, that when you put him on stage he resembles nothing so much as some weird mixture of both human sex organs.”

However we must say that the major items below were recorded 1966-70. Very few other rock bands flirted with androgyny until the coming of Glam rock in 1972.
In 1966 of the band dressed as World War II army nurses for the photograph that accompanied the single, 'Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?'.

In 1967 We Love You, one of the very earliest videos, made in the wake of Mick Jagger's trial for marijuana possession, has Jagger, in the dock, dressed as Oscar Wilde and Marianne Faithful as Alfred Lord Douglas.

The Stone's single, 'Honky Tonk Women', 1969, has been commented on by different writers as being about a drag queen: 'a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis' heaves him 'right across her shoulder ... she blew my nose and then she blew my mind'.

The word androgyny has often been used about the film Performance, 1970, which has Jagger as Turner, a retired rock-and-roll singer who initiates Chas, an on-the-lam gangster into androgyny and fusions of gender and identity. Well, the trailer intimates that. At the end the identities of Turner and Chas have become confused. Which one has been killed? Which one is taken away by the gangsters? This is not really androgyny (man-woman): it is more andrander (man-man). But then there is that bit where Chas is in bed with one of Turner’s women, and with a bit of tricky editing, you think for a moment that it is Turner himself rather than the woman.


Steve J. Spears' stage play, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, about a transvestite speech-therapist, which was first performed in 1977, uses both the Rolling Stones' song You Can't Always Get What You Want and Mick Jagger's image as part of the ambience.

The film, Running out of Luck, 1986, features Jagger as himself recording his first solo album in Rio de Janerio when he is kidnapped by a gang of transvestites. This film is so obscure that I could not find either a suitable photograph or clip.

Naked Came the Stranger

A Long Island housewife, Penelope Ashe, was the author of Naked Came the Stranger, a badly written sex romp, which was published in 1969 and sold some millions of copies.


Not only did Penelope turn out to be mainly a man, she was revealed to be 19 men and 5 women. A group of writers and editors on Newsday magazine organized by Mike McGrady wrote the book over a weekend to demonstrate how quickly a trash novel could be produced. McGuire got his sister-in-law to play Penelope Ashe in interviews.

In 1970 McGrady wrote a book telling how they did it. He later wrote the autobiography of Linda Lovelace who was famous for being in the porn film Deep Throat.

The novel was filmed in 1975, still giving Penelope the credit.

• Mike McGrady et al writing as Penelope Ashe. Naked Came The Stranger. New York: L. Stuart, 1969. Fort Lee, N.J.: Barricade Books, 2003.
• Radley Metzger (dir). Naked Came The Stranger. Scr: Jake Barnes, based on the novel by Penelope Ashe, with Darby Lloyd Rains as Gillian Blake. US 83 mins 1975.
• Mike McGrady. Stranger than naked;: Or, How to write dirty books for fun and profit; a manual . P.H. Wyden 1970.
• Linda Lovelace and Mike McGrady. Ordeal. Star Books. 1982.
• Alex Boese. “Naked Came The Stranger”. The Museum of Hoaxes http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Naked_Came_The_Stranger/
• “Naked Came the Stranger”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger.