Kind of a Drag

They don’t make ‘em like “Some Like it Hot” anymore. We’re not talking about that film’s crackerjack timing or Marilyn Monroe’s va-va-voom silhouette.

Drag comedies have changed since their earliest incarnations, yet they remain a small but stubborn subgenre of our popular entertainment.

And every time it appears the form is about to fade to black, along comes a “White Chicks” or the forthcoming “Hairspray” — featuring John Travolta in drag — to recharge the dying batteries.

Last year’s “White Chicks” and the “Big Momma’s House” films were modest hits, but both featured twists on the drag formula. The former’s big concept turned two black men into white socialites, while the latter played up Martin Lawrence’s grandmotherly girth as well as his sex change.

Drag comedies once mocked women, or at least played up the shallowness of the fairer sex. Just recall Jack Lemmon’s Jerry — as Daphne — swilling hooch with “her” fellow band members early on in “Hot,” a scene in which the women were silly, frilly and eager to talk about boys.

The modern drag performer is far more likely to celebrate the female experience.

Dustin Hoffman’s “Tootsie” became a better man because he spent quality time as a woman.

Patricia King Hanson, executive editor of the American Film Institute’s catalog, says nearly 200 films from the dawn of cinema to the year 1971 featured female impersonators.

Ms. Hanson says everyone from silent film stars like Lon Chaney to Jack Benny went the drag route at some point.

“In the movies the plot device was mostly for humor. It was very often an aspect of the French drawing room comedies, with people hiding out from the police,” she says. “Almost any comedian at one point did it.”

Ms. Hanson believes drag comedy may be staging a minor comeback, a rebound from a relative low point during the 1970s.

During that feminist era, some looked upon drag as “more of an insult,” she says.

Jeremy Kagan, author of the just-released “Directors Close Up,” says films are simply reflecting an evolving culture.

“The kind of judgmental and superficial look at who and what a woman is doesn’t play anymore,” says Mr. Kagan, who directed “The Journey of Natty Gann” and Court TV’s “The ACLU Freedom Files.”

“I don’t think you could make [‘Some Like it Hot’] now,” he adds.

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