Calamity Jane is possibly the queerest film of all time. The central character spends almost the entire film cross dressed and every single one of the major characters cross dresses figuratively or literally - usually literally - at central moments of the story.
*****
The screen opens in the wild west of Hollywood. A coach is making its way across a plain and Calamity Jane is riding shotgun. As she sings a jaunty song about whips a group of Hollywood Indians attack. Calamity Jane holds them off with her sharp shooting and she gets the coach into town.
Incidentally, the scene of the coach pulling into Deadwood is one of the few in the movie that hints that there might be women in the town. A few are viewed in the background and the coach brings in some women’s clothes. Were it not for these hints, one might think that Deadwood was inhabited solely by men. Or possibly the dresses were for the men. Deadwood is the campest camp in the Territories. Calamity Jane herself wears male costume cut very tight so as to show off some serious structural engineering under Doris Day’s costume. She walks the fine line of dressing in a way that’s both butch and feminine, chaste and sexy.
Certainly the saloon that Calamity Jane saunters into to celebrate is an otherwise entirely male preserve. Calamity Jane orders a sarsaparilla and chats with her friends. She likes the saloon owner Henry Miller and she is close to Wild Bill Hiccock. She and Bill have a rapport which appears to be based on genuine respect. Few of the men in town appear to be willing to talk to her but Bill seeks her company out. The masses of men in the background are later proved to be fickle and prone to threatening lynchings.
While Calamity Jane is boasting of her slaughter of the Indians word comes that Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin, the man Calamity Jane has a crush on, has been captured by Indians. In an interesting inversion, Calamity Jane rescues her generic Lieutenant from the equally generic Indians. He can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t act - the triple threat - but is quite attractive and serves as evidence of Calamity Jane’s heterosexuality. Calamity Jane creeps into the wood, stampedes the Indian ponies and frees Danny. They ride off together on Calamity Jane’s horse which is, as she points out, ‘cosier’ than having separate horses.
Embarrassed at being rescued by a girl, Lieutenant Gilmartin shows off his picture of Adelaide Adams, the famed Chicago singer. Bill says, ‘She’s a hope, a dream, a vision.’ Calamity Jane says, ‘Looks like a fat, frilled up, side of undressed beef to me. And I can look the same. Excepting I’ve got certain ideas about modesty.’
The first male to female cross dressing now occurs as Francis Friars, an eastern actor, performs a revue. Bill says, ‘She ain’t pretty.’
Calamity Jane says, ‘That ain’t all she ain’t.’
Francis is revealed to be a man and the fickle crowds of Deadwood turn against the saloon owner Henry Miller. Calamity Jane leaps to his defence and promises to bring to town the only actress she knows the name of - Adelaide Adams.
The crowd grudgingly accepts this - they’re dying for a lynching - and Calamity Jane heads off to Chicago to find Adelaide Adams. Bill and she make a side bet about her ability to bring home the bacon, or side of beef, as it were.
Through a series of comical misunderstandings the person she actually finds is Katie Brown, Adelaide Adam’s maid who has inherited her wardrobe and who wants to perform on the stage. Katie decides to seize the opportunity to impersonate Adelaide and heads back to Deadwood with Calamity Jane.
Katie, though rather flat chested and sharp nosed, has a go at performing Adelaide’s salacious routine on stage. It’s all very reminiscent of the routine from Blazing Saddles - ‘I’ve had thousands of men, again and again, and I’m tired.’
Before she can begin her routine, the crowd notes that Bill is there dressed as a Sioux squaw. His cross cultural cross dressing is the pay off to Calamity Jane for winning their bet. Kate begins but fails to entrance the audience. She eventually breaks down and confesses her masquerade.
The crowd turns ugly again and Bill is particularly peeved at his unnecessary female garb. He lassoes Calamity Jane and trusses her on the stage - bondage as well as transvestitism - but then works with Calamity Jane to convene the audience to give Katie a second chance. Katie, renewed by the ever fickle crowd’s enthusiasm, wows them with a sexy routine. She is thrilled that they like it and attributes this to their respect for her pep rather than, say, their lustful appreciation of her high kicks.
Calamity Jane befriends her and takes her back to her cabin to ‘batch’ together. They share one of the queerest duets ever. They sing about the joys of ‘a woman’s touch’ as they whirl around the cabin together. Katie is extremely femme, wearing pretty skirts and Calamity Jane, under Katie’s skillful hands, is remodeled into a person who is virtually bursting with femininity. She is now immaculately clean and bedecked with neat ribbons. She sometimes wears trousers and sometimes a neat riding habit.
Dannie and Bill both want to take Katie to the local dance but she makes Bill take Calamity Jane. Calamity Jane comes out as a girl, and wears a pink gown to the ball. However, at the dance Dannie reveals his love to Katie and she, unable to resist his less than apparent charms, succumbs.
Calamity Jane freaks out and tries to first rip off her own pink dress (to Bill’s embarrassment) and then to shoot Katie (which he prevents). The crowd turn once again, this time shunning Calamity Jane.
Calamity Jane, however, talks to Bill and the two discover that they love each other after all. The song that features at this point is a gay classic ‘Once I had a secret love,’ Calamity Jane carols, ‘But my secret love’s no secret anymore.’ Calamity Jane rides off and brings Katie back for a group wedding.
I’d like to make a few points about this.
Firstly, the movie really is all about cross dressing. All the important characters cross dress and they do so, on the whole, to express themselves fully. Calamity Jane is a tom boy, Katie is a show pony who likes to please the audience, and Bill is an honourable man who stands up to the conditions of this bet.
What the characters learn throughout the film is balance - when to cross dress and how to do so in a way the others in Deadwood will accept. The final songs are an interesting example. Bill, Calamity Jane and Katie reprise their solos. Bill says is heart is ‘higher than a hawk’ (not higher than a hog, as I heard it for years). Calamity Jane says she’s found her secret love. Then they drive off in a stage coach together, plus Katie, minus Dannie, singing, once again, about whips.
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