Butch Onscreen by Jenni Olson
2023 updated prefatory note from Jenni Olson: This originally appeared as a chapter in the long out-of-print anthology Dagger: On Butch Women (1994, Cleis Press). I think there's some pretty great stuff in here, it's also important to remember that our cultural conversations about butchness and gender were at a very different juncture than where they are now. Shortly after this article came out I collaborated with Jack Halberstam on a clip show version of this (called Looking Butch) which played at various queer film festivals (Jack's book Female Masculinity — 1998, Duke University Press, features a chapter called Looking Butch: A Rough Guide to Butches on Film). For my June 2023 Masc film series on the Criterion Channel — co-curated with Caden Mark Gardner — you can see from my Letterboxd list for the series that we included several of the titles below.
When I was little there were screen tomboys. I could recognize myself in the faces and screen characters of Tatum O'Neal, Jodie Foster, and Kristy McNichol. They empowered me to think of myself as a hero. These little tomboys were strong and smart like the movie cowboys and gangsters I emulated. They were "different" and that difference was celebrated onscreen as good old-fashioned individuality.
The screen tomboys were socially acceptable. As a young butch dyke coming out in 1986 I looked for their grown up counterparts. I couldn't find anything. My trio of tomboy heroes hadn't turned out like I had.
Instead, I turned to Marlon Brando and James Dean as my role models of butchness. I watched them, as Laura Mulvey says, "in borrowed transvestite clothes."
As a twenty-three-year-old Film Studies major at the University of Minnesota, Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet opened the door to a vast world of lesbian and gay film images -- a new world of culture, heroes, and recognition. I don't remember how I got my hands on it, I do remember that I couldn't put it down.
I wanted to see the films Vito wrote about. Not just on video in the privacy of my own home, but with an audience full of people who wanted to see them as badly as I did. With lists of film titles in my head I approached the student film committee with my proposal for "Lavender Images: A Lesbian & Gay Film Retrospective." Their unenthusiastic approval left me alone and uncertain in front of a shelf full of 16mm film distribution catalogs. Finding the source for The Killing of Sister George after hours of paging through catalogs, I began my career as a film programmer. I also began my own informal inventory (and source list) of butch women in film.
The films included here are all feature-length motion pictures, mostly Hollywood productions, some independently produced. Most of these films are available for rental on video. A brief list of mail order distributors specializing in lesbian and gay films on video is included along with listings of non-theatrical distributors for specific titles (in case you want to present your own "Butch Onscreen Film Festival"). There are many interesting works, dealing with gender issues and butchness, being produced in short format film and video -- a brief listing of some of this work is also included. [Actually I am not including the 1994 "mail order distributor" list here; will try to add streaming links at some point, but also some very nice person made a cool Letterboxd list of all the films mentioned here].
Tomboy
Robin Johnson. Times Square; Allan Moyle, USA (1980).
Robin Johnson's cocky streetwise Nicky is one of the sweetest dyke portrayals ever. She's tough and romantic, shy and insecure; she's a hero, she's a gravel-voiced, tough talking, rock n' roll icon. She does the butch/femme thing with Pammy (Trini Alvarado) as they play off each other's strengths and insecurities like the classic lesbian couple. "I'm brave, but you're pretty. I'm a fuckin' freak of nature," she tells Pammy. While there's no explicit lesbian content in the film, the original script had several scenes and plot elements that developed the sexual butch/femme tension between Nicky and Pammy, including: a scene of their first meeting in the hospital, in which they have to undress in front of each other; two scenes where they take off their shirts and play together in their underwear in the river; a wrestling scene; a scene of the first night that they sleep (sleep, not fuck) together; and a scene of Pammy dancing topless at the Cleo Club while Nicky watches. Despite all this missing content, there's tons of erotic tension between the girls, and, most importantly, they love each other and they're not interested in boys.
Also see:
Little Jodie Foster in everything she was in before she grew up and her voice changed -- especially Gary Nelson's Freaky Friday (1976) and Nicolas Gessner's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976).
Little Tatum O'Neal in Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973), Michael Ritchie's Bad News Bears (1976), and Ronald F. Maxwell's Little Darlings (1980). She's not actually all that butch in Little Darlings, but she's very cute and it's such a great movie. She and Kristy McNichol and the other girls are all so in love with each other that you can read it as an allegory of closeted lesbian adolescence. Kristy McNichol, of course, is the butch one. As Kristy and Tatum race to lose their virginity, Kristy's the one who sleeps with a boy -- and you know it's really to prove that she's not a dyke. But you know that she is a dyke - which makes it a really moving film. I saw this in a theatre when I was seventeen and I identified on an intensely uncomfortable level with Kristy McNichol. It was a very strange experience to see my awkward tomboy self in a Hollywood movie. And Kristy probably wasn't acting, she was just being herself as the uncomfortable-in-her-body, Marlboro-smoking, teenage butch with the jean jacket and bad '70s adolescent girl haircut.
Mary Stuart Masterson in Howard Deutch's Some Kind of Wonderful (1987). She gets dirty, she plays drums, she pretends she's interested in Eric Stoltz but she doesn't actually do anything about it. There's all kinds of coded dialogue about her being "different" than other girls. And she's totally cute. Way better than her Annie Hall-butch Idgy in Fried Green Tomatoes.
Mercedes McCambridge (in a small, uncredited part) as the dykey Chicana juvenile delinquent in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958). When the boys ask the girls to leave the room as they prepare to gang-rape Janet Leigh, McCambridge insists, "I wanna watch."
Julie Harris as Frankie in Fred Zinneman's Member of the Wedding (1953).
FTM (Women playing men/girls playing boys)
Tomoko Otakra, Rie Mizuhara, Miyuki Nakano, and Eri Miyagima. Summer Vacation: 1999; Shusuke Kaneko, Japan (1988).
Summer Vacation looks at the shifting attractions between four boys at an isolated country school. Vivid character development, clever narrative structure and a striking visual atmosphere come together in this beautiful cinematic fantasy. In a brilliant gender-bending casting twist, director Kaneko cast girls in the male roles, later dubbing in their voices with those of four male actors. While most Western audiences are familiar with the Noh/Kabuki tradition of Japanese theater in which female roles are played by men, Summer Vacation draws on the less well-known Takurazuka tradition, in which male roles are played by women.
Pamela Segall (now Pamela Adlon). Something Special (Willy/Milly); Paul Schneider, USA (1985).
In this obscure teen transgender comedy Milly Niceman wishes she were a boy and then wakes in the middle of the night to discover she's magically grown "a guy's thing down there." Her family and friends make the adjustment to her new male self, Willy, and the film plays extensively on all of the homo and lesbo-erotic potentials available. She goes back to being a girl at the end (so she can be with a boy), but she's still a butch girl even if she is straight.
Anne Carlisle. Liquid Sky; Slava Tsukerman, USA (1983).
Anne Carlisle's performance as queer twin brother and sister is one of the sexiest examples of androgyny ever filmed. As original as they come, this sci-fi sex and drug story is raw, funny, and strangely moving. (I fell in love with Anne Carlisle after seeing this film and ran to the video store to find anything else she was in; the only thing I could find was a really boring drama in which she looks and acts completely normal. Resist the temptation to rent it -- I can't even remember its name -- just watch Liquid Sky again).
Marta Keler. Virgina; Srdjan Karanovic, Yugoslavia/France (1991).
Virgina offers a remarkable look at the workings of misogyny, gender, and sex roles in 19th century Serbia. The film's title is taken from the Serbian term used to describe a girl raised as a boy. This practice seems to have been not entirely uncommon; according to superstition, lack of a son would bring about the family's demise. Born as the fourth daughter of a poor Serbian family, "Stephen" narrowly escapes being shot at birth by her father. Raised as a boy, Stephen sees her mother and sisters treated abusively by her father. Her empathy for them as a woman is countered by her family's insistence that she indulge her own male privilege. Her mother consoles her, "Better a rooster for a day, than a hen for life. Everything is made for men." Growing up to be a handsome young boy, Stephen finds a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and a good deal of erotic tension with both. A tragedy provokes Stephen's eventual rebellion against her father, and in a surprising revelation Stephen's masquerade is shown to be a common thread in the fabric of this androcentric Serbian culture. The film was completed during the outbreak of the civil war in June, 1991.
Also see:
Eva Mattes. A Man Like Eva; Radu Gabrea, Germany (1983). Eva Mattes stars as Rainer Werner Fassbinder in this rather slow fictionalized portrayal of the late great gay director.
FTMTF (Women playing men who become women)
Vanessa Redgrave. Second Serve; Anthony Page, USA (1986).
Redgrave is so convincing as a man in the first part of this made for television bio-pic of tennis coach Renee Richards that it's hard to believe she's a woman in the second part.
Also see:
Anne Heywood as Roy/Wendy in John Dexter's I Want What I Want (1972). Heywood (The Fox) is totally weird (not really butch, but very queer) in this bizarre sex-change melodrama. The film ultimately comes across as a plea for transsexual understanding as Roy becomes Wendy and falls in love with a man. A camp gem with much unintentional humor. Watch for the period styles in home furnishings, hair, clothing, and especially makeup.
Micheline Carvel in Adam Is Eve, France (1953).
Gender Dysphoria
Ana Beatriz Nogueira. Vera; Sergio Toledo, Brazil (1986).
* IMPORTANT NOTE: Here is my completely updated description of the film (from my June 2023 Criterion Channel Masc film series, co-curated with Caden Mark Gardner): Based on the tragically short life of Brazilian poet Anderson Bigode Herzer, this intense drama tells the story of Bauer, a trans man who navigates a difficult upbringing in an orphanage before finding love with a young librarian. He has the sympathy of his mentor, a professor who sees his talent as a poet, but struggles to be understood by others: “I’m not what everyone thinks I am. You hear me? I’m different. I’m something else. Something else.” One of the earliest portrayals in cinema of a transmasculine character, VERA features a remarkable lead performance by Ana Beatriz Nogueira, who received the Best Actress prize at the 1987 Berlin Film Festival.
For the sake of history, here's the (now very embarrassing) description of the film as it appeared in the original chapter. In my defense... the original presskit for the film reflected none of the information above about the material the film was based on, and descriptions in queer film festival catalogs at the time characterized the film similarly:
Presenting the story of a young woman who believes that she is a man, Vera deals with issues of masculine/butch identification and internalized misogyny, and portrays the dysfunctional effects of rigid gender role stratification. Vera does not identify herself as a lesbian (she believes she's a man in a woman's body). Vera grows up in an orphanage, and on being released when she turns eighteen, takes a job at a research center where she meets Clara, with whom she falls in love. Vera's insistence that she is a man becomes problematic when, in a painfully intimate love scene, she refuses to remove her undershirt. The relationship between Clara and Vera is seriously jeopardized as they both struggle with Vera's gender dysphoria. Two notes about the film: The film employs an unusually fluid, and at times hard to follow, flashback structure to show parts of Vera's life in the orphanage. An ambiguous ending (open to two very different interpretations) makes the film extremely disturbing.
Also see:
Mink Stole in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977). When her girlfriend says she doesn't like her sex change, she cuts off her (rubber) cock with a scissors and throws it out the door.
General genderfuck
Shelley Mars. The Virgin Machine; Monika Treut, West Germany (1988).
Shelley Mars does double duty drag: as Ramona the sex-therapist, she poses in the stylized lesbian fuck scene with Ina Blum; and as Martin the sleazy male chauvinist pig, she performs her famous Burlezk drag/strip routine. He strips down to his shirttails and boxer shorts, jacks off a beer bottle, and cums foam all over the stage.
Ellen Barkin. Switch; Blake Edwards, USA (1992).
A truly weird rendering of what could have been a predictable retread. Barkin as Amanda/Steve plays up the slapstick and sexism of masculinity and goes a bit over the top on the artifice of femininity. His/her budding feminist consciousness provides plenty of cathartic moments (a la Thelma & Louise), and there's homo/lesbo-eroticism everywhere. The ad campaign for Switch posed the genderfuck question of the year: "Will being a woman make him a better man?" There was an extensive girl-girl love scene between Ellen Barkin and Lorraine Bracco; unfortunately the scene was cut after test audiences responded negatively to it at pre-screenings of the film. In a cover story interview, "The Sexiest Man Alive," in Entertainment Weekly, Barkin said of the excised love scene: "There was no nudity or anything, but it was a lot heavier than what's in the film now. [Director] Blake [Edwards] didn't want to cut it. And to me it really elevated the film. But the audiences weren't ready for that. I felt that [Blake and the studio] should have just shoved it down their throats. It would have been a great thing for gay women." As Barkin describes the final version of the scene, it sounds a bit too much like what Stephen Spielberg did to the love scene between Celie and Shug in his "version" of The Color Purple. Barkin says, "Lorraine and I came up with this idea that my character would get the giggles and out of nerves have uncontrollable fits of laughter while Lorraine was very seriously trying to make love to her." Alas, another Hollywood lesbian love scene goes down (as it were) in history, right alongside the tickling scene in Personal Best. Who says lesbians don't have a sense of humor? Looking at Hollywood, it seems that's all we have. We certainly don't have sex.
Carole Landis. Turnabout; Hal Roach, USA (1940).
Husband and wife change bodies halfway through this screwball comedy. The comic talents of Carole Landis bring a measure of intelligence and hilarity to a fairly lightweight script. She dresses up in big man clothes, and mimics male body language, speech, and gesture.
Veronica Lake. Sullivan's Travels; Preston Sturges, USA (1941).
The plot makes no use at all of Veronica Lake's boy-drag as she dresses up to go slumming with Joel McCrea. (As they walk through a shanty town holding hands, director Sturges seems oblivious to any notion of homoeroticism.) The film's feel-good populism (a la Frank Capra) focuses on Joel McCrea as Everyman, and Lake is of course merely a woman. She steals the film from McCrea when she's onscreen, and (along with Bacall and Dietrich) has one of the sexiest deep voices ever heard -- they call it sultry when femmes talk that way.
Passing
Katharine Hepburn. Sylvia Scarlett; George Cukor, USA (1936).
Hepburn previously did a bit of cross-dressing in Dorothy Arzner's 1933 woman-aviator melodrama, Christopher Strong. Here she goes all out as Sylvester Scarlett, boy thief and traveling musician. It's a crazy plot that veers bizarrely from comedy to tragedy. As with Garbo's Queen Christina, the latter half of the film is disappointing. But Hepburn's a bundle of boy energy, looks like a young David Bowie, and even has a girl kiss her on the lips.
Greta Garbo. Queen Christina; Rouben Mamoulian, USA (1933).
The one and only Garbo gives the drag performance of her career as the titular 17th century queen. Swaggering about castle and countryside in male attire, the Swedish queen is as butch as they come and then some. Although the real life queen was a lesbian, the film has her falling in love with John Gilbert. However, just underneath the heterosexual act is a clear queer appeal and it's easy to imagine the queen as a dyke. Christina's apparent love interest through the first half of the film is the Countess Ebba Sparre (Elizabeth Young), and an early scene in the film features a very nice butch/femme sort of kiss between the two.
When Christina meets Antonio (John Gilbert) in a country tavern/inn (where she is traveling in male disguise), they end up having to share a room together. In a very provocative sequence of misgendered identities the queen is propositioned by a barmaid. She reveals to Antonio that she is a woman, and, on waking in bed together the following morning, the couple is seen by a servant who raises his eyebrows at the two "men."
When pressed by her valet to marry ("But, your majesty, you cannot die an old maid"), the queen replies, "I have no intention to… I shall die a bachelor."
Indeed, Garbo herself died a bachelor, and at this point her own lesbianism is common knowledge. The behind the scenes history of this film (according to Mercedes D'Acosta's autobiography) is that Garbo and D'Acosta, who had been lovers, developed the film together. Later D'Acosta was fired as screenwriter from the project because she was making it too clear that the queen was a lesbian. This seems to come through quite clearly in the beginning of the film, and changes somewhat strangely when the queen has a fight with the Countess somewhere in the second reel. The queen thereafter toys with the affections of a court ambassador (who obviously does not interest her) until she meets Antonio. When she gives up her throne to be with Antonio (in real life she gave it up to be with Ebba Sparre) the film makes its ultimate break with reality.
In The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo cites the following excerpt from a 1933 New York Herald-Tribune book review which makes reference to the anticipated release of the film: "The one persistent love of Christina's life was for the Countess Ebba Sparre, a beautiful Swedish noblewoman who lost most of her interest in Christina when Christina ceased to rule Sweden...the evidence is overwhelming, but will Miss Garbo play such a Christina?" Unfortunately no. Small consolation -- Antonio dies and Christina goes off alone in the end.
Also see:
Julie Andrews in Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria (1982). Remember The Sound of Music? Julie Andrews doesn't really seem very convincing as a man, does she?
Barbra Streisand in her own Yentl (1983). Another Barbra Streisand movie I didn't see [I have subsequently seen and love this film].
Molly Picon in Joseph Green's Yiddle with His Fiddle, Poland (1937). A movie Barbra Streisand saw before she made Yentl.
Cowboy butch
Anne Bancroft. Seven Women; John Ford, USA (1966).
Bancroft struts her stuff as the chain-smoking, cowboy cross-dressing Dr. Cartwright. She's tough, bold, intelligent and doesn't take shit from anyone (until the end, when she is forced -- albeit heroically -- into a submissive role). The film also features Margaret Leighton as Agatha Andrews, the repressed lesbian spinster with the hots for Sue Lyon. Set in 1935 China, in an all-women mission, Seven Women is remarkable for offering an intense psychological study of its female characters. Unfortunately, the portrayal of the film's Mongolian robbers is not so enlightened, falling into the usual Hollywood racist stereotypes in the last half of the picture.
Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Johnny Guitar; Nicholas Ray, USA (1954). More cowboy drag, and good feudin' between Joan and Mercedes.
Also see:
Betty Hutton in 501s and facial hair in the "Oh Them Dudes" production number in Let's Dance, USA (1950); Beverly Garland in Roger Corman's Gunslinger, USA (1956); Jane Russell in Montana Belle, USA (1952); Doris Day in Calamity Jane, USA (1953); Louise Dresser in Caught, USA (1931); Martha Sleeper in West of the Pecos, USA (1934); Barbara Hale in West of the Pecos, USA (1945); and Dorothy Gish in Nugget Nell, USA (1919).
Last but not least, check out Suzi Quatro as Leather Tuscadero on TV's "Happy Days."
Law Enforcement
Jodie Foster. Silence of the Lambs; Jonathan Demme, USA (1991). She has the sexiest butch hands.
Jamie Leigh Curtis. Blue Steel; Kathryn Bigelow, USA (1990). A stupid ending (her sleeping with the big he-man cop), but who can resist a girl with a gun?
Also see:
Hope Emerson in her Academy Award-nominated portrayal of the sadistic prison matron Evelyn Harper in John Cromwell's Caged (1950). Also Eleanor Parker in the last half of the film (after she gets her head shaved).
Strong female characters who look really butch when they're all sweaty and dirty
Sigourney Weaver and Jenette Goldstein. Aliens; Ridley Scott, USA (1986). Sigourney's hot, but hotter still is Jenette Goldstein as Private Vasquez. When one of the male cadets hassles her about her butchness, asking: "Have you ever been mistaken for a man?" she simply responds, "No, have you?"
Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 (1992).
"So, which one of you is the man?"
Butch lesbians in mainstream lesbian-relationship films
Patrice Donnelly. Personal Best; Robert Towne, USA (1982). The lesbianism of Mariel (femme) Hemingway's character is treated as a phase (she goes off with a male water polo player in the end). Patrice Donnelly's character is the "real" lesbian -- basic butch. Good butch dialogue. In response to Hemingway's reluctance to define the true nature of their relationship, Donnelly says: "We may be friends, but we also happen to fuck each other every once in a while." And, (on meeting Hemingway's new boyfriend): "He's pretty cute... for a guy."
A memorable love scene, consisting of tickling and nervous giggling and Mariel Hemingway saying, "This isn't so bad, I kind of like this."
Jane Hallaren in John Sayles' Lianna (1983). Barely butch.
Beryl Reid in Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (1968). Late '60s British butch.
Anne Heywood in Mark Rydell's The Fox (1968). Femmey-butch. Very sexy in and out of her hunting outfit. A truly awful film.
Butch lesbians in independent lesbian-themed films
Patricia Charbonneau. Desert Hearts; Donna Deitch, USA (1986).
Sort of butch, butcher than Helen Shaver. Good butch dialogue: "Take your hands out of your pockets and come here."
Sheila Dabney. She Must Be Seeing Things; Sheila McLaughlin, USA (1987).
Overly ambitious at times, this feature is notable for its treatment of the explicitly butch/femme relationship between Agatha and Jo.
Linda Basset. Waiting for the Moon; Jill Godmilow USA (1987).
Basset plays butch Gertrude Stein opposite Linda Hunt's brilliant Alice B. Toklas.
k.d. lang in Salmonberries; Percy Adlon, Germany (1992).
Salmonberries portrays the developing emotional bonds between two women of very different backgrounds. Roswitha (Rosel Zech), a librarian in the small Alaskan mining town of Kotzebue, resists lang's affections throughout the film. lang's determined courting climaxes in a tremendous tease of a love scene (or, not a love scene). lang's abilities as an actress are difficult to determine. She doesn't talk much, and she's so captivating when she's onscreen that it's hard to care whether she can act or is just being herself. Whichever, she gives a hot cinematic rendering of a strong, silent-type butch dyke in love.
Cyberdyke (Postmodern butch)
Angela Hans Scheirl. Flaming Ears; Angela Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek and Ursula Purrer, Austria (1991). As the sullen necrophiliac cyborg, Scheirl wanders the streets reciting some of the most poetically romantic (butch loner) monologues ever written. She's tall, lean, dirty and handsome in her red PVC coveralls. The sweet tenderness in her puppy-like devotion to her new lover's corpse is an inspiring piece of postmodern butch.
Butch behind the camera
Dorothy Arzner, openly lesbian Hollywood director of the 1930's. In October, 1936, Time magazine described her as, "short, stocky, with a quiet executive manner, a boyish bob and an interest in medicine and sunsets." Her unique sensibility shines through in such classics as: Christopher Strong (1933), Craig's Wife (1936), and Dance, Girl, Dance (1940).
A sampling of contemporary short films and videos dealing with butchness, gender identity, masculinity and Female-to-Male transgender issues
Brown Sugar Licks Snow White; Suzi Silbar and Robin Vachal, USA (1992), 4 mins. B&W. Snippets of voice, text, and image scan the terrain of race and gender, with porno dialogue and girls in femme drag.
Dual of the Senses; Heidi Arnesen, USA (1991), 3 mins. B&W. Girl dresses up as boy to do it with boy dressed up as girl.
F2M; Cayte Latta, Australia (1992), 15 mins. Interview with Jasper, a thirty-year-old lesbian female-to-male pre-op transsexual.
It Wasn't Love; Sadie Benning, USA (1992), 20 mins. Sadie does her Fats Domino impression, sucks her thumb, tells a story about her girlie, and smiles sweet for the camera.
Juggling Gender; Tami Gold, USA (1992), 27 mins. A lesbian performance artist talks about growing up, coming out, lesbian-feminism, and having a beard.
Linda/Les and Annie; Annie Sprinkle, Al Jacoma, Johnny Armstrong, USA (1989), 28 mins. Transsexual Les Nichols and Annie Sprinkle talk about Les's operation and life, and then fuck with Les's prosthesis.
Max; Monika Treut, USA/Germany (1992), 20 mins. Female-to-male transsexual Max Valerio talks about his life and the experience of becoming a man.
Passing; Sara Whiteley, USA (1991), 3 mins. 16mm B&W. A woman is madeover to a masculine and then a feminine extreme.
P[l]ain Truth; Ilppo Pohjola, Finland (1993), 15 mins. A painful and cathartic "symbolic documentary" based on the experience of Rudi, a female-to-male transsexual.
Stafford's Story; Susan Muska, USA (1992), 3 mins. Stafford tells about an encounter at a sex club.
Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box; Michelle Parkerson, USA (1987), 21 mins. An overview of the career of the famous black male impersonator, Storme DeLarverie.
Copyright 1993 Jenni Olson
When I was little there were screen tomboys. I could recognize myself in the faces and screen characters of Tatum O'Neal, Jodie Foster, and Kristy McNichol. They empowered me to think of myself as a hero. These little tomboys were strong and smart like the movie cowboys and gangsters I emulated. They were "different" and that difference was celebrated onscreen as good old-fashioned individuality.
The screen tomboys were socially acceptable. As a young butch dyke coming out in 1986 I looked for their grown up counterparts. I couldn't find anything. My trio of tomboy heroes hadn't turned out like I had.
Instead, I turned to Marlon Brando and James Dean as my role models of butchness. I watched them, as Laura Mulvey says, "in borrowed transvestite clothes."
As a twenty-three-year-old Film Studies major at the University of Minnesota, Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet opened the door to a vast world of lesbian and gay film images -- a new world of culture, heroes, and recognition. I don't remember how I got my hands on it, I do remember that I couldn't put it down.
I wanted to see the films Vito wrote about. Not just on video in the privacy of my own home, but with an audience full of people who wanted to see them as badly as I did. With lists of film titles in my head I approached the student film committee with my proposal for "Lavender Images: A Lesbian & Gay Film Retrospective." Their unenthusiastic approval left me alone and uncertain in front of a shelf full of 16mm film distribution catalogs. Finding the source for The Killing of Sister George after hours of paging through catalogs, I began my career as a film programmer. I also began my own informal inventory (and source list) of butch women in film.
The films included here are all feature-length motion pictures, mostly Hollywood productions, some independently produced. Most of these films are available for rental on video. A brief list of mail order distributors specializing in lesbian and gay films on video is included along with listings of non-theatrical distributors for specific titles (in case you want to present your own "Butch Onscreen Film Festival"). There are many interesting works, dealing with gender issues and butchness, being produced in short format film and video -- a brief listing of some of this work is also included. [Actually I am not including the 1994 "mail order distributor" list here; will try to add streaming links at some point, but also some very nice person made a cool Letterboxd list of all the films mentioned here].
Tomboy
Robin Johnson. Times Square; Allan Moyle, USA (1980).
Robin Johnson's cocky streetwise Nicky is one of the sweetest dyke portrayals ever. She's tough and romantic, shy and insecure; she's a hero, she's a gravel-voiced, tough talking, rock n' roll icon. She does the butch/femme thing with Pammy (Trini Alvarado) as they play off each other's strengths and insecurities like the classic lesbian couple. "I'm brave, but you're pretty. I'm a fuckin' freak of nature," she tells Pammy. While there's no explicit lesbian content in the film, the original script had several scenes and plot elements that developed the sexual butch/femme tension between Nicky and Pammy, including: a scene of their first meeting in the hospital, in which they have to undress in front of each other; two scenes where they take off their shirts and play together in their underwear in the river; a wrestling scene; a scene of the first night that they sleep (sleep, not fuck) together; and a scene of Pammy dancing topless at the Cleo Club while Nicky watches. Despite all this missing content, there's tons of erotic tension between the girls, and, most importantly, they love each other and they're not interested in boys.
Also see:
Little Jodie Foster in everything she was in before she grew up and her voice changed -- especially Gary Nelson's Freaky Friday (1976) and Nicolas Gessner's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976).
Little Tatum O'Neal in Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973), Michael Ritchie's Bad News Bears (1976), and Ronald F. Maxwell's Little Darlings (1980). She's not actually all that butch in Little Darlings, but she's very cute and it's such a great movie. She and Kristy McNichol and the other girls are all so in love with each other that you can read it as an allegory of closeted lesbian adolescence. Kristy McNichol, of course, is the butch one. As Kristy and Tatum race to lose their virginity, Kristy's the one who sleeps with a boy -- and you know it's really to prove that she's not a dyke. But you know that she is a dyke - which makes it a really moving film. I saw this in a theatre when I was seventeen and I identified on an intensely uncomfortable level with Kristy McNichol. It was a very strange experience to see my awkward tomboy self in a Hollywood movie. And Kristy probably wasn't acting, she was just being herself as the uncomfortable-in-her-body, Marlboro-smoking, teenage butch with the jean jacket and bad '70s adolescent girl haircut.
Mary Stuart Masterson in Howard Deutch's Some Kind of Wonderful (1987). She gets dirty, she plays drums, she pretends she's interested in Eric Stoltz but she doesn't actually do anything about it. There's all kinds of coded dialogue about her being "different" than other girls. And she's totally cute. Way better than her Annie Hall-butch Idgy in Fried Green Tomatoes.
Mercedes McCambridge (in a small, uncredited part) as the dykey Chicana juvenile delinquent in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958). When the boys ask the girls to leave the room as they prepare to gang-rape Janet Leigh, McCambridge insists, "I wanna watch."
Julie Harris as Frankie in Fred Zinneman's Member of the Wedding (1953).
FTM (Women playing men/girls playing boys)
Tomoko Otakra, Rie Mizuhara, Miyuki Nakano, and Eri Miyagima. Summer Vacation: 1999; Shusuke Kaneko, Japan (1988).
Summer Vacation looks at the shifting attractions between four boys at an isolated country school. Vivid character development, clever narrative structure and a striking visual atmosphere come together in this beautiful cinematic fantasy. In a brilliant gender-bending casting twist, director Kaneko cast girls in the male roles, later dubbing in their voices with those of four male actors. While most Western audiences are familiar with the Noh/Kabuki tradition of Japanese theater in which female roles are played by men, Summer Vacation draws on the less well-known Takurazuka tradition, in which male roles are played by women.
Pamela Segall (now Pamela Adlon). Something Special (Willy/Milly); Paul Schneider, USA (1985).
In this obscure teen transgender comedy Milly Niceman wishes she were a boy and then wakes in the middle of the night to discover she's magically grown "a guy's thing down there." Her family and friends make the adjustment to her new male self, Willy, and the film plays extensively on all of the homo and lesbo-erotic potentials available. She goes back to being a girl at the end (so she can be with a boy), but she's still a butch girl even if she is straight.
Anne Carlisle. Liquid Sky; Slava Tsukerman, USA (1983).
Anne Carlisle's performance as queer twin brother and sister is one of the sexiest examples of androgyny ever filmed. As original as they come, this sci-fi sex and drug story is raw, funny, and strangely moving. (I fell in love with Anne Carlisle after seeing this film and ran to the video store to find anything else she was in; the only thing I could find was a really boring drama in which she looks and acts completely normal. Resist the temptation to rent it -- I can't even remember its name -- just watch Liquid Sky again).
Marta Keler. Virgina; Srdjan Karanovic, Yugoslavia/France (1991).
Virgina offers a remarkable look at the workings of misogyny, gender, and sex roles in 19th century Serbia. The film's title is taken from the Serbian term used to describe a girl raised as a boy. This practice seems to have been not entirely uncommon; according to superstition, lack of a son would bring about the family's demise. Born as the fourth daughter of a poor Serbian family, "Stephen" narrowly escapes being shot at birth by her father. Raised as a boy, Stephen sees her mother and sisters treated abusively by her father. Her empathy for them as a woman is countered by her family's insistence that she indulge her own male privilege. Her mother consoles her, "Better a rooster for a day, than a hen for life. Everything is made for men." Growing up to be a handsome young boy, Stephen finds a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and a good deal of erotic tension with both. A tragedy provokes Stephen's eventual rebellion against her father, and in a surprising revelation Stephen's masquerade is shown to be a common thread in the fabric of this androcentric Serbian culture. The film was completed during the outbreak of the civil war in June, 1991.
Also see:
Eva Mattes. A Man Like Eva; Radu Gabrea, Germany (1983). Eva Mattes stars as Rainer Werner Fassbinder in this rather slow fictionalized portrayal of the late great gay director.
FTMTF (Women playing men who become women)
Vanessa Redgrave. Second Serve; Anthony Page, USA (1986).
Redgrave is so convincing as a man in the first part of this made for television bio-pic of tennis coach Renee Richards that it's hard to believe she's a woman in the second part.
Also see:
Anne Heywood as Roy/Wendy in John Dexter's I Want What I Want (1972). Heywood (The Fox) is totally weird (not really butch, but very queer) in this bizarre sex-change melodrama. The film ultimately comes across as a plea for transsexual understanding as Roy becomes Wendy and falls in love with a man. A camp gem with much unintentional humor. Watch for the period styles in home furnishings, hair, clothing, and especially makeup.
Micheline Carvel in Adam Is Eve, France (1953).
Gender Dysphoria
Ana Beatriz Nogueira. Vera; Sergio Toledo, Brazil (1986).
* IMPORTANT NOTE: Here is my completely updated description of the film (from my June 2023 Criterion Channel Masc film series, co-curated with Caden Mark Gardner): Based on the tragically short life of Brazilian poet Anderson Bigode Herzer, this intense drama tells the story of Bauer, a trans man who navigates a difficult upbringing in an orphanage before finding love with a young librarian. He has the sympathy of his mentor, a professor who sees his talent as a poet, but struggles to be understood by others: “I’m not what everyone thinks I am. You hear me? I’m different. I’m something else. Something else.” One of the earliest portrayals in cinema of a transmasculine character, VERA features a remarkable lead performance by Ana Beatriz Nogueira, who received the Best Actress prize at the 1987 Berlin Film Festival.
For the sake of history, here's the (now very embarrassing) description of the film as it appeared in the original chapter. In my defense... the original presskit for the film reflected none of the information above about the material the film was based on, and descriptions in queer film festival catalogs at the time characterized the film similarly:
Presenting the story of a young woman who believes that she is a man, Vera deals with issues of masculine/butch identification and internalized misogyny, and portrays the dysfunctional effects of rigid gender role stratification. Vera does not identify herself as a lesbian (she believes she's a man in a woman's body). Vera grows up in an orphanage, and on being released when she turns eighteen, takes a job at a research center where she meets Clara, with whom she falls in love. Vera's insistence that she is a man becomes problematic when, in a painfully intimate love scene, she refuses to remove her undershirt. The relationship between Clara and Vera is seriously jeopardized as they both struggle with Vera's gender dysphoria. Two notes about the film: The film employs an unusually fluid, and at times hard to follow, flashback structure to show parts of Vera's life in the orphanage. An ambiguous ending (open to two very different interpretations) makes the film extremely disturbing.
Also see:
Mink Stole in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977). When her girlfriend says she doesn't like her sex change, she cuts off her (rubber) cock with a scissors and throws it out the door.
General genderfuck
Shelley Mars. The Virgin Machine; Monika Treut, West Germany (1988).
Shelley Mars does double duty drag: as Ramona the sex-therapist, she poses in the stylized lesbian fuck scene with Ina Blum; and as Martin the sleazy male chauvinist pig, she performs her famous Burlezk drag/strip routine. He strips down to his shirttails and boxer shorts, jacks off a beer bottle, and cums foam all over the stage.
Ellen Barkin. Switch; Blake Edwards, USA (1992).
A truly weird rendering of what could have been a predictable retread. Barkin as Amanda/Steve plays up the slapstick and sexism of masculinity and goes a bit over the top on the artifice of femininity. His/her budding feminist consciousness provides plenty of cathartic moments (a la Thelma & Louise), and there's homo/lesbo-eroticism everywhere. The ad campaign for Switch posed the genderfuck question of the year: "Will being a woman make him a better man?" There was an extensive girl-girl love scene between Ellen Barkin and Lorraine Bracco; unfortunately the scene was cut after test audiences responded negatively to it at pre-screenings of the film. In a cover story interview, "The Sexiest Man Alive," in Entertainment Weekly, Barkin said of the excised love scene: "There was no nudity or anything, but it was a lot heavier than what's in the film now. [Director] Blake [Edwards] didn't want to cut it. And to me it really elevated the film. But the audiences weren't ready for that. I felt that [Blake and the studio] should have just shoved it down their throats. It would have been a great thing for gay women." As Barkin describes the final version of the scene, it sounds a bit too much like what Stephen Spielberg did to the love scene between Celie and Shug in his "version" of The Color Purple. Barkin says, "Lorraine and I came up with this idea that my character would get the giggles and out of nerves have uncontrollable fits of laughter while Lorraine was very seriously trying to make love to her." Alas, another Hollywood lesbian love scene goes down (as it were) in history, right alongside the tickling scene in Personal Best. Who says lesbians don't have a sense of humor? Looking at Hollywood, it seems that's all we have. We certainly don't have sex.
Carole Landis. Turnabout; Hal Roach, USA (1940).
Husband and wife change bodies halfway through this screwball comedy. The comic talents of Carole Landis bring a measure of intelligence and hilarity to a fairly lightweight script. She dresses up in big man clothes, and mimics male body language, speech, and gesture.
Veronica Lake. Sullivan's Travels; Preston Sturges, USA (1941).
The plot makes no use at all of Veronica Lake's boy-drag as she dresses up to go slumming with Joel McCrea. (As they walk through a shanty town holding hands, director Sturges seems oblivious to any notion of homoeroticism.) The film's feel-good populism (a la Frank Capra) focuses on Joel McCrea as Everyman, and Lake is of course merely a woman. She steals the film from McCrea when she's onscreen, and (along with Bacall and Dietrich) has one of the sexiest deep voices ever heard -- they call it sultry when femmes talk that way.
Passing
Katharine Hepburn. Sylvia Scarlett; George Cukor, USA (1936).
Hepburn previously did a bit of cross-dressing in Dorothy Arzner's 1933 woman-aviator melodrama, Christopher Strong. Here she goes all out as Sylvester Scarlett, boy thief and traveling musician. It's a crazy plot that veers bizarrely from comedy to tragedy. As with Garbo's Queen Christina, the latter half of the film is disappointing. But Hepburn's a bundle of boy energy, looks like a young David Bowie, and even has a girl kiss her on the lips.
Greta Garbo. Queen Christina; Rouben Mamoulian, USA (1933).
The one and only Garbo gives the drag performance of her career as the titular 17th century queen. Swaggering about castle and countryside in male attire, the Swedish queen is as butch as they come and then some. Although the real life queen was a lesbian, the film has her falling in love with John Gilbert. However, just underneath the heterosexual act is a clear queer appeal and it's easy to imagine the queen as a dyke. Christina's apparent love interest through the first half of the film is the Countess Ebba Sparre (Elizabeth Young), and an early scene in the film features a very nice butch/femme sort of kiss between the two.
When Christina meets Antonio (John Gilbert) in a country tavern/inn (where she is traveling in male disguise), they end up having to share a room together. In a very provocative sequence of misgendered identities the queen is propositioned by a barmaid. She reveals to Antonio that she is a woman, and, on waking in bed together the following morning, the couple is seen by a servant who raises his eyebrows at the two "men."
When pressed by her valet to marry ("But, your majesty, you cannot die an old maid"), the queen replies, "I have no intention to… I shall die a bachelor."
Indeed, Garbo herself died a bachelor, and at this point her own lesbianism is common knowledge. The behind the scenes history of this film (according to Mercedes D'Acosta's autobiography) is that Garbo and D'Acosta, who had been lovers, developed the film together. Later D'Acosta was fired as screenwriter from the project because she was making it too clear that the queen was a lesbian. This seems to come through quite clearly in the beginning of the film, and changes somewhat strangely when the queen has a fight with the Countess somewhere in the second reel. The queen thereafter toys with the affections of a court ambassador (who obviously does not interest her) until she meets Antonio. When she gives up her throne to be with Antonio (in real life she gave it up to be with Ebba Sparre) the film makes its ultimate break with reality.
In The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo cites the following excerpt from a 1933 New York Herald-Tribune book review which makes reference to the anticipated release of the film: "The one persistent love of Christina's life was for the Countess Ebba Sparre, a beautiful Swedish noblewoman who lost most of her interest in Christina when Christina ceased to rule Sweden...the evidence is overwhelming, but will Miss Garbo play such a Christina?" Unfortunately no. Small consolation -- Antonio dies and Christina goes off alone in the end.
Also see:
Julie Andrews in Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria (1982). Remember The Sound of Music? Julie Andrews doesn't really seem very convincing as a man, does she?
Barbra Streisand in her own Yentl (1983). Another Barbra Streisand movie I didn't see [I have subsequently seen and love this film].
Molly Picon in Joseph Green's Yiddle with His Fiddle, Poland (1937). A movie Barbra Streisand saw before she made Yentl.
Cowboy butch
Anne Bancroft. Seven Women; John Ford, USA (1966).
Bancroft struts her stuff as the chain-smoking, cowboy cross-dressing Dr. Cartwright. She's tough, bold, intelligent and doesn't take shit from anyone (until the end, when she is forced -- albeit heroically -- into a submissive role). The film also features Margaret Leighton as Agatha Andrews, the repressed lesbian spinster with the hots for Sue Lyon. Set in 1935 China, in an all-women mission, Seven Women is remarkable for offering an intense psychological study of its female characters. Unfortunately, the portrayal of the film's Mongolian robbers is not so enlightened, falling into the usual Hollywood racist stereotypes in the last half of the picture.
Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Johnny Guitar; Nicholas Ray, USA (1954). More cowboy drag, and good feudin' between Joan and Mercedes.
Also see:
Betty Hutton in 501s and facial hair in the "Oh Them Dudes" production number in Let's Dance, USA (1950); Beverly Garland in Roger Corman's Gunslinger, USA (1956); Jane Russell in Montana Belle, USA (1952); Doris Day in Calamity Jane, USA (1953); Louise Dresser in Caught, USA (1931); Martha Sleeper in West of the Pecos, USA (1934); Barbara Hale in West of the Pecos, USA (1945); and Dorothy Gish in Nugget Nell, USA (1919).
Last but not least, check out Suzi Quatro as Leather Tuscadero on TV's "Happy Days."
Law Enforcement
Jodie Foster. Silence of the Lambs; Jonathan Demme, USA (1991). She has the sexiest butch hands.
Jamie Leigh Curtis. Blue Steel; Kathryn Bigelow, USA (1990). A stupid ending (her sleeping with the big he-man cop), but who can resist a girl with a gun?
Also see:
Hope Emerson in her Academy Award-nominated portrayal of the sadistic prison matron Evelyn Harper in John Cromwell's Caged (1950). Also Eleanor Parker in the last half of the film (after she gets her head shaved).
Strong female characters who look really butch when they're all sweaty and dirty
Sigourney Weaver and Jenette Goldstein. Aliens; Ridley Scott, USA (1986). Sigourney's hot, but hotter still is Jenette Goldstein as Private Vasquez. When one of the male cadets hassles her about her butchness, asking: "Have you ever been mistaken for a man?" she simply responds, "No, have you?"
Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 (1992).
"So, which one of you is the man?"
Butch lesbians in mainstream lesbian-relationship films
Patrice Donnelly. Personal Best; Robert Towne, USA (1982). The lesbianism of Mariel (femme) Hemingway's character is treated as a phase (she goes off with a male water polo player in the end). Patrice Donnelly's character is the "real" lesbian -- basic butch. Good butch dialogue. In response to Hemingway's reluctance to define the true nature of their relationship, Donnelly says: "We may be friends, but we also happen to fuck each other every once in a while." And, (on meeting Hemingway's new boyfriend): "He's pretty cute... for a guy."
A memorable love scene, consisting of tickling and nervous giggling and Mariel Hemingway saying, "This isn't so bad, I kind of like this."
Jane Hallaren in John Sayles' Lianna (1983). Barely butch.
Beryl Reid in Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (1968). Late '60s British butch.
Anne Heywood in Mark Rydell's The Fox (1968). Femmey-butch. Very sexy in and out of her hunting outfit. A truly awful film.
Butch lesbians in independent lesbian-themed films
Patricia Charbonneau. Desert Hearts; Donna Deitch, USA (1986).
Sort of butch, butcher than Helen Shaver. Good butch dialogue: "Take your hands out of your pockets and come here."
Sheila Dabney. She Must Be Seeing Things; Sheila McLaughlin, USA (1987).
Overly ambitious at times, this feature is notable for its treatment of the explicitly butch/femme relationship between Agatha and Jo.
Linda Basset. Waiting for the Moon; Jill Godmilow USA (1987).
Basset plays butch Gertrude Stein opposite Linda Hunt's brilliant Alice B. Toklas.
k.d. lang in Salmonberries; Percy Adlon, Germany (1992).
Salmonberries portrays the developing emotional bonds between two women of very different backgrounds. Roswitha (Rosel Zech), a librarian in the small Alaskan mining town of Kotzebue, resists lang's affections throughout the film. lang's determined courting climaxes in a tremendous tease of a love scene (or, not a love scene). lang's abilities as an actress are difficult to determine. She doesn't talk much, and she's so captivating when she's onscreen that it's hard to care whether she can act or is just being herself. Whichever, she gives a hot cinematic rendering of a strong, silent-type butch dyke in love.
Cyberdyke (Postmodern butch)
Angela Hans Scheirl. Flaming Ears; Angela Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek and Ursula Purrer, Austria (1991). As the sullen necrophiliac cyborg, Scheirl wanders the streets reciting some of the most poetically romantic (butch loner) monologues ever written. She's tall, lean, dirty and handsome in her red PVC coveralls. The sweet tenderness in her puppy-like devotion to her new lover's corpse is an inspiring piece of postmodern butch.
Butch behind the camera
Dorothy Arzner, openly lesbian Hollywood director of the 1930's. In October, 1936, Time magazine described her as, "short, stocky, with a quiet executive manner, a boyish bob and an interest in medicine and sunsets." Her unique sensibility shines through in such classics as: Christopher Strong (1933), Craig's Wife (1936), and Dance, Girl, Dance (1940).
A sampling of contemporary short films and videos dealing with butchness, gender identity, masculinity and Female-to-Male transgender issues
Brown Sugar Licks Snow White; Suzi Silbar and Robin Vachal, USA (1992), 4 mins. B&W. Snippets of voice, text, and image scan the terrain of race and gender, with porno dialogue and girls in femme drag.
Dual of the Senses; Heidi Arnesen, USA (1991), 3 mins. B&W. Girl dresses up as boy to do it with boy dressed up as girl.
F2M; Cayte Latta, Australia (1992), 15 mins. Interview with Jasper, a thirty-year-old lesbian female-to-male pre-op transsexual.
It Wasn't Love; Sadie Benning, USA (1992), 20 mins. Sadie does her Fats Domino impression, sucks her thumb, tells a story about her girlie, and smiles sweet for the camera.
Juggling Gender; Tami Gold, USA (1992), 27 mins. A lesbian performance artist talks about growing up, coming out, lesbian-feminism, and having a beard.
Linda/Les and Annie; Annie Sprinkle, Al Jacoma, Johnny Armstrong, USA (1989), 28 mins. Transsexual Les Nichols and Annie Sprinkle talk about Les's operation and life, and then fuck with Les's prosthesis.
Max; Monika Treut, USA/Germany (1992), 20 mins. Female-to-male transsexual Max Valerio talks about his life and the experience of becoming a man.
Passing; Sara Whiteley, USA (1991), 3 mins. 16mm B&W. A woman is madeover to a masculine and then a feminine extreme.
P[l]ain Truth; Ilppo Pohjola, Finland (1993), 15 mins. A painful and cathartic "symbolic documentary" based on the experience of Rudi, a female-to-male transsexual.
Stafford's Story; Susan Muska, USA (1992), 3 mins. Stafford tells about an encounter at a sex club.
Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box; Michelle Parkerson, USA (1987), 21 mins. An overview of the career of the famous black male impersonator, Storme DeLarverie.
Copyright 1993 Jenni Olson