Here's a Babe that less handsome Crivs
than myself may have more of a chance of
pulling - ADA DAWSON. I think she might
be related to LES DAWSON, but not sure
in exactly what way. Sister, maybe?
Friday, 17 April 2015
15 comments:
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I loved Les Dawson and Cissie & Ada were hilarious. I remember reading that the rock group Queen's popularity suffered in America after they dressed up as women for the video of 'I Want To Break Free' in 1984 - the Americans didn't understand the fine old British tradition of drag !!
ReplyDeleteNot quite sure that I understand it either, CJ. Can't stand Mrs. Brown, but the wee guy who plays her seems a nice chap. Good luck to him if he's making some dosh from it 'though.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, dragging up, we've all done it, haven't we?
ReplyDeleteHaven't you?
What? Nobody else?
( Ahem....)
Cissy: "When you were in Greece, did you have the shish-kebabs?"
Ada: "From the moment we arrived!"
Cissy: "No, did you visit the Acropolis?"
Ada: "We were never bloody off it!"
Milton Berle and Flip Wilson did drag fairly regularly. There were also the movies "Some Like It Hot," "Tootsie," and "Mrs. Doubtfire." And the TV sitcom "Bosom Buddies." But that's about it, AFAIR. So it's true that drag comedies are few and far between in America, and we don't really have a "fine old tradition" of it.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once asked me if I was a cross-dresser. Only when I'm in a bad mood putting my clothes on in the morning. Boom, boom!
ReplyDelete******
I suppose Peter Pan being played by a woman on stage is also a sort of drag act, TC.
The sight of men dressing as women goes back a long time to when only men could be actors - back to ancient Greece actually but in Shakespeare's day the role of Juliet (for example) would have been played by a teenage boy. I'm not sure how the "Principal Boy" in panto came about - maybe a woman playing the prince was supposed to suggest how handsome he was or perhaps it just seemed less threatening for a woman to play the main male role...?
ReplyDeleteHarummmph! Dodgy stuff if you ask me, CJ. Those actors are a funny lot.
ReplyDeleteCJ, women enter the the theatre during the restoration and start taking on male roles more or less from the get go. There are some practical reasons to cast a male role with an actress, especially in the theatre if you want to contrast stature, or portray youth in a histrionic fashion. Incidentally, this practicality is still recognised today, juvenile male voice roles are routinely cast to females. I can think of few: the young Zellaby in Village of the Damned was dubbed by an actress and what about Bart Simpson?
ReplyDeleteAnd let's not forget Sylvia Anderson providing the voices for various junior male roles in her husband's puppet programmes.
ReplyDeleteWell, I read that Bart Simpson is voiced by a woman in order to avoid the "Charlie Brown problem" where a young boy doing the voice has to be replaced as he ages by another young boy with a different voice - The Simpsons has been going since 1989 so there would have been quite a few Bart voices by now if they'd used young boys. Of course, women also play male roles in opera - so called "trouser roles" which were originally sung by a "castrato" (best not to dwell on that hee, hee).
ReplyDeleteMakes my eyes water just thinking about it, CJ.
ReplyDeleteI forgot about the versatile Sylvia, she had a pretty good range as a voice actress. One interesting note on the cross cultural taboos over the issue of dressing up, back during the Kung Fu flick era there was a film called Back Alley Princes. It featured a girl masquerading as a male character, in the US there's a subtle change was in the title, ie: Back Alley Princess. Really dumb because it screws the twist up completely.
ReplyDeleteThat title sounds like a double entendre, DSE. Most of these Kung-Fu movies were cra*p anyway, I thought. Although I did like Enter the Dragon.
ReplyDeleteOh crikey yeah, that title is a bit dodgy taken in that light. I used to like the kung fu flicks, 70's action orientated cinema was dire, the kung fu scene offered a bit of colour and levity. Enter The Dragon, even though it prompted interest in the scene, it eventually knocked it back because they couldn't compete with production standards, it died off a bit till the video market took off. There was a bit of a moral reaction too, so the censor started taking liberties, shuriken were seen as particularly offensive along with other edged weapons.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the fate of Kung Fu movies weren't helped by Bruce Lee dying a few days before ETD was released. There was really no one else who could fill his shoes at the time. I've got the uncensored version of ETD on DVD, DSE (see what I did there?), but I've still to watch it. Seen the ordinary version 2 or 3 times 'though.
ReplyDelete