1964 'Woke Up Woman' trope/ proto-genderfuck movie

[cimorene]

I watched a movie called Goodbye Charlie (1964) last night that was UNCANNILY similar to classic Popslash Explosion -era (ca. 1999-2001) Woke Up Magically with the Reproductive Physiology and Visible Secondary Characteristics Associated with Femininity fic (the fandom term for which used to be sex-or-gender swap-or-switch, and at some point progressed to genderfuck). This era in popslash was seminal to the development of modern media slash fandom and was probably the single strongest contributor to the next phase of development of this trope and its variants. (Citation needed, but source is that I was there reading in most of the major trending media slash fandoms of the time.)

SO ANYWAY this is the first movie I've found that is this close to the fandom template! A lot of people like to point to Star Trek's original series as the source of various tropes, but this is a exception. There is a classic episode of TOS where Kirk is trapped in a woman's body, but it's the body of a specific woman who wants to steal his life. She uses a bodyswapping machine to switch them and of course, the strategem fails because Spock can recognize Kirk's soul etc and Kirk gets his body back. But the plot is of necessity more concerned with on the one hand the body snatcher, and on the other Kirk's trying to solve the problem when no one has any reason to believe he's him (except Spock). Red Dwarf has several great episodes where they meet the female versions of themselves, played by female actors, but the minds of the main cast aren't switched. I've always figured this one didn't have any real parallels in movie and tv! So I was pretty surprised to find even this much.

Here's a summary of Goodbye Charlie (1964, dir. Vincente Minnelli, starring Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds and Pat Boone), adapted from George Axelrod's 1959 play Goodbye, Charlie:

1. Sleazy Hollywood writer Charlie gets shot and thrown over the side of a yacht at a sleazy Hollywood party (by his boss, the yacht owner) and dies.


2. Charlie's BFF, novelist George (Tony Curtis), flies in from Paris for the funeral, which is attended by only three other people (a funeral director and two women Charlie has had affairs with) because he was such an unlikeable skeeze.


3. That night while George as executor is going through the estate, a motorist knocks on the door and dumps a beautiful young woman (Debbie Reynolds, with platinum hair) whom he says he found wandering naked in the middle of the road nearby. Motorist says he has to go to a party and the woman apparently can't speak but insisted on coming into this house. He escapes while George is yelling for him to come back, so George gives his guest the bedroom and some pajamas.


4. The next morning George is awakened by the guest screaming because he's just remembered that he is Charlie. He remembers his murder and dying, and then wandering naked in the road. He convinces George of his identity and sends him out to buy him something to wear.


5. A couple of makeover scenes right out of a popslash fic follow: he confesses to a "sudden desire" to paint his toenails and goes all dreamy about how he wants to wear clothes that are "soft, tender and warm" while groping his boobs. He goes to a salon, slaps the hairdresser's ass and sadly muses that "It's not the same", then finds the two women from his funeral there and blackmails ten thousand bucks out of them by posing as his own wife and threatening to publish his racy memoirs. Then he insists on going to an "out on bail" party thrown by his murderer.


6. A scene where George yells at him for this blackmail and being a bad person and he cries and gets cuddled and then George freaks out about their being attracted to each other ensues. Charlie says they should just get married and it's probably fine, because a marriage licence would enable him to get new identity papers; being bffs is a good foundation for a marriage and making out is nice. George flees to a motel and Charlie says (unconcernedly) that he'll have to marry someone else.


7. The motorist who rescued him the first night asks him on a date, then proposes after like, one hour. Charlie accepts and goes with him to his scary mansion, but feels guilty for taking advantage after the guy gets drunk and confides his life story, so he gives the ring back and sneaks out while the guy is asleep.


8. Meanwhile a cop interrogates George, suggesting that he and Charlie's widow appearing so carefree after Charlie's murder, and attending a party thrown by his supposed murderer, looks like they're in some kind of conspiracy. George panics and begs the murderer-boss, because he's a millionaire, to smuggle them out of the country and provide fake papers, but the murderer-boss uses this to get George out of the way and try to ambush Charlie at home alone.


9. He chases Charlie around the furniture, and Charlie barely fends off rape a couple of times, when suddenly the murderer's wife appears with a gun and shoots Charlie, who falls off the balcony into the ocean. George arrives just in time to see and dives in after, but he fails to find him.


10. Just a few hours later while George is muttering to himself ("Maybe it's for the best...") he hears someone yelling "Charlie!" outside and a great dane runs right into the house through the patio, followed by Debbie Reynolds with different hair and a different accent, apologizing for her dog. She is a schoolteacher who lives half a mile down the beach. She's never met Charlie the human, and says she named the dog that because he "seemed like a Charlie". They do a lot of love at first sight staring, and he tries to offer her something to eat, only for her to discover the kitchen contains nothing but ketchup and corned beef and that George himself has not eaten in a day, so she starts to fix food for him. Meanwhile the dog proves that he is actually Charlie by removing the vodka from its hiding place in the bookshelf (he told George about this earlier when played by Debbie Reynolds), knocking it onto the floor and then licking it up. THE END!

(This type of ending was weirdly common in speculative or fantasy fiction and especially film, especially in the midcentury - a sort of variant of It Was All A Dream where, regardless of whether it was a dream or not, after the fantasy romance is removed, the empty space of the fantasy lover is filled by an accessible and realistic version of the fantasy lover played by the same actor, with some mystical woowoo over it meant to suggest that they cosmically or magically really ARE the same person somehow. Or something. So doing this is not unprecedented and it's a familiar trope and a common solution to this sort of fix. But the addition of the dog for humor renders the whole thing baffling. The dog and the girl can't BOTH be Charlie! The girl can't symbolically be Charlie while the dog is actually Charlie??? What is this even trying to say????)

But in spite of obvious differences, there are a lot of similarities to this particular early generation of gender-stuff fic:

• The transformation serves the purpose of teaching a lesson related to gender (albeit not the same one as in fanfiction): check


• Exploiting for humor scenes of the character in the "female" body participating at least briefly in objectification of other women: check


• The affection and attraction between the transformed character and the BFF is addressed, resisted, and then develops past the resistance: check


• The "female" body affects the transformed character by making them open to, curious about, and apparently happy to enjoy the actual transformation into a SUCCESSFUL feminine body inhabiter (ie recognized as a sexy woman by all who behold them, having mastered the art of... essentially... drag, ie the performance of glam hyper-femininity): check


• A further transformation removes the inconveniences/impossibilities posed by romance with the transformed character: check (usually in slash this is a transformation back to their original body, but with a new awareness of gender and sexuality)

Comments

[zana16]

I remember that era of pop slash… it must have made an impression because I started an epic genderfuck novel in the Professionals fandom that I never finished.

[cimorene]

I enjoyed seeing the next generation where they were doing more creative things interrogating and transforming the formula!

[copracat]

The credits animation! The dancer in the gold dress! She must have been exhausted. I'm so pleased to see that someone is knitting at a louche party on a yacht in the Sixties. Five minutes in and I'm delighted.

[cimorene]

Yeah I was already pretty stunned by the credits animation. In fact I was still going "What the?" about the theme song when Charlie got shot and pushed overboard!