Movies With Women Dressing as Men

[astorian]

There are loads of movies in which men try to pass themselves off as women. How many movies are there in which women try to pose as men? I can think of:

Hillary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry"
Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love"
Miranda Otto in "Return of the King"
"Mulan"
Julie Andrews in "Victor Victoria"

Other nominees?

[Little Nemo]

Just One of the Guys (1985) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089393/)

[bordelond]

The Afghani movie Osama uses this device.

[astro]

There are loads of movies in which men try to pass themselves off as women. How many movies are there in which women try to pose as men? I can think of:

Hillary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry"
Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love"
Miranda Otto in "Return of the King"
"Mulan"
Julie Andrews in "Victor Victoria"

Other nominees?
Steisand in Yentl

[DeVena]

Portia in the Merchant of Venice

[pinkfreud]

How could we forget Barbra Streisand as Yentl?

[pinkfreud]

Oops, we didn't forget Streisand as Yentl. Sorry, astro. :smack:

[StephenG]

Portia in the Merchant of Venice
And Viola in Twelfth Night (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0117991/).

[Wendell Wagner]

This isn't the same thing, but Linda Hunt won a best supporting Oscar for playing a man in _The Year of Living Dangerously_.

[Dusty]

Beverly of Graustark (1926)
Same as the book, with Marion Davies playing Beverly who dresses as her cousin Oscar to save The Kingdom of Graustark.

A Florida Enchantment (1914)
A surprising good film (the premise sounds incredibly stupid, but I always take the chance to see silents in real theatres when they play) about a woman (Edith Storey) who, by way of magic beans, turns into a man so that she may flirt with women.
In the end, it all turns out to be a dream.

The House with Closed Shutters (1910)
A D.W. Griffith film about a man who deserts the Confederate army and his sister who, dressed as him, takes his place so that the family is not disgraced.

I Don't Want to be a Man! (1919)
A funny movie about a girl who thinks the life of women is boring, so she dons formal wear and goes out a-drinkin' with the boys.

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921)
29 year old Mary Pickford dressed as a 12 year old (approx., I don't remember if an exact age is mentioned) boy. Not quite what you're looking for, since in the film she's supposed to be male, not just be dressed as a male, but it's worth a mention.

[Kaitlyn]

Just One of the Guys: A high school reporter dresses up as a girl and enrolls at a rival school to prove that the rejection of her newspaper article wes sexist.

[Nava]

Belle epoque. Fernando Trueba, 1992

There is a Mardi Gras party. The main male character goes in drag; one of the four daughters of the house where he is a guest goes dressed as a guy. The lesbian daughter.

It's a Spanish movie, got nominated for the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Movie. For some reason IMDB lists it as French... they must think that sounds snazzier. I once watched it with an American boyfriend (we had picked one movie each and rolled dice to see which got played first): he didn't speak a word of Spanish and of course there are some in-jokes that you can't understand unless you know quite a bit about Spanish history, but he was laughing so hard I would occasionally stop the tape and turn it back a bit. He ended up sitting on the floor so he wouldn't roll off the armchair again.

[Go You Big Red Fire Engine]

Rachael Stirling (Daughter of Diana Rigg) in Tipping the Velvet. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0324264/)

[Askia]

Briefly, A black male airplane passenger is revealed to "really" be Drew Barrymore's character at the start of Charlie's Angels. A murderous mob of men almost lynches a crooked ointment salemen, one of whom turns out to be the mannish sister of the eponymous Little Big Man. In Dragonslayer, a young maiden passes herself off as a boy to prevent being ritually sacrificed to a dragon. Natalie Portman very briefly dresses up as Charlie Chaplin in Leon (The Professional). I think. I think Diane Weist dresses as a man to escape the attention of a tabloid photographer at the end of The Birdcage but I might be mistaken.

[DocCathode]

Hillary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry"


I wouldn't include this. The other movies listed are all 'woman dresses as man as part of some plan.' Eomer puts on some armor and calls herself Dernhelm because she wants to go and fight. Terry dresses as a boy to sell her article on school lunch, then lives as a boy as fodder another article. Brandon Tina, OTOH, was just a transsexual trying to live the way he felt.

[Walloon]

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1914)
The Mystery of Richmond Castle (1914)
The Ragged Earl (1914)
Hearts and the Highway (1915)
Mistress Nell (1915)
The Beckoning Flame (1916)
The Daughter of the Don (1916)
Her Father's Son (1916)
Land O' Lizards (1916)
Poor Little Peppina (1916)
The Snowbird (1916)
The Wharf Rat (1916)
Alma, Where Do You Live? (1917)
Cheerful Givers (1917)
The Jury of Fate (1917)
The Little Brother (1917)
The Little Chevalier (1917)
Love Aflame (1917)
Peggy, the Will O' the Wisp (1917)
The Trouble Buster (1917)
The Wild Girl (1917)
The Daredevil (1918)
The Dream Lady (1918)
Opportunity (1918)
Two-Gun Betty (1918)
The Girl Alaska (1919)
The Hoodlum (1919)
The Microbe (1919)
Muggsy (1919)
The Oakdale Affair (1919)
Phil-for-Short (1919)
Bubbles (1920)
The Flame of Hellgate (1920)
Thunder Island (1921)
Trail of the Law (1923)
Lawful Cheaters (1925)
Pursued (1925)
The Enchanted Island (1927)
2 Girls Wanted (1927)
Finders Keepers (1928)
She Goes to War (1929)
Viktor und Viktoria (1933)
First a Girl (1935)
West of the Pecos (1935)
Rose of the Rancho (1936)
Sylvia Scarlett (1936)
Yiddle with His Fiddle (1936)
Wings of the Morning (1937)
Turnabout (1940)
True to the Army (1942)
The Emperor Waltz (1948)
Stagecoach Kid (1949)
The Marshal's Daughter (1953)
Age of Youth (1961)
Fidelio (1961)
Homicidal (1961)
The Spessart Inn (1961)
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
The Ballad of a Hussar (1963)
The Love Eterne (1964)
The Lady General (1965)
Every Day Is a Holiday (1966)
The Female Prince (1966)
Gunn (1967)
Fidelio (1970)

[Antigen]

In "Sleeping with the Enemy", Julia Roberts' character dresses as a man to sneak in somewhere without being caught.

[Krokodil]

Glenn Close has an unrecognizable cameo as Glenn the Pirate in Hook.

Sophia Coppolla, as an infant, played a baby boy in the baptism scene in Godfather, Part II

The Wonderful Land of Oz (although magic was involved and they had one actor for Tip and another actress for Ozma)

[Little Nemo]

A murderous mob of men almost lynches a crooked ointment salemen, one of whom turns out to be the mannish sister of the eponymous Little Big Man.
In that scene, the sister was one of the leaders of the mob. But she had been mistaken for a man in earlier scenes.

Didn't Blofeld dress up as a woman in one of the James Bond movies? Diamonds Are Forever maybe?

[Little Nemo]

Of course, Blofeld dressing as a woman doesn't answer the OP. Never mind.

[gfloyd]

There was a TV show on the WB, which I really liked maybe five years ago, called something like American High or such and had a girl dressed as a boy, though either the reasons weren't ever developed or I've since forgotten. It was ages ago.

[Miss Mapp]

In the film Fiesta, Esther Williams disguises herself as her twin brother (Ricardo Montalban) to fight a bull.

[Peter Morris]

In one episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine a female Ferrengi impersonates a male becauise Ferrengi laws prevent females from doing business.

[Peter Morris]

Oh, and an episode of Futurama where Fry and Bender join the army, and Leela puts on a false beard to rescue them.

[Askia]

Whoopi Goldberg invents the alias of white male CEO Robert Cutty (yes, after the whisky) in the underrated comedy, The Associate.

Though I haven't seen it, Cicely Tyson most probably assumed a man's identity during the made-for-TV movie, A Woman Called Moses, since that was an actual tactic used to escape detection of the notorious Harriet Tubman, foremost conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Kudos to Walloon for all his picks.

[Cervaise]

Sylvia Scarlett (1936)I came in specifically to mention this, because I saw it recently (eight months ago or so). Definitely an odd, but not an unsatisfying, movie. An interesting mix of badly dated and way ahead of its time, it feels like it's about three movies in one. Starts out as movie A, abruptly turns into movie B, and about twenty minutes before the end it suddenly changes again into movie C. Worth seeing for Katharine Hepburn's performance.