Comedic Cross-dressing: A Comparison of Charley's Aunt (1925) and Madame Behave (1925)

Intro

"Masculine women! Feminine men!" sang Irving Kaufman in 1926 (Discography). Just one year prior, two comedy films came out playing on "Feminine men;" Charley's Aunt (1925) and Madame Behave (1925) both feature men dressing as women as a means to an end. In Charley's Aunt, "Babbs" (Syd Chaplin) posess as his friend's aunt in order to secure the approval of his friends' girlfriends' guardian for the girls to marry. Madame Behave features Jack (Julian Eltinge) pretending to be a woman to evade arrest. While their exact reasonings differ, the characters' cross-dressing is treated as necessary-- albeit comedic-- measures to ensure their goals. Understanding the history of cross-dressing in cinema gives a lens to the perception of gender non-conforming individuals as well as acknowledging how these depictions shape cultural perceptions of transgender people.

Charley's Aunt

Article from 1925 about the financial success of Charley's Aunt

Babbs first shows up dressed as a woman when trying on a costume for a play he is to appear in-- displaying gender non-conforming behavior in the character's life outside of the narrative. When his friends require a female chaperone for their dates, Babbs is initially reluctant to play as his friend's aunt; however, he quickly assumes the role. Babbs' embracing of the role of Charley's aunt means he adopts feminine mannerisms-- he hides behind a fan, greets other women with kisses, smiles sweetly, and curtseys-- fully adopting the role of "woman." When the dates' guardian makes a snide remark implying Babbs is a man, Babbs jumps across the table with the intent to fight the man. Despite the remark being true, Babbs takes personal offense to the threat to his womanhood and acting in an un-ladylike manner to defend it. This suggests that Babbs not only assumes womanhood, but identifies with it. Furthermore, Babbs openly and enthusiastically flirts with two men in order to sow chaos. He appears to delight in both the flirtation and the ensuing rivalry. While Babbs true intent is to create disorder, he enjoys the process of the push-and-pull flirtation with the two men-- certainly played as a joke, but depicting homosexual desire on the part of Babbs. The cross-dressing facade is the core of many joke within the film and emblematic of perceptions of gender at the time. When Babbs' friend tells him "Keep your voice up and your skirts down!" we understand that the performance of womanhood requires not only a higher voice, but differing behavior in regards to modesty. This differing behavior from men to women appears again with Babbs' line "I'm too much of a lady to call you what I'm thinking." Ladies-- which Babbs is identifying himself as in this line-- are expected to be polite and hold themselves with decorum. In contrast, the two gentlemen courting Babbs act immaturely and mischieviously despite their class and age. While Babbs repeatedly identifies with womanhood, he ultimately gives up the ruse at the end of the film in order to be with his female lover.

Madame Behave

Article from 1925 comparing Madame Behave to Charley's Aunt

Billed as "a cousin to "Charley's Aunt"" and by the same director, Madame Behave follows Jack as he borrows money for rent that he instead spends on an engagement ring and climbs up to his girlfriend's apartment to propose ("JULIAN"). When police appear after a report that a man was found breaking into an apartment, Jack assumes the role of Madame Brown. Jack, as Madame Brown, then becomes the focus of two men intent on marrying him as they believe him to be a witness to an automobile accident and want to ensure that he will or will not testify. Jack eggs the men on in their courting in order to be with his girlfriend. As the two fight over Jack, one of the men gives Jack a fake beard-- the joke within the narrative being that "Madame Brown" is a woman dressing as a man, but the joke to the audience being that Jack is a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man. Within the narrative and outside of it, gender non-conformity is a performance, a joke. Like Babbs, Jack greets women with kisses and warm embraces. Unlike Babbs, he makes no remark as to identifying with womanhood-- rather, the opposite: when proposed to, he says "When I marry, I must wear the pants," serving as a double entendre about his true identity as a man. Instead of Jack referring to his own "womanhood" in a Babbs-like fashion, the film focuses more so on other characters' comments. The most memorable being "If you'll only promise to be my wife, you'll never regret you're a woman." This comment, while clearly referring to Jack not truly being a woman, also ties Jack's act of Madame Brown to marriage. Jack's assuming of womanhood is to marry his girlfriend and serves only as a means to an end for Jack himself, rather than Babbs' act for amusement and charity.

Comparison and Cultural Relevance

In private, both cross-dressers act in less lady-like manners— Babbs smokes a cigar, Jack as Madame Brown begins to eat a pie with his bare hands. Yet when Babbs is caught, his gender non-conforming behavior is taken as a cultural difference rather than a sign of Babbs’ false womanhood. In these films, the characters’ womanhoods are never doubted— whether due to their behaviors or frames; the films display an acceptance of types of women that vary from the norm, even if the womanhood is not genuine. At the end of each film, the main characters return to masculinity to be with their beaus. Both films purport that cross-dressing is alright, as long as it is treated comedically and that the cross-dressers return to their original gender presentation as well as ceding to heterosexuality. Despite this, the films still read as queer. Men dressed as women kissing women with clear desire and enthusiastic flirting with men by cross-dressing men represents both homosexual-adjacent attraction as well as problematic stereotypes about predation by transgender women. While one may argue that equating cross-dressing to transgender identity is a problematic conflation, the separation between the two identities (cross-dresser and transgender/transsexual/transvestite) is a recent phenomenon (Horak). Ergo, when analyzing older depictions of gender non-conforming behavior, equating the two is a necessity brought by differences in culture and language. Regarding the return to heterosexuality and masculinity by the protagonists of Charley’s Aunt and Madame Behave, this was reflected in the real life of female impersonator Julian Eltinge— who stars as Jack in Madame Behave (Horak). Outside of his performances, “Eltinge aggressively promoted a masculine image for himself,” displaying gender non-conformity as being culturally nonexistent in the mainstream, serving only as a vehicle for entertainment. These attitudes towards gender non-conformity rings true within the films as well. Both films received massive amounts of praise in film magazines, with an article on Charley's Aunt revealing it had been shown in the White House and was "booked for indefinite runs... by three premiere picture theatres which are identified only with big presentations of exceptional productions," (""Still Running""). These films would not have achieved this success if the audience did not agree with the attitudes regarding gender non-conformity or did not view it as a means of entertainment and source of comedy. The success of these films hinged on their portrayal of gender non-conformity as purely comedic.

Conclusion

These films together depict cross-dressing, and by extension, other gender variant identities and behaviors, as abnormal and a source of entertainment. Regardless of the characters’ joy in performing womanhood, at the end of the films they eagerly give up their assumed womanhood for their born masculinity. Their performances of womanhood reveal not only the cultural understandings of gender non-conformity at the time, but gender performance. Attraction while cross-dressing— such as flirtations with men and kissing women— are jokes, too; in this, not only is gender variance condemned as a joke, but same-gender attraction is as well. Only once our cross-dressers lose their female dress are their heterosexual romantic inclinations taken seriously. These cultural understandings of cross-dressing reveal further understandings of transgender, gender variant, and otherwise queer depictions in the Silent Era as well as how these depictions echo in modern understandings of these identities.

Bibliography

Charley’s Aunt. Directed by Scott Sidney, performances by Syd Chaplin, Columbia Pictures, 1925.

Discography of American Historical Recordings, s.v. "Columbia matrix W141575. Masculine women! / Frank Harris," accessed October 1, 2023, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000031339/W141575-Masculine_women.

Horak, Laura. "Tracing the History of Trans and Gender Variant Filmmakers." The Spectator, vol. 37, no. 2, Fall, 2017, pp. 9-20. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/tracing-history-trans-gender-variant-filmmakers/docview/1907748015/se-2.

JULIAN ELTINGE A COUSIN TO "CHARLEY'S AUNT"?: Famous Female… Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Aug 2, 1925; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times pg. D17

Madame Behave. Directed by Scott Sidney, performances by Julian Eltinge, Columbia Pictures, 1925.

""Still Running": America Enthuses over "Charley's Aunt"." Kinematograph Weekly (Archive: 1919-1959), vol. 96, no. 932, 1925, pp. 71. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/still-running/docview/2298064847/se-2.