Historically in art, when women dressed as men, it was to usurp their inferior social status and access opportunities ordinarily denied. When men dressed as women it was almost automatically comical, a ploy to avoid (or escape) trouble, like the characters in Some Like It Hot – a story hinge-pinned on drag and the classic Hollywood farce, in which the two protagonists transform themselves into darling damsels in an effort to escape the mob.
When two musicians, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) witness a mob massacre in Chicago, they need to get out of town, and quick, before the gangsters find them. Their only route out takes them to Florida, disguised as players in an all-girl band, where they meet singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) and try their hardest not to fall in love, or be fallen for. Chaos ensues.
Wilder’s film is funny and at points, downright silly too. While Joe and Jerry try their hardest – and succeed all too easily – at being women, Monroe’s Sugar Kane tries endlessly to conceal her fierce and feisty streak with a delicate, naïve persona – what she believes men want from a woman. The black and white film soundtrack features Monroe singing I Wanna Be Loved By You and I’m Thru With Love and of course, the title track.
Arguably, gender roles, expectations and assumptions have changed drastically since the 50s but 55 years after its first release, Some Like It Hot is still as charming as ever. Wilder never hammers home comments on gender stereotyping, and there is a sense that he is less mocking the protagonists’ attempts to be perfect women and more their efforts to be people that they’re not. Nevertheless, the theme is present. The crux of the film is delivered in the iconic last line, when Daphne/Jerry reveals to wealthy suitor Osgood (Joe E Brown) that she/he’s a man: “well, nobody’s perfect.” Neither man nor woman has achieved that, yet.