Calamity Jane (1953): David Butler’s Western Comedy, Starring Doris Day and Howard Keel (LGBTQ Lesbian)

Famous singer Adelaid Adams (Gale Robbins) is in Chicago, about to be brought to town by Calamity Jane (Day). Wild Bill Hickok (Keel) laughs at the idea and tells Calamity that the night Adams steps on stage, he will come to the opening dressed as a Sioux squaw lugging a papoose.

Calamity travels to Chicago, where Adams is giving a farewell performance (just before heading to Europe.  Disenchanted with the ‘primitive’ Chicago, Adelaide gives the costumes to her maid, Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie), who dreams of becoming a singer. Katie tries on one of the dresses and starts to sing. When Calamity walks in, she mistakes Katie for Adelaid, and the former poses as Adelaid so that she could fulfill her dream.  Soon a special friendship develops between the feminine femme and the butch one (Day, sans makeup, wearing chaps and boots, with her hair pulled back).

When Bill finds Calamity’s gun under her wedding dress, she jokes it’s just in case any more actresses roll in from Chicago.

In this fictionalized musical Western, Jane and Hickok are portrayed as lovers, though in real life they were merely acquaintances.  However, when she died decades after Hickok, friends buried her beside him at her request.

Over the year, Calamity Jane has become a favorite among female and lesbian viewers for its depiction of the Doris Day character as aggressive and butch–a gay icon. Moreover, not only Is Jane a strong and independent woman, but she bonds with her pal and rival Katie Brown (played by Allyn Ann McLerie), sharing a house with her, and the two of painting “Calam and Katie” in a heart on its door.

For their part, gay male viewers single out the film’s Oscar-winning song, “Secret Love,” as some sort of a secret gay anthem.  The rendition of another song, “Hive Full of Honey,” was problematic, too, when submitted to the Production Code.  The Hays Office ruled: “The man (played by Dick Wesson) can be timid and shy, but for obvious reasons, should not be excessively effeminate.”

The movie is now almost regularly programmed in international gay and lesbian film festivals.

Running time: 97 Minutes

The movie was successful at the box-office, solidifying Doris Day as a movie star and a singer.