Focus Features

Victor/Victoria was the last in a series of three gay films to come out in the first three months of 1982. On February 5, Robert Towne’s lesbian-athletes-in-love romance Personal Best hit theaters. A month later, on March 5, came Arthur Hiller’s Making Love, the much ballyhooed first gay studio film. And while the first two were serious melodramas dealing with "complicated" subject matter, the third, Victor/Victoria, was pure musical comedy. Hans Hoemburg brought the idea of updating Reinhold Schünzel's 1933 German comedy Viktor und Viktoria to Blake Edwards, who then rewrote the farce of gender confusion and asked his friend Henry Mancini to come up with musical numbers. Blake wrote the title role of Victor/Victoria for his wife Julie Andrews, who hadn’t been in a film musical for over a decade. Set in Paris (which was actually a set built in Pinewood Studios outside London), the story follows the travails of Victoria (Andrews), a female cabaret singer who is rescued from obscurity by a gay performer, Toddy (Robert Preston), who suggests that Victoria become Victor, a famous female impersonator. The twisted identity becomes all the rage in Paris, where gangster King Marchan (James Garner) visiting from Chicago sees it, and inexplicably falls in love with him/her. While the film offered up a few speeches of tolerance and diversity towards the end, Victor/Victoria relied mostly on its infectious good spirit to carry its message. And both audiences and critics heard it loud and clear. In France, it picked up the 1983 César Award for Best Foreign Film. In America, Andrews won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy/Musical), and the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

Victor/Victoria was the last in a series of three gay films to come out in the first three months of 1982. On February 5, Robert Towne’s lesbian-athletes-in-love romance Personal Best hit theaters. A month later, on March 5, came Arthur Hiller’s Making Love, the much ballyhooed first gay studio film. And while the first two were serious melodramas dealing with "complicated" subject matter, the third, Victor/Victoria, was pure musical comedy. Hans Hoemburg brought the idea of updating Reinhold Schünzel's 1933 German comedy Viktor und Viktoria to Blake Edwards, who then rewrote the farce of gender confusion and asked his friend Henry Mancini to come up with musical numbers. Blake wrote the title role of Victor/Victoria for his wife Julie Andrews, who hadn’t been in a film musical for over a decade. Set in Paris (which was actually a set built in Pinewood Studios outside London), the story follows the travails of Victoria (Andrews), a female cabaret singer who is rescued from obscurity by a gay performer, Toddy (Robert Preston), who suggests that Victoria become Victor, a famous female impersonator. The twisted identity becomes all the rage in Paris, where gangster King Marchan (James Garner) visiting from Chicago sees it, and inexplicably falls in love with him/her. While the film offered up a few speeches of tolerance and diversity towards the end, Victor/Victoria relied mostly on its infectious good spirit to carry its message. And both audiences and critics heard it loud and clear. In France, it picked up the 1983 César Award for Best Foreign Film. In America, Andrews won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy/Musical), and the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.