A sapphic 1953 movie about a cowgirl and a would-be cabaret star’s forbidden love? It sounds too good to be true — and that’s because it is. Still, for the era, Calamity Jane is about as close to a lesbian romance as we could get.
The movie stars Doris Day as the titular Calamity Jane (aka Calam), a butch frontierswoman who tracks down Katie Brown (played by Allyn Ann McLerie), who she thinks is a renowned cabaret singer. Hijinks of mistaken identity ensue, leading to Calam and Katie moving in and making a home together (complete with a musical number about the touch of a woman). There are also men in the movie, but they’re so not the point.
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From there, things do go a bit off the rails, including a tragic makeover for Calam and both women ending up in separate relationships, but the central duo’s near-romance is still enough to make the movie a queer classic.
A clip from the film showing Calam and Katie’s first meeting recently went viral on TikTok. Folks immediately sniffed out the sapphic undertones (or overtones?) of the scene: Calam calls Katie “the prettiest thing [she’s] ever seen” and says she “never knowed a woman could look like that.”
In the comments section, people pointed out the clear chemistry between the two — chemistry that, of course, had to go unexplored in the ’50s. “And historians will call them close friends, besties, roommates, colleagues,” one commenter wrote.
“My dad showed me this movie when I was little and I asked him ‘are they in love??’” another recalled. “And he said ‘Yep. They don’t say it out loud but they clearly are. 😂’”
A third commenter got straight to the point with a Chappell Roan reference: “good luck, babe!”
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Though Calamity Jane may keep its queerness reserved to subtext, it still has a very gay legacy. The movie musical even spawned an inadvertent gay anthem: “Secret Love,” which, despite being sung by a woman about a man in the film, has long spoken to the queer community. With lyrics about a hidden romance and “coming out of the closet” to sing it from the rooftops, it’s no surprise that the gays latched onto it.
Doris Day herself, before her passing in 2019, learned that “Secret Love” had been adopted as a gay anthem and celebrated its resonance with queer folks. “I was not aware of that, but that’s wonderful,” she told The Advocate.
Check out the vintage trailer for Calamity Jane below.
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