SOMELIKE IT HOT

The film follows Joe (Curtis) and Jerry (Lemmon) as the pair flees the mob in Chicago by joining an all-female traveling band. To be able to go undercover, the two don female personas, named Josephine and Daphne, and successfully join the band heading to Miami. Along the way, they meet Sugar Kane (Monroe), and she throws a wrench in their caper, as Joe quickly has the desire to pursue her. Once they reach Miami, Joe juggles yet another persona as a male, rich softie to win her over. Jerry, however, finds himself actually liking being Daphne, and inadvertently attracts an old millionaire named Osgood, played by Joe E. Brown, despite trying to shake him. While all these shenanigans ensue, the mob is still right around the corner.

Featuring crossdressing as a main component, the film bashed against the Hays Code, which, until 1968, prevented Hollywood movies from having any sort of lustful kissing, scenes of passion, homosexuality, gender fluidity or interracial relationships, among other constraints. To depict actors Curtis and Lemmon, who up to that point had always played strictly masculine and sometimes womanizer-like roles, as gender-bending feminine men who lean into their identities and don’t dismiss it as immoral, shook audiences back in the late 50s. Not only this, but the film’s smashing success was one of the key factors in abandoning the Hays Code almost a decade later.
-Savannah Burger, The California Aggie