Expert: Barbara L. Baker - 6/27/2008

Question
Hello Barbara! I admire your love for this great genre! My question to you is this. We always hear about the Ole movie cliche about characters that want to gain acess to somewhere so they mug the passerby and take their clothes. What I'm looking for is instances in comedies where WOMEN have done this. Like theoretically for example, a woman might want to spy on someone at a restaurant. She then sees a waitress walk by. She follows the waitress. She then shows up a couple of scenes later wearing the uniform of the waitress she followed. That sort of thing.

The ole follow the passerby and come back in her clothes thing.

Could you perhaps give me instances where WOMEN have done this in comedies?

Thank you very much Barbara!

Answer
Melissa, this is an interesting question, although difficult to answer since so broad. There are a lot of comedies, and this type of old cliche occurs in other films besides comedies, at least when it comes to males hitting other men and stealing their clothes.

It is harder to come up with female examples. After thinking about it, and doing some quick on-line searching, the only comedy title I can come up with where a woman actually mugs someone to take their clothes is the 1988 SF spoof "Earth Girls are Easy," where Geena Davis's character does this to a nurse.  However, there are other comedies where women pretend to be someone they aren't, such as in "Nine to Five" (1980) where Lily Tolmin's character takes a doctor's coat from a hospital closet and pretends to be one, or in "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988) where Jamie Lee Curtis's character pretends to be a law student.  In addition, in films like "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" (1997) and "True Lies" (1994), women use their own clothes to pretend to be people they aren't.  There also are some thrillers where women pretend to be other people through the use of clothing and wigs, such as Hitchock's classic 1964 film "Marnie."

This is the best I can do in the short time period I have to respond to questions on this site.  But perhaps this will be enough to spur you to think of other examples, as I'm guessing they are out there.