the cross-dressing
wife
by Douglas Messerli
Alice Guy Blaché (writer and director) What
Happened to Officer Henderson (aka Officer
Henderson) / 1913
The 19th century American writer Edgar Allen
Poe well knew that the “double” represented something important in the
unconscious mind, indicating that if a single being and “another” just like him
simultaneously existed, it might challenge the other’s normative behavior. As
the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde makes clear, in the double of the self,
the “other” is nearly always dangerous and queer in its opposition to its original.
In
psychological terms it parallels, obviously, the experience of the LGBTQ
individual, who in order to deal with society found it necessary to behave in a
manner that was at odds with his or her own private feelings and emotions.
Accordingly, the double was nearly always a villain or, at worst, someone who
led the normative-behaving self into destructive behavior and death. Obviously,
an even older version of the dangers of the double exists in the myth of Narcissus,
the beautifully “real” being drawn into death by his own “dream” image of his
own kind, the queer other.
The French, who loved Poe, quickly recognized the power of his numerous
doubles and twins (“William Wilson” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”
representing just two of Poe’s numerous examples of twins, doubles, and
doppelgängers) and growing up in French culture Guy would have known of these stories
and their inevitable relationship with queerness, which she expressed in her
films in terms of shifting genders. The man who is a woman and the woman is a
man was a natural extension of the costumed doubling of her more normative
wholly heterosexual tales such as His Double. Officer Henderson
along with Cupid and the Comet are perhaps her best expressions of the
phenomenon.
Once more in this work we get not just a single set of “doubles,” but a
combination of them that results in a comic situation that in some respects is
not quite possible to resolve, as if, in fact, it might, as in the end of Cousins
of Sherlocko, demand the players remain just a little bit longer in their
other previously unknown existence.
As in that earlier work, a police detective once more must search for a
new method in order to track down a local criminal, this time a pickpocket who
robs women’s purses as they shop. In order to stake out the neighborhood,
Captain Rogers orders street policemen Williams and Henderson to dress up as
women to attract the purse snatcher to them ending in an arrest.
The two quite readily embrace their new selves, even admiring one
another in the costumes provided to them by a local clothier. And they are
quite successful in their task.
Williams, pricing lace table coverings and
veils, leaves his purse open just a little, trapping a would-be pickpocket and
quickly bringing him to a nearby street policeman for arrest.
Henderson drops in for lunch at the local café, two busybody women
noting “her” presence, at first apparently approvingly. But when a nearby male
customer begins flirting with “her,” and she flirts back, encouraging him to
join her at her table, the lunching ladies are scandalized by both their
behaviors. Henderson makes an appointment to meet his would-be “masher” for the
next day.
When they return to precinct quarters, the Captain tells them to take
their dresses home so that can use them on their patrols the following day.
Fortunately, so the intertitle seems to suggest, Henderson’s wife is away
visiting her mother, so he has most of the next day to savor his new
“existence” in full—without commentary or resistance.
He puts the dress and blouse into the closet and lays out the rest of
the attire, the hat, the cape, the purse, etc., on the bed. Back in his male
police attire he returns to the street to enjoy the rest of his day.
Meanwhile, Henderson’s wife misses her husband so terribly that she
tells her mother that she is returning home early. Won’t that be a nice
surprise! Her mother looks pleased about her daughter’s love.
She returns, of course, to discover a woman’s apparel strewn what to her
seems everywhere around the house, and can only presume that her husband has
been cavorting with another woman while she has been away. She even discovers a
note in the purse saying that her husband plans to meet up with someone the
next day at the café. Shocked, she packs up all of the stranger’s clothing and
returns to her mother in tears, giving evidence of her husband’s indiscretions
by opening the case and displaying the garments one by one.
Her mother suggests she return to Henderson dressed up in his secret
lover’s outfit, providing the evidence to which he will be forced to confess to
and to explain.
Henderson, having returned home and found his dress and clothing missing
has no choice but to show up on the street the next day in his regular uniform,
meeting up with Williams to talk about the strange circumstance of his missing
attire.
Hungry, Henderson’s wife decides to visit the café and keep her
husband’s appointment with the hussy whose dress she now wears. Soon after
she’s seated the masher notices her, stands, and goes over to her, immediately
kissing her hand. Startled by the assault she slugs him, and continues to
pummel him with her fists and purse. Three other policemen, having arranged to
be there to watch Henderson in female attire do precisely that, peek through
the window, howling at the deserved punishment of the transgressor. Their “man”
has taught the masher a lesson he’ll never forgot.
Furiously, the wife returns to the street only to see her husband
chatting away with a woman who she presumes to be his secret lover, and begins
to pummel Williams just as he has previously enforced her powerful anger upon
the masher.
Since Henderson can’t see her face given the long veil drooping down
from her hat, he and Williams together drag the wild lady to police quarters
where they begin to tell the story of her behavior to the Captain. Suddenly,
however, she raises her head enough that Henderson recognizes her as his wife
attired in his own costume. He laughs and begins the long explanation that
Williams is not a woman but his male partner—Williams obliging by removing his
hat and wig—and proceeds to explain away the whole confusion. But meanwhile
Williams, still in female dress seems to be thoroughly enjoying a conversation
with a fellow smiling policeman in the background. The two seem so very much
engaged in a “touchy-feely” chat you might even suspect that they have just
made a date.
Los Angeles, May 20, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (May 2021).
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