Film

The Queen

Name: The Queen
Genre: Documentary
Released: 1968
Cast: Jack Doroshow, Bernard Giquel, Mario Montez, Crystal LaBeija, Rachel Harlow

Other titles called The Queen: the 2006 film.

Social drama

A raw, black-and-white record of the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, shot mostly backstage as New York's drag community preps wigs, tucks and nerves for the big night. It favors intimacy over spectacle, and it stumbles into real history when a genuine, unscripted flashpoint over judging and race erupts on camera. Brief, funny, tense, essential for anyone curious about queer life before Stonewall.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love observational documentaries that let people perform themselves on camera, catching the bitchy warmth, vanity and nerves of a backstage world without a narrator steering your reactions.

Skip it if you want a documentary that explains its subject or builds toward a clear payoff, since this one mostly hangs around dressing rooms and lets the talk wander for long stretches.

What it asks of you: It runs about an hour and eight minutes in crisp black and white, asking you to sit with rehearsal chatter and waiting, and to read faces and small slights rather than being handed the point.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Paris Is Burning1991

The definitive ballroom documentary, following NYC's houses and legends who turned survival into artistry; funny, tender and unflinching about race, class and queer chosen family.

But Some of its subjects were later unhappy about compensation and credit, so it's worth watching with that history in mind.

Pose2018

A glossy, big-hearted drama dramatizing the same ballroom world a generation later, with a landmark trans-led cast and voguing sequences that crackle with joy and grief.

But Three seasons is a real commitment, and the soap-opera plotting sometimes overtakes the community it's honoring.

RuPaul's Drag Race2009

The reality-competition juggernaut that took drag mainstream, with real wit, technical craft, and a weirdly moving undercurrent of chosen-family sentiment beneath the shade.

But Fifteen-plus seasons and endless spin-offs is a lot, and the polish can feel a world away from the scrappy 1967 pageant.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Queen

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Some Like It Hot1959

Both use drag as disguise and survival, one earnest and documentary, one glossy studio farce, showing how differently the same costume reads depending on who's allowed to wear it as a joke.

A decade earlier and a world away in polish, this Billy Wilder comedy has two musicians disguise themselves as women to escape gangsters, and stumbles into real tenderness about identity along the way.

But It's played entirely for laughs and never claims to speak for anyone; the drag-as-survival premise is a plot device, not a lived truth.

Kiki: Love to Love2016

A direct descendant of ballroom culture filmed nearly fifty years later, following young queer and trans people of color building the same kind of family through competition and performance.

But It's slighter and less structurally ambitious than its predecessors, more a snapshot than a statement.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar1995

A broad, big-hearted studio comedy that puts drag glamour on a road trip through small-town America, with Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo clearly having a ball.

But It sands down every rough edge the real pageant had, and its politics feel cautious and dated now.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar poster

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert1994

Two drag queens and a trans woman cross the Australian outback in a bus called Priscilla, turning performance into pure, defiant joy against a hostile landscape.

But The humor and frocks sometimes crowd out the harder truths the real pageant sat with.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert poster

Disclosure2020

Trans creatives and critics dissect a century of Hollywood's trans representation, tracing a direct line back to the very stereotypes this pageant's subjects were fighting against.

But It's more analytical and talking-head than immersive; you're watching interviews, not a pageant unfold.

Wigstock: The Movie1995

A giddy record of New York's outdoor drag festival, full of the same backstage chaos, big wigs and bigger personalities as the 1967 pageant, just louder and prouder.

But It's more concert film than character study, so you lose the intimacy of following specific people.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch2001

A rock musical about a botched surgery and a stolen songbook, turning drag and gender into full-throated performance art with real heartbreak under the glitter.

But It's stylized and theatrical, a different animal from vérité documentary, and the musical numbers won't land for everyone.

We're Here2020

Both put drag performance inside a community under pressure, one a 1967 pageant riven by rivalry, the other queens building temporary family in hostile towns; the ritual of getting ready is the real subject in each.

Drag queens descend on small conservative American towns each episode, coaching locals into their own drag debut; warm, political, and often devastating about who gets to be seen.

But The format is repetitive by design, and the tears-then-triumph reality-TV structure can feel engineered next to the pageant's rawer chaos.

Pink Flamingos1972

Made just a few years later in the same countercultural moment, it takes the same competitive-pageant structure and camp sensibility and detonates it into gross-out provocation, offering the era's other answer to what drag on camera could be.

John Waters' filthy underground comedy stars Divine competing for the title of "filthiest person alive," turning camp into a weapon instead of a plea for respectability.

But It's deliberately disgusting and abrasive, built to shock rather than move you; if the pageant charmed you, this may repel you.