Thread by @NetflixFilm

Before RuPaul launched the careers of over 100 drag queens and Elektra Wintour read the ballroom houses of POSE to ashes, THE QUEEN, a 1968 documentary about a 1967 drag pageant, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival providing an almost unprecedented look at queer culture. (thread)

Directed by Frank Simon, the film came to be largely thanks to Jack Doroshow, aka Miss Flawless Sabrina. It showed the performer at the height of her power, a queen amongst queens, who ran an operation of about 100 people that put on as many as 50 pageants per year across America

But in addition to the successes of Sabrina, buried within the doc is the inciting incident that led to the house-ballroom scene, where the art of voguing would emerge.

These two things make THE QUEEN, which until now has never been streamable, an indelible part of queer history

This was a time before the pivotal Stonewall Uprising, a time where drag was often still criminalized — Sabrina was reportedly arrested over 100 times for crossdressing.

Still, “One grows fond of all of them,” the New York Times wrote of the queens in its initial film review.

On its surface, this cinéma vérité-style documentary is a chronicling of the Andy Warhol-judged 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest. For that event, 28 drag performers converged on Manhattan. But as a part of the process, the film provides insight into the LGBTQ+ community.

Like DRAG RACE after it, in multiple scenes contestants appear chatting about their lives and issues that impact them directly; Acceptance from family and friends, the conflation between drag and trans identities, as well as the presence of queer people in the military.

In this way, THE QUEEN is almost unprecedented, allowing drag queens to speak in a forum that did not judge, mock, or criticize them. In fact, if criticisms were lobbed at anyone, it is the viewer that is in the hot seat.

But the moment from the film that has become the most memorable, referenced on shows like TRANSPARENT and by celebrities like Frank Ocean, is an epic reading session by Crystal LaBeija. Aja, infamously recreated the moment in a DRAG RACE Snatch Game challenge.

LaBeija was the reigning Miss Manhattan at the time, and one of only a few Black queens who had ever won Queen of the Ball, a prestigious title. At the time, queens of color were routinely short shrifted, snubbed in favor of their white counterparts.

So, when Crystal was called as third runner-up for the title of the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant, it seemed a repeating of a history she knew too well. She walks offstage, in the middle of the awards, never to walk another pageant in the white-centric circuit again.

As the final scene of the film — and of that segment of Crystal’s drag career — she lets loose a blistering read, first to the camera, and then to Miss Flawless Sabrina herself. It’s a sight to behold.

“I’m beautiful and I know I’m beautiful” she yells at one point.

With that chapter of her life LaBeija began to get involved with a series of Black-centered balls. In a bit of marketing genius credited to her friend Lottie, she hosted one of her own under the "House of LaBeija."

The format of "houses" hosting balls quickly was replicated, and these groups, which were almost exclusively Black at the time, began to form, becoming surrogate families for members.

The art of voguing would be created and nurtured in these families.

Today the House of LaBeija still lives on. After Crystal LaBeija, the house was run by Pepper LaBeija — who some believe was the first runner-up in the now infamous 1967 pageant. Pepper received her kudos in another landmark film, PARIS IS BURNING, which gave a look into ballroom

Since that 1991 work, the scene has grown into an international, bustling community with over 50 houses. Though POSE shows a fictionalized narrative set in the 80s and 90s, other shows like My House and YouTube channels like Ballroom Throwbacks show the scene today.

So it is on the shoulders of THE QUEEN that all of these projects stand, and arguably a large part of RuPaul’s legacy — in a 2019 Vogue profile Ru revealed that a 1976 lip sync by Crystal LaBeija was the first drag performance he saw.
vogue.com/article/rupaul…

The result: THE QUEEN is an inextricable part of queer history, preserving Flawless Sabrina, who was the RuPaul of her time, as well as the moment that the ballroom community began to split off and become something all its own.

Now that history comes fully restored by Kino Lorber and the Harry Ransom Center, replete with color correction. And for the first time, THE QUEEN is available to stream on Netflix (US).