Buried Treasures: Vera

 

Hello and welcome to the inaugural edition of Buried Treasures a series where we semi-regularly highlight unique or interesting items from our Special Collections. Today, we’re looking at the Charles Wallace Collection, and the script for the transgender romance movie of the 1980s that never was: Vera.

Vera logo. Vera publicity packet, 1980, Box: 7. Charles Wallace Collection,
UR16. Armacost Library Special Collections.

The Charles Wallace collection contains film and television scripts and associated production materials from the 1940s through the 1980s. Charles Wallace, a screenwriter best known for The Girl Who Knew Too Much starring Adam West and Nancy Kwan and Tiger by the Tail starring Christopher George and Tippi Hedren, gifted materials relating to his work in film and television. Additional donations came from former University of Redlands professor Bruce McAllister. The script for Vera likely came from this, more recent, addition to the collection.

Vera is a romantic drama about Dennis, a lingerie designer, and Vera, a transgender cabaret performer. After meeting under false pretenses (Dennis’s friends take him to see Vera’s show, not disclosing that she is transgender), Dennis and Vera grow to care deeply about each other, despite some initial shock when Vera discloses her identity. Their relationship is not without complications, however. As Dennis spends more time with Vera, his relationship with his fiancée, Cynthia, becomes strained. While spying on Dennis, she sees Vera visiting his houseboat. Furious, Cynthia spreads the news as she sees it: Dennis is cheating on her with a man. As a result, Dennis’s father storms in, throws Vera overboard, and puts Dennis in a psychiatric hospital. After his release, Dennis tracks Vera down. She is performing in a club in New York and in poor health due to drug use. He takes her, nursing her back to health before her gender confirmation surgery. Unfortunately, during the surgery, Vera dies due to complications with anemia. Dennis is alone, but no longer lost having experienced “love in its truest form.”

Vera was developed by Western International Pictures, a film production studio founded in late 1979 by Robert Barich. The production of Vera was announced alongside that of two other films, The Pope Is Missing and a then untitled third film. Vera was announced with a modest budget of $10.5 million, which is comparable to E.T and The Outsiders, and a script by Henry Nemo. In a press release, producer Jerry Zimmerman claimed that $250 thousand alone was allocated specifically to research on transgender issues stating, “[we] believe that it is money well spent since it gives us an insight into a mysterious region that we hope will be reflected on the screen…and we want to treat [the] matter with authenticity and compassion.” Daniel Mann was rumored to direct (Drama-Logue, 1980) and John Voight was in talks to star as Dennis (Castro, 1980) with Danny Bonaduce in a supporting role (Drag, 1980).

To cast the role of Vera herself, Western International Pictures sought to do something that would have been radical at the time: cast a trans woman. From the start, the producers knew that doing so would be difficult but necessary with Zimmerman stating, “We have been told by others in the industry that we are taking a gamble in using a transexual to play the role…we further believe that we will be doing a disservice to the film and the movie-going public if we compromised.” Finding inspiration from David O. Selznick’s search for Scarlett O’Hara, Western International Pictures planned open auditions to find the perfect actress. In early 1980, auditions were held in Los Angeles and New York with further auditions planned for New Orleans, Miami, Chicago, Montreal, St. Louis, Sydney and Paris. According to a report on the auditions in Female Mimics International, “the rights to all the videotapes done during the auditions were PRE-SOLD to a Japanese firm and will be used in a documentary feature in the Orient and Europe.”  

Unknown woman auditioning for Vera. (1980). Les girls: Boys will be girls 1(2)

Contemporary response to the auditions was largely enthusiastic and covered in traditional outlets like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and in niche gay and trans magazines such as Data-Boy, Female Mimics International, and Les Girls. Reporting in traditional media offers a straightforward account of the auditions supplemented by a quote or two from Barich or Zimmerman and occasionally commenting on the novelty of the auditions. Reporting in gay and trans media was much more enthusiastic, offering photos from the events and responses from the hopeful auditioners. In Data-Boy, Busty O’Shea commented on the script saying, “This is an honest story. No one is being made fun of and no one is belittled, and unless they change the script that I’ve seen, and I hope they don’t, they’ve got a winner.”  Les girls featured photo spreads in multiple issues from each round of auditions and was enthusiastic about the project’s future saying, “The star of ‘Vera’ will most certainly become an overnight sensation, our first transsexual star!”

For all the attention surrounding the auditions, Vera would ultimately never be filmed. All mention of Vera largely ceases in 1981. At that time, Western International Pictures would begin production on what would become the only movie they would ever release, Mausoleum. During its production and shortly after its release, Barich and Zimmerman would be sued and charged several times on multiple counts including breach of contract, civil fraud, grand theft, and conspiracy to cheat and defraud (AFI). Mausoleum was a critical and commercial bomb, generally disliked by the few who saw it. This, combined with the lawsuits, seemed to have doomed Western International Pictures and Vera along with it.

When the film never materialized, opinion in the gay press seemed to sour. By mid-1981, in a profile on Rocio, one of the women who auditioned for the role of Vera, Les girls called the auditions “infamous.” In 1983, Linda Lee writing for Female Mimics International said, “Sometimes it seems like the opportunities that should be unique to transgendered people all turn out to be illusions. One only has to think back to Vera—A Love Story of the Eighties, which seemed to mostly wind up being a story where transgendered people performed on videotape without getting paid.” After that, Vera seems to have disappeared from public consciousness.

While it seems strange to dwell so much on this little movie that was never made, I find it’s worth putting Vera in the cultural context of its hypothetical release. Generally speaking, what little depiction of trans women in popular media was largely unfavorable. For example, during the Vera casting process, Dressed to Kill was released. Dressed to Kill was only one of many films that featured murderous trans women or crossdressing men (at the time, the moviegoing public wouldn’t have made a meaningful distinction between the two groups). This legacy includes Psycho and Silence of the Lambs among others. Other films featured different harmful images of trans women, where revelations of their identities and bodies are met with disgust and violence, as in The Crying Game, Soapdish, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. By contrast, Vera is portrayed as a sincere romantic interest. Any characters that oppose Dennis and Vera’s relationship are clearly shown as villainous and in the wrong in the screenplay’s perspective. This would’ve been revolutionary for the time. 

Additionally, the producers’ intent on casting a trans woman as Vera would have put the movie decades ahead of the rest of mainstream cinema which, until very recently, continued to cast cisgender actors to play transgender roles. Even at the time this was considered an issue. For example, in 1983, Linda Lee lamented the casting of cisgender actors as transgender women in both Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and The Christine Jorgensen Story.

Had Vera been produced, maybe its star could’ve broken through and become the star of the 80s. Maybe the “transgender tipping point” wouldn’t have been in 2014 with Laverne Cox but in 1980 with Amanda Winters, Rocio, or one of the countless other women who auditioned.

               Thus concludes this scintillating installment of Buried Treasures. As always, you can learn more about this and other items in the Special Collections by browsing the collections online or by emailing the Special Collections Librarian.

 

References

Castro, T. (January 31, 1980). Is it live or is it Memorex? Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 109(304).

Daily Variety, (November 27, 1979).

‘Danny’ worries about TV/TS angle in new movie. (1980). Drag 8(27).

Lee, L. (1983). Linda Lee’s Pages. Female Mimics International, 13(15).

Mausoleum, (n.d.). AFI Catalog. https://catalog.afi.com/Film/58014-MAUSOLEUM?sid=a6ffe425-7e33-4097-8fc5-2a97165e062e&sr=11.572908&cp=1&pos=0

Messina, L. (December 5, 1979). Barich budgets $30 million for 3 films; hotel and video slated. The Hollywood Reporter, 259(26).

Rocco, P. (February 7, 1980). Vera auditions draw a crowd. Data-Boy, 1(242).

Rocio: Star of L.A.’s Plaza Saloon. (February, March, April 1981). Les Girls: Boys Will Be Girls 1(4).

The search is on…Vera. (Spring 1980). Female Mimics International, 11(2).

Vera publicity packet, 1980, Box: 7. Charles Wallace Collection, UR16. Armacost Library Special Collections.

Whose life is it, anyhow? (February 14-20, 1980). Drama-Logue.