Inside the spring 2020 Stories to Tell exhibition, Ransom Center film curator Steve Wilson explores the archive related to the recently restored film, The Queen, which documents the 1967 “Miss All American Camp Beauty Pageant” held in Manhattan. The New York contest was a parody of the Miss America pageant and featured drag queens when laws against cross-dressing and widespread anti-gay attitudes put the participants at great personal risk. The Center worked in partnership with Kino-Lorber to restore the film, and in 2019, The Queen was re-released. Learn more through this Q&A with multi-platform drag historian and videographer Joe E. Jeffreys (read more). [Read more…] about All hail The Queen! An interview with drag historian Joe E. Jeffreys
Lewis Allen
Fellows Find: Lewis Allen, indie film pioneer
Gracia Ramirez is an independent scholar whose research centers on the initiatives of independent film producers within the American film industry of the 1960s. She conducted research in the collection of American independent film and Broadway producer Lewis M. Allen last summer with support from a 2014-2015 Robert De Niro Fellowship from the Ransom Center. Below, she recounts how Allen’s shrewd production management and on-set relationships brought highly successful art-house creations to life.
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