Home
Cross-dressing takes center stage on two new teen dramas, The WB's Young Americans and Fox's Opposite Sex, in which three dudes charm their female classmates with a high-glam version of ''I Will Survive'' (see above). But it's not like these kids invented the practice; as this brief pictorial history shows, you just can't spell ''transvestite'' without ''TV.''
-- Bruce Fretts and Brian M. Raftery
[BOX]
-- MILTON BERLE (1948) Uncle Miltie -- or should that be Aunt Miltie? -- took his Berle-esque act to television on The Texaco Star Theater. Is that a cigar in your skirt or are you just happy to see us?
-- MAUREEN MCCORMICK (1971) Going bananas over ex-Monkee Davy Jones, The Brady Bunch's Marcia tried to crash his hotel room by donning a lame bellboy getup. Still, she couldn't make anybody a believer.
-- JAMIE FARR (1973) Wearing a brassiere beneath his fatigues in a vain attempt to merit a Section Eight mental-illness discharge, M*A*S*H's Cpl. Maxwell Klinger brought new meaning to ''Don't ask, don't tell.''
-- TOM HANKS (1980) You know Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- meet Buffy the Vamp. That was the Oscar winner's wigged-out alter ego when he checked into the all-girls Susan B. Anthony Hotel on Bosom Buddies.
-- DAVID DUCHOVNY (1991) No, that's not Paula Jones pre-plastic surgery. Before he was an FBI agent, Duchovny played DEA agent Dennis/Denise Bryson on Twin Peaks. (Insert ''twin peaks'' falsies joke here.)
-- DAVID SPADE AND ADAM SANDLER (1993) Following in the high-heeled footsteps of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall, SNL's Gap Girls were all like, ''Omigod!'' And viewers were all like, ''Good God!''
-- KRISTIN DAVIS (2000) Proving as Swank-y as she is swanky, Sex and the City's prim and proper Charlotte pulled a Boys Don't Cry by cross-dressing up for a kinky photo shoot. And you thought she was freaky on Melrose Place.
