Victor/Victoria

**Victor/Victoria** is a 1982 film starring Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren and Alex Karras, directed and written by Blake Edwards and produced by Tony Adams and Edwards.

## Plot

In 1934 Paris, Toddy, a performer at Chez Lui in Paris, sees Labisse, the club owner, auditioning a frail, impoverished soprano, Victoria Grant. After her failed audition, Victoria reluctantly returns to her apartment to find herself deciding whether or not to spend her rent money for food. That night, when Richard, a hustler whom Toddy pays for sex, comes to Chez Lui as part of a straight foursome, Toddy incites a brawl. Labisse fires Toddy and bans him from the club. Walking home, he spots Victoria in a restaurant. She invites him to join her. As neither of them can pay for the meal, she dumps a cockroach in her salad to avoid paying, but it escapes and mayhem ensues.

The duo run through the rain to Toddy's, and he invites her to stay when she finds that the rain has shrunk her cheap clothes. The next morning, Richard shows up to collect his things. Victoria, who is wearing his clothes, hides in Toddy's closet. When she thinks that Richard might harm Toddy, she assaults him and kicks him out. Seeing this, Toddy is struck with the inspiration of passing Victoria off as a man and presenting her to Andre Cassell, the most successful agent in Paris, as a female impersonator.

Cassell accepts her as Count Victor Grazinski, a gay Polish female impersonator and Toddy's new boyfriend. Cassell gets her a booking in a nightclub show and invites a collection of club owners to the opening. Among the guests is King Marchand, a shady owner of nightclubs in Chicago, and his ditzy moll Norma Cassidy and burly bodyguard Bernstein, a.k.a. Squash. Victor is an immediate hit, and King is smitten, but he is shocked when she is "revealed" to be a man at the end of the act. King, however, is convinced that "Victor" is not a man.

After a quarrel with Norma, King sends her back to America. Determined to get the truth, King sneaks into Victoria and Toddy's suite and confirms his suspicion when he spies her getting into the bath. He invites Victoria, Toddy, and Cassell to Chez Lui. Another fight breaks out. Squash and Toddy are arrested, along with many of the club clientele, but King and Victoria escape. King kisses Victoria, pretending that he does not care about Victoria's gender, leading them to get together.

Squash returns to the suite and catches King in bed with Victoria. King tries to explain, but then Squash reveals he himself is gay. Meanwhile, Labisse hires a P.I., Charles Bovin, to investigate Victor. Victoria and King live together for a while, but keeping up her deception strains the relationship to the breaking point, and King ends it. Back in Chicago, Norma tells King's partner Sal Andretti that King is having an affair with a man.

At the same time that Victoria has decided to give up the persona of Victor in order to be with King, Sal arrives and demands that King transfer his share of the empire to Sal for a fraction of its worth. Squash tells Victoria what is happening, and she shows Norma that she is really a woman, saving King's stake. That night at the club, Cassell tells Toddy and Victoria that Labisse has lodged a complaint against him and "Victor" for perpetrating a fraud. The inspector tells Labisse that the performer is a man and Labisse is an idiot.

In the end, Victoria joins King in the club as her real self. The announcer says that Victor is going to perform, but instead of Victoria, Toddy masquerades as "Victor". After an intentionally disastrous, but hilarious performance, Toddy claims that this is his last performance.