First a Girl

In 1930s London, Elizabeth, Jessie Matthews quits her dull job at a posh luxury fashion shop and, caught in a rainstorm, finds shelter in a crowded coffeehouse where she sits opposite Victor, a gifted yet struggling actor who dreams of Shakespeare but makes his living in a music-hall persona called “Victoria.” After a brief exchange, Victor hurries away to his boarding house to fetch a message inviting him to perform that evening, only to discover he has laryngitis brought on by the storm. Seeing a spark of opportunity, he hatched a bold plan: Elizabeth could step in, sing, and perform as a female impersonator. That night, Elizabeth’s debut is a sensational success, and promoter McLintock, Alfred Drayton, rushes backstage with a contract in his hand.

Thus begins a European tour under the showmanship of Elizabeth’s unlikely partner, with Victor acting as her manager and the stage name “Bill” riding on the fame of his own persona, the revered “Victoria.” The duo travels across continents, turning Elizabeth into a celebrated figure on stage while keeping the ruse alive: a man performing as a woman under Victor’s guidance. It isn’t long before they cross paths with high society when Princess Mironoff, Anna Lee, and her fiancé Robert, Griffith Jones, attend one of “Bill’s” performances. Robert is captivated by the onstage presence, only to be startled when the wig comes off, revealing Elizabeth’s cropped hair and unmistakable femininity. The moment is a delicate balance of attraction and embarrassment, and the princess and her future husband begin to toy with the idea of exposing the act in order to reveal Bill’s true gender.

Backstage, the party’s flirtations deepen. During a nightclub interlude, Victor works to charm the Princess with Shakespearean recitations while Robert talks privately with Bill as he wrestles with his feelings. Elizabeth must physically perform as a man—smoking a cigar and quaffing whiskey—to keep up the illusion. The reality grows thornier when a feminine hair comb is found under Bill’s chair, arousing suspicions that Bill might be a woman after all. Conspiring to uncover the truth, the Princess invites Elizabeth, Victor, and their new circle to travel with them to the South of France, where they hope to uncover the truth through a staged trip; the three “men” are forced to share a room at a guesthouse, and Elizabeth must navigate this pressure while maintaining her disguise.

At the villa Elizabeth has rented with Victor, she revels in the freedom of wearing women’s clothing again, and the mood turns sunlit and carefree as she swims. A sudden sea rescue by Robert, who saves her from drowning, breaks the tension; in a tight-fitting swimsuit, the truth of her gender is plainly visible, leaving Robert momentarily embarrassed as he retreats to the water. Yet the long-term effects of the deception press on: Elizabeth confesses to the Princess that she loves Robert, but Victor—ambitious and calculating—claims that he and Elizabeth are simply close friends. The love triangle becomes a source of drama, even as a nosy newspaper reporter begins to sniff out Bill’s true identity and threatens to reveal the deception to the world.

Victor steps in to deflect the danger by staging a dramatic counter-move: he appears as Bill, performing in drag to comic effect, turning the potential scandal into a spectacle that delights audiences and shields Elizabeth for the moment. The Princess, impressed by the showmanship and the possibility of a new Shakespearean stage, pledges funding to Victor’s dream of a proper theater, which adds a hopeful note to Elizabeth’s tangled life. Despite Elizabeth’s possession of a man’s passport for the moment, the path to a new life remains open when she is waved across the French border to begin a life with Robert.

In the end, the film threads a careful line between performance and identity, ambition and affection. Elizabeth’s journey from a shop clerk to a celebrated performer, and then toward a life with Robert, unfolds within a web of wit, romance, and melodrama. The bold choices made by Elizabeth and Victor—stepping into roles not their own, testing the boundaries of gendered performance, and negotiating romance amid public scrutiny—form the core of this story about art, deception, and the price of fame.

Last Updated: October 07, 2025 at 09:00