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Ladies & Gentlemen: "The Lady and the Dale" is made from the materials that make up a huge Hollywood story

Liz Carmichael's story is made up of so many absurd, extreme and life-size plots that at times it is hard to believe it really existed.

HBO's docu-series returns to a slanderous character and gives her some vital kindness

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Ben Byron Braude

Tuesday, 16 February 2021, 08:52

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Trailer for the docu-series "The Lady and the Dale" (HBO)

In the 1970s America was thirsty for fuel.

Rather, for a cost-effective solution while world oil prices have been rising steadily.

Just at this time of economic anxiety bordering on despair, the new yellow hope, The Dale - suddenly emerged - a three-wheeled car that was supposed to revolutionize the automotive field, save fuel consumption and be safer than any other vehicle before it.

The public was thrilled by the steward, the model presented in the media looked like a combination of a future car and a Formula 1 style race car. The media was also there to increase the buzz.

Behind the steward venture stood Liz Carmichael - an entrepreneur, ideologue, saleswoman and criminal with a rich criminal past.

Not surprisingly, the steward also had an amazing idea on paper but had little grip on reality (if any), and cost a lot of people quite a bit of money.

The story of Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael, or Liz Carmichael for short, is made up of so many absurd, extreme and life-size plots that at times it is hard to believe that it really existed.

Her life story is the basis for the docu-series "The Lady and the Dale", the fourth and final part of which was broadcast yesterday (Monday) on HOT, yes and Cellcom TV, next to the broadcast on HBO.

Carmichael is the kind of anti-hero criminal who is hard not to admire their talent.

If I were to simplify her complex story, I would say that this is a classic case of "imposters" with a challenging life.

In practice, Liz Carmichael and her exploits deserved at least a Hollywood film at the level of "Catch Me If You Can" created by Steven Spielberg about the life of the criminal Frank Abgeniel.

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Entrepreneur, ideologist and criminal.

Liz Carmichael, "The Lady and the Dale" (Photo: HBO)

The choice of the series' creators, Nick Camillari and Zachary Drucker (produced by the talented Duplas brothers), to open Carmichael's story in the stewardess affair, illustrates how the American media covered it in the cheerful 1970s.

Like a story of good deception, "The Lady and the Dale" also turns out at some point to be something completely different from what was presented to us on paper, in this case in the synopsis in the VOD library.

Liz Carmichael's story could just as well be called "pride and prejudice": despite being a convicted crook who went in and out of prisons (including a few trials she did not attend), Carmichael was an almost admirable personality, this is also the angle the creators choose to portray.

The prejudice in this case is of a number of journalists who demonized her, all because of one small detail - Liz Carmichael was born Jerry Dean Michael.

The constitutional and especially public status of the LGBT community has gone through a lot since the 1970s, in the United States and also in Israel, from a legal ban on same-sex relationships, to the recruitment of transgender people to the military and police and the struggle for gender-neutral service cells. Ree Dean somewhere in the state of Indiana in 1937, no one knew what a transgender person was, maybe not even she.She managed to marry three women and become a father several times before meeting Vivian - her fourth wife and first spouse who accepted her as she was, together They brought up five children and lived a nomadic life that forced them to move from country to country due to entanglements with the law.It's hard to believe, but as early as the 1970s, when no one imagined series like Ryan Murphy's "Pose" glorifying transgender characters, Liz Carmichael lived a proud life as a transgender woman 'Vow and even won full support from her immediate environment.

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Could have saved the world?

The car driven by Carmichael, "The Lady and the Steward" (Photo: HBO)

"The Lady and the Dale" consists of four episodes lasting about an hour, and is filled with an endless amount of details that try to give as broad a picture as possible of Carmichael's life.

The creators interview Liz's family members - including her daughter Kennedy, ex-son-in-law and one of her granddaughters (who talks about her longingly) - but also people who were harmed by her like employees of "Twentieth Century" vehicles, the company that was supposed to produce the steward and collapsed in disgrace.

But the most interesting angle here is the media, represented by former reporter Dick Carlson, who revealed in real time the steward's scam and embarked on an enthusiastic campaign following Carmichael.

Watching Carlson's broadcasts from that period conveys to viewers a severe sense of discomfort, when Liz was arrested on charges of public fraud he described her as a man disguised as a woman to evade the law.

Even when Liz bravely interviews in front of the cameras and explains that she is not a man in costume but a transgender woman, her remarks are ridiculed by Carlson who has stuck to his transphobia to this day (by the way, his son Tucker Carlson is one of the most conservative presenters on Fox News).

Liz Carmichael passed away long before the film was made (sometime in 2004) so ​​she herself does not describe the affair from her point of view.

Instead, the creators chose to use animation consisting of newspaper clippings against a two-dimensional background, along with many audio recordings that Carmichael sent to her family.

These passages, which seem ridiculous at first, actually become one of the strengths of "The Lady and the Dale" and manage to breathe life into the great character she portrays.

We see on the one hand the two-dimensionality with which she was described in the media but also hear how eloquent and brave she was, for an unapologetic moment, believing in the righteousness of her way completely and going with her truth (even when she is lying).

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The family continued to support.

"The Lady and the Steward" (Photo: HBO)

As the episodes progress, the point of view of the series becomes more and more clear, even if controversial - in the opinion of the creators, more than she was a criminal, Liz Carmichael was a groundbreaking woman, one who did not let life circumstances stop her, and especially a character ahead of her time.

Thanks to interviews with gender experts, we are exposed to harsh details about the discrimination that criminals and transgender criminals receive - then but also today.

After years of escaping the law Carmichael was finally caught, and despite conducting a brave trial, was convicted and imprisoned against her request for a year and a half in a men’s prison.

This, of course, did not prevent her from continuing to live within the prison walls as a woman, absorbing quite a bit of violence and continuing to receive unconditional support from her family.

The American media has made Liz Carmichael a field judge.

She described her for years as a scam artist, a man with a highly criminal mind who was willing to cross any border to evade the law - here, he even lived as a woman.

"The Lady and the Dale" tries to clean up some of the stains attached to Carmichael and let her enjoy some positive coverage (yes, even many years after she passed away).

Here we return again to the same famous Dale car.

When you hear Liz talking about her, you can get the feeling that she really believed that she had an invention in her hands that would change the world, and did not plan a big scam.

Even the people who worked with her and paid the price for the failure admit that she was a boss full of faith and empathy, and that if the authorities had not pursued her we might all have been driving today in a three-wheeled vehicle and paying no money for fuel.

Towards the end of the series, one of the journalists who covered the affair says that sometime in the 1980s he drove to the coastal town of La Hoya in San Diego, because he heard that Carmichael was participating in a tennis tournament.

An off-screen voice asks him if he does not mean tennis player Renee Richards - a transgender woman who competed in those years in a women's tournament, and won media shaming after it was revealed she was born a man and until a few years ago lived as a doctor in New York City.

The journalist pauses for a moment and admits that he may be confused and indeed this is Richards, this is a small section, but one that is meant to illustrate to us that the world may have changed since the steward affair, but there is still quite a bit of room for improvement.

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