TOOTSIE ROLE

TOOTSIE (1982)
dir: Sydney Pollack

TOOTSIE ROLE
MAD #240, July 1983
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

An actor can't get any work so he dresses as a woman and gets a part in a soap opera.

Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) keeps going on auditions for plays but can't get any parts. He comes home with his roommate, an aspiring writer Jeff (Bill Murray) to his Lower East Side loft to find a surprise party has been thrown for him by all his students at all acting course he teaches.

The Graduate, Midnight, Cowboy, Little Big Man, and Kramer vs. Kramer, all of which were also featured here, are referenced in the splash panel.

Michael helps his friend Sandy (Teri Garr) rehearse for a role in the soap opera Southwest General. He later meets with his agent George (Sydney Pollack) begging for work but there's nothing for him.

If I remember correctly, George doesn't find the soap opera gig for Michael, he auditions on his own, trying out for the role Sandy was up for, and getting it because they admire him for his feistiness, The director, Ron Carlisle (Dabney Coleman) is skeptical at first, but everyone else convinces him. As Dorothy Michaels, Michael gets the part and interrupts his agent at lunch to give the good news.

Michael/Dorothy meets John Van Horn (George Gaynes), who plays an actor on the show, and during the shoot goes off script to avoid being kissed. He meets Judy Nichols (Jessica Lange), and develops a deep friendship with her but doesn't divulge his true identity, and she invites him to come to her parents' home with her for the weekend. There's a suplot where Michael meet's Julie's widowed father, who develops a crush on him and later proposes marriage, which isn't used here, but like a few other elements, are in the Cracked parody in a few pages.

Jessica Lange had been in King Kong, thus the giant gorilla hand in the last panel.

Michael/Dorothy's character of Emily Kimberly becomes the most popular character of Southwest General, and he ends up signing another contract he wants to get out of so he can do other work as himself, but can't. One day, they have to shoot the show live, Michael decides he's had enough. Goes off book again, and reveals himself on live TV, as having really been Edward Kimberly all along.

Michael is fired for the stunt he pulled and shunned by the entire cast and crew, of course. The movie ends with him trying to reconcile with Julie outside the studio. Here she reveals she was Jeff the whole time.

TOOTSIE ROLL
Cracked #196, August 1983
a: John Severin

Sandy is initially just Michael's friend but becomes his girlfriend later.

Julie asks Dorothy/Michael to come over to run lines with her, which is when he starts to develop feeling for her.

Julie is seeing Ron, who Michael doesn't like because Ron's patronizing to Dorothy and he knows Ron's cheating on the side. Julie's father is Les (Charles Durning).

Klinger was never trying to fool anyone, he was just trying to get out of the army, John Lithgow's character was trans. Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, and Tom Selleck were just hypothetical.