The Lady and the Dale is HBO’s new four-part documentary on Elizabeth Carmichael, the entrepreneur that represented The Dale. The Dale doesn’t sound familiar to you? That’s because it was a three-wheel, fuel-efficient vehicle from 1970’s the quickly disappeared from the market. This series is produced by Emmy-winners Mark and Jay Duplass, names you may remember from Room 104 and Wild Wild Country.
Elizabeth Carmichael blew people away with her yellow, three-wheeled, 70-miles to the gallon car known as The Dale. With promises to blow General Motors out of the water, and in the height of the gas shortage of the 1970’s, people began giving Carmichael millions to build the car empire. Unfortunately, the Dale never made it to manufacturing. Soon, Carmichael was on trial not just for the Dale, but also because she was transgender in a time where transition and transgenderism was treated as a dirty little secret. This documentary interviews family members, investigators, and reporters who followed the story in the 1970’s. Archival images and animations fill in the gaps where there is little to no footage.
This series discusses that age old (and misguided) belief that transgender people are committing fraud by living as the person they truly feel they are. Be advised that older interviewees refer to Carmichael as he fairly often, but the experts and members of Carmichael’s family are endearing and loving when it comes to gender identification and gender politics. Much of the series becomes about Liz’s transition, how her family survived, and how her interactions with those who worked for her endured, even during the worst year’s of her life. Liz’s focus on the world of Ayn Rand, Libertarianism, and creating your own image of the world are all highlighted in this show. In short, the series is a balanced look at the good and the bad of one of California and Texas’ strangest stories.
The Lady and the Dale debuts with two episodes Sunday January 31, 2021 at 9:00pm ET/PT. It will also be streaming to HBO Max. For those interested in fraud stories, and/or transgender studies, this series is fascinating and definitely worth a watch.
