The promise of 70 miles a gallon and a magic bullet for interminable gas shortages garnered the Dale and its champion outsized media attention. But by 1976, an investigation by LA local reporter Dick Carlson had brought the company crashing down, and Carmichael went on the run with investors’ money. Focus on the company’s fraud soon bubbled into a queasy fascination with outing Carmichael, then in her late 40s, as a transgender woman – a highly sensationalized revelation revisited, recontextualized, and reappreciated in HBO’s expansive four-part docuseries The Lady and the Dale.
Carmichael was a dogged entrepreneur, a consummate scammer, a bombastic businesswoman and a gripping conversationalist, the type of personality who could charm anyone within 10 minutes and one of the rare figures to justify a long-form documentary series. The Lady and the Dale, produced by the Duplass brothers, views her story both as a fascinating portrait of a high-wattage individual and a portal i
1/31/2021
Car entrepreneur, lifelong scammer and trans pioneer Elizabeth Carmichael is profiled in a four-part HBO bio-doc produced by the Duplass brothers.
Throughout her long, madcap and utterly singular life, Elizabeth Carmichael boasted a talent for remaking reality. Carmichael had little use for the way things were not when it came to her body, nor to America’s ailing car industry of the 1970s. Her knack for making the world see things her way led her to pursue a gender transition in the late ‘60s, seemingly with no other trans people around to give support or advice. A decade later, that same force of will led to her highly publicized claim that she would create and mass-produce a three-wheeled, fuel-efficient car that would save the country from the oil crisis a pipe dream that helped her bilk millions from investors.