Not like that film was a one-off either.
I would like to add The Birdcage (1996) to this list of drag queen movies (mind you, it's based on a French stage play from 1973).
Which starred Nathan Lane as a drag queen just two years after he had voice Pumba in "The Lion King":
And we ESPECIALLY need to remember Victor Victoria from 1982 (during the REAGAN administration) which is SET IN THE 1930S and stars everyone's favorite curtain-sewing nanny as a struggling soprano who decides to pretend to be a boy doing drag (DOUBLE THE DRAG FOR YOUR MONEY). I mean look at this photo:
Count Victor Grazinski isn't putting up with your transphobia (or you being a dick to Robert Preston).
Unfortunately, the representation of drag and female impersonation (as it was often called pre-Stonewall) is scant in mainstream American cinema due to the Hayes Code. There are definitely more, but these are biggest, "family-friendly" names I can think who have starred in major motion pictures as drag performers.
can I add another?
Some Like It Hot (1959), it got in trouble with censors and still went ahead, but it featured a lot of Gender and a character getting really into this whole “being a girl for real” thing, as well as the implication of a a gay engagement being on the table
but like? It has Marilyn Monroe in it and banger music and it’s a classic! I only know from my mother bringing it up and also a tiny bit of exposure to russian tv channels, but I think it was also popular in the Soviet Union? So she’d seen it as a child and loved it so much she watched it with me when I was also just a child.
(not to mention big traditions of children’s theatre with drag performance)