The Ballad of Little Jo is a 1993 film inspired by the true story of a society woman who tries to escape the stigma of bearing a child out of wedlock by going out West, and living disguised as a man. The film stars Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins, Ian McKellen, David Chung, Heather Graham, and Carrie Snodgrass, and was written and directed by Maggie Greenwald.

Roger Ebert described the film as depicting a culture in which, "men of poor breeding lived and worked together in desperate poverty of mind and body, and were so enclosed inside their roles that they hardly knew each other at all."

Tagline: In the Wild West, a woman had only two choices. She could be a wife or she could be a whore... Josephine Monaghan chose to be a man.

The Ballad of Little Jo was nominated for the 1994 Independent Spirit Award for best female lead (Amis) and best supporting male (Chung). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106350/awards

Based on a true story, this is the tale of Josephine Monaghan, a young woman of the mid-19th century who is thrown out of her parents' home after being seduced by the family's portrait photographer and giving birth to an illegitimate child. Josephine quickly learns that young, female, pretty, and alone are a bad combination for life in the wild west. In her desperation to survive, Josephine disguises herself as "Jo", a young man, and struggles to make a life for herself in a dingy frontier mining town. Can "Little Jo" live and love without revealing his/her secret? Written by Martin Lewison