May 30, 1926– Before the lovely Laverne Cox, before Alexis Arquette, before Chaz, even before Bruce broke the big news to Diane Sawyer & the world, a little boy from the Bronx became a lovely lady. It was 1952 & science was still popular, unlike our times. Engineers could build rocket ships, researchers could cure diseases, & medical doctors could turn a seemingly regular guy into a glamorous woman. This was an era before there was a T in the equal rights movement, before there was even an L,G, or B. In fact Transgender wasn’t even a term yet.
Recently discharged Army Private George Jorgensen made headlines around the world when he returned to the USA from Denmark as a blond woman named Christine Jorgensen. Jorgensen shocked the world, & freaked out Americans. People were afraid & angry. They still are.
While serving in the Army, Jorgensen, who said that she had felt trapped in the wrong body since childhood, read an article about a doctor in Denmark who was experimenting with sex change & hormone therapy.
Brave Jorgensen was just 24 years old when she made the journey to Copenhagen to meet with Dr. Christian Hamburger who diagnosed the young GI as “transsexual”. Hamburger prescribed female hormones & encouraged Jorgensen to dress in women’s clothing. Hamburger & a psychologist had to petition the Danish government for permission to perform the illegal act of castration for surgical purposes.
Hamburger changed Jorgensen’s special stuff from male to female. Jorgensen chose Christine as her new female name in honor of her doctor.
Her transition made headlines when she returned to the USA in 1955. Curious crowds & eager journalists showed up at NYC’s Idlewild Airport to cover her return from Denmark. The December 1st, 1952 headline on the cover of the NY Daily News read: “Ex-GI Becomes Blond Beauty”.
”At first I was very self-conscious & very awkward, but once the notoriety hit, it did not take me long to adjust.”
Jorgensen was resourceful & like a true American she was able to take that media attention & turn it into nightclub engagements. With a straight face, she sang I Enjoy Being a Girl & Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered as part of her act. My city of Portland’s own Mary’s Club, the oldest strip club in the USA (Portland has more strip clubs than churches) engaged Jorgensen with a gig as a go-go girl. Often the butt of TV comedian’s jokes, she always had a sly sense of humor about herself.
Jorgensen didn’t hide away. She became the first, but certainly not the last, transgender American to grab that publicity about her transition & run with it, so to speak. All network news broadcasts, every major magazine & newspaper, & every popular radio show covered her transition. Books were written about her. She smartly wrote her own: Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, a bestseller in 12 languages, adapted into a film in 1970. She got a record deal & released Christine Jorgensen Reveals, a spoken-word album where she was interviewed by comedian Nipsey Russell. She even cut a few singles. Jorgensen made $12,000 a week performing her stage act in Hollywood. Other people who were considered “cross-gender” always existed, but no one had the guts to go public, become famous & make money until Jorgensen.
Just like in our 21st century, the government didn’t know how to handle a change in gender. She sought a marriage license in 1959 but was denied because her birth certificate classified her as male. She had worked as a chauffeur, but her permit was revoked.
Jorgensen claimed that public reaction to her surgery was one of the first steps in the new sexual revolution of the 1960s. She said that she never regretted her decision. The public acceptance of Jorgensen as a woman showed that gender & the body were not always connected, & that gender was something that a person could create. This changed the world in no small way.
Jorgensen lived a quiet private life after her notoriety had run its course. She resided at the famed The Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, occasionally taking speaking gigs. Lovely to look at, smartly dressed, with a smoky, sexy speaking voice, she would have been perfect for today’s TV programming. I am sure that World Of Wonder Productions would have had a place for her in their smart line-up. In fact, at the end of her life she said that her only real regret was not appearing on Murder, She Wrote (an achievement that I did manage).
She never married & lived alone. Jorgensen took her final curtain call in 1989, gone from that damn cancer. She was just 62 years old. I like to imagine her still alive, living as the queen of the movement that she gave voice to.
“Does it take bravery & courage for a person with polio to want to walk? It’s very hard to speculate on, but if I hadn’t done what I did, I may not have survived. I may not have wanted to live. Life simply wasn’t worth much. Some people may find it easy to live a lie, I can’t. & that’s what it would have been… telling the world I’m something I’m not.”
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