Trans New York 1960-1962.

 See also:

Trans New York 1963-1965

The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline

The five years following Stonewall - a New York timeline

The Gilded Grape

The GG Knickerbocker P T Barnum Room

1960

Gynecologists Howard and Georgeanne Jones left their private practice to become full-time faculty at Johns Hopkins Psychohormonal Research Unit. Howard started doing ‘corrective’ surgery on intersex infants.

Female impersonator Libby Reynolds was working in mufti as a bartender at Main Street Lounge in Greenwich Village when actor Raymond Burr (1917 - 1993), who played Perry Mason on television, came in and they spent the night together. Reynolds sold the story to Confidential magazine, and the story now was that Burr had innocently picked up Libby and never realized that she was a ‘man’. The story included a composite photo of Burr and Libby en femme.

Nan Gilbert, author of forced femininity fiction and who had been active among transvestites at an earlier date, had his mail stopped and was fined $500. Donald Wollheim contacted Gilbert, and they corresponded for some time.

Patricia Morgan became a patient of Harry Benjamin, started taking estrogen, and began living full-time as female. She was saving seriously for the $5,000 plus expenses for the operation. She was arrested as a female prostitute, got through the strip search without being read, and declared herself as a ‘boy’ only in court. She was released in that the prostitution law applied only to women.

New Yorker, Susanna Valenti started her “Susanna Says” column in Transvestia.

David Wilde separated from his wife and moved to an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. As Gail he subscribed to Transvestia, and became a New York contact for the Foundation for Full Personality Expression, (FPE). Those who knew both David and Gail found Gail to be less abrasive, but both personae were negative about gays and transsexuals.

Felicity Chandelle first met other cross-dressers through the Transvestia contact ads. Then she took up the practice enthusiastically.

• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Transvestism Today; The Phenomena of Men Who Dress As Women. Epic Pub. Co, 1960. Online at Queer Music Heritage.
• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Erotic Symbolism; A Study of Fetichism in Relation to Sex. Epic Pub. Co, 1960.

1961

Ira B Pauly was doing a psychiatric residency at Cornell Medical Center in New York. He was called to urology to counsel a trans man who was in for a hysterectomy. He attempted research in the hospital library but found material on transsexualism only in French and German. He had patients who were willing to do longhand translations for him. He then discovered a paper by David Cauldwell.

“And then there was a brief article by someone named Harry Benjamin. And in those days, it was in a somewhat obscure journal. I don’t quite remember which journal it was. But it had his address. And it was an address that was about five blocks away from the hospital that I was working at. So, I looked up his name in the phone book and told him that I was a psychiatry resident, and I had a little experience with a transgender, transsexual patient. And was there any way I could come over and talk to him, because I had read—he was an endocrinologist. And a lot of these folks, the first step in the physical transition is taking the contrary hormone.” 

For much of that year, he attended Benjamin's Wednesday afternoon clinic.

 “So every Wednesday afternoon, through the generosity and mentorship of Harry Benjamin, I was able to see probably more transsexual patients than any psychiatrist in North America. … As I got to know the patients, they uniformly described being happier into the gender role that they felt they were in from the very beginning. And that the only thing that needed to be done as far as treatment was concerned was to get the body on board with the gender of their choice.“ 

Pauly set out to aggregate 100 cases from the literature and from among Benjamin’s patients.

Patricia Morgan, with arrangements made through Harry Benjamin, flew to Los Angeles in November 1961 for surgery with Dr Elmer Belt. While waiting for a hospital bed, she was in a car crash with a drunken john. She sued the john, a movie producer, to cover her medical bills, and they settled out of court. After four months in Los Angeles, Pat had a penectomy and her testicles implanted in her abdomen. Two months after that she had a vaginoplasty. Afterwards she was in pain, very weak and her money had run out.

Vito Russo, the future gay film historian, was 15 and his parents bought a house in Lodi, New Jersey – to his chagrin. However, he soon found the local queer scenes:

“Vito’s first drag-queen contemporary was a fellow student …. Standing six feet two inches [1.89 m] under a bleached-blond man, Billy knew how to make a striking entrance – particularly when bombing around Lodi in his pink Cadillac convertible. Contact with Billy meant automatic social ostracism. … Billy invited Vito to a New Year’s Eve party held at the home of ‘the most outrageous drag queen in Bergen County’. …

Billy’s friends were working-class drag queens from Lodi and the nearby towns…. Like Billy, these men were wildly out of the closet, almost unwittingly so: they were ‘identifiable on the street whether they liked it or not. They couldn’t hide it even it they tried’. From them, Vito got his first lessons in gay survival. He listened attentively to their tutorials on ‘how to take care of himself on the street and be funny and get out of a raid and go through a window in a bathroom and all that stuff you had to know in the ‘60s’. …

Another favorite haunt was Danny’s in Fort Lee, where the group went to see ‘Bella from the Bronx’, a drag queen whose act consisted of traditional Italian families’ reactions to the revelations of their gay children. … He was also enamored of the headliner at Fran Bell’s in Nyack, New York. Fran herself … donned a tuxedo and top hat and crooned ‘Just a Gigolo’ à la Dietrich. Then there were the drag balls at Newark’s Robert Treat Hotel.”

Susanna Valenti’s male persona, Tito, was summoned by postal officials. Two of her correspondents had been charged with mailing obscene materials, and Susanna’s name had come up. Tito pleaded respectability and denounced the obscenities.

The future Vicky West, after army service, returned to Cornell and completed an engineering degree.

Virginia Prince flew into New York on her way to that year’s Halloween Weekend at Susanna Valenti's Chevalier D’Eon Resort in upstate New York. While in New York City,

“I was chauffeured over to Dr. Benjamin's office for a nice but too brief visit and dinner with him. Those of you who have never met Dr. Benjamin have missed a real treat. People of our persuasion have no better professional friend.”

Donald Wollheim, science fiction editor, was building to a nervous break-down from not expressing his cross-dreaming.

• Greg Garrison (dir) Hey, Lets Twist, with Joey Dee and the Starlighters. US BW mono 79 mins 1961. IMDB. Wikipedia. A fictionalized story of the Peppermint Lounge, partially filmed there.
• Avery Willard (dir) The Last of the Worthington, with Minette. US ? mins 1961.
• Avery Willard (dir) Magic Music Hall, with Minette. US ? mins 1961.

1962

Ira B Pauly obtained a position at the University of Oregon Medical School.

John Money became head of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University Hospital when Lawson Wilkins retired. 

Holly Woodlawn, 16-years-old, hitch-hiking, arrived in New York. She found work as a saleswoman at Saks 5^th Avenue.

11-year-old Sylvia Rivera discovered 42^nd Street where he had heard that the maricónes were to be found. However a neighbour spotted Sylvia, which led to a row with grandmother, a suicide attempt and two months in Bellevue Hospital.

January: New York science fiction editor Donald Wollheim, discovered a copy of Transvestia, and a copy of Justice Weekly, in a store on 42^nd St.

March: Donald Wollheim was in Los Angeles on business. He, having previously corresponded, met first Virginia Prince in his hotel room, and then was invited to dinner with Virginia and wife Doreen. After an interesting evening, it was suggested that in New York Darrell should contact Gail and Susanna who were listed in Transvestia. He also bought the complete back file of Transvestia.

Back home, the first task was to tell Mrs Wollheim. This was done in stages and accomplished after 10 days, and a few days after that they went shopping together on 5^th Avenue for feminine nightwear. 

Wollheim wrote letters to Gail (David Wilde) and to Susanna Valenti. The former had to go via Prince/Transvestia in Los Angeles, and therefore took longer to get a response. Susanna had published contact details in Transvestia, and could be contacted directly. A letter from Susanna arrived quickly, but an actual meeting – for one reason or another – took several months. It was early April, two weeks later, before a letter arrived from Gail, but it gave a phone number, and Wollheim was able to visit the next evening, had a heart-to-heart chat and was given gossip about New York transvestites.

Nan Gilbert advised Wollheim not to contact persons such as Gail and Susanna, in that they were frustrated persons who would be disappointing. On the other hand, Wollheim and Gail met a few times for lunch. In May Gail moved again to an apartment in Greenwich Village, and Wollheim attended a small party where Gail was the only person in female clothing. Gilbert was mentioned, and known by those who were present. Later when Wollheim sent regards to Gilbert from ‘Alice from Canada’, a reference to one in attendance, Gilbert became curt, and the correspondence was soon discontinued.

On the 4^th of July, Mrs Wollheim also attended the soiree at Gail’s. This was the first time that they met ‘Fiona from New Zealand’ (actually Katherine Cummings from Australia).

Patricia Morgan, still in Los Angeles, moved in with her friend Shelley, but was gang raped by two of Shelley’s tricks. Later they were arrested and Pat was charged with living in a house of prostitution. She served 30 days in the prison hospital. She developed urinary problems and had to have a third operation with Dr Belt. She hustled to raise the airfare to go home.

Back in New York Patricia took up prostitution again. She had breast implants to 42DD but then reduced to 38D. She also had her nose straightened. She was booked for prostitution when she accepted a ride in the rain. Her lawyer tried to get her off on the technicality that she was still a man, not having changed her name or birth certificate. The judge ruled that she was a female anyway, and gave her a suspended sentence. She started a business of limousines with female chauffeurs, but it lasted only a year. She also did modeling.

Betty, who had been living full-time, and working in a night club in New York, found a sponsor who paid for her consultations with Harry Banjamin, and a few months later she had surgery in Casablanca.

43 ‘men’ were arrested at the National Variety Artists Annual Ball and charged with ''masquerading to conceal identity”. Judge William Ringel ruled that the ball, of its nature was a masquerade and dismissed the charges.

71 transvestites gathered at the Chevalier D’Eon Resort for Halloween 1962, held a day after the National Variety Artists costume ball raid. The guests at Chevalier D’Eon Resort included Virginia Prince, Katherine Cummings, Felicity Chandelle, Darrell Raynor and Gail Wilde, and psychologists Hugo Beigel and Wardell Pomeroy. Raynor, Cummings and Beigel later wrote about the event. Harry Benjamin was invited bur sent his regrets.

Tobi Marsh was engaged at Club 82 where Tony Midnite was doing the costumes. Midnite also did the costumes for the road shows of Gypsy and Carnival!, for the Metropolitan Opera and some television shows.

Tommy Dorsey (later Issan Dorsey), then a touring stage female impersonator, was the only survivor of a car-full of drag queens that crashed on route from New York to Rochester. He suffered medical problems from it in later years.

Isabel Whitney (1878 – 1962) died. Her companion, the future Dawn Simmons, inherited an estate reportedly worth over $1 million. Simmons flew her body to Heathfield, England for burial, although she had never been there in life, and then moved to Charleston, South Carolina as Whitney and Simmons had intended to do together.

• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Transvestism. Sexual behavior series, no. 5. New York: Epic Pub. Co, 1962.
• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Fetichism. Sexual behavior series, no. 6. New York: Epic Publ. Co., Inc, 1962.
• R E L Masters, with an Introduction by Harry Benjamin. Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality: An Objective Re-Examination of Perverse Sex Practices in Different Cultures. Julian Press, 1962.
• Avery Willard (dir) The Dead Sister’s Secret, with Minette. US ? mins 1961.