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Showing posts with label Chrysis-Christy set. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chrysis-Christy set. Show all posts

16 June 2015

Pete Burns (1959–2016) performer

Burns was born in Cheshire to a father from Liverpool and a German Jewish mother who had fled from the Nazis.

He later told journalist Kris Kirk:
"When I was 13 I heard about April Ashley's sex change and I thought 'Bloody hell, that's what I have to do', 'cos I was really enjoying putting on make- up and stuff. But after a while I realised you didn't have to be a 'she' to do it".
At 14 he dropped out of Catholic school after it was clarified that his appearance/actions were not in line with the rules. Shortly afterwards Pete met hairdresser Lynne whom he married in 1980.
"The only thing that spoiled it was that the man in the registry office had to go and make a feeble joke by asking which one of us was the bride".
They remained married until 2006.

After working in a Liverpool record shop, Burns was able to perform with a band, and after personnel changes they became Dead or Alive, who had a number one single with a cover of "You Spin Me Round" in 1985. Pete fronted the group and was known for his androgynous look.

After his friend InternationalChrysis died in 1990, he put out a cover version of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" under her name in 1994:
"You've got your mother in a whirl /She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl ".
Burns became a media personality, swearing on the BBC, a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother. He became famous for his feminizing plastic surgeries, and appeared on television programs on the subject.

In 2006 Pete and Lynne were divorced; shortly afterwards he entered a civil union with Michael Simpson.

He published an autobiography in 2007. In 2010, Burns won £450,000 in damages from cosmetic surgeon Dr Maurizio Viel, who, the singer claims, left him 'suicidal' after his lip implant operations went wrong.

However by 2015, and more plastic surgery, he was bankrupt.

Pete died of cardiac arrest, aged 57.   
EN.WIKIPEDIA(Pete Burns)   IMDB   EN.WIKIPEDIA(Dead or Alive)    Transgender-Net





   
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11 January 2014

Kim Christy (1950 - ) performer, editor, adult film producer

Kim was raised in the Bronx, New York. By age 14 he was going out in semi-drag. He took up with the young Billy Schumacher (later to become International Chrysis). They were photographed fooling around outside the Astor in Manhattan when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were staying there, and the picture appeared in a Life Magazine article on teenage delinquents.


The photograph in Life Magazine: Kim with back to camera, Chrysis at front
Kim and Chrysis each left home and shared a tiny apartment in the area that later became New York's SoHo. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Kim had a boyfriend who worked with her to soften her Bronx accent. She got to know New York female impersonators such as Tammy Novak, and performed at Club 82 as a stripper and as a showgirl. Her song was the theme music from A Man and a Woman. She toured North America as a female impersonator.


Kim and Chrysis had uncredited roles in the chorus line in the 1967 contest that became the film, The Queen. In 1968 a photograph of Kim and Chrysis appeared in Female Mimics. By 1969 Kim was being kept by an oil tycoon.

Kim with her mother
She also starting doing photography for Eros Publishing Company, which published Eros, Mode Avantgarde, Hooker and Exposé. When Female Mimics was relaunched in 1973, the first issue featured Kim winning a Los Angeles beauty contest. In 1979 Kim became editor of Female Mimics,which was owned by Jennifer Jordan, one of Lenny Burtman's ex-wives, and the name was changed to International Female Mimics. The transsexual content was increased and eventually explicit photographs were introduced. Kim also became editor of Exotique, a revival of Burtman's pioneering fetish magazine from the 1950s.

Also in 1979 Kim was in Los Angeles doing a photo-shoot when he discovered Sulka in the audience. The next year he put her in the film Dream Lovers, and then after her surgery, in The Transformation of Sulka, 1981, and Sulka's Wedding, 1983. He became a major producer of she-male and fetish porn – spanning 8mm, VHS and DVD. He also made straight porn.
In FMI, 11,1, 1980

++Kim had reverted to male as Ken Olsen.  He met and married a woman. Their marriage has lasted: they now have grandchildren.

In 1998 Kim/Ken won an award as Best Fetish Producer. The same year he edited the original run of Exotique in book form. In 2001 he edited The Christy Report, a historical survey of sex and fetish images. He was inducted into Adult Video News (AVN) Hall Of Fame in 2004, the first transgender person to be so.
“I am married to my wife. I am with her. Something I learned from all my years working with clients all over the world: Men and women can both be very fluid in their sexuality. Plus things like certain sexual scenarios can engage a person deeply for a time. Sometimes it’s same-sex activity. Some people stay attracted to one gender or another all their lives. I was with men — when I lived as a woman — who never would have called themselves gay, but they were not unhappy about my extra parts at all. Like I said, back then we did not name things so much. I never thought of any of the things I did as who I was. They were things I liked. Things I did.”
*Not the horse exhibitor.  Not Ken Olsen the sound engineer.
IMDB   IAFD
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The Internet Adult Film Database (IAFD) entry on Kim is a bit dubious.   See Jim Beaux’ comments.  The image supposedly of Kim is actually of Carnal Candy in a 1984 film.  It lists Kim’s years active as performer: 1984-2001 – except that Kim never performed in any adult films.

Ms Bob wrote a 3-part history of Female Mimics for TG Forum.  Bob lists Kim as appearing in the magazine, but says nothing at all about Kim becoming the editor.

I couldn’t find any photographs of Kim after the early 1970s. 

In the Advocate  article, Kim says that her aunt and then her mother recognized her in the Life Magazine photograph.  As she has her back turned, how could they be sure?
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19 November 2013

Sulka (1962–) porn star

Sulka from Dallas met Kim Christy in 1979 when she was in the audience at an event in Los Angeles and he was doing the photography.

Sulka was then featured on the cover of New Female Mimics, where he was the new editor, and did
some work in the office. She had had various silicone injections and feminization surgeries, and looked rather artificial, but did make an impact. She was promoted by both Kim Kristy and by Jennifer Jordan, owner of New Female Mimics.


Her first film appearance was  as secondary role in Dream Lovers in 1980, directed by Kristy. This was supplemented by the magazine Sensuous Sulka and others which also emphasized her pre-op status.

Unlike other such porn actors Sulka had transgender surgery – which was actually featured in her next film The Transformation of Sulka, 1981. Her post-op extravaganza, Sulka's Wedding, 1983, features other trans porn stars and Paul Barresi (who later turned up in the Eddie Murphy transsexual scandal) and incidentally shows the success of her operation.

The cliché is that post-op porn stars are no longer in demand, but Sulka was a legend from being the first and went on to make Sulka and Candy (1982), Divine Atrocities (1983), Sulka's Daughter (1984) – where it is implied that the operation was so successful that Sulka has a daughter of her body.

She continued living in the Hollywood area, but became reclusive. At one time she was advertising in underground Hollywood papers that she did transvestite makeovers at $100 a go. It was reported a few times that she had been seen at Peanuts bar when they had a "queens' nite".

There are several Sulka look-alikes.

*Not the Finnish photographer, nor the New York haberdasher.
  • New Female Mimics, 5,3, 1979: cover.
  • Kim Kristy (dir). Dream Lovers, with Sulka. US 85 mins 1980
  • The Transformation of Sulka, with Sulka. US 29 mins 1981.
  • "Sulka! The before and after photos". Club International, April 1982.
  • Mike Stringer (dir). Sulka’s Wedding. Scr: Joaquin Quinn & Kim Kristy, with Sulka, Paul Barresi. US 75 mins 1983.
  • Kim Kristy (dir) Sulka's Daughter, with Sulka. US 86 mins 1984.
  • Elizabeth Freeman.   The Wedding Complex.  Duke University Press, 2002: xii, xiii, 35, 37.
  • Cal Y. Pygia. "Sulka: A Vintage Shemale". literotica.
  • Jim Beaux. "Sulka". Hung Devils, 27 May 2013. 
  • "Sulka: DoesAnyoneKnow...??" IMDB Message Boards,. Online.
IAFD      IMDB
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IMDB tends not to have its usual reliability with regard to porn films, so I may not have the full list of her films.

The Transformation of Sulka is featured on many of the sites that give basic details of films, but for some reason none of them give a summary of the plot.  The best evasion is found here at SynopsiTV:  “This is probably about something. It is probably very interesting, with great character development, plot buildup, and a nail-biting climax with a twist that will blow your mind. We just don’t have the details.”





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12 August 2010

International Chrysis (1951 – 1990) performer.

Revised January 2014.

Billy Schumacher was raised in Brooklyn. A performer noted for her beauty, Billy became Chrysis from the age of twelve, and was soon entering pageants and performing. She took up with Kim Christy. They shared an apartment in Manahattan below Houston Street. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman, who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Chrysis and Kim appeared together in Female Mimics.  They had uncredited mufti cameos in the chorus line of the film, The Queen, 1968.

By the mid-70s Chrysis was a drag celebrity, and had performed at the Jewel Box Review and other major venues, including in Europe, especially Berlin and she was a long-time friend of Salvador Dali.   In 1976 she was on the cover of Whitehouse, the UK magazine named antagonistically after the anti-porn crusader. Despite the claim on the cover that "This Woman is a Man", that was the first time that an out trans woman was on a magazine cover.

In 1982 she was the woman in the Van Halen video to their cover of "(Oh) Pretty Woman".  She reveals herself herself as a non-standard women by taking off her wig.  It played a few times on MTV but was pulled after complaints about the non-consensual fondling by little people.



Many accounts mention that she was a sexual top with the New Jersey college boys that she liked to pick up.

She headlined in Jesus Chrysis Superstar and The Last temptation of Chrysis. She was in the drag acting troupe, Hot Peaches, was to be found at the Pyramid Club and performed at Wigstock.

Her best-known movie role was as a witness to be eliminated in Q & A, which was released in 1990, a month after she died, at age 39, from cancer caused by the seepage of silicon from her breasts. Her friend, the singer Pete Burns, named one of his groups, International Chrysis, after her.

The documentary Split was actually proposed by Chrysis herself, but not completed until after her death.

*Not the powerboat racer.
  • "This is Chrysis". In George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.  
  • Ellen Fisher Turk & Andrew Weeks (dir). Split: William to Chrysis: Portrait of a Drag Queen. Scr: Dan Chayefshy. US 60 mins 1992. Special Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
  • Laurence Senelick. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. London & New York: Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 433.
  • “International Chrysis”. Endless Night.  Online. 
  • Jim Beaux.  "International Chrysis".   The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, 05 August 2013.  
EN.WIKIPEDIA       IMDB    FACEBOOK      BACKINTHEGAYS    

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Jim Beaux' article contains: "Kim Christy's commentary points out that when she was in hospital dying, she hated the fact that the staff used her male name. She had a couple of roles where she portrayed a woman, who at the end would pull her hair off to reveal a man, and she disliked the endings both times."   This raises the question: what was her female name, as opposed to her performance name?  As with Sir Lady Java, we have a male name and a performance name.  But the female name, the one that was presumably on her driving licence and tax return, that is, her real name, remains unknown.
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