Carlotta (1943 - ) performer.

Richard Byron from Balmain was illegitimate and abused by his stepfather. He ran away to Sydney, became Carlotta and joined Les Girls drag cabaret show in Sydney in 1965. The show, which had started in 1963 in a building, at the corner of Darlinghurst Rd and Roslyn St, then owned by gangster Abe Saffron. It struggled until it was featured on Channel 9's Australian Project '65 which had a dressing room interview with the then unknown Carlotta (see video below).  The show went on to great success and became a must-see for visitors to Sydney. 

Carlotta stayed with the show for 26 years, rising to become its compere and most famous star. Carlotta styled herself "Queen of the Cross” (Kings Cross, Sydney, NSW). 

She first appeared (with Edna Everage) on film in the pioneering Australian sex documentary, The Naked Bunyip, 1970. 

She was featured in six episodes of the soap opera, Number 96, in 1973 under the actor pseudonym of Carolle Lea playing a character who admits that she is transsexual - this is the first time that a transsexual was cast as a transsexual on television. 

She had previously had breast implants from Dr Lee in Hong Kong, and completed transition in 1972 with surgery at the Prince of Wales Hospital in the Sydney suburb of Randwick , and had one of the first three sex-change operations in Australia. Carol Bryon, as she now was, was introduced to her first post-op boyfriend, a television journalist, by Germaine Greer. 

She was one of the inspirations for the film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. She retired from Les Girls in 1992, and published her first autobiography two years later. For several years has been a panellist on the TV show Beauty and the Beast. In 2003 she was featured on the television biography show, This is Your Life, and published a second, more explicit, autobiography. In recent years she has toured Australia with her own shows.

A dramatized biography of Carlotta aired on ABC television in June 2014, starring cis actor Jessica Marais.   

• Carlotta with James Cockington. He did it her way: Carlotta, legend of Les Girls. Ironbark. 159 pp 1994. A biography.
• “Carlotta”. Aussie Soap Archive. members.ozemail.com.au/~fangora/carlotta.html. 2002, 2001, 2003.
• “Carlotta”. This Is Your Life. Sept 2003.
• Carlotta with Prue MacSween. I'm Not That Kind of Girl. Pan Macmillan. 2003. 
• Ken Johnson.  Kandy: What a drag!  Sydney 2009: 15,84.
• Daphne Guinness. "The queen who makes a reluctant subject". The Sydney Morning Herald. Aug 30, 2003. www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/29/1062050659178.html. 
• Samantha Lang (dir).  Carlotta.   With  Jessica Marais as Carlotta.   ABC television, 18 June 2014.  

EN.Wikipedia     www.carlotta.com.au

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The Wikipedia page for Balmain does include Carlotta among its notable residents.

The Aussie Soap Archive says of Carlotta’s surgery: “She paid just $5 for the procedure - the figure was to cover the costs of the legal documents that Carlotta signed, waiving any right of recompense from the hospital should the operation go wrong. Carlotta happily went under the knife, the operation was a success, and she never regretted it.”

It is ironic that Carlotta, who pioneered  trans playing trans in 1973, is portrayed by a cis actor in the 2014 biography.

Carmen Rupe (1935 - 2011) performer, mayoral candidate.

Trevor David Rupe is a Maori of  Ngati Maniopoto descent. He was raised in Taumarunui (map) on Aotearoa (New Zealand)’s North Island, in a family of 13 children on a sheep and cattle farm. His mother found him dressed in her cloths when he was 11, but accepted his femininity.

In 1955, at the end of military training in which he was trained as a nurse, he did an impersonation of Eartha Kitt as part of the farewell concert. He worked as a nurse in Auckland and Wellington doing part-time drag.

In 1957 Rupe moved to Kings Cross in Sydney, took the name Carmen from the 1954 film, Carmen Jones, stopped wearing men’s clothes altogether, and became the first Maori drag performer in Australia. She stripped, danced the hula and had two snakes. She also got breast implants and worked as a prostitute. In 1963 she joined the famous Les Girls revue, and worked with Carlotta.  She was a friend of Noel McKay.

On a trip home Carmen was arrested in a car at 3am and charged with wearing women’s clothes. However the magistrate threw out the case because there was no such law. In 1968, the police harassment in Sydney got to be too much, and she returned to Wellington. An inheritance from her grandfather enabled her to open a coffee bar that was a brothel upstairs. The place became popular with the local rich and famous, including several MPs.

She ran for mayor of Wellington in 1977 under the banner ‘Get in Behind’ promising gay marriage and legalized brothels.

In 1979 she returned to Sydney, and to working in nightclubs. She had small parts in television dramas in 1992/3.

In 2003 she was inducted into the Variety Hall of Fame. In 2008, she lead the Decade of the Diva float at Sydney’s Mardi Gras. She was a prominent member of Agender, the New Zealand transgender group.

She died at age 75 after some months of medical problems.

• “Carmen recalls Coffee Lounge glory days”. Gay.co.nz. www.qna.net.nz/news/696.html.
• Carmen Rupe. “Madame Carmen”. In Tracie O’Keefe (ed) Trans People in Love. Routledge 2008.
• “Carmen”. Time Out Sydney. 2010. www.timeoutsydney.com.au/thebridge/colourfulsydneyidentity/carmen.aspx.

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