Valérie Wilson (1953-2011) actrice, performer

Valérie Wilson was an early transitioner. By her late teens she was living as female and performing at L’Alcazar, a nightclub competing with Le Carrousel. 

From there she was recruited to act in the sex comedy La michetonneuse. As she was still under age, her mother had to sign the contract. La michetonneuse was filmed 1969-1970 but not released until 1972. The film follows Justine who leaves her family and university in search of freedom. She is befriended by Valérie, a trans performer at L’Alcazar (and the film includes scenes of Valérie’s actual performance at L’Alcazar). 

From this, Valérie Wilson was recruited to act in what turned out to be the final film by the New Wave/existentialist director Jean-Pierre Melville. Un Flic (A Cop) starring Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve, and Wilson was the second major female character in the film. She drives a good car and wears a fur coat, and is an informer to Delon’s cop, and is apparently cis, but after Delon’s cop fails to capture the heroin shipment, he blames the messenger and threatens her with jail for cross-dressing and uses transphobic slurs.

Wilson’s third film, Un ange au paradis, is of a married man having an affair with a trans woman. After its release, she was interviewed on the televison program Chutes en tourney. The director of the film, Jean-Pierre Blanc was also interviewed in the same program, and he labelled Valérie’s character the titular ‘angel’ of the film (reflected also in the character’s name, Marie-Ange), saying that she was the only ‘honest’ character. He also stated that he had deliberately cast a ‘real travesti’ and that being one ‘is not all bad’.

Her last film was Change pas de main, a porn film, features Valérie as a nightclub dancer in the first 20 minutes.

After that she withdrew from public life.

• Francis Leroi (dir). La michetonneuse, scr : Francois Jouffa & Francis Leroi, with Christine Leuk as Justine and Valérie Wilson as Valérie. France 90 mins 1972.
• Jean-Pierre Melville (dir & scr). Un Flic, with Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve and Valérie Wilson as Gaby. France 98 mins 1972.
• Jean-Pierre Blanc (dir & scr). Un ange au paradis, with Valérie Wilson as Marie-Ange Bystrzanowiez, Pascale Arcia as Le Transsexuel and Jean-Claude Dreyfus as Un travesti de la Grande Eugène. France 85 mins 1973.
• Entretien avec Valérie Wilson. Chutes en tourne, 3ème chaîne, Octobre 1973.
• Paul Vecchiali (dir). Change pas de main, scr: Noel Simsolo & Paul Vecchiali, with Valérie Wilson as Mylène. France 92 mins 1975.
• Diana Santiago. « Valérie Wilson ». Diane et le sexe des anges. 2011. Archive.
• Willow Catelyn Maclay. Musings on Transgender Cinema: "The Strange Movie within a Movie in Jean-Pierre Melville's "Un Flic"". Patreon.com, Jan 17, 2021. Online.
• Christopher Wolff & Jesse Blanchard “‘They Lack Imagination…’ – Valérie Wilson and Trans Life in the Audiovisual Archive”. View: Journal of European Television History & Culture, 14,28, 2025. Online.

FR.Wikipedia IMDB Allociné Elcinema

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Wolf and Blanchard quote the La michetonneuse press kit that claims that Valérie was 19 when the film was made. However if she were born in 1953, she would be only 16/17 in 1969/1970.

IMDB names Wilson’s character in Un Flic as ‘Gaby’; other sources do not give her a name or list her as ‘transvestite’. She is not referred to by name in the film.

Maclay in particular reads a past affair between ‘Gaby’ and Delon’s cop based on facial expressions and intonations. Such is in the eye of the beholder.

Ajita Wilson (1950 – 1987) prolific actress

Original March 2007.

Wilson was born and raised in Brooklyn.

After a start as a transvestite entertainer in New York in the last remaining burlesque spectacles of the time, Wilson also posed for some adult magazines,

Around 1970, bankrolled by a rich boyfriend, said to be from Denmark, Ajita Wilson went to Europe, and had completion surgery. It is rumoured that she was featured in hardcore loops at this period – however such are not documented.

Her first non-porno film was Cesare Caneveri’s La Principessa Nuda,1976. in a leading role as Miriam Zamoto, an African princess on a fund-raising mission who encounters Italy’s La dolce vita. The film is a light Comedy/satire poking fun at celebrities and the so-called jet set. Suddenly Ajita Wilson was a star.

With an uncritical approach to scripts, Ajita was constantly employed throughout the 1970s, in both mainstream genre movies, and also in softcore and even hardcore porno. She was often top-billed.

She often played characters simply named ''Ajita''.

In 1978 she made a crossover into Euro-trash such as women-in-prison flicks, and a number of films directed by Jesus Franco.

There were suggestions that she was trans, but they were not taken too seriously. Some knew, other did not. She was frequently featured in European nudie magazines simply as a woman.

1981 was the year of her best-known film, Jesus Franco’s Sadomania, aka Hellhole Women, where Ajita plays the cruel lesbian prison warden who takes delight in the inmates’ suffering – who is named, for some reason, Magda Urtado (said to be the maiden name of Ajita’s real-life mother). In a confusing scene, director Franco, in the role of a gay brothel owner, is sodomized by Ajita, in a second role as a mustachioed man. 

That year she was featured in magazines: the Afro-American magazine Jet featured Ajita as their “Beauty of the Week”: 

“Beautiful Ajita Wilson from Rome is a movie actress in Europe”. 

She was also featured on the cover of Players Magazine and High Society.

She co-starred opposite trans singer/actress Eva Robin’s in Eva Man (1980) and El Regresso de Eva Man (1982). 

Another Jess Franco film, Macumba Sexual, has Ajita in the role of Princess Obongo, a voodoo princess returning from the dead and haunting a woman by using sexual hallucinations.

In the 1980s she starred again in women-in-prison films such as Hell Behind Bars, Hell Penitentiary and Savage Island (with Linda Blair from The Exorcist, an incoherent production using footage of two other movies from the 1980s).

By the mid-1980s Ajita’s career was declining. She was mainly in obscure Greek softcore films. Part of the decline was that softcore porn was being pushed out by US hardcore porn at this time, and the advent of VHS videos.

In 1986 she was arrested by the carabinieri in a brothel in Florence and tried to escape running naked through the street. In 1987 she died from the complications from a road accident.

The rumour that she was trans was more said after her death.

After Wilson's death, an interviewer for "Sinister Tales" asked director Carlos Aured to comment on speculation as to whether she was a transsexual. Aured simply replied, 

"She was charming, beautiful and very professional. The rest is not important.".

Alternate accounts:

There is an alternate story that says that she is Magda Urtado from Rio, but that is the name of her character in Sadomania – it is also supposedly her mother’s maiden name.

Jesus Franco suggested in the 2003 documentary Sadomaniac, that the mysterious star hailed from Ethiopia.

According the October 1981 edition of the American magazine Players (vol. 8, no. 5), she was born in 1951 in Flint, Michigan, the offspring of a Brazilian mother and a US father. In Marco Giusti's book Dizionario Dei Film Italiani Stracult, Sergio Bergonzelli, who directed her in “La Doppia Bocca di Erika”, said that “Ajita had been a firefighter in an American city".

• “Ajita Wilson, mujer de la noche”. Interviu, 189, 27 diciembre 1979.
• “Beauty of the Week: Roman Beauty”. Jet, August 20, 1981:43. Online.
• “Ajita Wilson la veneren era”. High Society, Edizione Italiana, Settembre, 1981.
• “Film Star: Ajita Wilson Goes Nude”. Players Magazine, 8, 5, October 1981.
• Bob McCann. “Ajita Wilson” in Encyclopedia of African American Actresses in Film and Television. McFarland, 2009.
• Monica Roberts. “Black Trans History-Ajita Wilson”. TransGriot, august 21, 2012. Online. 
• “Before Laverne Cox there was Ajita Wilson”. Welkom, 8.sep, 2015.
• Johnny Stanwick. “Created by Cinema: The Enigma of Ajita Wilson”. The Grindhouse Effect, Online. 
• Matt Richardson. “Ajita Wilson: Blaxploitation, Sexploitation, and the Making of Black Womanhood” Transgender Studies Quarterly, 7, 2, May 2020. Also at edu.
• Sierre B Holt. “Ajita Wilson’s Jet Set Style”. The Stylestorian, July 26, 2020. Online.
• Rebekkah Mulholland. Historical Erasure is Violence: The Lives and Experiences of Black Transgender Women and Gender Nonconforming Women of Color in the 19th And 20th PhD thesis, The University of Memphis, May 2020: 28,38, 63, 69-71,73-4 . Online.

IMDB      EN.WIKIPEDIA       FINDAGRAVE      MySpace       Cult Sirens

La Principessa Nuda (aka The Nude Princess, 1976)
Gola Profonda Nera (aka Black Deep Throat, 1976)
Sylvia im Reich der Wollust (aka The Joy of Flying, 1977)
Candido Erotico (aka Copenhagen Nights/The Exhibitionists, 1977)
La Bravata (1977)
Nel Mirino di Black Afrodite (aka Black Aphrodite, 1978)
Le Notti Porno Nel Mondo nº 2 (1978)
L´Amour Chez Les Poids Lourds (aka Traveling Companions, 1978)
Proibito Erotico (1978)
La Pitoconejo (1979)
Pensione Amore Servizio Completo (1979)
Libidine (1979)
Femmine Infernali (aka Escape from Hell, 1979)
Eros Perversion (aka Twelfth Night, 1979)
Los Energéticos (1979)
Una Donna di Notte (1979)
Luca il Contrabbandiere (aka Contraband, 1980)
Orinoco-Prigioniere Del Sesso (aka Hotel Paradiso, 1980)
Evaman, La Máquina Del Amor (1980)
Erotiki Ekstassi (aka Love, Lust and Ecstasy, 1980)
Sadomania - Hölle der Lust (1981)
Erotiko Pathos (aka Blue Passion, 1981)
Apocalipsis Sexual (1982)
Catherine Chérie (1982)
Triferes... Gatoules (1982)
Bacanales Romanas (1982)
La Amante Ambiciosa (1982)
Macumba Sexual (1983)
Töchter Der Venus (1983, aka The Pussycat Syndrome)
Inferno Dietro Le Sbarre (aka Detenute Violente/Captive Women Hell: Hell Penitentiary/Hell Behind Bars, 1983)
La Doppia Bocca di Erika (aka Naked Wild Erections, 1983)

Anomali Erotes Sti Santorini (1983)
Corpi Nudi (aka Nude Strike, 1983)
Stin Athina Simera... Oles Ton Pernoun Fanera! (1984)
Ke To Proto Pinelo (1984)
Idones Sto Egeo (1984)
Savage Island (1985; re-uses scenes from 1979´s Femmine Infernali)
Bocca Bianca, Bocca Nera (aka Love Boat. 1987)
Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut (1999, stock footage)

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IMDB lists her as appearing almost 50 films. This compares with 6 for Aleshia Brevard, 26 for Eva Robin's, 28 for Holly Woodlawn, 79 for Bibi Anderson and 75 for Alexis Arquette. Most of Alexis' film were in her pre-op phase, so on the crude criteria of counting films Ajita is second only to Bibi as the major transsexual film star of that period.

Michael Cimino (1939 – 2016) film director and author

Cimino grew up in Long Island, New York. He was educated in private schools and then attended first Michigan State University and then Yale. At the latter he took a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in 1961 and an MFA in 1963. He was also in the US Army reserve where he did a month of medical training. 

He found work in New York City with a small company that made documentary and industrial films, and from there progressed into making commercials. He then attempted scriptwriting, and created Thunderbolt and Lightfoot which was at first about outlaws in Ireland, but he was persuaded to revise it as a contemporary heist movie set in the US. It was shown to Clint Eastwood, who wanted to direct it himself, but Cimino insisted. Eastwood also asked him to revise the John Milius script for the Dirty Harry film, Magnum Force. Then Eastwood let him direct Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, although Eastwood was in charge. (The film includes a scene where Jeff Bridges’ character is in drag to distract a security guard and deactivate the alarms). Cimino also worked on the revision of the script for Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976.

Cimino’s next film as director was Deer Hunter. It had started as a spec script called The Man Who Came to Play, about going to Las Vegas to play Russian Routlette. Cimino was hired to develop the script so that it could be filmed. He in turn hired Deric Washburn to do most of the writing, to be completed within a month. It became a script about steel workers in Pennsylvania sent to Vietnam, and tortured by Russian Roulette (despite there being no record of the Viet Cong ever using such methods). The original protagonist was split into three characters. On completion Washburn was fired, and his name taken off the script, although it was restored in a Writers’ Guild arbitration. The resulting film went over budget and over schedule and cost $15 million. However it grossed $49 million, was nominated for nine Academy Awards and took five.

Cimino then made Heaven’s Gate for United Artists. It was filmed in Montana, budgeted as $12 million but cost $44 million and on release in 1980 grossed less than $4 million. The original version was over 5 hours, but the main cinema release was cut to 2½ hours. It was said that Heaven’s Gate caused the collapse of United Artists, and ended the run of director-auteur films that had typified 1970s Hollywood – however there were other factors such as management infighting.

Most of the projects that Cimino was involved in for the next few years never got as far as filming. However he did then direct another four films – albeit without the freedom that he had earlier: Year of the Dragon, 1985; The Sicilian, 1987; Desperate Hours, 1990; The Sunchaser, 1996. 

Cimono still had a vision and kept writing sceenplays – but they were no longer filmed. One of these was adapted into a novel, Big Jane, set in 1951, about a butch woman who travels by motorcycle across the US and ends up in a women’s brigade in the Korean War. It was translated and published in France in 2001, but never published in English. He was honoured for this in 2001 at Deauville Film Festival with a Prix littéraire. This was followed by the autobiographical Conversations en miroir, which again was published only in France.

Eastwood and Cimino in 2015

Cimino had became a recluse in his house in Beverly Hills, rarely seeing anybody. He lost weight and his face changed – the latter was assumed to be because of cosmetic surgery. There were rumours that Cimino had been seen presenting as female, of an application to the directors’ union for a name change to ‘Michelle Cimono’. Journalists and others actually asked him to his face if he were transitioning. Cimino denied being trans and suggested confusion with Gene Simmons of the band Kiss who lived next door. Cimono’s previous personality had been solemn, abrasive and without any humour. Now, especially at appearances in Europe, Cimono was charming. This was helped by the discovery of the original four-hour version of Heaven’s Gate, the DVD rerelease on Criterion of a director’s cut by Cimono, and the re-evaluation of the film as a masterwork. He was feted at film festivals across Europe. 

Since the early 1990s Valerie Driscoll had owned and run Hair To Wear Wigs in Torrance, a suburb close to the Los Angeles airport. Among other trades she had been a cosmetologist, a masseuse, a commodities trader and a dominatrix at S&M parties.  She contributed to the Cross-Talk newsletter for trans persons with articles on hair and makeup, and also advised her customers re cross-dressing.  She described one of her customers who used the name Nikki as “sweet, soft, and particularly naïve”.  Nikki claimed to be “a caregiver to an elderly couple in Beverly Hills and lived in their guesthouse”. Slowly they developed a friendship and talked.  Meeting with biographer Charles Elton may years later, Driscoll said: “We each knew things that helped each other. I think she grew to like me due to my strength and independence as a woman. I was drawn to her softness, sweetness, and uncharacteristic naivety.”  She felt that she gave Nikki the confidence to change.   “As time passed, I began to notice subtle changes to her face, and soon his masculine features softened. I don’t know at what point he decided he was done with being a guy. I just don’t know. Michael became Nikki.”  Valerie gave up her shop in 1996, and moved  to Yucca Valley in the Mohave Desert, where she ran a massage and spa business.  Nikki and Valerie continued their relationship by telephone, and sometimes would meet halfway at a hotel.  But the makeover magic worked less well as Nikki aged.  Nikki stopped calling so often.  Valerie missed her, and as she had Nikki's cellphone number she was able to find out that Nikki was Michael Cimino.  She mentioned to Nikki that she knew who he was, and then their relationship was strained, and then it was over.

Cimino died alone at home at the age of 77. Forest Lawn cemetery set up an online memorial page.  Three women in the film world added tributes, as did Valerie Driscoll whose comment was: 

"Every day I think I’ll hear his unmistakable voice on the other end of the phone. We had become friends through my retail business in Torrance over 12 years ago and I must say that he became my BEST friend. I love him so much and miss his intelligence and humor.” 

 This led to Charles Elton, the biographer discovering her existence.

• Michael Cimino. Conversations en miroir.  Gallimard, 2004.
• Steven Bach. The Final Cut: Dream and Disaster in the Making of "Heaven's Gate". William Morrow, 1985
• Steve Garbarino. “Michael Cimino’s Final Cut”. Vanity Fair, March 2002. Online.
• Charles Elton. Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate and the Price of a Vision.  Abrams Press, 2022.
• Bret Easton Ellis. “How Hollywood destroyed Michael Cimino”.  com.  Online.
• Richard Brody. “A New Biography of Michael Cimino Is as Fascinating and Melancholy as the Filmmaker Himself”.  New Yorker,  May 22, 2022.  Online.
• Juan Sanguino translated by Xanthe Holloway. “The tragic life of Michael Cimino Hollywood’s most notorious failure”. El Pais, Jun 14,2022. Online.

EN.Wikipedia    IMDB    

Here is a list of movies that made a big loss.  Heaven’s Gate is only moderate in this list.

Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (1990) author, actress

Boulianne-Tremblay was born and raised in Saint-Siméon, down river from Quebec City, on the north shore of the St Lawrence River.

Gabrielle came out as trans in 2012. Her first volume of poetry, Le Ventre des volcans, was published in 2015. After appearing in a couple of short films, she was cast in : Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n'ont fait que se creuser un tombeau, 2016, and was nominated for best actress in a supporting role at the Canadian Screens Prize. 

Her second volume of poetry, Les secrets de l'origami, was published in 2018. Her autobiographical novel, La fille d’elle-même came out in 2021 and was awarded a Prix des libraires du Québec, The next year she published a young adult novel, La voix de la nature.

FR.Wikipedia           EN.Wikipedia         IMDB

The Cameron siblings: Bobbi and Loren

Marjorie (1922-1995)

One cannot mention the trans siblings, Loren and Bobbi, without also mentioning their remarkable aunt, Marjorie Cameron (sometimes just Cameron). She was in the US Navy during WWII as aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Afterwards she joined occult circles in Los Angeles, and became muse and later spouse to Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and thelemite magickian. In 1946 she, Parsons and L Ron Hubbard undertook the “Babalon Working” to create a magical child. They knew several science fiction writers. After Jack’s death in an explosion, she became known as an artist and acted in some films, most notably as the Scarlet Woman in Kenneth Anger’s Inaugeration of the Pleasure Dome (1954).

• Spencer Kansa. Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron. Mandrake, 2014.

• Michael William West. “Marjorie Cameron (1922-1995)” in Sex Magicians: The Lives and Spiritual Practices. Destiny Books, 2021.

• Alice Troughton (dir). “Jack Parsons: The Devil and the Divine” with Josh Bowman as Parsons and Alicia Witt as Cameron. S2.E6 of Lore, US Amazon 40 mins 2018.

IMDB

Bobbi (1953 - )

We have already discussed Marjorie’s niece, Bobbi, who was in the Cockettes and starred in Elevator Girls in Bondage, 1972 and The Holy Mountain, 1973 and Star Trek.

GVWW IMDB

Loren (1959- 2022)

Marjorie’s nephew and Bobbi’s brother, Loren became a photographer and trans activist. He is best known for his book Body Alchemy, 1996, which documents the process of trans male transition, including his own.

While cis photographers such as Christer Strömholm, Andy Warhol, Walter Rutter, Brassaï, Mariette Pathy Allen had been taking pictures of trans persons as far back as the 1930s, Loren was the first trans photographer to be so recognized.

His work was also exhibited in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.

He died by suicide at age 63 after a period of poor health.

• Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits. Cleis Press, 1996.

• Man Tool: The Nuts and Bolts of Female-to-Male Surgery. Zero eBooks, 2001.

• Cuerpos Fotografiados. 2 volumes. Taller Experimental Cuerpos Pintados, 2003.

• “Finding love as a transman”. Advocate, December 18 2006. Online.

• Loren Rex Cameron papers, 1961-2008. Cornell. Online.

Other:

• Dani Hefferman. “Transgender Photographer Loren Cameron Speaks At University Student Event”. GLAAD, September 27, 2012. Online.

• Penelope Green. “Loren Cameron, 63, Dies; His Camera Brought Transgender Men to Light”. New York Times, April 20, 2023. Online.

EN.Wikipedia IMDB

Marlene Parker (1930 - ) hairdresser, actor

Parker was born as Siegfried Speck in Dresden in December 1930, in the last years of the Weimar Republic. Speck’s mother being a deaf mute, the baby was placed in an orphanage until adopted in 1937. The adoptive parents were very strict. At age 10 Speck had to join the Deutsches Jungvolk, and at age 14 the Hitler Youth. 

13-15 February 1945 was the Allied bombing and the resulting firestorm of Dresden which killed up to 35,000. Speck’s family lived outside the city and survived. 

Speck trained as a hairdresser, and found work in a fashionable salon in East Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse. In the days before the Berlin Wall, East Berliners could attend parties in West Berlin, and there Speck met Felix, his first boyfriend, also an Ossi, and later they escaped to West Germany. They settled in Hamburg, where Speck was a successful hairdresser.

A job on a cruise ship took Speck to Los Angeles. There was work hairdressing at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and acting in plays at L.A’s German Club, which led to an uncredited part in the 1959 remake of The Blue Angel. The same year, billed as Seigfried Speck, there was a part as a U-Boat crew member in episode 17 of the the first season of One Step Beyond. After that Speck became John Siegfried, and was in the 1962 biopic Hitler with Richard Basehart in the title role – Siegdfried played a gay SA officer killed in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. Siegfried was in several television programs throughout the 1960s, often being cast as a German, and was again a ‘German Officer’ in the 1973 film, Trader Horn. One of Siegfried’s lovers was Rock Hudson.

However Siegfried was not happy living as male: the urge to be her true self was building and could no longer be denied. 

“I was really getting bigger in the industry. But deep inside I was very, very unhappy. I used to get these attacks, like a panic attack....I wouldn't be alive. I was close to suicide....When you get into this change, you lose a lot of friends.”. 

She completed transitioned in 1978 taking the name Marlene Parker. Afterward she did stand-up comedy and had a cable TV show. She became friends with the younger trans actress Candid Cayne.

• Sharon Knolle. ”Inside Trans Pioneer Marlene Parker’s Journey From Nazi Germany to Hollywood – and Beyond”. The Wrap, January 6, 2023. Online.
• Sharon Knolle. “Trans Pioneer Marlene Parker Portraits (Exclusive Photos)”. The Wrap, January 6, 2023. Online.

IMDB

Georgina Beyer (1957 - 2023) actress, sex worker, politician.

++Original version posted January 2013.

George Bertrand was a Maori of Te Ati Awa, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Raukawa, and Ngati Porou descent.  A second child was adopted out.  The father quickly disappeared, and the elder was at first raised on the mother's parents farm. He became George Beyer when his mother Noeline remarried in 1962 to Colin Beyer, a lawyer who later became a Securities Commissioner, and they moved to Wellington.

From 1969-71 George attended the all-boys Wellesley College where he was a few years behind Claudia McKay who was an activist with the trans group Agender (archive).

Noeline and Colin separated in 1971. Young Beyer began acting while at school, and left at 16 intending to be an actor.

A year later Georgina started living as female. She worked as a drag queen, stripper and prostitute in Wellington and in Sydney, Australia. At one point she was beaten and gang-raped. However she persevered and completed transition in 1984.

She acted on stage and in several television productions, and was nominated for best actress in the New Zealand Gofta Awards for her part in Jewel's Darl, 1985.

She moved to rural Carterton (map) and found work as a radio host and social worker. She was quite open about her gender history:

"Children would say to me, 'Are you that queer that's moved into town?' I would say 'Yes, I'm a transsexual. I used to be a man, but I'm a woman now.'"

Georgina was elected to a local school board, and lost in an attempt for the town council by only 14 votes. She was elected mayor in 1995, and then in 1999 ran as the Wairarapa Labour candidate for Parliament. As a left-wing Maori trans woman it was not expected that she would win in such a traditionally conservative district. However, her opponent's negative campaign strategy backfired, and Beyer won the seat. In her maiden speech she said:

"Mr. Speaker, I can't help but mention the number of firsts that are in this Parliament. Our first Rastafarian [Nándor Tánczos]… our first Polynesian woman… and yes, I have to say it, I guess, I am the first transsexual in New Zealand to be standing in this House of Parliament. This is a first not only in New Zealand, ladies and gentlemen, but also in the world. This is an historic moment. We need to acknowledge that this country of ours leads the way in so many aspects. We have led the way for women getting the vote. We have led the way in the past, and I hope we will do so again in the future in social policy and certainly in human rights."

In 2003 she helped to pass the Prostitution Reform Act, which made New Zealand laws on prostitution a liberal model. She opened her speech:

"Madam Speaker, I shall take the liberty of assuming that I am the only member of this House with first-hand knowledge of the sex industry".

In 2004 she was a proponent of the Civil Union Bill, which gave the rights of marriage to same-sex couples. She also attempted to introduce a private members Bill to add 'Gender Identity' to the Human Rights Act of 1993, but found herself alone when the acting Solicitor General opined that trans people were already covered by the Act, and the amendment was unnecessary. However she did persuade both the Solicitor General and the Attorney General to sign a statement to that effect, thereby putting that interpretation into law.

She has been a Justice of the Peace since 1997. She was also named Supreme Queer of the Year in 2000. In 2005, she stepped down as a representative for Wairarapa because of a conflict with her identity as a Maori with respect to the Seabed and foreshore legislation. She became a list Labour MP until 2007.

There had been a series of murders in Wairarapa in the early 2000s, and and she worked as a member of Violence-Free Wairarapa. Unlike other ex-MPs she was unable to get a position on any government boards despite Labour still being in power. She considered returning to show business, but without success.
 
Beyer was a Keynote speaker at the First International Conference on LGBT Human Rights in Montreal, 2006, the Asia Pacific Outgames Human Rights Conference in Melbourne, 2008, and at the Second International in Copenhagen, 2009, and at Egale Canada's Human Rights Trust in Toronto, 2010. A film based on her life, Girl, was made in 2008.

In 2010 there was talk of her running for mayor of Masterton, which lost her her job at a local jewellors. In 2011 she was living on unemployment benefits, and had been obliged to sell her house.

++

In 2013 Georgina was diagnosed with end stage renal failure, required dialysis four times a day, seven days a week.  Despite this she ran, albeit unsuccessfully, in the 2014 general election for the Mana Party in the Te Tai Tonga constituency.  However she was critical of Mana’s alliance with the Internet Party which was dominated by Kim Dotcom.

In 2017 She received a kidney transplant, and, no longer needing dialysis, was able to resume public appearances.

In 2020 Georgina was  appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to LGBTIQA+ rights.

Georgina Beyer died in a Hospice in Wellington in March 2023.

• Georgina Beyer with Cathy Casey. Change for the better: the story of Georgina Beyer. Auckland: Random House New Zealand, 163 pp 1999.
  
• Peter Wells & Annie Goldson (dir) Georgie Girl. With Georgina Beyer. NZ 2001.
  
• Matt & Andrej Koymasky. "Georgina Beyer". The Living Room, March 12^th 2004. Online.
  
• Ryan Brown-Haysom. “Beyer Beware”. Critic Magazine. 2005 www.critic.co.nz/showfeature.php?id=3329.
  
• Matt Akersten. "She'll be right - Georgina Beyer keeps it Kiwi". GayNZ, 23^rd November 2008. Online.
  
• Jack Barlow. "Former MP Georgina Beyer unemployed". Stuff, 17/12/2011. Online.
  
• Joseph Romanos."Georgina Beyer : From drag queen to Member of Parliament". New Zealand's Top 100 History-Makers. Wellington: Trio Books, 2012.
  
• “Georgina Beyer: First transsexual in the world to be elected deputy”. Trans.Ilga. Online.
  
• Danya Levy. "Boys' school with two 'old girls' ". Stuff, 22/03/2012. Online.
•   “New Zealand: World’s first trans MP suffering kidney failure”.  Pink News, May 05 2013.  Online. 
• David Herkt.  “Georgina Beyer: From boy to woman to warrior”.  NZ Herald, 12 Oct, 2018.  Online.
• Bess Manson. “Georgina Beyer is back and ready for some fighting talk”. Stuff, Oct 13 2018.  Online.
• “Trailblazing MP Georgina Beyer dies aged 65”. 1News, 6 Mar 2023.  Online.
•  “World’s first openly transgender MP, Georgina Beyer, dies in New Zealand aged 65”,  Australian Associated Press, 6 Mar 2023.  Online.

EN.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB   GLBTQ    TRANS.ILGA

Two false positives in 1960s-70s New York

Some trans women are indeed into performativity, to exaggerated femininity and attention seeking.  Such persons are often referred to as Drag Queens even though they do not perform on a stage or screen.

Some cis women too are into performativity. Since such performativity has become associated with Drag Queens, performative cis women are sometimes (mis)taken as trans. And so …

Hope Stansbury (1945 - ) actress, scriptwriter

Stansbury was born in New York and raised in the cheaper parts of Maryland, New Jersey and South Philadelphia. After school she took up with a flamboyant hairdresser and a tough drag queen. They moved to Manhattan and Hope became associated with the mainly gay Caffe Cino, 31 Cornelia Street, which put on plays and is now considered the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway. For a while she lived at the gay art gallery owned by Frank Thompson, and worked there for room and board - the only female in the place. In her cobwebby dresses, white make-up and black eye-liner, Hope stood out among the Caffe Cino crowd - where she opened the doors and set up for each evening. “She was so incredibly exotic that you had the impression that she was a transvestite” said actor/director Eric Concklin.    Candy Darling is said to have based her look largely on Hope. Hope got her own apartment down the street and decorated it with mirrors, cats and Snow White memorabilia. 

Salvadore Dali asked her to pose; Carlo Ponti gave her a screen test.

She wrote a script about anonymous relationships and meetings in gay bathhouses, which became the first film by gay director Andy Milligan, renamed Vapors. He paid her $200 for the script. She acted in several of his films, and also had a small part in a Sidney Poitier film.

Hope now lives in France.

• Jimmy McDoniugh. The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan. Acappella, 2001: 78-81.
• Rob Craig. Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan. McFarland & Company, 2013: 9, 27-8, 84, 94.

IMDB     Twitter    

Andrea Feldman (1948-1972) actress

Feldman, a native New Yorker, was educated at Quintano's School for Young Professionals, a high school for the performing arts. She was in three films associated with Andy Warhol, and took to referring to herself as Ms Andy Warhol. In the 1970 film Groupies she was referred to as Andrea Whips. A regular in the back room of Max's Kansas City, she pioneered a performance which she called "Showtime", in which she performed a striptease on the round table, at the center of the room. She became known for her dependence on drugs, particularly amphetamines.

In August 1972, she summoned her ex-boyfriends, and then jumped from her parents’ 14^th floor apartment holding a crucifix and a bible. She left a note: “I'm going for the big time, I hit the jackpot!"

Andrea was cis. So why does Robert Hofler write?:

“Word had gotten back to Holly and Candy that Andy was no longer into chicks with dicks, which made them wonder why [director Paul] Morrisey had cast Andrea Feldman, aka Andy Feldman, to play Sylvia Miles’s daughter in the film [Heat, 1972].

• Robert Hofler. Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to a Clockwork Orange - How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke all the Taboos. ItBooks, 2014: 265

EN.Wikipedia      Warhol Superstars              IMDB

Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part III - Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words. Caveat Lector.

Part I: Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery
Part II: Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding
Part III: Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

John Wojtowicz gave Carmen a yellow rose on her anniversary, and Liz a red one on hers.

The divorce of Carmen and John was finalized in 1983. Carmen reverted to her maiden name, and while working three jobs, put herself through college. She became an education associate for children with special needs.

Liz Eden was in a hit-and-run incident coming out of a gay bar late one night. She was rushed to St Clare’s Hospital in Hell’s Kitchen and they put pins in to save her leg. However apparently the blood transfusion was HIV+, and after a while and a couple of sicknesses Liz was confirmed to have AIDS.
 

One time while out, Wojtowicz and Liz were interviewed by gay film buff Vito Russo on his Our Time television show. Wojtowicz was still referring to Liz as ‘Ernie’ and Liz became quite infuriated.

Liz moved to Rochester, NY, and was said to be remarried. Liz died in September 1987 of Aids-related pneumonia – she was 41.

John and his mother

         John and his mother

Finally out for good, Wojtowicz returned to living with his mother and his developmentally disabled brother Tony in Brooklyn.

Despite claims that he was paid $100,000 or 1% of the profits of the film which took in over $50 million on a budget of $1.8 million, he received very little of it apart from the $2,500 that went to Liz for the operations. The New York State Crime Victims Compensation Board diverted tens of thousands to the hostages, and contested against Wojtowicz receiving anything right up to his death. Sometimes he was on welfare. Sometimes he worked at minimum wage jobs.

John was married for a fourth time to Chiclets, a 17-year-old trans woman. She was viciously beaten by a group of transphobes in the Village. They dumped her in New Jersey. She was in a coma for a month before dying.

Pierre Huyghe, the French artist, was doing a series of dual screen presentations combining a real event, its fictional remake and a first-person recollection of the original. He was intrigued by the Dog Day Afternoon scenario. In 1999, he travelled to Brooklyn and knocked on doors until he found Wojtowicz at his mother’s house. He invited John to go to Paris to re-enact the events. A copy of the bank as in the film had been built in a studio in a Paris suburb. This could not be done in the US as Wojtowicz did not own the copyright. The resulting film, The Third Memory, 2000, opens with the standard FBI warning against copyright infringement, with a voice-over:

“I tell the FBI to go fuck themselves. . . . It’s been twenty-eight years since I’ve been fighting Warner Brothers to try and get my money back. They keep giving it to the hostages while I’m a millionaire living on welfare. My name is John Wojtowicz; I’m the real Sonny Worcek and I’m the one that you see in Dog Day Afternoon.” 

It was shown at Huyghe’s first solo exhibition in New York. As Barikins’ book on Huyghe says:

“As Huyghe’s film demonstrates, neither Wojtowicz’s ‘self’ nor the details of his story are or were ever entirely his own. Not only was Wojtowicz’s original conception of the robbery influenced by Al Pacino’s performance in The Godfather (1972) (which he and his partners viewed on the morning of the bank robbery as a kind of motivational manual), but Pacino’s interpretation of the character later affected Wojtowicz’s reenactment of the siege.”

In 2005 there was the Australian film, Based on a True Story, which is mainly a study of the 1975 film combined with phone calls to Wojtowicz where he asks for money for further co-operation.

Instead he co-operated with Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren, local film makers who spent 10 years recording him and the other people in his story. It was released in 2013 as The Dog.

Wojtowicz died in 2006 of cancer, age 60. As he deteriorated, his brother Tony, despite his own disability, stepped up to become John’s carer. John was cremated and did not have the military funeral that he had hoped for.

Films:

• Gordon Parks (dir).  Shaft. US 100 mins 1971.  GAA activists including John Wojtowicz can be seen protesting in the credits sequence.
• Sidney Lumet (dir). Dog Day Afternoon. Scr: Frank Pierson, from the magazine article by P.F. Kluge & Thomas Moore, with Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik, John Cazale as Sal, and Chris Sarandon as Leon Shermer (roughly based on Liz Eden). US 124 mins 1975. Oscar for best screenplay; Sarandon was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Top grossing film of the year. The shooting script is online at: Archive.
• Pierre Huyghe (dir). The Third Memory. With John Wojtowicz as himself. US 10 mins 2000. A short documentary re-enacting the “Dog Day Afternoon” bank holdup.
• Walter Stokman (dir & scr). Based on a True Story. With John Wojtowicz and Sidney Lumet, with photos or clip quotes of Liz Eden, Al Pacino, John Cazale & Chris Sarandon. Netherlands 75 mins 2005.
• Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren (dir). The Dog, with John Wojtowicz, Liz Eden, Carmen Bifulco, Randy Wicker. US 101 mins 2013.

Other:

• Atthur Bell. “Mike Umbers: The Emperor of Christopher Street”. The Village Voice, July 22, 1971. Online.
• “Here Comes the Bride”. Drag: the magazine about the Transvestite, 2, 6, 1971: 9-12. Online.
• Paul Meskil. “An Insider Is Sought in Bank Holdup: FBI Agent Kills Bandit at JFK And 2d Thus is Nabbed”. Daily News Aug 24, 1972..
• “A Mobster is Linked to Bizarre Holdup”. The New York Times, Aug 26, 1972. Online.
• Arthur Bell. “Littlejohn & the mob: Saga of a Heist”. The Village Voice, August 31, 1972, XVII, 35. Online.
• “News”. Drag: Now! America’s No 1 Magazine about the Transvestite, 2, 8, 1972: 4, 6. Online.
• P.F. Kluge & Thomas Moore. "The Boys in the Bank". Life Sept 22, 1972, vol 73 (12). Online.
• “News”. Drag: The International Transvestite Quarterly, 5,17, 1975: 9. Online.
• “Gay Bank Robber’s Real Wife Sees Movie – and Red”. Drag: The International Transvestite Quarterly, 6,24, 1975: 3, Online.
• John Wojtowicz. “Real Dog Day hero tells his story”. Unpublished article written from prison for the New York Times in 1975, later reprinted in Gay Sunshine: A Journal of Gay Liberation, No. 29/ 30, Summer/Fall, 1976, and then again in Jump Cut, no. 15, 1977, pp. 31-32. Online at: www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC15folder/RealDogDay.html.
• Eric Holm. "Dog Day Afternoon, Dog day aftertaste". Jump Cut, 10-11. 1976:3-4. Online.
• Fredric Jameson, “Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film” College English 38, April 1977: 854.
• “Elizabeth Eden, Transsexual Who Figured in 1975 Movie”. The New York Times, Oct 1, 1987. Online.
• Holly Woodlawn with Jeff Copeland. A Low Life in High Heels: the Holly Woodlawn Story. Martin's Press,1991. Harper Perenniel Pb. 1992: 111-2.
• Lisa Photos “The Dog and the Last Real Man: An Interview with John S Wojtowicz”. Journal of Bisexuality, 3,2, 2003: 43-68.
• Jefferson Cowie.  Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. The New Press, 2010: 200-5.
• Michael Schiavi. Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo. University of Wisconsin Press, 2011: 85-6, 218.
• Emily S Rueb. “A Wife Recalls Her Estranged Husband’s 1972 Failed Bank Robbery”. The New York Times, August 22, 2012. Archive.
• John Strausbaugh. “Liz Eden’s White Wedding”. The Chiseler, 2012. Online.
• Amelia Barikin. Parallel Presents The art of Pierre Hutghe. The MIT Press, 2012: 116-121, 138.
• Sean Manning. “7 Fascinating Things You Didn't Know About the Real Dog Day Afternoon”. Esquire, Aug 8, 2014. Online.
• Larry Getlin. “The bizarre true story that inspired ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ “. New York Post, August 3, 2014. Online.
• Sam Roberts. “‘The Dog’ Who Had His Day on Film”. The New York Times, Aug 4, 2014. Online.
• David Ehrenstein. “The wild Inside story of ‘The Dog’: How one failed bank robber shaped LGBT history”. Salon, Aug 6, 2014. Online.
• Cynthia Fuchs. “'The Dog' from ' Dog Day Afternoon' Would Do It All Over Again, Hell Ya”. Pop Matters, 08 Aug 2014. Online.
• J R Jones. “Revisiting the Brooklyn bank robbery that inspired Dog Day Afternoon: The Dog tells the sad story of a man trapped by his criminal past”. Chicago Reader, October 01, 2014. Online.
• Gina Dimuro. “The Real Story Of John Wojtowicz And The Bank Robbery That Inspired ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ “. Allthatsintering.com, June 27, 2018. Online.
• Emily S Rueb. “A Botched Robbery That Went Hollywood”. The New York Times, August 22, 2018. Online.
• Phillip Crawford Jr. “Real Life Mafia Story Behind Dog Day Afternoon Movie”. Reddit.com/r/Mafia, April 2020. Online.

FindaGrave(Liz)   FindaGrave(John)    IMDB(John)     IMDB(Dog Day Afternoon) 
IMDB(The Dog)    EN.Wikipedia(Liz)     EN.Wikipedia(John)     EN.Wikipedia (Salvatore) EN.Wikipedia(Dog day Afternoon)    EN.Wikipedia(The Dog)     Military.Wikia(John)   NNDB(John)      New York Times Slide Show      Getty Stock Images

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The FindaGrave site for John lists only his first spouse as such, although two others are mentioned in the text.

The Wikipedia page on Liz states that Liz had a second marriage, but does not give a source.