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.

Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez (1964 - 2016 ) sex worker, singer, prisoner.

++I originally wrote about Cristina Otiz in May 2008.  A lot has happened to her since then.

Cristina was born José Antonio Ortiz Rodriguez, the fourth of six children, in Adra, Almeria, Andalusia. Jose became known as Joselita.  From an early age Joselita showed talent in fashion design.  She was never accepted because of her gender expression and was attacked and mistreated, but as a man was considered to have good physique and was awarded the title Mister Andalusia in 1989 at the age of 24.  Still as José Antonio, Ortiz entered a competition on television in 1991 and won a trip to Thailand.

Ortiz had been secretly dressing as a woman, and in January 1992 she went to Madrid and began  transition.

Cristina was working as a prostitute in 1996 when she was discovered by television host and journalist Pepe Navarro who was doing a story on trans people. He hired her, and she became famous on his television shows Esta noche cruzamos el Mississippi and La sonrisa del pelícano, and with a music single ‘Veneno pa tu piel’ (Poison in your skin). She became known as Cristina La Veneno (the poison).

There was a plan to make a film about her life, but it did not happen. She starred in two porn films:  El secreto de la Veneno and La venganza de la Veneno, both 1997.  She toured Spain as a singer, and in 1998 was on television in Buenos Aires for a month.

In 1999, Cristina was arrested in an insurance scam, accused of arson, after an anonymous denunciation by her Italian ex-boyfriend. Investigation uncovered other crimes and she was sentenced to three years in a men’s prison, 2003-6, where she was frequently attacked and raped, and was incommunicado to her family for many months. Her weight doubled from 60 to 122 kg, and she suffered obvious physical deterioration.

After release she appeared on television gossip shows, complaining about her treatment in prison. The Instituciones Penitenciarias denounced her statement as calumny, but later in 2006 the Socialist Workers Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (no relation) introduced a new policy of respecting a prisoner's gender and changed name, and placing trans women in women's prisons.

She was confronted by other trans activists in that she gave a bad image to the trans community.   In 2010 she was challenged on television to lose the weight that she had gained in prison, and some months later had lost 35kg.  But she was still suffering from bulimia and depression. 

In 2013 Cristina presented her 23-year-old boyfriend.   However he disappeared with her savings of €60,000.   But she was hired as one of the stars of the show Que trabajo Rita. From the end of 2013 to 2014, La Veneno made stellar appearances in some of the concerts of the tour.

In October 2016 her long-promised memoirs, ¡Digo! ni puta ni santa, appeared.  It was co-written with Valeria Vegas, a friend, and self-published through the Bigcartel web site.  She gave the initials of many famous politicians and footballers who had had sex with her.    This resulted in death threats.

In November that year she was found at home with bruises, unconscious and with a serious bruise on her head.  She was rushed to hospital, put into an induced coma, and died a few days later.  She was 52.  Officially she was deemed to have suffered a fall after massive consumption of pills, but there are suspicions that one of the death threats was acted on. Her family attempted to re-open the case in 2017 to show that it was murder.

A plaque has been mounted in Cristina's Honour in Madrid's Parque del Oeste where she worked as a prostitute.

In 2019, Cristina's sister attempted to again re-open the case with the support of Dr Luis Frontela, a prestigious forensic doctor, who pointed out defence wounds on Cristina's hand.  However the attempt was without success.

*Not the  University professor.

• "Los buenos modales son Veneno". Perlas ensangrentadas. Online.
• "La Veneno pasa factura".  Interviu, 24/04/2006.  Online. 
• "La Veneno, su infierno en la cárcel" Entrevista en “Qué me dices”, 3 de abril de 2006. Archive. 
• "Prisiones denuncia a «La Veneno» por decir que sufrió abusos en la cárcel" ABC, 21 de abril de 2006. Online. 
• «La Veneno, perdida por los hombres de mal vivir». El Mundo. 12 de noviembre de 2016. Online. 
• CristinaOrtiz & Valeria Vegas. ¡Digo! ni puta ni santa: las memorias de la Veneno. Roi Porto DL, 2016.
• "La Veneno murió por una caída accidental".  El Periodico, 10/11/2018.  Online.
• " 'La Veneno' pudo ser asesinada, según un nuevo análisis forense".  La Opinion de Tenerife, 09.01.2019.  Online.

  ES.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB     

---------------------------------

The ES.Wikipedia page on Adra does list Cristina among its citizens of note.

Jill Monro (1951 – 1982) porn star

Terri, originally called Teddy, was a Brooklynite of Italian descent. Her father died when she was young, and her mother practically raised her as a girl. As a teenager, Terri had a rhinoplasty and her chin reshaped, electrolysis, took female hormones and silicon enhancements. She trained and was licensed as a cosmetologist.

In March 1976 Terri and a friend hired a car, and then she and the driver, David Rice, exchanged numbers, and they started dating after she broke up with her previous boyfriend. Rice accepted that she was a bit different from other women.

“I am, believe it or not, a fairly straight kind of dude – I mean, I’m not, and never have been, gay. But then, I don’t think Jill was ever a man – she was just born with the wrong kind of equipment. I fell in love with her and together we sailed through the series of operations that would make us a ‘legitimate’ couple.”

David took out a loan for her to have further breast enhancement, and another loan a year later in July 1977 for sexual correction. The pain killers she took after the surgery added to the downers that she was already taking.

After surgery Terri caught David reading Cheri magazine, and felt that she was more beautiful than the model. They took some polaroids and sent them in. Cheri magazine invited them to come in, and a shoot was arranged. Terri took the name Jill Monro from Farrah Fawcett’s character in Charlie’s Angels. David had to write a monthy column sometimes under Jill’s name, and sometimes as Dave Zele.

Terri was quite open about her sexual past, and her appearance in the magazine was an eight-page
article, “The Gal With The Man Made Muff – The Incredible Saga of Jill Monro”.

“Most people didn’t believe that she was born male.  Everybody thought that Cheri magazine was just doing a huge publicity stunt for the numbers, for circulation, for money… whatever you want to call it.”

Jill and David were introduced to Mark Stevens (1943-1989) who was established as a heterosexual adult-film actor despite being mainly gay. Annie Sprinkle refers to him as ‘straight for pay’. Mark and Jill threw theme parties at different clubs in Manhattan. Jill was in several adult films between 1978 and 1982. Late in 1978 Jill had a supposed marriage with Marc Stevens at a Greenwich Village disco. This became an eight-page spread in Cheri magazine.

In 1979 Jill and a female friend went to the nude beach at Rockaway Beach, and were busted for public lewdness. A good lawyer got them off, and the incident was turned into an article for Cheri magazine.

David became a photographer, and did rock music tours, sometimes did the camera work on Jill’s films, and was also her manager.

After a management shake-up at Cheri, David and Jill went over to High Society magazine. By this time she had progressed from cocaine on to heroin. This led to her and David living apart. She got less and less work as a model, and began turning tricks and ran ads in Screw and the Village Voice.

The drugs led to a decline and Terri died at age 31.

• David Zele (David Rice). “The Gal With The Man Made Muff – The Incredible Saga of Jill Monro”. Cheri magazine, March 1978.
• Hazel Gravy. “Jill Monro’s Surgeon Tells: How To Become A Woman”. Cheri magazine, May 1978.
• Dan Zele (David Rice) “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Tits: The Story of Jill Monro”. Cheri magazine, July 1978.
• Jill Monro & Jane Compton. “Beach Blanket Bust-O”. Cheri magazine, February 1979.
• “The Wedding of the Decade”. Cheri Magazine, April 1979.
• George Petros interviews Annie Sprinkle. “Has a hands-on fetish for Trans guys”. The New Transsexuals, 2012. www.georgepetros.com/writings/tnt/Annie-Sprinkle.htm.
• Interview with David Rice. “Who was Jill Monro?: The Story of New York’s First Transsexual Porn Star:. The Rialto Report, 16 March 2014. www.therialtoreport.com/2014/03/16/who-was-jill-monro-the-story-of-new-yorks-first-transsexual-porn-star/

IMDB

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Some of the dates don’t jive. IMDB lists Jill in the film White Fire, as 1976, before she met David Rice, before correction surgery and before she chose the name.

Jill’s movie period was 1978-82. Compare to Sulka’s prime years 1980-3. Jill was different from other trans porn stars in being post-op before getting into adult movies.

Yasmin Lee (1983 - ) actress. activist.

Lee was born in Thailand of Thai, Cambodian, Chinese, and Brazilian heritage. The family moved from Thailand to the Philippines and then to California.

Lee joined the U.S. Navy at age 18, but he was harassed and forced out. He found work as a drag entertainer and make-up artist. He worked as a make-up artist in Hollywood actresses and on music video sets.

After taking female hormones, and having breast implants while back in Thailand, Yasmin felt that she had to quit her job as a make-up artist, but was able to find work as an assistant on pornography sets. She became a casting director.

One day in 2004 the engaged actress did not show, so Yasmin took her place. She was featured in many porn videos. She was nominated AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2008 and 2009.

After various television appearances such as The Maury Povich Show and The Tyra Banks Show, Yasmin was able to make a breakthrough into mainstream movies the with horror release Red Ice and the comedy The Hangover Part II, both 2011.

She is also an activist with the American Civil Rights Union and campaigned against California’s Proposition 8.

• "Yasmin Lee: Porno Queen Turned Hollywood Wet Dream". Trannies on Top: Star 5. Bizarre Magazine, 7, April 2011. 
  

EN.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB      YasminLeeBlog

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.

• James Mills.  "The Detective:  a good cop fights for law but the deck is stacked against him". Life, 3 Dec 1965: 90d-132.  http://bit.ly/1cJ6A0B.
• "These are the twins - Kim and Bobbie".  Final section in George Alpert. The Queens. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. 
• "Kim Christy".   Guys in Drag, 1,4,1977: 3-4.
• "Meet your Editor: 'Kim Christy's' Personal Photo Album".  Female Mimics International, 11,1, Winter 1980: 6-11.  Online.   
• Kim Christy (ed). Letters to Kim Christy. North Hollywood, Calif: Leoram Productions, 1986.
  
• Kim Christy (ed). The complete reprint of Exotique: the first 36 issues, 1951-1957. Köln: Taschen, 1998.
  
• Kim Christy & John Quinn. The Christy Report. Taschen, 2001. Review.
  
• Christopher Harrity. "Kim Christy's Lost World". The Advocate, February 12 2011.http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/photography/2011/02/12/kim-christys-lost-world.
  
• Ms Bob. "Female Mimics Magazine — Part 1, The Early Years". TG Forum, Jan 16, 2012. www.tgforum.com/wordpress/index.php/female-mimics-magazine-part-1-the-early-years.
  
• Jim Beaux. "Leonard Burtman, 1921 – 1994", "Jennifer Jordan 1938 - ????", "Kim Christy" The Transsexual Erotica Archive of Magazines and Films, May 2013. http://www.hungdevils.com/index.php?/topic/18134-the-transsexual-erotica-archive-of-magazines-and-films-we-need-your-help/page-2.
  
• www.kimchristy.com.
  

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?

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
_________________________________________________________

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.”

Allanah Starr (198?–) performer.

Starr was born in Cuba and raised in Miami, where she grew up as an effeminate boy frequently harassed at school. At 15 she joined a gay-and-lesbian youth group, and became confident enough to win a school contest with a drag performance.

She went to a fashion college, and also started dancing professionally in clubs, sometimes using the name Damien Divine. Allanah worked at transy-themed restaurant, Lucky Cheng’s, in Miami. With help from a co-worker, she started hormones and electrolysis. She found a plastic surgeon, and had a nose job, an ear job and breast implants, funded by an admirer she met at Lucky Cheng’s. She started doing porn, and also escorting.

She moved to New York, initially working through an agency. She is 36DD and has had 60 cosmetic surgeries. She has starred in a score of porn films – including a sex scene with Buck Angel directed by Gia Darling that earned her AVN awards in 2007 for Transsexual Performer of the Year and Most Outrageous Sex Scene.

In 2008 she and Buck were sculpted life-size by London Artist Marc Quin.

She has modeled for men’s magazines and performed at celebrity parties. She has become an event promoter.

• Abby Ehmann. “Allanah Starr”. Eros-London, 4-12-2005. Online at: Online2.
• Amy Sohn. “New York's Transsexual Star Alannah Starr challenges gender boundaries”. The Canadian. 2007. Online.
• Christopher Ciccone & Wendy Leigh. Life with My Sister Madonna. New York, NY: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2008: 219.
• http://allanahstar.thumblogger.com.
• www.transexualstarr.com.

EN.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB

______________________________________________________________________________

 www.transexualstarr.com and her Wikipedia page say that Allanah (under the name Damian Divine) performed at Madonna's 32nd birthday party.  If you check Ciccone's book, she actually gets a one-line mention.  It says that a bunch of drag queens were invited to attend, and also a bunch of basketball players.  The players pushed all the drag queens into the swimming pool.

Brigit Brat (1964 - 2011) sailor, musician, sex worker

After high school, Brat served in the US Navy as a submarine commander.

Brigit, who was 6’7” (2.01m), designed and built speciality guitars. She composed and performed as Ritual Suicide Necrophilic Blues, and also covers of ‘When the Levee Breaks”.
God’s Girlfriend. She did a cover of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” on her album

She also did porn and domination. And worked with Ilsa Strix (spouse of Buck Angel and then Lana Wachowski).

Brigit died at age 47.

• Michael de Plessis. “’Goth Damage and Melancholia: Reflections on Posthuman Gothic Identities” in Lauren M. E. Goodlad & Michael Bibby. Goth: Undead Subculture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007: 162-4.
• “Obituary: Brigit Brat”. San Jose Mercury News, Aug 17, 2011. www.legacy.com/obituaries/mercurynews/obituary.aspx?n=brigit-brat&pid=153151227.
• James O’Meara. “Brigit Brat [1964 - 2011] : She Didn't Need a Religion, She Was Already God's Girlfriend”. Where the Wild Boys Are, Aug 23, 2011. http://jamesjomeara.blogspot.ca/2011/08/brigit-brat-1964-2011-she-didnt-need.html.

Discogs      

Camilla De Castro (1979 – 2005 ) model, porn star.

Alessandro Caetano Kothenborger grew up in São Paulo.

As Camilla De Castro she became a model and a porn star, and appeared regularly on Brazilian television.

She killed herself during a heavy drugs binge by jumping from her 8^th floor penthouse.

She has been deleted from en.wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Camilla_de_Castro.

• “Camilla de Castro”. Wikipedia, Die freie Enzyklopädie. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camilla_de_Castro

Buck Angel (1972 - ) adult film maker.

Susan was a tomboy as a child in San Francisco’s San Fernando Valley.

As a young woman she used the name Laura, and worked as model, but she was uncomfortable as a woman, and did a lot of drugs and alcohol. She hung out with butch lesbians because there was nowhere to go.

Transitioning in his twenties, he had top surgery and hormones, which he supplemented with bodybuilding. He was husband to Ilsa Strix (Karin Winslow), a top dominatrix in Los Angeles, until she left him in 2003 for Lana Wachowshi, one of the two directors of the Matrix films.

Buck moved to New Orleans to be with his second wife, body piercer, tattooer and body modification enthusiast Elayne Angel - he took her name, and became Buck Angel. He then sought work as a trans-porn actor.

In 2005, Buck was the first trans man in an all-male porn film, and he was in another film where he had sex with trans woman Allanah Starr. For the latter he was nominated for Transsexual Performer of the Year and Most Outrageous Sex Scene. In January 2007, Buck won Transsexual Performer of the Year at the Adult Video News Awards.

In 2008 he and Allanah  were sculpted life-size by London artist Marc Quinn.

Buck is the best-known and best-paid FTM porn star. He is billed as ‘a real man, with a real pussy’.

He frequently appears on talk shows and at sex conventions.

“I do believe that people need to recognize this as a real medical condition. I do also believe that a lot of people don't take it as seriously as it needs to be taken. It's kind of become a trendy thing. They're playing with their gender, and maybe they don't really want to be male. Which is fine, but as a real transsexual person, I don't consider myself a transsexual, I consider myself a man.”

• Mark Miller. “Matrix Revelations: The Wachowski Brothers FAQ”. Wired 11.11 Nov 2003. www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/matrix_pr.html.
• “Buck Angel”. Bizarre. Nov 2004. www.bizarremag.com/sleaze/interviews/1472/buck_angel.html?xc=1.
• Gerry Visco. “Man? Or Woman? You Decide: Porn Actor Buck Angel’s Body is a sexual confusion”. New York Press, March 29, 2006. www.nypress.com/article-13179-man-or-woman-you-decide.html
• Dan Hunt (dir).  Mr Angel, with Buck Angel, Elayne Angel, Tyra Banks, Dan Savage. US/Canada/Germany/Mexico 68 mins 2013.  

 EN.WIKIPEDIA    Website.

Carmen de Mairena (1933 – ) singer, performer.

Miguel Brau Gou was born in Barcelona. At age 12, while working as an errand boy, he would entertain with song and dance. At 16 he was an extra in several movies.

From 1956, as Miguel de Mairena, he became well-known in the Barcelona area as a singer and entertainer.  His lover was Pedrito Rica, before the latter began his tour of the Americas. Both were arrested under the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes (Vagrancy Law) which was amended by the Franco dictatorship in 1954 to include homosexuals. Miguel was badly treated in prison, and because of this was unable to work for a year as an entertainer after his release.

However by the late 1960s he was performing with other popular singers in Barcelona.

In the 1970s, as Carmen de Mairena, she had black-market silicone injections and sought work as a transformista doing impersonations of Sara Montiel and Marujita Diaz. This was not well received and she resorted to sex work.

In the 1990s she was discovered by the television presenter Javier Cardenes and developed a career as a television comedian, as part of the friki scene. She also had parts in a few films, including two porno movies.

In November 2006 and October 2008 Carmen was arrested as part of a crackdown against the prostitution of Rumanian women, in that she had rented rooms used by the ring.

However this has not affected her television career and in 2010 was a candidate in the Catalan elections.

carmendemairena.galeon.com/index.html      ES.WIKIPEDIA   

Amara Vadillo (197?–) sex worker.

Vadillo was born and raised in Cuba. After emigration to Los Angeles she became Amara. After injections of hormones and silicone, she was a 34 DDD.

She found work acting in shemale videos and performing at the West Hollywood Club 7969 under the name of Sylvia Boots. She became known for her love of the work, and that it showed on camera. She acted in over 50 videos (see ES.Wikipedia for a list), and as she had facial cosmetic surgery several times, she looks different over the course of her films.

She generally got on well with her fellow actors, with one exception, fellow performer Tanya Amadore. After being attacked by three of Tanya's friends outside a nightclub, Amara filed a criminal complaint with the police. In August 2002, Amara dated Jorge Espinoza without knowing that he was Tanya's boyfriend. After sex he brutally beat her and stole her car. Again she filed a police complaint. Three weeks later Jorge returned and shot her in the head. Miraculously Amara survived and still has the bullet in her head. She filed a third police complaint and was unofficially advised to carry a gun for self-defense.

On March 17, 2003 Amara and Tanya encountered each other in the ladies room at the Yukon Mining Co restaurant. Insults, hair pulling and punches started and were continued in the parking lot, and friends of both women joined in. It escalated to the point where Amara pulled out her gun. Tanya tried to take it away from her. It went off and Tanya's hand was seared with gunpowder burns. A few minutes later it was apparent that one of Tanya's friends, Laura Banuelos, was dying of a gun wound. Amara was arrested.

In jail she was able to positively identify Jorge Espinoza to the police for his attempt on her life.

Amara herself was charged with Murder in the first degree, Murder in the second degree, Voluntary Manslaughter, Involuntary Manslaughter and an Armed Allegation charge. Tanya was not charged. After 14 months in jail, Amara's trial lasted one week, the defense rested after one day, Tanya "unequivocally testified" that she did not touch the trigger and that she had not encouraged Jorge Espinoza to shoot Amara.  The jury returned after five hours finding Amara guilty of second degree murder. She was convicted under the California law of transfer of intent that was intended to apply to a sniper situation.

58 people wrote letters and signed a petition urging the judge to reduce the sentence to Involuntary Manslaughter, but Amara was sentenced to 20 years to life for Second Degree Murder and an additional 25 years to life under the anti-sniping law, and that she has to pay $10,000 restitution to Laura's family if ever released on parole.

In January 2006 it was rumored that Tanya died after an incompetent injection of oil/silicone. Some think that this was a hoax to enable Tanya to escape police attention. In either case her video career was over.

An appeal of Amara's sentence in October 2007 was denied.

Amara was initially at Donovan State Prison in San Diego, and is currently in the California Medical Facility prison at Vacaville.

* Not Jorge Espinoza the Chilean football player, nor the boxer.

• "P. v. Vadillo". FearNotLaw, 10/12/07. www.fearnotlaw.com/articles/article15106.html.
• Chubby Chucker. "Re: Sylvia Boots". Tgirl Forums, 12-27-2005. http://tgirlforums.com/yabbse/showthread.php?t=26274.
• John Green "Sylvia Boots". Tribe. http://tribes.tribe.net/shemalelovers/thread/20e6d06b-ef8d-4d6c-b4ec-089fa0bb8896 also at  other sites.

  Wikibin (No longer available)    ES.Wikipedia     

____________________________________________________________

Neither Amara Vadillo nor Sylvia Boots is in IMDB nor the Wikipedia Category: Transsexual pornographic film actors.

45 years plus is longer than many mafia contract killers get.

The requirement to pay $10,000 is what in Sharia law is a called blood money, except that under Sharia, if you pay the money, you don’t go to jail.

The US gun lobby groups that proclaim that you should carry a gun to protect yourself don’t seem to be interested in this case.

Amara is mainly a female name, but sometimes given to boys.  It is unclear whether Vadillo was called Amara at birth, at emigration or later.  However she was charged under that name, so the California prosecution service took that to be her legal name.

The Wikibin article does not even mention the homicide.

Amara and Tanya put down each other and others as 'faggots'.   An indication of their lack of self-consciousness.

Pudgy Roberts (? - ) female mimic.

Pudgy was a New York female impersonator most famous in the late 1960s.

He also wrote two novels, Dormitory Mates, 1968 and Seafood, 1969, an how-to book, and edited a monthly magazine.   ++He also wrote for Gay Power, 1969-70, and ran a business distributing flyers.

Avery Willard made a short film about him, and he was one of the first drag queens to do comic relief in a porno movie, The Sexualist, 1975.

• Pudgy Roberts. Female impersonator's handbook. Newark: Capri Publishers, 1967.  Selections 
• Gil Truman.  "Girls Who Are And Can't: An Interview with Pudgy Roberts".   Female Mimics, 1,12, Spring 1968.    Online at:  http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/PUDGY.HTM.
• Avery Willard (dir). Camp Burlesgue. With Pudgy Roberts impersonating Bette David, Carol Channing, Tiny Tim, Marlene Dietrich, Lily Tomlin, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. US 6 mins 1969.
• Kemal Horulu (dir)  The Sexualist: A Voyage to the World of Forbidden Love.  With Pudgy Roberts as Papamabuto.  US 73 mins 1973. 
•  Donald Greenhaus. “Without Abstract”. Society. Vol 11,1 November 1973. www.springerlink.com/content/h6870muw8m283033/fulltext.pdf?page=1.
• Pudgy Roberts (ed). The great female mimics. New York: Mark Lithographers. 1963-79. Monthly magazine.  Sample 
• Laurence Senelick. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. Routledge xvi, 540 pp 2000: 384, 395, 403n15.
• Mark Singer.  Mr. Personality: Profiles and Talk Pieces from The New Yorker.  Mariner Books, 2005: 95-8. 

IMDB     Queer Music Heritage  

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I met Pudgy once, when we were both in Lee Brewster's boutique.

Edward D. Wood, Jr (1924 - 1978) film-maker, pornographer

++ added later

Ed was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, New York. After tentative jobs as a cinema usher, and in musical groups, he joined the US Marines at age 17 just after the US entered the Second World War, and served until 1946.


He claimed that he was in combat in the Marshall Islands, Naumea and Tarawa, that he had his front teeth knocked out by a Japanese soldier, and was later machine-gunned in one of his legs. That he was awarded several medals and honorably discharged, and that he had fought in battle with a bra and panties under his uniform. However he completed his service as an office typist.

He also claimed that after discharge he worked in a carnival as the geek and as the half-man-half-woman. He also worked in San Francisco as a female impersonator. His trick at parties was to disappear and reappear en femme, sometimes even shaving off his moustache to do so. Often he used the name, Lily.

In 1950 he worked as a drag stunt double for Ellen Drew in The Baron of Arizona. He had a special thing for angora sweaters, and would borrow one from his then girlfriend, Dolores Fuller (who would later write songs recorded by Elvis Presley). She put up with his cross-dressing for a while, but could not really handle it, and so would not marry him.

In the early fifties he was trying to break into Hollywood as a director. Exploitation producer, George Weiss, was seeking to take advantage of the media fuss surrounding Christine Jorgensen, and Wood talked himself into the film. Jorgensen, quite sensibly, wanted nothing to do with the project, so Wood rewrote the script drawing on his own experiences, and starred himself (under the name of Daniel Davis) and Delores Fuller.  ++As the film was being made, there were newspaper reports in Los Angeles of an admitted transvestite, Arnold Lowman, who was attempting to alter the terms of his divorce.  Wood made an announcement to the press that the film would not be based on that newspaper story. ++ The film was released under various names, but is best known as Glen or Glenda, 1953. It is actually a plea for tolerance of transvestites and transsexuals.

While it is made in the format of psychiatric case studies it does not have the attitude of condemnation common to the genre. However Glen or Glenda is also camp with a surreal narrator, played by Béla Lugosi completely separated from all the other characters and situated in a laboratory with smoking test tubes and human skulls, more suitable to a cheap horror film or exploitation movie, and it includes passionate psychodramas involving sex changes, bondage and flagellation.

 LA Times, Feb 17, 1953 - item in news was Arnold Lowman

In 1955 Ed married Norma McCarthy, but she kicked him out when she found that he was wearing female underwear. The marriage was annulled six months later. He then married Kathy O’Hara who remained his wife until his death.

Bela Lugosi starred again in Wood’s Bride of the Monster, 1955, and then died after shooting only a few seconds for Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959 (which also features Bunny Breckinridge). It was largely financed by the local Southern Baptist Church, which retained the rights to the film.


Wood’s films were quickly and cheaply made, up to 30 scenes per day as compared to only one in Hollywood A-movies. Retakes were rarely done even when they were obviously needed. Wood’s films rarely made money. Other actors in his stock company included the Swedish wrestler, Tor Johnson, the psychic Criswell and television horror hostess Vampira (Maila Nurmi).

Ed’s wife Kathy reports that that when Ed and Tony Curtis were both at Universal Studios, they would borrow dresses from the wardrobe there and try them on.

Wood expanded the adventures of Glen Marker, the protagonist of the Glen or Glenda, in two of his porno-thrillers: Killer in Drag, 1965, and Death of a Transvestite, 1967, where Glen is doing contract killings to pay for a sex-change, and then, on death row, will tell all if he can die in drag.

His writing of pornography became his major source of income, although he worked with Steven Apostolof in making soft-core films.

In the 1970s he became acquainted with the science fiction writer who would later become Jean Marie Stine. Jean later wrote of his early life.

He died in poverty, of a heart attack, while watching television.

Two years after Wood’s death, he was the winner in the Medved Brothers’ Golden Turkey Awards as the worst director ever. This started his cult, that culminated in the film of his life made by Tim Burton in 1994, and in founding in 1996 of the Church of Ed Wood which has over 3,500 baptized members.

*Not the British Foreign Secretary, nor the Canadian philanthropist.

• Harry and Michael Medved. The Golden Turkey Awards: the Worst Achievements in Hollywood History. Berkeley Books. 1980:252-61, 308-16. Includes a short but unreliable biography.
• Michael Copner (dir). On the Trail of Ed Wood. US 1990. A biography of Edward D. Wood Jr, with clips from the films, interviews with cast and crew members, and a tour of his home.
• Mark Patrick Carducci (dir & scr). Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion. Scr: Lee Harris, with narration by Lee Harris, and interviews with Rudolph Grey, Stephen C. Apostolof, Harry Medved. US 11 mins 1992. A documentary about the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space, that is also a film about Edward D. Wood Jr.
• Rudolph Grey. Nightmare of Ecstasy: the Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Feral House 380 pp1992. A collage of interviews with friends, colleagues and fellow transvestites.
• Ted Newsom (dir & scr). Ed Wood: Look Back In Angora. Narration by Gary Owens, with interviews with Stephen C. Apostolof. US 51 mins 1994. A documentary about Ed Wood's life and films with clever re-editing of clips from Wood's films to illustrate his life.
• Tim Burton (dir). Ed Wood. Scr: Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski, based on the book, Nightmare of Ecstacy, by Rudolph Grey, with Johnny Depp as Ed wood, Marton Landau as Bela Lugosi, Sarah Jessica Parker as Dolores Fuller, Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge. US 127 mins 1994.
• David C. Hayes and Hayden Davis. Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Ramble House 168 pp 2001.
• Jean Marie Stine. Ed Wood – The Early Years. Renaissance E Books. 112 pp 2001.
• "Lugosi to Appear as Weird Scientist".  Los Angeles Times:  Daily Mirror:  Los Angeles History, May 12 2011.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2011/05/lugosi-to-appear-as-weird-scientist.html. 

EN.Wikipedia      IMDB   
_____________________________________________________________________

Glen or Glenda uses the word “transsexual” the same year that Harry Benjamin is supposed to have coined it.

Glen or Glenda is in effect the first cinematic defence of queer lifestyles, eight years before Basil Dearden's Victim, 1961.

Ed was active in heterosexual transvestite groups in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s. So was Virginia Prince. But neither appears in the books about the other.

Glen or Glenda is not Bela Lugosi’s only drag movie. The year before, 1952, he had gone to England to star against Arthur Lucan in Mother Riley Meets the Vampire.

Gia Darling (198? - ) sex worker.

Darling was born in Guatemala. At age two, he was adopted by a US single mother, and they lived in Valencia, California.

Gia socially transitioned at age 15, and started taking street hormones. Three years later she had breast implants. She has not had genital surgery. However she has had 45 surgeries to feminize her face, and 100 other procedures on hips, buttocks, breasts, chin and cheeks – the cost of all this over $150,000, all with Dr Mayer in Los Angeles.

She has appeared in many porno films, and also many television programs. She won the Transsexual Performer of the Year AVN Award in 2006.

She has adopted two Maltese babies.

• “Gia Darling”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gia_Darling.
• www.darlingmodel.com.

Veronica Vera (1946 - ) teacher of femininity.

Mary Veronica grew up in New Jersey as a Catholic, and has a degree in English.

She worked on Wall Street as a stockbroker and then became a porn actress as Veronica Vera, where she worked with Annie Sprinkle, and was photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe. She was a regular at the Studio 54 disco in New York. Through the 1980s she wrote a column about New York’s sex scene in Adam magazine.

In 1984 she testified on sexual explicit media to a US Senate committee, and argued for the decriminalization of prostitution. In 1986 she attended that year’s World’s Whores Congress in Brussels. In 1989 she helped to reorganize Prostitutes of New York (PONY). Her 1992 video, Portrait of a Sexual Evolutionary, was included in a show about sex work at the University of Michigan Law School and became the centre of a censorship battle.

She founded her Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls in 1992. She has written books on cross-dressing, and many articles on sexuality in general. In 2005 she extended her services to women also, for like men they also need to learn the artificial aspects of being female, especially the art of walking in high heels. She also runs a group for wives of crossdressers.

*Not the character in Shadow Hearts Covenant game, nor the character Veronica Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street.

• Portrait of a Sexual Evolutionary, with Veronica Vera and Annie Sprinkle. US 28 mins 1992.
• Veronica Vera. Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls. Main Street Books 208 pp 1997.
• Veronica Vera. Miss Vera's Cross-Dress for Success: A Resource Guide for Boys Who Want to Be Girls. Villard 240 pp 2002.
• Rachel Kramer Bussel. “ Pump It Up”. Time Out New York. Oct 3, 2007. www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/museums-culture/22770/pump-it-up.
• www.missvera.com.

Candace Watkins (195? - ) sex worker, author.

Candace left home at 16 and became a transy prostitute in Chicago, then New Orleans and then Los Angeles. She also stripped, and performed in porn films. In the early 1980s she was a pioneer as a transsexual dominatrix, then a new porn genre.

She had gender surgery in 1983.


By the late 1990s when the Eddie Murphy scandal broke, she was a mentor to local transsexuals in Los Angeles. Although she had never tricked with Murphy herself she had been hearing tales for years of others doing so. She worked these anecdotes up into a book which she published online as Carnal Candy. She also put several of her friends in touch with The National Enquirer and The Globe which ran stories on Murphy and transsexuals.

When Paul Barresi working for Murphy’s lawyers sought to buy off potential witnesses, he saw Watkins as the focal point who would influence the others. They agreed on $15,000 and she swore a declaration at the lawyers’ office.

After Atisone Seiuli’s death, Candace created a memorial website saying that she had been pushed out of her window.

*Not the mayor in Louisiana.

• Candace Watkins writing as Carnal Candy. In the Closet with Eddie Murphy. 1997. eBook.
• Mark Ebner & Jack Cheevers. “The Bagman”. Hollywood Interrupted. March 23, 2006. www.hollywoodinterrupted.com/archives/the_bagman.phtml.

Atisone Seiuli (1976–1998) sex worker, performer.

Saoaumaga Atisone Kenneth Seiuli was born to a Mormon family in American Samoa.

She was able to express her femininity as a teenager using the name Shalimar (after the French fragrance). She was cheerleading captain at school, and was Miss American Samoa Island Queen 1993.

By 1996 she had moved to Los Angeles and begun transition as Atisone Seiuli.

She already had one prostitution conviction, when on May 2, 1997 she was caught by police in the vehicle of film star Eddie Murphy, and arrested for violation of a ruling from the previous conviction. Within a few hours this was a media event. The National Enquirer paid her bail in exchange for an exclusive.

This was her career breakthrough. She acted in a pornography film, and became the ‘House Madame’ at the 7969 nightclub where she performed to celebrities as a dominatrix with live snakes.

She was troubled by death threats from Eddie Murphy fans. On April 22, 1998 she was dead, clad in her underwear only, outside her apartment building. The coroner concluded that she had locked herself out of her fifth-floor apartment and fallen while attempting to swing from the building roof to an open window using a towel.

• Mark Ebner & Jack Cheevers. “The Bagman”. Hollywood Interrupted. March 23, 2006. www.hollywoodinterrupted.com/archives/the_bagman.phtml.
• “Atisone Seiuli”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atisone_Seiuli.

Karen Dior (1967 – 2004) drag-queen actor, theologian.

Geoffrey Gann was born in Ozark, Missouri, the son of Missouri Republican state senator Donald Gann, and raised as a Southern Baptist.

As a teenager he had earned a lot of money selling Mary Kay cosmetics to bored housewives, and at college he had first practiced the act that evolved into Karen Dior.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1988. Offstage he remained a man, but in character as Karen she was called ‘one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood’. She was an early friend of Chi Chi LaRue who introduced her to the porn business, and pioneered her in drag-queen porn. She performed and directed in gay porn, transy porn and mainstream cinema and television, including Xena: Warrior Princess and Veronica’s Closet.

She also acted under the names: Geoff Dior, Rick Van and Geoffrey Karen Dior. She did a few television commercials that emphasized her gender-bending. She also sang with The Johnny Depp Clones, and in 2001 wrote a kiss-and-tell autobiography.

She had had encountered Eddie Murphy in the late 1980s, and spoke up during the scandal in 1997. She was one of those who refused the pressure and bribes from Murphy’s lawyers even though she was ill with AIDS at the time.

As Geoffrey, he became an ordained minister, and earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion.

He died at the age of 37 from hepatitis stemming from AIDS.

• Geoffrey Karen Dior Gann. “Porn Star?”. In Kerwin Kay, Jill Nagle, Baruch Gould (eds). Male Lust: Pleasure, Power, and Transformation. Haworth Press, 2000. 
• Geoffrey Karen Dior. Sleeping under the stars: erotic memoirs of a decade in porn. Los Angeles: Bedside Press 2001
• Mark Ebner & Jack Cheevers. “The Bagman”. Hollywood Interrupted. March 23, 2006. www.hollywoodinterrupted.com/archives/the_bagman.phtml.
• “Karen Dior”. Internet Movie DataBase. www.imdb.com/name/nm0228045. 44 films.