Bobbie Kimber (1918 – 1993) ventriloquist, miniatures painter

Birkenhead, 1938, with Eddie

​I wrote an initial version in September 2008.

Ronald Victor Kimberley was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham. As a teenage aspiring variety artist he appeared with an all-male cast in Weston-super-Mare in 1935. The ‘leading lady’ quit, and Kimberley being the youngest was given her parts, and ended up doing his vent act without time to change. This went well, and as there was a surplus of male ventriloquists, although very few female ones taking the stage, he took the name Bobbie Kimber and started a stage career at the Theatre Royal, West Bromwich where he was paid £3 10s, but was also ‘given the bird’, that is booed off-stage. However he persevered with warm applause but little national recognition. His dummy at that time was Eddie, known for his infectious laugh. They appeared on television as early as 1939.

Kimberley was in the Army during World War II where he was a Sergeant assigned to do Service entertainments. There he met Janet, ten years older, who was touring with her parents in a family act. They married in 1941. They had a daughter Christine in 1949.

Augustus Peabody

During the war Kimber had  acquired a new dummy, Augustus Peabody. The act then was very successful and Bobbie and Augustus appeared in the major London theatres, including a Royal Variety Show at the London Palladium in 1947. In 1952 Augustus was given the job of announcing the acts for television’s Music Hall, assisted of course by Bobbie Kimber. They also appeared on radio. The Times commented in a review: 'Miss Bobbie Kimber is at once the triumph and surprise of the evening'.

Bobbie was at that time a tall glamorous brunette – she was 6 ft and 14 stone (1.83 m, 89kg), and had grown out her own hair (pinned under a hat when in male mode). Most members of the public, and even theatre critics took her to be a woman, as they did with Mrs Shufflewick, although some viewers would phone the BBC switchboard enquiring: is it a man or isn't it?

However Kimber was reasonably open about his sex. He appeared in Pantomime as early as 1945 when she was one of the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella at the Regal Theatre in Edmonton, which was broadcast on the BBC - that is, she was playing a Dame part and therefore was implicitly a man.

In December 1946 Kimber wrote an article for the trade magazine, The Stage. He acknowledged that he had been preceded as a female impersonator ventriloquist by Lydia Dreams.

In mid-December 1952, the Daily Mirror ran a front-page story

“Biggest B.B.C. Hoax is Out: “Five million viewers watched TV Music Hall on Saturday Night ... And once again Britain’s TV audience was hoaxed into thinking it was watching a woman. But it was not. For Bobbie Kimber is a man – married eleven years with a daughter of four.”

Bobbie pointed out that “I’ve always been careful to see that the B.B.C. never used any pronouns about me – just Bobbie Kimber, no ‘he’ or ‘she’.”

Gilbert Harding (1907-1960), the closeted-gay television personality phoned a top BBC executive to complain, and then attacked Bobbie in a magazine article: “Is Bobbie Kimber He, She or It?” The BBC contract was up for renewal, but was not taken up, and Kimber only rarely worked for the BBC again, despite many viewers writing in to ask what had happened to Augustus Peabody.

Hannen Swaffer (1879-1962), theatre critic who had written him up as a woman, snubbed him after that.

This was followed by a small article in The Stage:

“Recent Press comments about the sex of Bobbie Kimber the ventriloquist have succeeded only in raising faint smiles among his professional colleagues, who have always been aware of Mr. Kimber’s masterly female impersonation.” 

Kimber remained in demand but was now working as a known female impersonator – and even took to removing a wig at the end of the act.

However by the 1960s gigs had dried up. For a while he ran a pub, but both he and Janet drank too much of the merchandise. Later he drove lorries, and then London Transport buses.

Bobbie returned for a sold-out Cavalcade of Drag Music Hall in April 1969. Augustus was revamped with longer hair, and a moustache - which was fashionable at that time. In January 1972 Bobbie and Augustus appeared on the amateur talent show Opportunity Knocks, which led to a flurry of letters from old fans, and enquiries from agents.

On the 2 February the Daily Mirror ran a positive article on Bobbie, “Geared Up for a Comeback”, written by Clifford Davis, the same journalist who had denounced Bobbie twenty years before. This time he wrote her up as a female impersonator.

But then only 13 days later, the sister publication, the Sunday Mirror, ran the first of three three-page spreads written by Bobbie revealing that she had had transsexual surgery two years before, but not told her wife and daughter until December 1971. “They see me go out to work five days a week dressed as a woman. But at weekends – to please my wife – I dress as a man.” She did not change her driving licence or passport. “My family means everything to me. And this is why, even after my sex-change operation, I am not prepared to register as a woman. This would ruin my marriage completely, and after all we have been through, I love my wife more than ever. She wants me as a man – and for her I stay as one, at least at weekends.” Of her earlier years she wrote: “But my happiness as a man [after marriage] was short-lived. I found myself fighting a constant inner desire to become a woman. … I also started to change physically. Over the years my male parts began to shrink. My chest began to fill out developing into full breasts. The Army discharged me for ‘ceasing to fulfill physical requirements’. … Yet never in my life have I taken any kind of hormone treatment.” In late 1969 Kimber was playing a two-week engagement at the Mediterranean when she was invited to dine by a rich Moroccan who then made a pass. She confessed her sex, and surprisingly the man said: “You know, you really should be a woman. In my country, this can be done quite easily. Would you like me to arrange it?” She agreed and was flown to Casablanca, and was operated on by Dr Burou in January 1970. Bobbie first confided her change to a woman friend, Rene, who ran a pub in Yorkshire. Rene took her shopping in Leeds, and schooled her in the ways of women.  From June to October 1971 Bobbie lived alone in Blackpool where she found work as a toy demonstrator and some weekend and evening work as a ventriloquist. Then she worked as a barmaid until it became apparent that she was allergic to the detergent used to wash the glasses.  During this time she dated a man, and got to the point of cooking for him, but not sleeping with him.

Bobbie placed a half-page advert in The Stage newspaper in late March 1972 , referencing “the Sunday Mirror’s Sensational ‘He & She’ Story”, and was booked by clubs in Sheffield and Barnsley, Nottingham and Manchester, usually as the star attraction. Sidney Vauncez, writing in The Stage said “he has certainly come back with a bang”.

A fellow performer commented:

“I worked in a Revue with Bobbie Kimber at The Devonshire Music Hall, Manchester in the early 70s. She had shoulder length natural greying hair and always dressed as a woman. This was after the News Article about her being Transgender that had regenerated interest in her as a performer. She was like a very nice, polite middle aged woman and in no way flamboyant or brash like the stereotype Drag Act. She did tell me that she was the only person to appear at the London Palladium both as a male and later as a Female. She was very professional, a terrific Vent' and a lovely person.”  

Later in the 1970s the gigs again ran out, and for a while Bobbie worked at a hardware factory in Shoreditch.  Unlike in the 1960s she worked as female and was accepted as such.

Bobbie was also a fine painter of landscape miniatures.

Janet died in 1985, and was described on the death certificate as the wife of Roberta Kimber. Bobbie lasted another eight years, with some assistance from the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund. On her death bed it was discovered that Bobbie never did have a surgical sex change.

*Augustus Peabody was not the US Congressman Augustus Peabody Gardner.

• Bobbie Kimber. “Impersonation”. The Stage, 5 December 1946: 5.
• Clifford Davis. “Biggest B.B.C. Hoax is Out”. Daily Mirror, 15 December 1952: 1.
• “Bobbie Kimber’s Impersonation”. The Stage, 1 January 1953: 3.
• “Augustus Made Bobbie’s Name”. Portsmouth Evening News, 14 August 1953: 13.
• Roger Baker. Drag: a history of Female Impersonation on the Stage. A Triton Book. 1968: 189.
• Ellis Ashton. “Music Hall Miscellany”. The Stage, April 10 1969: 6.
• Clifford Davis. “Geared Up For a Comeback”. Daily Mirror, 2 Feb 1972.
• Bobbie Kimber. “He She: Five days a week I am a woman. At weekends my wife wants me as a man“. Sunday Mirror, 13 February 1972: 10-12.
• Bobbie Kimber “He buys his first dress as a woman; She has a close shave in a girl’s bedroom”. Sunday Mirror, 20 February 1972: 10-12.
• Bobbie Kimber “He gets his first marriage proposal as a SHE; tells of his life as a man – and a woman”. Sunday Mirror, 27 February 1972: 10-12.
• Jan Kimber. “Our Incredible marriage”. Sunday Mirror, 27 February 1972: 12.
• Sidney Vaunces. “Light Entertainment”. The Stage, 18 May 1972: 3.
• Kris Kirk & Ed Heath. Men in Frocks. GMP, 1984: 28
• Anthony Slide. Great pretenders: a history of female and male impersonation in the performing arts. Wallace-Homestead Book Co., 160 pp. 1986: 50.
• Patrick Newley. “Obituaries: Bobbie Kimber”. The Stage, April 29 1993: 41.
• Michael Kilgarriff. Grace, Beauty & Banjos: Reculiar Lives and Strange Times of Music Hall and Variety Artistes. Oberon Books, 1998: 146.
• www.christinekimberley.info.
• Richard Anthony Baker. Old Time Variety: An Illustrated History. Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2011:
• Oliver Double.  Britain Had Talent: A History of Variety Theatre. Red Globe Press, 2012: 187-8.

IMDB

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Born 1918 or 1920? In interviews Bobbie said 1920, but also that he was 17 in 1935 when he first appeared on stage.

The social construction of femininity circa 1970. Rene advised: “Always make your own bed and tidy your own room. This is something that women guests always do – but never men. … Don’t get into heated arguments over foreign affairs, politics, football matches or things like that”. Bobbie already knew to hold her cigarette upwards so that the smoke rises. “This stops too much nicotine staining your fingers.” “I’ve had to give up pints of beer and confine myself to the odd sherry or gin. And when I drink as a woman I have to remember to sip – not to down the lot in one big swallow.”

The February 1972 articles are written by Bobbie and this in the first person. However the captions to the pictures are presumably by a sub-editor and use male pronouns.

From a 21st-century perspective, it seems rather odd that ventriloquists as well as gender impersonators were booked on the radio, where they could not be seen – but audiences were required to have more imagination those days, and the broadcasts were supplemented by live appearances and media reports.

Kimber had a career bounce after being denounced in 1952.   I assume that the writing of the Sunday Mirror articles in 1972 was an attempt to repeat that, and in fact did produce another career bounce.  While she apparently lied about having surgery, she apparently did start living almost full-time as female, and as such should be regarded as transgender as well as a female impersonator earlier in life.

My initial 2008 version was mainly based on Roger Baker’s Drag: a history of Female Impersonation on the Stage which was published in 1968, and thus before the 1972 articles in the Sunday Mirror.   In his posthumous second edition, Bobbie Kimber has been removed, and so he did not discuss the later developments.

Bobbie’s daughter Christine added comments – see below.  She insisted that

“He arrived at the theatre as a man and left as one. He didn't reveal himself at the end of his act either because it served him better to have people think he was a woman. There weren't many female vents in those days and the range of his voice made it exceptional for a woman. It gave him a professional edge. It was a gimmick - all part of the game.” 

This would well fit the period before 1952, but after that he was perceived by the public as a female impersonator. After her revival in the early 1970s it seems that Bobbie was mainly living as a woman – at least five days a week. Apparently she told some, as she had written for the Sunday Mirror, that she had had the operation, and others just assumed that she was a woman.

www.christinekimberley.info no longer seems to work.  I suspect an outdated Flash plugin.

I was unable to find a web page of Bobbie’s  miniatures, nor a video of her performance.

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The Reader Comments to the original posting:

Anonymous said...

As the daughter of Bobbie Kimber (his only child now aged 61) I don't find it hard that vents etc were booked for radio. In those days most radio was recorded live from theatres and readio audience heard the laughter from the live audience. Not everyone could get to or afford to got to the theatre and radio was a far more widespresd and popular form of entertainment. And of course all the acts recorded were well known through news paper reviews, magazines, live appearances and the charity work the did.

17/1/10 12:07

Anonymous said...

As the daughter Christine Kimberley now aged 61) of Bobby Kimber who worked as a female impersonator and ventriloquist I find it strange to read 'outed himself as a man in 1952' Dad never 'outed himself' he was always a man.The press found out that he was a man and had a field day - that's all. He was good at his job - he worked at it like any male impersonator impersonating a man today. Fact is he was so good at it he fooled a lot of people for a long time.

17/1/10 13:21

Zagria said...

Thank you for your comments, Christine. Is your father still alive? Was his secret known to the other performers, or did he arrive at the theatre already dressed as female?

I might well have had written 'outed himself', but actually I did not. The details in Baker and slide are very brief. What a shame that Bobbie Kimber was removed from Baker's second edition.

17/1/10 14:11

christine kimberley said...

From Christine Kimberley, daughter of Bobbie Kimber. My Dad died on the 8th of April 1993.To answer your questions: Other performers did know that he was a man. He only dressed as a woman to do his act or for publicity shots and charity appearances and things like that. All his friends knew he was a man. He arrived at the theatre as a man and left as one. He didn't reveal himself at the end of his act either because it served him better to have people think he was a woman. There weren't many female vent's in those days and the range of his voice made it exceptional for a woman.It gave him a professional edge. It was a gimmick - all part of the game. He went to great lengths to study women's body language and mannerisms. Again, in those days there were far more distinctions in the way men and women behaved and carried themselves than there are now. At one point he even had some special corsets made (or as he would say 'constructed' such was the work involved) to give him more curves in the right places. His hands were his only worry but fortunately he could hide them behind his dolls.
This is how it all began: When he first started out as a ventriloquist in his late teens, in the late 1930's, he was working in a seaside town in a summer show. Because the back stage facilities were so bad the town council wouldn't allow any women performers in the show. The boss didn't like this and said that to get round it, one of the performers would have to dress as a woman. Dad was the youngest, and newest member of the company.....so....then one night something went wrong with the running order and Dad didn't have time to change out of his female costume back to male clothes - so - he just grabbed his dolls and went on stage. From there he realised he was on to something and, being the artist he was he put as much work and effort into learing to deceive with his looks as he had put into doing the same with his voice. Voila! Warm regards, Christine.

4/2/10 10:23

Pebbles said...

I dont know who "Christine" is but Im afraid I really dont think this is Bobbie's daughter. I knew Bobbie, his wife and daughter in the 70s and Bobbie did not dress as a woman just for his shows and his real daughter Christine would know that!

Bobbie dressed as a woman ALL the time and was thought of as a woman which is how she wanted it. She had spoken often to my husband and I about her operation to become a woman. Her real daughter spent many a time with myslf and my husband and other friends with Bobbie and her mother, with Bobbie dressed in women's clothes. If you ask anyone in the Stoke Newington area, where they lived, about Bobbie they will tell you the same, Bobby was NEVER seen in men's clothes.

31/3/10 15:05

Zagria said...

//www.christinekimberley.info now contains lots and lots of photographs of Bobbie Kimber and promises that his autobiography with be added soon. Enjoy.

1/4/10 17:34

Anonymous said...

Pebbles. Oh yes I am Bobbie's daughter. I have no idea who you are and would really appreciate your full name - then I might remember spending many hours with you. Bobbie's story was very complicated, believe me, and I have no desire to wash dirty linen in public. You may never have seen Bobbie out of womens clothing but I did. The big tabloid spreads in the 70's did not tell the whole truth - far from it.
Please contact me through my website where you will see part of my collection of photo's of my Dad - and me as a little girl with my family.I also have some unpublished snaps you might like to see if, like me, you are who you say you are. I post my comments as anonymous because I can never get the URL thing to work.

11/4/10 07:29

Robert G said...

I was lucky enough to work with Bobbie in the 1970's when we were both employed by a Hardware Factor in Shoreditch. Although she called 'Herself' 'Robbie' at the time, we didn't know her past, eventhough there were rumours about her gender, she dressed as a Woman and was accepted as so and used the Ladies Loo along with all the other women. There was also some talk of her past celebrity status and that she once performed on the same bill as Laurel and Hardy at the Paladium,but, she never mentioned this herself and very much kept herself to herself, except did say she was going to visit her daughter now and again. She was also a fine artist and spent a lot of time (while she was at work) painting miniture Landscapes and I'm proud to say that she actually gave me some of these paintings and I still have them today. However, it wasn't until years after I left that company,that I came across a man who once worked as a stage hand at the Paladium, who said he had met Laurel and Hardy,so when I mentioned Robbie, he told me hew knew 'Him' well, which was a shock to me, as I was young at the time and didn't understand such things. Anyway, If Christine, requires any further information from the time I worked with her Father, please don't hesitate to contact me at bgsky@supanet.com.

12/12/10 09:06

Pebbles said...

Thank you Robert for confirming what I said. Bobbie came to my wedding with the woman he had been married to, who was still her wife. I'm appalled how her daughter now seems ashamed of her father. Both Bobbie and her wife came to my wedding and BOTH wore women's clothes and Bobbie was a guest, she wasn't working, and didn't bring her dolls.

5/6/12 07:22

Broken Sword said...

I lived in Stoke Newington in the 80s and was a friend of Bobbie's I agree with all that Pebbles wrote. I spent many afternoons with Bobbie admiring her paintings (she painted exquisite miniatures) and chatting about the old days of variety theatre.

10/5/14 10:21

Patrick said...

I worked in a Revue with Bobbie Kimber at The Devonshire Music Hall, Manchester in the early 70s. She had shoulder length natural greying hair and always dressed as a women.This was after the News Article about her being Transgender that had regenerated interest in her as a performer. She was like a very nice, polite middle aged woman and in no way flamboyant or brash like the stereotype Drag Act. She did tell me that she was the only person to appear at the London Palladium both as a male and later as a Female. She was very professional, a terrific Vent' and a lovely person.

25/3/17 10:47

Szecsődi Kári (1992 - ) singer

Szecsődi was born in Balatonkenesén, Hungary at the northern end of Lake Balaton to a dynasty of circus performers and musicians, and was singing onstage with mother’s band before starting school.

In 2007 mother died in a car accident, and Szecsődi descended into depression and drugs. With the help of the Szecsődi family, father and siblings, Szecsődi entered the 2008 Megasztar, the talent search program on Hungary’s TV2. 10,000 applied, and Szecsődi came 7^th.

In 2011, as Kári she came out as trans in a television interview. She defined herself as “not a boy, not a girl, not straight, not bisexual, not gay, just me”. She had top surgery in 2012.

After the failure of her single in 2016, she has been living abroad with a US boyfriend and doing erotic work.

• Orbán Violetta. “A Megasztár énekese nem kellett a TV2-nek - Ezért nem került a Sztárban Sztár leszek! Adásába” Femina, 2019.09.18 . Online. Translation.

HU.Wikipedia      Instagram

Aleksa Lundberg (1981 - ) actress, author, activist

Original version May 2014.

All quotes from Bögtjejen via Collmar via Google Translator.

Lundberg’s father was a union organizer, but despite this the parents rejected her gender expressions. However there was an accepting grandmother, and it was a friend of the grandmother who introduced the child to a video of the drag show After Dark with Christer Lindarw.

At the age of 15, Lundberg was able to start an acting career with a recurring small male part in the Swedish television series, Kenny Starfighter.

Lundberg first came out as gay, then that she felt like a girl, and finally that she wanted correction surgery.  However Aleksa did not really fit in with the other trans women.

 “The difference between being transsexual and transvestite was important to point out. In no circumstances did I want to be taken to be like Birgitta or the other ladies. … In addition, I thought that the aunties at Gyllene Gåsen looked like boys in dress, which I myself was terrified to be perceived as. I was a girl born in the wrong body and otherwise normal. … It felt insanely sad not to order a large portion of meat. I had always loved luxurious steaks, clove potatoes and fatty sauces. But I had decided to appear as a woman in every conceivable part of my life.”

Transition was completed by 2002. In 2003 she was in the television miniseries, Veganspöket Lisa, but uncredited.

After 13 attempts she was accepted in 2006 to study drama at Teaterhögskolan, Göteborg. As she grew older she came to resent that Swedish law had prohibited her from freezing sperm before transition, and therefore from having children. She stopped hiding that she had been born male, and launched a one-woman show, Infestus, which told of her life as a boy, her transition, and life as a grown woman. She played this all over Sweden to acclaim.

In 2009 she graduated in drama, the first known trans person to do so in Sweden. However she found that she was not able to obtain work with any of the institutional theatres.

By 2010, apart from the Christian Democrats, the main political parties supported repeal of the 1972 law which prohibited transsexuals from having children after surgery. In 2011 Aleksa played in a stage version of Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf.

The ban on freezing eggs or sperm was removed in 2013. Aleksa, and another 141 transsexuals claimed damages of 300.000 kronor each, but received neither damages nor an apology.

In 2014 she was cast in Jean Genet's The Maids, but after a few weeks of rehearsal realized that she could not play the transgender implications of the play. Then, in three days, she wrote Maids! The transgender version and premiered it at Stockholm's Theatre Three.

At that point she was insistent that she would never reveal her boy name, but, of course, as her first acting gig had been as a boy her name was available in IMDB.

In 2018 she published her autobiography, Bögtjejen (=gay girl). Here she first expressed some degree

of regret:

“I regret it. I'm not a woman. Never been”. although she quickly adds: "My temporary stage of regret passed so quickly".   

As Collmer paraphrases: “She questions the image of herself - the simplified narrative of being born in the wrong body, and she questions the value of being normal. She puts words on the internalized transphobia that requires her to be exaggerated and purely feminine, and instead tries to embrace that she also has masculine sides. Gradually, she seems to stop looking for something that already exists, and instead start looking for opportunities to change attitudes at the community level. She goes from wanting to fit in to wanting to change.”

In October 2019 Aleksa apologised for not having been sufficiently open about the depression she had felt after her operation.

“I would probably not undergo corrective surgery if I had the same choice today,” she wrote. “And I want to apologise to those who perhaps needed to hear that story earlier.”

• Ann Tornkvist. "Aleksa Lundberg, Swedish Transgender Actress, Mourns Forced Sterilization". Huffington Post, 11/02/2011. Online.
• "Sterilized transsexuals sue Swedish government". The Local: Sweden's News in English, 24 Jun 2013. Online.
• Karin Thunberg. ”Vår sexualitet väljer inte kvinnor eller män”. SvD Kultur, 13 April 2014. Online.
• “'It means it a lot': Sweden compensates transgender people for forced sterilization” CBC, Mar 29, 2017. Online.
• Aleksa Lundberg. Bögtjejen. Brombergs, 2018.
• Marcus Joons. “En bögtjejs uppväxt”. Göteborgs-Posten, 22 sep, 2018. Online. Review of Bögtjejen. Translation.
• Katie Collmar.  “En bögtjej med lesbiska erfarenheter väcker tankar om vad kön är”.  Dagensbok.com, 2018.10.22.  Online.  Review of Bögtjejen. Translation.
• Cecilia Nelson. “Medryckande om en bögtjejs uppväxt“. Göteborgs-Posten, 5 nov, 2018. Online.  Review of Bögtjejen. Translation.
• “Hear Aleksa Lundberg - the gender dysphoria remained after the operation: ‘What the hell am I supposed to do?’”. Teller Report, 10/9/2019. Online.
• Richard Orange. “Teenage transgender row splits Sweden as dysphoria diagnoses soar by 1,500%”. The Guardian, 22 Feb 2020. Online.

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Genet’s The Maids need not be cast for male or trans actors. The 1974 film version featured Glenda Jackson and Susannah York as the maids, and the 2013 Sydney Theatre Company version starred Cate Blanchette and Isabelle Huppert.

M J Bassett (196? - ) film director

Michael Bassett was raised in Newport in Shropshire. Aspirations of being a wildlife veterinarian were dashed by low grades. At 16 Bassett left school and worked as a wildlife filmmaker’s assistant.

From there Bassett became a science-nature presenter on children’s television, and then was a children’s puppeteer. After quitting that, Bassett bought a VHS camera and made short films, some of which won amateur awards. A funded film was broadcast. Meanwhile Bassett spent years writing screenplays and attempting to get attention for them.

Finally a script for a horror movie set in the trenches of the Great War attracted attention from several financiers, although all but one dropped out when Bassett insisted on directing the script. It ended up being called Deathwatch, and was fairly successful. This led to another horror film, Wilderness, and the heroic fantasy Solomon Kane, and then to an adaptation of the video game Silent Hill. Bassett both wrote and directed, and for Silent Hill was in social media contact with the fans as the project developed. From 2013 Bassett began directing episodes in television series, first as a guest director, and the next year as lead director for Starz’ Strike Back.

In 2016, Bassett announced that she is trans. She is still working on major films and television. Since 2016 she is credited as MJ Bassett, and posts as emjaybassett.

• Christina Radish. “ ‘Strike Back’ Director Michael J. Bassett on the Show’s Final Season, ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead’ ”. Collider, August 28, 2015. Online.
• Mekanie McFarland. “"Strike Back" brings women into the action”. Salon, February 9, 2018. Online.

IMDB     EN.Wikipedia   ins-tag-ram  Twitter   Biography(archive)

Sophie White (1957 - ) filmmaker, actress

Sophie, originally from Houma, Louisiana, was previously known as Rory, and under that name had been a motorcycle racer, a boxing promoter, and a chiropractor, at first in Roswell, Georgia, and then, with a wife and three children, in Houma.

White invested in a brother’s new local television station, but it went bankrupt and White was left with a lot of equipment. Instead of selling it at discount, it made more sense to learn how to use it. White obtained camera work, and worked up to director of photography and then producer.

By 2017, White could no longer suppress her feminine side and had begun to transition as Sophie. That year she won an International Screen Writers Association award. She also pitched a film called Hummingbird loosely based on her own story of almost being pushed to suicide. They started filming with Sophie in the lead role. However another trans woman brought in as a consultant died by suicide, and they did not have the heart to finish post-production. 

Based on what had been filmed and seen, an agent signed Sophie as an actress. Since then she has had several film and television acting roles.

• “Transgender Filmmaker Transitions into New Career Roles” Ambush Magazine, October 8, 2019. Online.
• Eve Kucharski. “Transgender Actress Sophie White Talks Acting Origins, Upcoming Projects”. PrideSource, October 23^rd, 2019. Online.

IMDB

Éve-Claudine Lorétan (Coco) (1969 – 1998) model, housekeeper

​Lorétan was raised in Thun, south of Bern. She was taking black-market hormones from the age of 13. Her elder sister had been raped at age 13, and afterwards turned to drugs and died at a young age.

After high school, Lorétan trained as a model. At age 20 she took the name Éve-Claudine and Coco as a professional name. She met 32-year-old photographer Olivier Fatton in a sauna in Bern in November 1989, and they instantly fell in love.  She asked him to document her transition.

Her surgery was further video-documented by film-maker Paul Riniker. However there was an error, and more  surgery was required. The day her friends took her home from the hospital, she did cocaine to deal with the pain, and also insisted on performing that night. On stage she tore out her IV, howled and bled.

Riniker’s film Traum Frau Coco was shown on Swiss television in 1991 and watched by over 660,000 on the first broadcast. This made Coco famous in Switzerland, and sporadically she was in the news over the next few years, but she had to work as a housekeeper at a mental hospital in order make a living.

She also suffered from osteoporosis and depression. Doctors prescribed morphine, but that led to addiction.  She did model for the Bernese fashion designer Marianne Alvoni, and for a while was working at a sex salon in Thun, but was too well known.

In 1997 the manuscript of her autobiography was stolen. She made several suicide attempts, and so died at age 29.

In 2018, Coco’s life was made into a musical, Ein Transgendermusical by author Alexander Seibt and composer Markus Schönholzer. A male was cast for pre-transition and a female for her later years.

In 2019, Fatton published his photographs of Coco.

• Paul Riniker (dir) Traum Frau Coco. With Coco. Switzerland, 56 mins 1991.
• Miss Rosen. “Candid Photographs of 1980s Trans Trailblazer and Model, Coco”. AnOther Mag, March 01, 2019. Online.
• Miss Rosen. “The Majesty and Tragedy of a Trans Radical Gone Too Soon”. Feature Shoot, May 2, 2019. Online.
• Dunia Miralles & Olivier G Fatton. Coco. Edition Patrick Frey, 2019.
• Dunia Miralles. “Olivier et Coco: Art, amour, passion et tragédie”.  Des Avenues et des fleurs, 21 février 2019. Online.

DE.Wikipedia        transgender.at (translation)

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.

A BBC2 discussion from 4 June 1973 with Della Aleksander

This program was part of a series called Open Door that launched in April 1973.   Championed by the BBC’s director of programmes at the time, David Attenborough, the series provided a platform for marginalised groups to talk about issues affecting them, without any editorial intervention. 


Four trans women were described as the Transex Liberation Group, and were led by Della Aleksander.  The others were Rachel Bowen, Jan Ford and Laura Pralet.   Della was also the founder of GRAIL (Gender Research Association International Liaison), and co-produced this program.

They are joined by two men: Member of Parliament for Pontypool, Leo Abse, who had introduced the private member’s bill to decriminalize homosexuality that had become law in 1967, and Dr Schlicht, a psychiatrist. 

The opening clip is from the comedy program, Are You Being Served?  The same 'joke' was repeated in the movie spin-off from the series.

Note that the pre-ops are referred to as 'transsexuals' and the post-ops as 'sex changes'.   I wonder how much of out jargon today will still be used in 2063 in the same way?   Della several times describes herself and others as 'intersexual', a term which we use much more carefully these days. 

If the video does not play full-screen, click: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06c83f4.

• Lydia Smith.  "Trans women discussed trans rights on the BBC 45 years ago—here’s what it looked like".  Pink News, 27th July 2018.  www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/07/27/trans-women-discussed-trans-rights-on-the-bbc-45-years-ago-heres-what-it-looked-like.
• Gay Power Couple.  "These transgender women appeared on the BBC 45 years ago".  The gay Power Couple, July 29, 2018.  www.gaypowercouple.com/these-transgender-women-appeared-on-the-bbc-45-years-ago. 

Ayta Sözeri (1976 - ) actress.

Sözeri was born in Nuremberg, Germany. In 1982 the family moved back to İzmir (Smyrna).

Ayta had confirmation surgery in her early 20s. She did a business degree at Ege University and then studied Turkish music at Dokuz Eylül University, both in İzmir.

After working as a support vocalist, Ayta started getting acting roles in television and then in films. She has been in 13 television programs and in 5 films.

In March 2018 she was awarded as Best Female Actress In A Supporting Role at the 50 SIYAD (Film Critics Association) Awards Ceremony, for her role in Aile Arasında (Within the Family).

• “Trans oyuncu Ayta Sözeri kimdir?”. HaberTurk, 19.12.2017. www.haberturk.com/trans-oyuncu-ayta-sozeri-kimdir-1760940-magazin.
• “Ayta Sözeri: Bir başarı hikayesi”. CNNTurk, 15.03.2018. www.cnnturk.com/magazin/ayta-sozeri-bir-basari-hikayesi.

TR.Wikipedia     IMDB

Jamie Clayton (1978 - ) actress

Clayton was raised in San Diego, with a defense attorney and an event planner as parents. At age 19 she moved to New York to transition and to work as a make-up artist. She had completion surgery with Dr Toby Meltzer in Scottsdale in 2003, one of his first patients after he moved from Oregon.

In August 2008 Jamie was dating a man who knew a columnist at the New York Observer. This led to her coming out to the columnist and story was repeated in Gawker, and then elsewhere on the web. She became an internet sensation and got emails from all over. She was invited to go on The Tyra Banks Show, and CBS News’ Logo Channel did a segment on her. After a few months of acting classes, and meeting Laverne Cox, they co-hosted VH1's first makeover show TRANSform Me, where three transsexual fashion professionals came to the aid of cis women.

For a while Jamie had a problem in that known as trans, she could not get cis parts, and yet when she went to auditions for transgender roles she would be rejected in that she did not look the part. In December 2010 she was featured in an article in the New York Times about an acting class for gay actors. This led to her being cast as a secondary character in Hung, 2011, which was primarily about a male prostitute.

She played the role of "Michelle" in the interactive web series Dirty Work. Clayton is also a member of the performance art–rock group Roma! She now works regularly in movies and television, and was featured in Sense8, 2015-now (directed by the Wachowskis) and the Neon Demon, 2016.

• Spencer Morgan. "Has Fame Changed Jamie Clayton?" New York Observer, 7/20/10. http://observer.com/2010/07/has-fame-changed-jamie-clayton.
• Erik Piepenburg. “Helping Gay Actors Find Themselves Onstage” The New York Times, December 12, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/theater/13actout.html?_r=1&ref=arts.
• Jillian T Weiss. “Why I'm Impressed By Jamie Clayton”. The Bilerico Project, November 07, 2011. http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2011/11/why_im_impressed_by_jamie_clayton.php.
• Laverne Cox. "Hung Up on Our Bullies: Internalized Transphobia ". Huffington Post, 11/08/11. www.huffingtonpost.com/laverne-cox/hung-up-on-our-bullies-in_b_1079271.html.

IMDB      EN.WIKIPEDIA

John Ronald Brown (1922 - 2010) surgeon - Part I

 I wrote a shorter version of this in August 2007.   This version goes into more details, about his legal troubles, his patients etc.   



John Brown was born in 1922, the son of a Mormon physician. He grew up in Arizona and Utah. He was drafted in the Second World War, and, excelling on the General Classification Test, was sent by the army to medical school. He graduated from the University Of Utah School Of Medicine in August 1947. His first wife ran off with his best friend; his second died of cancer. After twenty years as a general practitioner, he took a program in plastic surgery at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, passed the written exam easily, but failed the oral.

From 1966-8 almost all transgender surgery in the US was done in university gender identity clinics. Georg Burou’s penile inversion technique that he pioneered in Casablanca was becoming better known, and in 1968 Stanley Biber, a doctor-surgeon at the Mount San Rafael hospital in Trinidad, a mining town in Colorado, who had had extensive surgical experience with the US Army during the Korean War, started doing vaginoplasties, using diagrams that he had obtained from Johns Hopkins Hospital based on Dr Burou’s technique.

February 2-4, 1973, saw the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome sponsored by the Divisions of Urology and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine. Its principal architect and chairman was Donald R. Laub, M.D., Chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. A highlight was the presentation of his techniques by Dr Georges Burou; John Brown also made a presentation, that was well received, doctors at that time not being aware of the idiosyncrasies of his practice. Vern Bullough: “the case of John Brown, who Zelda Suplee, my wife Bonnie, and myself at least halfway encouraged to do transsexual surgery, a recommendation we quickly regretted”.

John Brown set up business as a doctor-surgeon in San Francisco. His assistant was James Spence who had a criminal record but no medical training. Julie approached Brown and Spence about breast implants, and they, assuring her that she would be a ‘perfect woman’, talked her into a full operation. This was one of Brown’s first vaginoplasties; he was assisted by Spence. However unlike Dr Biber, Brown did not have surgical experience and he did not have operating room privileges. However he did network with trans activists.

Another trans woman, Wendy Davidson, who was attempting to organize peer clinics run by transsexuals, also worked with Brown for a while, as did Donna Colvin. Colvin later reported that he shot up valium before surgery, performed on kitchen tables and in hotel rooms. Brown also met with Angela Douglas, who later explained: “‘He wanted to help aid me and came up with several thousand dollars cash to help publish Mirage Magazine. In exchange, I promoted him considerably’.

In October Brown’s work was mentioned sarcastically in Herb Caen’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Journalist Paul Ciotti followed up and was invited to a dinner party where a pitch was made by James Spence to a group of urologists, proctologists and internists. Spence was hoping to establish what he projected to be the finest sex-change facility anywhere in the US. Dinner was served by several transsexuals, who were awaiting surgery. When asked how candidates would be selected for surgery, Spence replied: “It takes one to know one. We let other transsexuals make the decision. They can tell best when someone is a true transsexual — a woman trapped in a man’s body." His surgical method centered on using the glans penis to form a clitoris, and lining the vagina with scrotal skin. Ciotti says of Brown: “he came across as genial, knowledgeable and obviously quite proud of his technique. There was a certain naiveté (and even passivity) about him that struck me as surprising in a surgeon”.

However by January 1974 Brown and Spence were at odds.

In 1977 Brown performed vaginoplasty on Angela Douglas who paid around $600. She described him as one who "fed, housed, paid and helped hundreds, and gave free or nearly free surgery to at least two hundred of us". Another patient that year was Nicole Spray.

Later that year, the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance revoked Brown’s medical license for "gross negligence, incompetence and practicing unprofessional medicine in a manner which involved moral turpitude". This was partly based on his practice of doing vaginoplasty on an out-patient basis, not in a properly equipped surgical theater, and having patients work as medical assistants as part of their barter for their own surgery. He also misrepresented transgender surgery on insurance forms as "the congenital absence of a vagina". Despite this, the judge also filed a memorandum opinion that Brown was a pioneer making innovative contributions in transsexual surgery: perhaps a better resolution would be to include Brown in a medically recognized organization, with others selecting the patients and providing post-operative care.

In 1979 Julie sued, saying that the operation had left her neither male nor female. She sued for $7 million, but settled out-of-court for significantly less, but “enough for psychiatric care help for the rest of Julie’s life and a new operation”. Brown’s lawyer made the offer after psychiatrist Kathleen Unger testified that the patient would be a mental cripple for the rest of her life.

Brown worked and successively lost permission to practice in Hawaii, Alaska and St Lucia. In 1981, in St Lucia, he, then 59, contracted an arranged marriage to a 17-year-old, who did not speak English. He taught her the language, and they had two sons.

He then returned to southern California and began an underground practice operating in Tijuana. Tijuana was already a known destination for transsexual surgery. The most eminent surgeon was Jose Jesus Barbosa who worked with Harry Benjamin, and who was the surgeon for Canary Conn and Lynn Conway.

Most of Brown’s patients were trans women who could not afford Dr Biber or Dr Barbosa, or did not meet the requirements re time on hormones, psychiatrist’s referral etc. One patient at this time was Monique Allen, who had vaginoplasty at age 22, and came to Brown for enhancements. She would continue with various other doctors, and eventually had over 200 plastic surgeries.

Patrice Baxter, a cis woman, also had a surgery business in Tijuana. She met Brown, and became a long-time friend and business partner. She also went to Brown for a tummy-tuck, a face-lift and breast implants. Several of her friends and relatives were also operated on: her granddaughter had her ears fixed so that they did not stick out. Brown used Baxter’s home in Mexico for patient postoperative care. By this time he was charging $2,500 for a vaginoplasty – although many of his patients never paid. Baxter was quoted by Ciotti: “"He was brilliant, but he had no common sense. He would walk through plate-glass doors. He couldn’t balance his checkbook." Sometimes in the middle of a conversation he’d just pick up a magazine and begin to read. His bedside manner was no great shakes, either. "He tended to mumble. He didn’t hold your hand." But so what? She asks. "He wasn’t a general practitioner," he was a surgeon.

In 1985 a then-19-year-old had surgery that was so successful that her husband never guessed her past. She later became a manager for an airline. Ann, a traumatized Cambodian who had fled the Khmer Rouge was also pleased with her surgery and became a stripper in Las Vegas’ Chinatown.

On the other hand it was estimated that at least 70 of Brown’s transgender patients ended up with permanent colostomies. UC San Diego plastic-surgery professor Jack Fisher repaired 15 or so of Brown’s disasters: “"He’s a terrible, appalling technical surgeon. There’s just no other way to describe it. He doesn’t know how to make a straight incision. He doesn’t know how to hold a knife. He has no regard for limiting blood loss."

Brown started offering penis enlargements – he did this by cutting the suspensor ligament holding the penis root to the pubic bone. He ran advertisements in The Advocate, and in 1984 he held a seminar in San Francisco – entrance fee $25 per person. He was arrested for medical fraud. However it took four years to come to trial.

Meanwhile, in 1986 Penthouse Forum featured this as a cover story "The Incredible Dick Doctor”.  The article portrayed Brown as an inattentive driver who backed into other cars, and whose trousers fell down in the operating room. The television news magazine Inside Edition followed up with an investigative story on The Worst Doctor in America. Brown actually co-operated with the film crew.

Brown pleaded no contest to the fraud charges in 1989, was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in jail, but served only 30 days.


In transsexual circles Brown came to be known as 'Butcher Brown', but patients still came.

After the broadcast of the Inside Edition program, the San Diego District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation that led to Brown’s conviction in 1990, and a sentence of three years for practicing medicine without a license. Several trans woman, ex-patients, showed up to express support for previous work. His wife, the one from St Lucia, now divorced him, although they remained on good terms. He served 19 months.

Continued in Part II.

Mark Angelo Cummings (1964–) Part I: occupational therapist, Latino television personality.

Maritza DelCarmen Perdomo was born in Havana, of partial Taino heritage. From the age of three she was obviously a masculine girl, and constantly had problems with wearing dresses.

The family emigrated to Florida when she was five. She became a crack addict during a stint in the US Army. Afterwards Maritza went wild in the Miami gay scene, and at 24 made a last-ditch attempt to go straight by marrying a 55-year-old Englishman. However the marriage quickly fell apart as did several lesbian affairs. In one case the intention was to start a family, but Maritza was unable to get pregnant.

At age 38 in 2002 Maritza had become a bodybuilder and occupational therapist, where she took up with Violet who worked in the same gym. She was asked if she was transitioning, based on her appearance, but she did not understand the term until she looked it up on the internet.

"The sky just like opened up. There are others like me. It was like a revelation."

Mark Cummings, as he became, went from an initial consultation with a therapist, to hormone therapy, to a full mastectomy and hysterectomy with Dr Harold Reed in Miami, to a legal name and gender change in just five months.

"It was the easiest thing. I don't let grass grow under my feet. I was fulfilling my destiny. This is what I was supposed to be."

He and Violet were then legally married. To Mark's surprise it was his father alone in family who accepted him.

Violet and Mark, 2004

In January 2006 Mark and Violet appeared on the syndicated Maury Povich Show to great success.

"Well, Maury, I want viewers to know that being transgender is not a sin, a crime, or a deviant behavior. What it is, is a birth defect. We are human beings with feelings, and all we ask is the respect... "

Following this, he was contacted by the Anderson family in Florida who were attempting to enrol their trans daughter, Nicole, in school. They were said to be the first US family to support a trans child in this way. Mark immediately agreed to help. He wrote in response to a negative posting:

"My mother did everything within her power to make me a girl, although, I knew other wise. When I met The Andersons, I had only wish they could have been my parents. When I met Nicole, I bonded instantly, and felt, what a lucky girl she is. Gender Dysphoria is real. To tell you the truth, there will be an epidemic of it. You see at 8 weeks time when the brain and central nervous system is being developed, exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals ( pesticide, herbicides, fungicides, and estrogenic compounds such as soy products) alter the typical pathways that hard wires the brain to be a boy or girl brain. The weight of scientific evidence demonstrates that Transsexualism is biologically based."

He also wrote to the school board offering to educate and train teachers himself – an offer that was declined. He persuaded the Andersons to talk to a reporter. They were grateful, but sometimes found him a bit overwhelming.

Mark became a celebrity on US Spanish-language television for his open and outspoken appearances explaining his gender change and wowing the Latino television hosts. Again he explained transgenderism as a birth defect resulting from environmental toxins. Later that year Mark Cummings published his 79 page autobiography wherein he described the anguish he felt living in a female body:

“Being in the wrong body is a crime. Death is appealing to those of us, who are encased in the wrong shell, who are trapped in a flesh of darkness, that ...sickens us to the point of madness” (pp 33).

Mark and Violet opened a wellness center business. He also wrote and performed music and toured with his life story.

Continued in Part II.

_______________________________________________________________________________

It was said at the time that the Anderson family was the first US family to be supportive of a trans kid in this fashion.   However the Wisconsin woman we know by the pseudonym of Sally Barry was supported by her parents in the 1930s/1940s with varying response from the school authorities