Diane Delia (1957 - 1981) Performer

John Delia was the son of a builder, John was Rh-negative and required a transfusion within hours of birth. His mother doted on him and, preschool, dressed him as a girl. He attended Manhattan’s High School of Art & Design and specialized in music.

He graduated to become a drag artist: doing lip-synch impersonations of Diana Ross. He would perform without underwear so that the audience could see his penis under his skirt. At age 21, after several gay affairs including one with Robert Ferrara, he started seeing a psychiatrist with a view to transition, took estrogens, and had facial surgery.

Then he met Robyn (originally Roberta) Arnold, the rich daughter of an ear, nose and throat surgeon. They became lovers and John stopped his hormone shots and started lifting weights to discourage his breasts. His father was delighted. John was starting to perform at the major Manhattan discos. John announced that they would marry.

Diane's one and only modelling gig.

However his urge to be a woman had returned. After discussion, Robyn agreed to support him in this. In November of that year he flew to Dr Biber in Colorado and returned as Diane (from his favorite impersonation subject). Diane worked for a while as a nightclub hostess in Montréal, and as a model for Avon cosmetics.

After a run of unsatisfactory promiscuity she persuaded her old flame, Robert Ferrara to marry her, which he did, in his home town of Berwick, Pennsylvania. His parents tried to talk them out of it, and a neighbor objected to the sheriff that they were two men, but Dr Biber's affidavit and a reissued birth-certificate carried the day. Robyn paid $1400 for the wedding ring. Although Robert had had affairs with women, he did not relate to having sex with Diane. They also argued and fought, physically. So she moved out, and in with Robyn.

The move expanded into a two-day party. After the party Diane agreed to meet Robert to talk over their difficulties. She was never seen again until her body washed up in the Hudson River. Robert and Robyn lived together in the latter's apartment after the murder. They were charged together that they had both shot her. Robyn, with her expensive lawyer, was acquitted. Robert, with his inexperienced lawyer, went to prison. The bar where Diane used to do her Diana Ross impersonations commemorated her passing by having several people imitate her impersonation.

• "Transsexual Murder: Tangled Relationships Described in Trial of Former Lover, Husband".  New York Herald Journal, Sep 27 1982.  Online  
• Carol Vecchione. "The jury in the slaying of a transsexual fashion.." UPI, Oct 9, 1982.   Online 
• Linda Wolfe. "The Transsexual, the Bartender and the Jewish American Princess".  New York Magazine, 17 Jan 1983.   Online.   Reprinted in  The Professor and the Prostitute, and Other True Tales of Murder and Madness. Ballantine Books. 1987: chp 6. 

Find a Grave     

Two female transvestites in Elizabethan England

Sometimes all we can see is a snapshot recorded in the proceedings of a court. The motivation and the context are unknown. Here are two such:

Margaret Wakely
 
In 1601, Margaret Wakely, the mother of a 'bastard' child was convicted by the Bridewell Court in London of going about in 'man's apparell'.
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Dorothy Clayton
 
On 3 July 1575, Dorothy Clayton, spinster, was convicted by the Alderman's Court in London: she 'contrary to all honesty and womanhood commonly goes about the City apparelled in man's attire. She has abused her body with sundry persons and lived an incontinent life. On Friday she is to stand on the pillory for two hours in men's apparell and then to be sent to Bridewell until further order'.
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• Jean E Howard. “Crossdressing, The Theatre & Gender Struggle In Early Modern England”. Shakespeare Quarterly. 39,4 1988: 420

Marie-Pierre Pruvot (1935 - ) High-school teacher.

Jean-Pierre Pruvot was born in Ysser, a suburb of Algiers. At 16 Jean-Pierre attended a touring version of La Carrousel in Algiers. At 18 (the minimum legal age) he became Bambi and appeared at Chez Madame Arthur in Paris, and a year later at La Carrousel. She shared a home with Coccinelle. She became a star when Coccinelle went on tour.

She transitioned 1960 with the same surgeon, Georges Burou in Casablanca, that Cocinelle had gone to two years previously. She had to return to Algiers during the troubles to get her birth certificate re-issued, but the Algerian certificate was recognised in France without problems.

She played minor roles in a couple of long-forgotten films.
In her 30s, she returned to school, while still performing at La Carrousel, and qualified to attend Sorbonne University. She earned an arts degree, a masters with a thesis on the novels of Marcel Proust, and a teaching certificate. She then became a high-school teacher of literature in Cherbourg, and later near Paris. She stayed in teaching for 25 years, and was awarded the Palmes Academiques. Her past as a performer never came out during her teaching career.

In 2003 she wrote and published her first autobiographical novel set in the Algerian War of Independence using the name Marie-Pierre Ysser, and her second in 2007 about her show-biz career.
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• Vittorio Sala (dir). Costa Azzurra. Scr: Ottavio Alessi, Una Guerra, Vittorio Sala & Rodolfo Sonego. With Alberto Sordi as Alberto, and Bambi in one of the four tales. Italy/France 84 mins 1959.
• Mino Loy (dir). 90 notti in giro per il mondo. Scr: Guido Castaldo & Nico Rienzi, narrated by Nico Rienzi, documenting Bambi’ show, amongst others. Italy 88 mins 1963.
• Marie-Pierre Ysser. J'Inventais Ma Vie. Paris: Osmondes. 2003..
• Marie-Pierre Pruvot. Marie parce que c'est joli. Villettes: Ed. Bonobo, 2007.
• Lynn Conway and Karine Espineira . “Marie-Pier Ysser ("Bambi"): J'inventais ma vie” TS Successes. 2005. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/Bambi.html#My%20Life.
• Karine Espineira. “Marie-Pier Pruvot – Bambi”. http://patatrans.free.fr/bambi.html
• www.bambi-lelivre.com

Here is a photograph of a reunion of Bambi, Coccinelle and April Ashley in 2005. The man is Thierry Wilson, Coccinelle's third husband.

John Randell (1918 – 1982) Psychiatrist.

See also Richard Green, John Randell and ... 

John Randell was born in Penarth, Glamorgan, Wales, and qualified as a doctor at the Welsh National School of Medicine in 1941. From 1942-6 he was a Surgeon Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), and then worked at Guy's, St George's and St Thomas's, all in London.

In 1950 he was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital. There he worked with Lennox Broster who had been treating intersexuals, since the 1930s, but not transsexuals as such. At the end of the 1950s he wrote a paper on 50 transvestites and transsexuals that he had worked with. In his 1960 MD thesis (Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales) he discussed 61 mtf and 16 ftm cases. This was one of the first higher degree theses on transsexuality.

B'ham Post 21 Nov 1964 p9

During the 1960s he was seeing 50 cases a year, which rose to nearly 200 in the 1970s. By his own figures, he saw 2438 patients (1768 mtf, 670 ftm). He also spent half his time with general psychiatric patients. In 1969, his name was mentioned several times in press reports about the First International Symposium on Gender Identity, and he testified at the Corbett vs Corbett trial that he ‘considered that the respondent (ie April Ashley) is properly classified as a male homosexual transsexualist', (which contributed to the legal problems of transsexuals and intersex persons in the UK for the next 35 years).

From this time on he was the ‘expert’ sought out by the media and appearing on the occasional radio programs. In 1980 the News of the World claimed that he and his surgeon, Peter Phillip, had made London the ‘sex-change capital of the world’. However Randell had not been in favour of surgery until his patients who had had surgery abroad returned with positive evaluations. Even in the 1960s less than 10% of his patients managed to achieve surgery and only a third of the mtfs of those had vaginoplasty. Even in the 1970s when numbers increased, still only 15% of patients achieved surgery.

However by then he was arguing that surgery could be appropriate and that psychotherapy did not work. Even then he restricted surgery to sane, intelligent, single and passable individuals. Passable implied conforming to Randell’s old-fashioned ideas of being ‘ladylike’, that many women had abandoned by the 1970s. Until the end he continued to refer to patients, including post-operatives, by the pronouns of their birth gender, and would tell an mtf accepted for surgery that ‘you’ll always be a man’.

Most patients describe him as brusque, rude and cold. However Tula found him to be ‘absolutely charming’ (perhaps because she passed so well).  He is the unnamed doctor in the Julia Grant television documentaries who shocked most reviewers by his attitude.

Randall is the doctor who told Christopher Wilson, the author of Dancing With The Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue, that Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) = a woman with XY chromosomes.

Other patients include Mark Rees the town councillor, Rachael Padman the physicist, Alice Purnell the activist.

He died of a heart attack.

*Not the physicist nor the Conservative MP.

• John B. Randell. "The Early Recognition of Psychiatric Disorders in Adults". Medicine Illustrated, vol IV, 215-220, 1950.
• John B. Randell. "Euphoriant Effects Of "Preludin". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5043, 1957: 508-509.
• John B. Randell. "Transvestitism And Trans-Sexualism: A Study Of 50 Cases". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5164, 1959: 1448-1452.
• John B. Randell. Cross Dressing and the Desire to change Sex, MD Thesis, University of Wales, 1960.
• John B. Randell. "Preoperative and Postoperative Status of Male and Female Transsexuals" in Richard Green & John Money (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
• John B. Randell. "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery".  Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1:2, 153-161, 1971.
• John B. Randell. Sexual Variations. London: Priory Press. 1973.
• John B. Randell. Transsexualism and its management, Nursing Mirror, 45-47, 1977.
• David Pearson (dir). A Change of Sex. With Julia Grant. BBC TV. 1980.
• Alice Purnell. "Dr John Randell", Beaumont Bulletin, 14:2, 1982.
• "Dr J.B. Randell",  S.H.A.F.T. Newsletter, 15, 1982.
• Dave King. “Pioneers of Transgendering: John Randell, 1918-1982”. University of Ulster: Gendys Conference, 2002. www.gender.org.uk/conf/2002/king22.htm.

John Cabell Breckinridge(1903 – 1996).

Bunny Breckinridge was descended from a US Attorney General, a Confederate general and the founder of Wells Fargo Bank. He was heir to the Comstock load fortune. He was born in Paris, educated at Eton, and at Oxford University.

He was openly gay at a time when it was dangerous for the lower classes to be so, and was known for his flamboyance, and his use of perfumes and jewelry. He performed in local and amateur theatre, including Shakespearean plays. He also did drag shows. In France he used the name Jacques Solange. In 1927 while working as a drag performer in Paris, he married a woman and while they divorced after two years, they had one daughter, Solange.

As sex-change operations became better known he would announce his intention of having one, that he would go to Denmark, and later Mexico. However he never went through with it, nor did he ever start living fulltime as female.

In 1954 he taken to court for failing to support his aged, blind mother in England. In 1955 he was arrested for cruising and charged with vagrancy, but his family connections resulted in the charges being dropped.

By 1958 he had met fellow transvestite, Ed Wood, and was cast as the alien leader in Plan 9 From Outer Space, 1958. In 1959 he was arrested for taking under-aged boys to Las Vegas, and committed to a state hospital for the criminally insane, but released the next year. In the late 1960s he opened his San Francisco home as a hippie drop-in.

He was the inspiration for Bunny Wigglesworth in Zorro, the Gay Blade, 1981, and was amused to be portrayed in the Ed Wood film, 1994.

• Rudolph Grey. Nightmare of Ecstasy: the Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Feral House 380 pp1992: 81-2, 113-4.
• Tim Burton (dir). Ed Wood. Scr: Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski, based on Nightmare of Ecstacy by Rudolph Grey, with Johnny Depp as Edward D. Wood Jr, Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge, Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. US 124 mins 1994.
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 84, 305n97.
•  “Bunny Breckinridge”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_Breckinridge.

Brigitte Martel (1949 – 2006) chanteuse

Jacques Bélanger was famous throughout Québec at the age of 11 with the song ‘Maman, tu es la plus belle du monde’.

At age 20 he sang in a transvestite review and found out about sex changes. Jacques transitioned in 1972 and became Jacqueline Bélanger.

She restarted her career as a chanteuse under the name Brigitte Martel. She married a man in 1981 and published her autobiography the same year. In 1987 her mother died and she had a period of depression. As the Montréal cabarets closed she found it hard to work.

She was one of the founders of l’Association des Transsexuelles du Québec (ATQ) and performed for their fundraiser each year.

She died at home of a cardiac arrest.


Here is a video clip about her made by Mirha-Soleil Ross:

• Brigitte Martel. Né homme, comment je suis devenu femme. Éditions Québecor 155 pp 1981.
• Richard Thérrien. “Autrefois Jacques Bélanger, Brigitte Martel. Le chanteur devenu femme” Dernière Heure April 1997 Online at www.atq1980.org/bm.htm. 

 FR.WIKIPEDIA

Angelo Heddington (1973 – 2003), farm worker.

He was Angela until he left school at 14. Passing as male, he built up his muscles doing farm work around Thedford, Ontario. He had both male and female lovers, and was controlling and abusive with both. He starved a male lover until the latter lost 45 kg.

He met Elizabeth Rudavsky in 2002. He was working on a farm, and she was travelling to farms to sell dogs. She left a common-law husband of five years to move in with Angelo. He followed her everywhere and she lost her job. He locked the fridge and beat her often. Her weight fell from 91 to 59 kg. After five months she finally killed him with a knife. It then came out that Angelo was female-bodied. A judge, Crown prosecutors and the police investigators agreed that Rudavsky had acted in self-defence and dropped the second-degree murder charge.

• Colin Freeze. “Woman kills abusive lover, finds 'he's' female”. The Globe and Mail. Apr 5, 2003.

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With lots of good reason, we are suspicious when the killer of a trans person is let go, but on the evidence here this is probably an exception.