Christine Jorgensen: The First Transgender Celebrity

In 1953, Christine Jorgensen became a household name when her story was plastered on the front page of the New York Daily News under the headline, "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty," catapulting her into a sudden, unexpected fame.

Show Notes/Works Cited:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16BZY0z3lsguQOGXxgLgiwR-UdRfSgiQRrb5SW7fdWL8/edit?usp=sharing

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Transcript

In November of 1949, Christine Jorgensen, living at the time under her birth name of George, bought a one-way ticket to Copenhagen with a singular goal in mind: to become the woman she was born to be. In a little over 3 years she would make national news at the end of her years-long suite of gender affirming surgeries, becoming the first truly international transgender celebrity. 

Jorgensen was born to Danish American parents in New York City in 1926, and as a child had a story that many now are familiar with. Shy and effeminate, Jorgensen knew how to dress the part of a young man in the 1930s and 40s, but never quite fit in with her fellow teenage boys. She was once described by a cousin as “arty,” and that same cousin noted that she was a subject of teasing by the other boys in their early youth. The teasing mostly subsided as Jorgensen got older, but it was replaced with internal turmoil that arrived with the onset of puberty. The growing attraction she felt as a young man to other men didn't help. It was in early High School that Jorgensen says that she first started experimenting with cross-dressing, sneaking into her sister's closet at night when she was out and trying on her clothes. This was, of course, a closely guarded secret. 

Despite Jorgensen's artistic interests, she graduated high school in 1945 and was thusly drafted into the Army. Thankfully, her failure to pass the medical exam and the imminent end of World War II saved her from active duty, and after serving as an army clerk for a couple of months, she left the service and entered an uncertain period of her life. During the next few years, she attended various colleges, first for photography and then Dentistry, and briefly worked for a newspaper. She even had another stint in the military, where she was once again described as being less masculine than her fellow service members. Then, in 1948, she got her hands on a copy of a very scandalous piece of scientific literature: Dr. Alfred Kinsey's “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.” While his work didn't contain any research on transgender experiences, it nevertheless made Jorgensen realize that she might not be alone in her ambiguous feelings towards gender and her attraction to (at the time) her fellow men. Her curiosity was sparked and she soon found literature on the Danish artist Lili Eibe and the British physician Michael Dillon, both transgender people from the early 20th century. She began digging deeper and theorized through her reading on hormones, including the book “The Male Hormone” by Paul de Kruif, that she must be suffering from a hormonal imbalance. But she didn’t want to be more masculine - she continued her research and eventually found out about a surgical center in Sweden that might be the answer to all of her gender troubles. 

And so, in November of the next year 1949, Jorgensen took a trip across the Atlantic to Denmark, where she had planned merely to stop to visit her Danish relatives. However, during her stay there, she got in contact with a Danish endocrinologist, Dr. Christian Hamburger, who worked at the Serum Institute. Dr. Hamburger, being an endocrinologist, was able to prescribe Jorgensen estrogen, and thus started her medical transition. Jorgensen chose the name Christine for herself in Dr. Hamburger’s honor. Over the next 2 years, she would continue her hormone therapy and undergo multiple surgical procedures that we would call today gender affirming surgeries. She would also receive another surgery in 1954, after returning to the USA.

 It's worth noting at this point that she was not the first American to travel to Europe to get these procedures, nor was she the first transgender person to enter the American consciousness, but in 1953 when her face and name splashed across the front page of the New York Daily News, she became the first truly national, and even International, transgender celebrity. So why Christine? 

Christine made the perfect 1950s transgender celebrity in the way that she transgressed in order to assimilate. She had the perfect All-American upbringing, serving her country as a GI, then transforming herself into the picture of the 1950s American Woman: white, blonde, well-dressed, well-mannered, and wanting nothing more than to be a good wife, at least according to the papers. Her conformity to the rigid gender norms of white, upper class 1950s America was at the same time both her appeal to, and disturbance in, the social fabric. If someone could undergo a couple surgeries and take a few years of hormones and come out the other side looking like the model of American Beauty, in what way can we claim that gender roles and gendered beauty are in any way inborn or natural? These questions shook the American consciousness. 

There was one other small reason why she made front page news, and that would be because, according to some sources close to her, she had herself tipped off the newspaper. It would later come to light that Christine was friends with the Copenhagen correspondent for the New York Daily News, Paul Ifversen, whom she had given her entire story to while he assisted her with her amateur filmmaking ventures during her stay in Denmark. She swore Ifversen to secrecy, but I think we all understand at this point that reporters can only be sworn to so much secrecy when they're given a juicy news story.

Christine, to her credit, understood that if her fame could not be avoided, at the very least it could be taken advantage of. Having borrowed a handsome sum of money from relatives in order to pay for her surgeries, she was quick to sell interviews and news appearances to the hungry masses. 

This is not to say that the news coverage was all positive, however; Christine quickly found herself the butt of jokes by comedians like Bob Hope and the tabloids couldn’t get enough of her, dredging up any rumor or unsavory tidbit they could to sell papers. Journalists also began to question whether her gender-affirming surgery had been “complete” and whether she was, in their eyes, truly a woman. They resorted to calling her doctors in Copenhagen with invasive questions about the nature of her surgeries and leveling accusations of medical fraud at the doctors and Christine. The tide had turned on Christine, but she wouldn’t let it shake her.

Despite this bad press, there was still enough fervor around her that she was able to convert her fame and her newfound beauty and appeal into a career and entertainment. She launched a successful nightclub act, touring major cities in the US and becoming the first trans woman to perform at legendary venues like Delmonico's Restaurant in New York City. She attracted large crowds early in her career, eager to see the gorgeous "gender deviant," but her crowds were not limited to the cisgender masses. Wherever she went, and wherever her PO Box was listed, Christine received floods of letters and tearful messages from transgender people saying that seeing her move through the world happy, thriving, and gaining what little acceptance could be gained as a transgender person in the 1950s, gave them hope. 

This hope became a comfort to her even as her Hollywood story lost a little bit of its on-stage sparkle. Her engagement to labor union statistician John Traub was called off after they failed to receive a marriage license in 1959. After her parents death in 1967, Christine moved out to California and published her autobiography, in which she opened up about her struggles with depression and other mental health issues. She also helped produce The Christine Jorgensen Story, a film about her life, in 1970. Her career and entertainment was slowing down, but she continued to work the nightclub circuits until 1982. She supplemented her night work with tours of the University circuit, giving lectures in which she was praised for her wit and unabashed directness. 

She passed away from bladder and lung cancer in 1989, and her ashes were scattered off Dana Point, in California. She was 62. Her legacy continues to this day as a groundbreaking transgender figure. I'll end with a quote from her autobiography, about the struggles of transgender people: "The answer to the problem must not lie in sleeping pills and suicides that look like accidents, or in jail sentences, but rather in life and the freedom to live it.”

Thank you for joining us for this episode of This Month in Queer History. Join us next month for our episode on the FDA ban on gay men donating blood being phased out.