Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall

21. Trans-Forming Drag

236 21 Trans­Forming Drag In the 1950s George/Christine Jorgensen brought her one­ gal show to the Black Orchid during sex­change mania, when Chicago resident Carl Rollins Hammond, once a side­ show “freak,” became Hedy Jo Star. It was a time when Tony Midnite, costume designer and female impersonator, brought the Jewel Box Revue to the South Side, which heralded the 1960s Chicago drag boom. On December 1, 1952, a front-page headline in the New York Daily News read “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty; Operations Transform Bronx Youth” and George/Christine Jorgensen was outed as the first person in the world to change sex. This, of course, was not true, as in 1931 Danish artist Einar Wegener had a sex change to become Lili Elbe, though the process was not successful, as she died from complications after a fifth operation attempted to implant a uterus. Jorgensen went on to make a career out of her “sex change” notoriety. On July 3, 1956, she opened in Chicago at the Black Orchid nightclub at Rush and Ontario. She described her act to Robert Wiedrich of the Chicago Tribune in an article published the next day: “It’s a philosophical comedy number which shows life is full of changes. It’s brilliant. If you’re going to be what people consider a star, you’ve got to live the part. The idea of trying to be the girl next door is silly.” After trying her hand at acting, singing, and photography, Jorgensen took up writing and published Christine Trans­Forming Drag 237 Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography (1967). She also spoke of her life and experiences on university campuses around the country. On January 9, 1969, she appeared on Chicago, a TV talk and guest show, along with several local female impersonators, including the Cuban legend Heri del Valle (real name David de Alba), at the time Chicago’s most famous Judy Garland impersonator. In 1952, after Jorgensen’s sex change story broke, interest in transsexual affairs spawned an underground cult, with filmmaker Ed Wood making Glen or Glenda? (1953) and the publication of a slew of paperbacks with titles like Man into Woman by Neils Hoyer (1953) and The Lady Was a Man by Mark Shane (1958). Half (1953) by Jordan Park, a pseudonym for Chicago science-fiction writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, is a fictionalized account of a Polish American man living on the South Side of Chicago struggling with his sexuality and gender. “You’ve heard about ‘men’ like Steven Bankow,” the cover reads. “You’ve read about them in your daily newspapers. But here—for the first time—a novelist tackles the problem of a man who tries to change his sex.” In the autobiography I Changed My Sex (1965) by Hedy Jo Star, the first recipient of a sex change in an American hospital, she writes: “In the instant that I awoke from the anesthetic, I realized that I had finally become a woman.” In 1920 Star was born Carl Rollins Hammond in Prague, Oklahoma. In his late teens he became a Half-Man/Half-Woman sideshow freak in a circus. In the 1930s and ’40s most circuses, carnivals, and traveling freak shows included a tent with a banner emblazoned “Sex Paradox” or “Sex Enigma” and the “freak’s” name underneath: Anna–John, or Roberta–Ray, or Leo–Leola the Double Sex Wonder, and Joseph– Josephine the Polish Austrian hermaphrodite supposedly split down the middle, one side male one side female. Star stayed with the circus until the outbreak of World War II, when he was drafted into the army, where he escaped detection and carved a niche for himself entertaining the troops in touring shows like Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army. After breast implants in New York’s Park East Hospital, Star completed his surgery in the Methodist Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and on July 31, 1962, Carl Rollins Hammond became Hedy Jo Starr. At the time Star was operating a theatrical costume company in Chicago’s Loop, making clothes for female impersonators, strippers, burlesque stars, and circus folk. Star also worked in nightclubs as a hypnotist. In September 1966 she was at the Swing, 48 East Walton, doing magic and hypnosis, in a variety show Trans­Forming Drag 238 of “mental telepathy, dance interpretations and an all star revue with Asmara, Bambi, and Linda Gibson.” Later, Star wrote an advice column...