A Gender Variance Who's Who

Stevens was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but raised in Concord in the East Bay across from San Francisco. He came out as gay when he was called to the draft board.

In 1966 Jae started a professional career in San Francisco as a female impersonator and comedian, dancer and singer at THE FAN-TASY on Mason Street as part of "Jack & The Giants". He continued to work in the showroom of the P.S. Lounge, appeared on The Cabaret circuit in San Francisco and Los Angeles as one-half of the team of Stevens & [Steve] Miller. Jae also performed in a trio act with his sister, Melissa Stevens, and Miller. They were known as the "Wonder Sisters”.

In 1970, Jae was performing with The New Faces, and appeared at a charity premiere of the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, IMDB, as Jean Harlow and, taken as a cis woman, was acclaimed best female by audience applause. She then revealed that she was an impersonator – which was to the chagrin of the socially prominent judges.

Jae in The Laughing Policeman

Jae had an uncredited cameo in the 1973 film The Laughing Policeman. IMDB.

June 1974 Jae, age 27, had been performing at Finocchio’s night club. He (in mufti) was seen later on the night of the 24^th in the Cabaret Club in the North Beach, but it was not noticed that he left with anybody. He was feeling good as the next morning the Wonder Sisters were to fly to Boston for a gig. However, on the morning of June 25 Jae's body was found near Spreckels Lake in Golden Gate Park having been stabbed five times, three directly in the heart. It so happened that at 5 am the same morning the police had attempted to pull over a suspicious car in the Hayward area, but the driver raced away, was chased and crashed. The young driver, described as blond with shoulder-length hair, ran and escaped. The car was later identified as that of Jae Stevens.

The crime scene was a secluded area of the park sometimes used for gay encounters. The police assumed that Jae and his killer had gone there together after meeting in a bar.

There had been a similar murder of a gay man five months earlier, and then another on July 7. All were stabbed multiple times. Based on this modus apparandi, mainly the multiple stabbing and secluded locations, the SFPD assumed that they were looking for a homophobic serial killer.

Jae’s murder was, of course, a shock to the family. The youngest sister, Alma, 18, who had a history of instability, sought psychiatric help in late September, but was turned away. In October, she and her mother Mary Stevens, visited family in Texas. They returned late on Thursday 10 October. The father, a real estate agent, was not there as, while they were away, he had been sleeping at his office. After arriving home, Alma attacked and killed her mother with a hammer, dismembered the body and partially destroyed it by burning in the fireplace. The older sister, Melissa, the family member who had also performed as a Wonder Sister, and who had identified Jae’s body for the police, arrived, and was also attacked. She survived and went immediately to the local police, who arrested Alma. 

At her trial in February 1975, Alma was found innocent by reason of insanity, based on psychiatric reports, and she was committed to Napa State Hospital for an indefinite period.

Shortly afterwards, the father died in fire at his office. Melissa trained as a nurse and left the Bay Area. She returned only after Alma’s death in 2004.

We should also mention that San Francisco police at that time recently had dealt with the Zodiac (1968-9) and the Zebra (also 1971-4) serial killings of straight persons, and the overall homicide rate in San Francisco was more than double what it is today. Despite this there were apparently only four San Francisco murders in 1974 that can be designated as homophobic, the three later attributed to what became called the Doodler, and another killed in his apartment. In 1975 there was a surge in the number of such murders, including that of two trans women, Barbella and Yancy both killed in their own apartments. There was a gay community meeting in April concerned about the murders, but they continued. 

Three men, including a well-known entertainer and a diplomat, had survived a stabbing encounter in Fox Plaza and described the suspect, a black man, who was mentioned as making contact by sketching his mark. The police suspected that this ‘doodler’ could be the person who did the stabbing murders the year before. They put out a police sketch based on the three witness statements. The police listed five murders, 1974-5, as done by the Doodler, and suggested that the black man wanted for the Fox Plaza stabbing might be the Doodler.

A few months later there was a gruesome murder, again at the Fox Plaza, and in December-January two murders on Turk Street including one of a trans woman, Demott.

In late 1975, a psychiatrist phoned the police and claimed that one of his patients had confessed to the murderers during therapy. The police did not get the name of the psychiatrist straight, and never called him back. The therapy patient named was brought in for questioning in 1976, several times. The three men who had survived being stabbed identified the suspect. However, as homosexuality was still illegal at that time and San Francisco, like most US cities, had a police unit whose sole pupose was to entrap and arrest gay men, and to be outed as gay would destroy their lives and careers, the three survivors refused to testify against him. The suspect did not confess, charges were not pressed, and he was released. Murders of gay men in San Francisco continued, but no further murders were said to be done by the Doodler.

A rumor was put about that the Doodler had fled to New Orleans.

• Bill Kane & Jerry Carpenter. “Show Bars” California Scene, October 1971: 12. Online.
• “News”, Drag Magazine, 1,1, 1971: 16, 31. Online.
• Donald McLean. “Entertainer Jae Stevens Slain!”. Bay Area Reporter, 4, 13, 6/26/1974. Reprinted as “In Memoriam: Jay Stevens 1947-1974”. Drag Magazine, 4, 16, 1974: 34. Online.
• Wendy Heard. “The Doodler”. com. Online.
• Kevin Fagan. “The Doodler”. Com, March 16, 2021. Online.
• Gian J Quaser. “The DOODLER Serial Killer Theory”. Questersite, August 30, 2021. Online.
• Gian J Quaser. “Murder By Forgotten: The Gay Murders of San Francisco 1968-1982”. Questersite, February 6, 2022. Online.
• The Doodler: Unsolved, But Not Forgotten”. The Bloody Truth, December 17, 2023. Online.

Alma Stevens:

• “Body found in Concord fireplace: Mother missing, daughter held”. Concord Transcript, Oct 11, 1974:1.
• “A tragic psychiatric rejection”. The San Francisco Examiner, Oct 16, 1974:46.
• “Alma Stevens committed to a hospital”, Concord Transcript, Feb 26, 1975:1.

En.Wikipedia(Doodler) Find a Grave

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Jian J Quaser questions whether there was indeed a Doodler. The murders, of course were real, and significantly more than the five or six attributed to the Doodler. One of the Doodler victims was not stabbed, but beaten with a rock. Also, the man who stole Jae’s car and then ran off was described as ‘blond’ not black. 

Quaser:

The DOODLER concept then goes public in 1976, but the concept was presented to us vaguely. I have repeated it a number of times on here. To belabor the point, we are basically told there possibly had been some black guy known now as The DOODLER who might be connected with 14 other murders, names unspecified, over 1974-1975. In retrospect we are given five names of potential victims: they are, of course, Gerald Cavanaugh (January 1974), Jae Stevens (June 1974), Klaus Christmann (July 1974), Fred Capin (May 1975), and Harald Gullberg (May/June 1975). After this, The DOODLER concept rather fizzles away.

From our point of view today, however, there is a problem. A closer look at these cases, for the most part, doesn’t reveal much of a connection except they occurred out-of-doors and in the western districts of San Francisco. In retrospect there seems little reason these 5 were made tokens. Poor Harald Gullberg probably wasn’t even murdered. He certainly wasn’t knifed, and the coroner wasn’t sure if his death was an accident. Why then were these 5 names presented to the public in 1976 and strung to a black guy who had attacked in Mid Market and whose known victims had survived?

Quaser is almost alone in questioning the Doodler as a police construction. I am however inclined to go with his interpretation. The search for a mythical Doodler resulted in the murders not being properly investigated, and the real murderers not being apprehended.

Original version May 2013

Galiaci grew up São Paulo state, in the village of Bocaina which at that time had only 10 streets. Father was a cattle drover. At age seven Galiaci attempted suicide after considering that he might be a ‘viado’ (similar to ‘queer’). The school mates and others did treat Galiaci as such, who was afraid that the father would find out. When Galiaci was 14, he did so, threatened his son with a machete, and then threw both mother and child out of the house. Young Galiaci was in the city of São Paulo the next day.

Jacqueline & Antonio

Galiaci became a nursing assistant at Santa Casa, where she read an article in Mundo Ilustrado magazine about Cristine Jorgensen. She explained herself to a doctor, Dr. Eduardo, who gave her her first dress. She had chosen the name ‘Jacqueline’ and grew her hair out, but had to hide it in a beret to avoid arrest. In 1952 Jacqueline was was taken by a friend – “Miss America”, who sewed for the artists Elvira Pagã and Bibi Ferreira - to the Ok nightclub, where she met the owner and was taken on as a performer. She became a singer of sambas, and having only female clothes did not go out during the day for fear of being arrested, as did happen when she attempted to change venues. She and her fiancé, Antonio, were arrested, the press ran photographs of the two, discussing her, her outfits and her cleavage. She was released only after forced sex with the jailor.

She was arrested several other times. After the military coup in 1964, she was raped by four agents from the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS), the Brazilian secret police. She tried filing a habeas corpus petition to be allowed to walk the streets in women's clothing. Journalist José Magalhães published an article in the magazine Fatos e Fotos claiming that Jacqueline had had a surgical sex change. This news was a scandal, but it was a lie. She hadn't had it yet. Yet.

Jacqueline was registered with the Order of Musicians as an actress and singer. Through the 1960s she performed in all the concert halls of São Paulo, and many others across Brazil. She was written about in the press. Antonio often travelled across Brazil with her.

Finally in 1969 she went to Casablanca, to Dr Burou for completion surgery. She found the experience very painful, but one thing was certain in her mind: it was either that or die. Thus she was the first known Brazilian to have transgender surgery. This was two years before the first surgery in Brazil itself, that on Waldirene Nogueir by Dr Roberto Farina.

After a trip to Paris, Jacqueline returned to São Paulo in December just after the death of Artur da Costa e Silva (Brazil's seventh president and the second of the military regime), and the airport was swarming with military. Jacqueline was recognised, they told her she couldn't be dressed as a woman, and she was arrested. A female police officer took her into a room and checked inside her panties. The officer then reported that Jacqueline was indeed a woman. For a while there was confusion, but then Jacqueline was released.

On television, gay fashion designer Clodovil Hernades, known for his inappropriate comments about other people, said on the Flávio Cavalcanti show that Galiaci was neither a man nor a woman. She demanded a public retraction. She had a good lawyer, Giulio Bartolucci, and through him was able to gain the addition of 'Jacqueline' in the margin of her birth registration. The Magistrate authorized both this and the registration of her female sex.

Jacqueline’s love with Antonio lasted 32 years. She discontinued her stage career, and became one of the most respected breeders of Chihuahua dogs in São Paulo. “I have puppies in Germany, Italy, Bolivia, the United States, Portugal, in the hands of the consul of the USSR, in the family of General Couto e Silva, Nelson Gonçalves, Biro-Biro, etc,” she was quoted.

She died in 1992, age 58, of a heart attack, just after being interviewed by the Brasilian edition of Marie Claire magazine. She had exclusively granted Marie Claire two testimonials and an unpublished memoir.

Jacqueline's entry was deleted from the PT.Wikipedia in 2008, for no good reason.

• Adriano Fernandes Ferreira. Transexual como sujeito passivo de crime contra a liberdade: sexual: estupro ou atentado violento ao pudor. http://www.diritto.it/archivio/1/20258.pdf, 10.

• “Transexuais estranhos no próprio corpo”. Marie Claire, 1993. Copy Online.

• Neto Lucon & Astrid Beatriz Bodstein. “Conheça a Emocionante História de Jacqueline Galiaci, a 1ª brasileira transexual a passar pela redesignação genital” Identidade Mandacaru, 9 de marco de 2017. Online

• “Transcestrality, Travestiland, Traviarchy: the stage and gender dissidences in Brazil”. www.scielo.br, 2024. Online.

PT.Wikipedia(deletion)

 Tom’s father, Benjamin Davies, was the minister at Caersalem Baptist Chapel in the coal-ming village of Abergwynfi, Naeth Port Talbot, South Wales, and was a prominent figure in the local temperance movement. However by age eleven, young Tom was drinking beer with a next-door neighbour. He was also transvesting. 

“I was awfully interested in ladies clothes, and always dressing up as a woman, before I left school really. So now, and if my sisters had anything new, a hat, a coat, or a dress … I wasn’t happy until I tried it on.” 

He avoided the cricket and football that the boys played, and preferred hopscotch and skipping with the girls.

At age 14 he left school and found work in the drapery department of Glyncorrwg Co-operative Stores where he enjoyed working with fabrics and fashion. After war was declared in August 1914, Tom saw a newspaper advertisement for performers to join the army entertainment corps. He was auditioned in London and accepted. After several months at the dancing school run by John Tiller (famed for the Tiller Girls) – his natural singing voice was good enough to be professional – he was assigned to a YMCA-funded concert party led by the actress and suffragette Lena Ashwell, which performed in France close to the Western Front doing as many as forty concerts in a fortnight. Tom found Ashwell’s format too serious for his taste and wanted something less formal and where he could talk to the audience.  He transferred to other troups. He worked in Dieppe, Deauville and Paris. He also performed in the hospital on Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, the first hospital from the front line where many of the patients were badly injured soldiers, some groaning in pain. The act was basically what would be found in any music hall with risqué songs. Tom performed en femme: 

“I’d come out in this beautiful sequin gown you know, and then I used to take my gown off, and I had sequin briefs and a sequin bra, and I was naked then but for my tights.  And I had these two big ostrich feather fans, and I had learned to manipulate them … they wouldn’t see anything, and I could hear them saying, Jock, how would you like her in the bunk tonight …. There were many who wouldn’t believe I was male, you know, because I was so dainty.” 

By now Tom’s nom d’étage was Peggy Deauville.

After the Armistice Peggy stayed on in Paris, working in the Folies Bergères for five years and the Casino de Paris for two. The act featured impersonations of well-known women of the period such as the nurse Edith Cavell, Jane Renoir and the actress Gaby Deslys. The French press was fascinated in that Peggy was a woman off-stage also, and as such she travelled around France. 

Tom/Peggy worked in Germany for a while, and after returning to Britain worked with Bud Flanagan - a fellow performer from the war years - at the Victoria Palace and the London Palladium, and then four years in Malta with the John Bull Music Hall Company.

By 1939 Tom was back in south Wales and working again at the Glyncorrwg Co-operative. However with the outbreak of the next war, he returned to army revue shows.

After 1945 Peggy mainly performed at British Legion and working men’s clubs. Peggy assisted Roger Baker with his research for Baker’s 1968 book, and performed in the London show associated with the book.

Tom remained a regular church-goer, and never drank on Sundays.

• Roger Baker. Drag: A History of Female Impersonation on the Stage. A Triton Book, 1968: 173.
• Cliff John. “What a Man is Peggy Deauville”. Neath Guardian, 29 January 1970:7.
• Roger Baker, Peter Burton & Richard Smith. Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts. Cassell, 1994: 191-2.
• Daryl Leeworthy. A Little Gay History of Wales. University of Wales Press, 2019: 24-7.

Tara's male persona was raised by a Jehovah's Witness family in New Orleans. In the early 80s, he was working in Berlin as an English teacher.

Tara and Jayne, from Jayne's book.

When he discovered Romy Haag's drag club he came back again and again, and started wearing drag to the club. This lead to a part in the show and Tara gave up both teaching and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

She was in Rosa von Praunheim's 1983 film, Stadt Der Verlorenen Seelen (City of Lost Souls) along with Jayne County and Angie Stardust where they all play versions of themselves.

The boy who later grew up to be Latina Seville was pretty and grew neither body nor facial hair, and because of this was called ‘fruit’ or ‘queer’ at school, often by the same bullies who made passes when they were alone. 

Age 16 having dropped out of school and gone to New York, she became Latina Seville, found work as a female impersonator, and lived fulltime as female. She was recruited by the Jewel Box Revue, and with them travelled across the USA. As also happened at Le Carrousel in Paris, conversation among the Jewel Box performers often drifted to discussions about sex changes, especially with Dr Borou in Casablanca. 

She often felt lonely and had difficulties relating to men, and thought that it would be easier as a completed woman. She wrote to Dr Burou giving a complete medical history. He accepted her and gave her a date in July 1963 – she was then 22. She saved up, got a passport and went. 

The bill was $2,500. She was told no sex for six months after the operation. She recuperated at her mother’s, and practiced Flamenco dancing. Under the impression that being post-op she could no longer work as a female impersonator, she became a stripper with a Flamenco opening. This went well and her salary doubled and then tripled. But she could not handle the men who were pushy about making passes. 

After six months she had a close male friend make love to her, but experienced no pleasure. She thought that perhaps she still thought like a man, and started seeing psychiatrists who advised that she adjust to herself.

At age 25 she wrote an account of herself for the National Insider, saying that she wanted to be a man again. As they often did, the National Insider recycled her article in a book later that year as a supplement to Abby Sinclair’s autobiography and an essay by Carlson Wade mainly about eunuchs and castratos.

She was not heard of again.

Dolly was born and raised in Turin. When she grew up she went to Paris, and eventually got taken on at Madame Arthur and then Le Carrousel. Her first love was with a man who told her that he was a baron. After he found that she was pre-op, he left her, but came back after a few days, and the affaire continued for almost five years. Also in Paris, she came to know Josephine Baker and Amanda Lear. Salvador Dali, a frequent visitor to Madame Arthur, especially liked to see a Dolly Van Doll show.

She had completion surgery from Dr Burou in Casablanca in 1964. She arrived without an appointment. The price was 1,200 Francs, but she had only 600. “I cried and despaired so much that they gave me the missing half.” (Barba p 364). Her off-stage name became Carla Follis. She was the first known Italian to have had the operation, and as with Coccinelle the Church re-issued her baptismal certificate in her new name. However it took another year to get all her papers changed.

She did six years in cabaret in Berlin. In 1969 she fell madly inlove with a man who worked at Siemens.  When the affair ended in 1971, she was hurt and took the first contract that came along – six months in Barcelona, even though she did not know where Catalonia was.

She arrived in Spain during the final years of the Franco dictatorship. Despite initially not speaking Spanish, and being assigned to a rather dingy nightclub, her talent and beauty filled the place every night. She was soon transferred to Barcelona de Noche, and became treated as a star. In 1973 Coccinelle came from Paris to perform with her. In 1974 she put on a show called Travesti with renowned comedian Alfonso Lusson.

She met the love of her life, Fernando. He took her all over Catalonia. They became partners.

Under the Franco dictatorship, sexual expression was repressed. “A vedette [star] would show a little piece of nipple and men would flock like flies; if two little hairs stuck out of the top of her panties, people would run to see her”. (Barba p368)

When Franco died in November 1975, Carla and Fernando were starting a month’s vacation in Sri Lanka. When they returned, things were already changing. Drag and even nudity were becoming visible, and Dolly realised that her act had become old-fashioned and it had to be revamped. She did so and then did a tour all over Spain. 

In 1976 she and her partner Fernando moved to Valencia to open their own venue, Belle Époque. They married shortly afterwards, and she stayed in Catalonia the rest of her life. Dolly was a businesswoman as well as a performer. She travelled to Tokyo, Paris and Berlin, observed kabuki, cabaret, lyric theatre and incorporated them into her show. In 1982 they opened a second Belle Époque in Barcelona. Her shows were broadcast on Catalan television as part of the New Year’s Eve gala. In 1988 she was in the film Entreacte, which was partly filmed at the Belle Époque. Shortly afterwards the Valencia venue was closed. The Barcelona one ran until 1995.

Carla and Fernando later divorced, but remained good friends.

In 2007 her biography, From a boy to a woman, by Pilar Matos was published.

• Pilar Matos. De Niño a Mujer. Biografía De Dolly Van Doll. Arcopress Ediciones, 2007.
• Stan Lauryssens. Dali & I: The Surreal Story. Thomas Dunne Books, 2008: 31.
• Dolly Van Doll. “Dolly Van Doll, Turin, 1938” in David Barba. 100 españoles y el sexo. epublibre, 2009: 364-370.
• Valeria Vegas. “Dolly Van Doll” in Liberate: La Cultura LGBTQ que Abrio Camino en España. epublibre, 2020: 91-4.
• Luis Fernando Romo. “Dolly Van Doll: ‘Lo peor que me ha pasado es ser vecina de los Pujol’ ”. El Mundo, 26 enero 2020. Online.
• “Dolly van Doll, pionera de la transsexualitat”. Betevé, 3 de maig del 2021. Online.

IMDB

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Most sites translate De Niño a Mujer as From a child to a woman.  While the Spanish word for a boy is chico, the word Niño is a male child and Niña is a female child. Surely the point of the book title is a boy becomes a woman, not that a child becomes an adult. 

Dolly gives the name of the 'baron' in Paris.  I googled it to no effect.  

Lorena Capelli was born in Rio de Janeiro, and was an early transitioner. Her father initially beat her, but, being in the Brazilian diplomatic corps, obtained for her a passport in her female name and other official documents so that she could travel and live as female even before completion surgery. 

She was one of the first trans Brazilians to arrive in Spain and was one of the few who came to Europe already dressed as female given her father’s pulling of strings. Her ‘feminine’ appearance was noted. This depite the Ley de Peligrosidad y Rehabilitación Social which had been in effect since 1970, and which was used to control and persecute anyone who was different.

She then went to Paris and performed at the Le Carrousel, and then in Germany and Italy. She returned to Spain after genital surgery and other surgical enhancements. She and Yeda Brown – also post-operative – arrived around the same time, and both became celebrities. These were the final years of the Francoist dictatorship – the Caudillo Francisco Franco died in November 1975, and Spain started a transition to being a constritutional monarchy. 

Lorena was a star at the Teatro Victoria in Barcelona and then Micheleta Night Club in Madrid where she was announced in the press: 

“for the first time in Madrid a fabulous supervedette extraordinarily sexy, sexy, sexy; before she did military service, now she is intriguingly sexy, sexy, sexy. gorgeous! Lorena Capelli". 

In September 1976 Lorena was interviewed in Papillón magazine:

 “Yes, I always have a man, one man or another, because it is impossible for a woman to live without ‘love’, but I don't feel the strong flame of the rapport between two people. I have returned to striptease and to restarting my life. I am a woman who is living her beginnings again, although far from my native Brazil”. 

 

However she was dissatisfied with her vaginal depth, and went to a gynecologist at a clinic in Barcelona – this at a time when all transgender surgery was illegal in Spain. The gynecologist made her sign a paper accepting full responsibility, including her death. Apparently the operation led to complications that led to peritonitis, and she died. Her body was returned to Rio five days later. 

At the beginning of 1964 the then 19-year-old, Brigitte Bond, was signed as a singer by Tom Littlewood of the 2i’s Coffee Bar in London’s Soho which had launched early rock stars such as Tommy Steels and Cliff Richard. Mod, defined by fashionable clothes and modern jazz, was the new thing, and Mod had begun to incorporate the Jamaican music called Ska or Bluebeat. Brigitte had gigs across London with various aspiring musicians, and put out two songs as a 45 rpm single “Blue Beat Baby’ and “Oh Yeah Baby” backed by an impromptu group named the Bluebeats.

25 February 1964, the Jamaican Ska star, Prince Buster, arrived in England. He was met at Heathrow by a crowd of fans including Brigitte who was photographed dancing with him. This photo would later become iconic. The Daily Mirror dubbed her the Queen of Bluebeat. Prince Buster performed that same night at the prestigious May Fair Hotel and Brigitte was again photographed in attendance.

In April the Flamingo Club in Soho began a weekly Blue Beat Night, and Brigitte performed at the second show. Sir John Waller, 7^th Baronet of Braywick Lodge, a noted poet and gay, was not able to claim his full inheritance of £250,000 ( £4 million today adjusted for inflation) until marriage and a male heir. He had rejected many women. One day he walked past the 2i’s coffee bar and saw a poster promoting Brigitte. He already knew her manager Tom Littlewood, who was willing to introduce him to Brigitte. He proposed to her on their first date. She accepted. This did not stop her being featured in Tit-Bits magazine in early May, or attending a Mods gathering on the beach at Margate over the Whitsun Weekend. The engagement was in the press 21 May. However she would not be able to give him a baby, and the engagement was quickly called off. This resulted in press articles stating that Brigitte was trans, that were repeated internationally.

However this did not impede her career. She performed for a week at the prestigious Astor Club in Mayfair where royalty and gangsters mixed (and where the next year the gangsters, the Krays and the Richardsons, would clash and start a gang war). Brigitte transferred her management to the Arthur Lowe Agency who advertised her as “The controversial Sex Change girl with the velvet singing voice”. Other advertisements referred to her as “the Shapely French singer”. This was followed by a short African tour: Mombasa, Nairobi and Salisbury.

On return to London, Brigitte performed regularly at the Pelican Club in Soho, until it was raided for its nude dancers who broke the so-called Windmill Rule, that if nude the performer should not move. Brigitte, while not charged, was mentioned as “the worst”.

In 1965 Brigitte did a tour of South Africa and Rhodesia, and returned to headline at La Dolce Vita in Newcastle. She then did a residency In Madrid. Articles in the Spanish press mentioned her gender transition - although Spain was still ruled by Franco, this did not cause any problems.

In June 1966 US establishment preacher Billy Graham was in London for a month, and had denounced the newly fashionable mini-skirt. On 17 June he visited Soho as announced. Brigitte, who was now calling herself Brigitte St John, climbed on Graham’s car to protest his comments about miniskirts. The Sunday Mirror put her on the front page to make her point.

She moved to live in Spain. She claimed that she was in the 1967 James Bond film, Casino Royale, although she is not in the credits - however given the chaotic nature of the film with its many directors and cutting room compromises, she may well have been.

She is in the credits of three films 1967-1969: Herostratus, 1001 Nights and La muchacha del Nilo playing the role of ‘dancer’ in the first two and ‘Brigitte’ in the third.

By the late 1960s Brigitte St John was a ‘supervedette’ in Spain and elsewhere, mainly appearing in cabaret, and even appearing with Coccinelle. In 1974 she appeared at Madrid’s Gay Club, its first GLBT club as la Transición, the change away from Franco’s repression, was starting. She performed with the heterosexual transformista Paco España.

In April 1976 Brigitte was interviewed for a Spanish paper and revealed that she was married and living in Campania, Italy, and that her real name was Giovanna.

After that nothing was heard about her.

There was a revival of Ska in the late 1970s. The Birmingham band, The Beat, wanted a beat-girl logo for their first album and asked the cartoonist Hunt Emerson to create one. He took the 1964 photograph of Brigitte and Prince Buster dancing, and changed the image of Brigitte into an icon that has since then been that of the Beat Girl.

Melody Maker ran a story on the history in 1979, and included the 1964 photograph.

*not Bridget St John, the folk singer

• Brigitte Bond and The Bluebeats. “Blue Beat Baby / Oh Yeah Baby” 45 single 1964.
• “The King and Queen of Blue Beat meet”. Daily Mirror, 26 February 1964: 26.
• David Hunn. “Brigitte Bond: She has a built-in licence to thrill”. Tit-Bits, 9 May 1964: 13.
• “I’ll be Lady Waller in 4 Months says Brigitte”. The Evening Standard, 21 May 1964.
• “Where Boys Were”. Madera Tribune, 73,20, 10 June 1964, p3. Online
• “The Stripper who cried for shame”. Daily Mirror, November 14, 1964: 3.
• Brigitte St John. “Sin and Mini Skirts”. Sunday Mirror,June 19, 1966 p1.
• John Huston et al (dir). Casino Royal. With Peter Sellers, Orson Wells, Woody Allen etc and possibly Brigitte St John. US 131 mins 1967.
• Don Levy (dir). Herostratus. With Michael Gothard as Max and Brigitte St John as dancer. UK 142 mins 1967.
• José María Elorrieta (dir & scr). 1001 Nights. With Jeff Cooper and Brigitte St John as dancer. Spain & Italy 92 mins 1968.
• José María Elorrieta (dir). La muchacha del Nilo. With Rory Calhoun and Brigitte St John as Brigitte. Spain 81 mins 1969.
• Rachel Hebditch. “For Richer or Poorer .. Sir John weds a bride who could give birth to a £500,000 boy”. Daily Mirror, April 4, 1974 p9.
• “The Story of Ska”. Melody Maker, May 19, 1979.
• Victor Selwyn. “Obituaries: Sir John Waller Bt”. The Independent,21 February 1995. Online.
• Tony van den Bergh. “Obituary: Sir John Waller Bt”. The Independent, 4 March 1995. Online.
• Lloyd Bradley.Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. BBC Worldwide, 2002: 25.
• “The Beat Girl - Noted Cartoonist Hunt Emerson Designs a 2-Tone Era Icon”. Marco on the Bass, December 16, 2008.
• Der JB. “Who the f*** is Brigitte Bond?”. Over & Over(setter), 28 mai 2011. Online.
• Heather Augustyn. Women in Jamaican Music. McFarland, 2020: 87.
• Joanna Wallace with Heather Augustyn.Blue Beat Baby: The Untold Story of Brigitte. YouTube
• Heather Augustyn. Rude Girls: Women in 2 Tone and One Step Beyond. Half Pint Press, 2022.

Discogs            IMDB

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Thanks in particular for Joanna Wallace’s 30 minute YouTube documentary in compiling this.

Given the popularity of Brigitte Bardot (same spelling of Brigitte) and James Bond (the 3^rd film was soon to be released) in 1964, one can see how she chose her name.

Sometimes it is said that Brigitte was either Maltese or from Marseilles. Sometimes that she had done British military service as a male. National Service required two years between the ages of 17-20. However it was discontinued in 1960 when Brigitte was 15. She may have volunteered - but how to fit in two such years, and then gender transition and surgery all before arriving at the 2i’s club as age 19?

Heather Augustyn’s new book. Rude Girls, on Ska music has a section on Brigitte Bond.

Wallace says that “Blue Beat Baby” came out in March, after Prince Buster’s tour. However it is referred to in the Daily Mirror article 26/2/64.

The Flamingo Club had become well-known after a fight there in October 1962 between lovers of Christine Keeler led to revelations of her affair with John Profumo, the Minister of War, that in turn led to the defeat of the Conservative Government in 1964. For more on the Flamingo Club see Chp 11 in Rob Baker’s Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics, 2015. Also online.

Both the Wikipedia entry and the first obituary re Waller in the Independent say nothing at all about John Waller being gay and nothing about Brigitte. Both of them skip from the 1950s to the 1970s. Waller did eventually marry in April 1974, and had a daughter. However, due to the sexist nature of aristocracy, this did not count. He died in 1995 without ever getting the full inheritance.

The single:

Joanna Wallace's essential 30 minute documentary 

Wolters wore girls’ clothing until the start of school, and still then during vacations: she was called Hanne by the farm personnel and still later by grandfather. At the age of 13, her custody was transferred to an uncle, a professor. And the wearing of female clothing was stopped completely. Wolter’s voice did not change until the age of 20, and there was no beard growth until age 25. 

As a man Wolters took a wife, and developed a career on stage. By 1906 Wolters had written Weiberbeute, a forced-femininity novel about a mannish woman who hypnotises her stepson to think that he is a woman. She then induces a phantom pregnancy on him, and persuades him that her son is his. Her death-bed confession is dismissed by her victim as delusion. The novel was published in Budapest under the pseudonym Luz Fraumann. 

Magnus Hirschfeld included Wolters as Case #3 in his 1910 Die Transvestiten where she is referred to as Mr C. Hirschfeld also gives an extended quotation from Weiberbeute. 

During the Great War, Wolters (under her male name of Emil Mauder) was a senior lieutenant in the German army, and was taken captive by the Russians. 

In the 1920s Wolters became a well-known columnist in the trans magazines, Die Freundin and Das 3, Geschlecht. She wrote the following in Die Freundin in 1931.

“Dear Sister Ilse P.! I am one of the oldest and first cases of medical advisor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and I know from forty years of experience that even this great researcher in sexuality had first had to learn from us and how he changed his original views and findings. [...] But above all, dear fellow sisters, you should read up on the transvestite literature (I mean especially the scientific literature!). Dr. Hirschfeld has worked hard and thoroughly for us. The fact that he previously described the cross-dressing drive as pathological, and coined the not entirely accurate word "transvestitism" etc. is nothing essential, but came from developments in this field.“ 

In 1932 she drew upon more than 100 letters sent into Die Freudin, as well as newspaper reports and Hirschfeld’s Sittengeschichte des Weltkrieges (Sexual History of the World War), 1930, to highlight patriotic deeds and courage under fire of both trans men and trans women. Also that year she wrote an account of how the English Queen Elizabeth Tudor had been biologically male.

++The next year, after the Nazi takeover, Wolters was mentioned several times as a correspondent and contributing author during the trial of fellow trans person Anton Maier, but was not herself arrested.

• Luz Frauman.Weiberbeute:Ein merkwürdiger Roman. Budapest: Verlag von M. W. Schneider, 1906.
• Magnus Hirschfeld. Die Transvestiten; ein Untersuchung uber den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb: mit umfangreichem casuistischen und historischen Materia.  Berlin: Pulvermacher, 1910: 18-25, 171-7. English translation by Michael A Lombardi-Nash. Tranvestites: The Erotic urge to Crossdress. Prometheus Books, 1991: 27-32, 132-9.
• Emi von Wolters. “Die Welt der Transvestism”. Die Freundin, 7, 26, 1931.
• Emi Wolters, “Transvestiten im Weltkriege [8-part series, 24 February to 13April 1932, in ‘Die Welt der Transvestiten’ supplement],” Die Freundin 8, nos. 8 to 15 (1932).
• Emi Wolters. “Ein Transvestit als Königin”. Das 3, Geschlect,5, May 1932: 16-25.
• Annette Runte. Biographische Operationen : Diskurse der Transsexualität.Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996: 131,412, 568, 582.
• Graham Robb. Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. WW Norton & Company, 2003: 205.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005: 35.
• Rainer Herrn. "Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat".  Zeitschrift fur Sexualforschung, 26, 2013: 349.
• Katie Sutton. Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s. University of Michigan Press, 2019: 115, 193, 196, 257n96, 284n109
• “Luz Fraumann (Hirschfeld 3)”. Lili Elbe library. Online.

Spong was the son of the licencee of the Six Bells, Kings Road, Chelsea. On 7-8^th December 1941 he was a private in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps stationed in Singapore. On that day Japanese forces attacked Thailand, Dutch East Indies, the UK colonies of Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaya. and the US colonies of the Philippines and Hawai’i.

The 60,000 British empire forces in Singapore and Malaya finally surrendered 15 February 1942, what Churchill called "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history". Most UK and Australian troops, and later Dutch civilians, were imprisoned in the Selarang Barracks, near to Changi, an existing prison at the east end of Singapore. The Barracks also became referred to as Changi. 850 died in captivity, others were transported to work as forced labour in Japan or on the Thai-Burma railway (which included a bridge over the river Kwai).

Morale was inevitably bad, and the officers encouraged sports and theatricals. One of the first were The Mumming Bees concert parties, and it was at these that Bobbie Spong, who had already made somewhat of a name as a performer, first became well-known. Bobbie impersonated comedienne Beatrice Lillie, film star Marlene Dietrich and female impersonator Douglas Byng. From there Spong branched out into comedy sketches and revues, almost always in female parts. Even the Japanese and Korean guards came to watch. One night her appearance was greeted by a roar of applause that was heard across the island. 

Somehow Spong had managed to bring into the prison camp a full set of female clothing including corsets. He was allowed to grow his hair to a feminine length. Bobbie often stayed in role offstage. In particular she would tour the hospital wards and sing for those too sick to attend the performances. She was so convincing that when she sat on a patient’s bed they would blush and attempt to cover their nakedness. Late in 1943 when Private Spong returned to the Chungkai camp in Thailand from a work-camp up the line, and converted to Bobbie for a show, she was so convincing that the Japanese officers stopped the show and demanded proof of her manhood. Both Japanese and Korean guards often asked Bobbie to give a private performance in their quarters. This she did, graciously accepting fruit and cigarettes, and then would quickly flee back to her own quarters.

On Christmas Day 1943, Bobbie - in a light green and orange frock and hat - was in the hospital to give out cigarettes. Later that day she was at the mock horse races where everybody dressed up the best that they could. She kissed the winners of the races. The day ended with Bobbie under a large tree singing from the Douglas Byng repertoire.

The theatre at Chungkai.  Bobbie sitting front right.

On 29 April 1944 the shows were cancelled because the Japanese had taken all the theatrical paraphernalia for the celebration of the Emperor’s birthday. Bobbie was part of a burlesque football match that was hastily arranged instead.

West London Press, 32/10/1952 p1

Bobbie’s final appearance was in mid-May 1944 at Chungkai camp. Spong then shocked everyone by volunteering for a work detail in Japan because her best friend had been drafted for it. Departure was 8 June. By then Spong had had his hair cut, but managed to pack twenty frocks in his rucksack. 1300 POWs were crammed into an unmarked transport ship. The ship was spotted, torpedoed and sunk by a US submarine - very few survived.

• “Pledge Renewed”, West London Press,October 31, 1952: 1.
• Sears Eldredge. “Wonder Bar: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival in a Second World War POW Hospital Camp” in Gilly Carr & Harold Mytum (eds). Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire.Routledge, 2012.
• Sears Eldredge. “ ‘We Girls’: Female Impersonators in Prisoner-of-War Entertainments on the Thailand-Burma Railway”. Popular Entertainment Studies, 5, 1, 2014: 74-99.
• Sears A Eldredge. “The Uncomparable Bobbie” in Captive Audiences / Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945. Macelester College, 2014: 533-8.

Part I: Parachutist, soldier, pilot