How an American boy went to Denmark to become a blonde beauty Christine Jorgensen
IN 1953, Americans were fascinated by the elegant woman Christine Jorgensen (left) arriving back in the country after a trip to Denmark to undergo gender reassignment surgery to become a woman.
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AMERICANS were fascinated by the elegant blonde woman arriving back in the country after a trip to Denmark early in 1953. Stylishly dressed in a fur coat and a jaunty hat, the softly spoken woman confidently fielded questions from reporters who had gathered to meet her at Idlewild airport in New York.
But she was not a movie star nor a model. Before she left for Denmark her name was George William Jorgensen Jr, but George had undergone radical gender reassignment surgery to become a woman. The New York Daily News had earlier broken the story with the headline “Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty: Surgery transforms Bronx youth”. Suddenly the shy Jorgensen was thrust into the limelight.
Hers wasn’t the world’s first gender reassignment, but she became the first most widely known transgender woman, perhaps paving the way for people such as Caitlyn Jenner.
Jorgensen was born the son of a carpenter with Scandinavian heritage in the Bronx, New York, on May 30, 1926, 90 years ago today. From an early age George preferred to play with girls’ toys and avoided the usual male playground activities. This continued as George reached puberty, adding to his confused feelings about identity and sexuality. After leaving high school he studied photography but had to defer when he was drafted into the army. Because George was never particularly physical and even appeared effeminate, he ended up working as a clerk at Fort Dix, a major army training and support facility in New Jersey. While in the army he read about hormone therapy experiments conducted by Danish researcher Christian Hamburger and wondered if his lack of normal male development could be solved in this way.
After he was discharged from the army, George resumed his photography studies, but also trained to be a dental assistant. While studying at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School, Dr Joseph Angelo, the husband of one of his classmates, helped him look into gender reassignment and treated him with female hormones.
But George needed to visit Dr Hamburger in Denmark. He left the US in 1950 telling his parents he was taking a trip to visit their relatives, which he did, but also went to see the Danish doctor who diagnosed his condition and began treating him with hormones.
George began dressing as a woman in public and a psychologist assessed his conviction to become a woman before surgery was performed to complete the transformation.
The first known gender reassignment surgery had been performed in the 1920s
by German doctors. In the ’30s, the highly publicised transformation of Danish transgender Lili Elbe (which inspired the recent film The Danish Girl) resulted in her death from rejection of transplants.
Jorgensen’s surgeons had made vast strides since then and the procedures were successful. So George began a new life as Christine.
In 1952 Christine sent a letter to her parents telling them what had happened, but word reached the newspapers and when she returned to the US in February 1953 her story was splashed around the world.
Despite some hostility from the straitlaced, McCarthy-era American public, she generally found acceptance.
She was offered modelling contracts and mixed with Hollywood celebrities.
In 1953 the Scandinavian Society of New York named her their Woman of the Year.
Christine earned a living on the speaking circuit, writing her biography (which was later adapted to a film), recording songs and performing a cabaret act. One of her signature tunes was I Enjoy Being A Girl. When a Las Vegas nightclub once sent her a letter cancelling her show, beginning “dear sir”, supporters rallied and shamed the venue into allowing her act to go on.
In 1959 she became engaged to Howard J. Know but when she applied for a marriage licence she was refused when she produced her birth certificate, which stated he was a male.
On her visit to Australia in 1961 she said: “I might never marry and let’s face it — at 35, I am an old maid. I have been engaged twice already, but both times it didn’t work out”.
She died in 1989 from cancer.
Originally published as How an American boy went to Denmark to become a blonde beauty Christine Jorgensen
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