Long before the transgender movement took center stage with drag queen story hours, gender-affirming care for teens and even violence, one trans woman had already gripped the nation's attention.
Christine Jorgensen's dramatic transformation from soldier to a striking, leggy 5-foot-6, 120-pound woman captivated 1950s New York.
Her decision to undergo surgery and hormone therapy, at a time when the medical field was still in its infancy, stunned the public and made her a poster girl for today's trans movement.
And she was the one who paved the way for today's trans icons like Caitlyn Jenner - who as Bruce won Olympic gold as a decathlete - and Dylan Mulvaney who detailed her transition daily on TikTok before sparking a boycott of Bud Light after she promoted the beer brand.
Transgender historian Susan Stryker, Professor Emerita of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona and herself a trans woman, has described Jorgensen as the pivotal figure who popularized the very concept of 'transsexuality' and brought public attention to the idea of surgically reshaping the body.
Growing up in a middle-class section of the Bronx, New York, Jorgensen, the son of Danish immigrant parents, had what she would later describe as a 'happy, normal childhood,' but soon began feeling like a 'female trapped in a man's body'.
Christine Jorgensen was the first American transgender woman to captivate the nation and dominate headlines through the gender-affirming surgeries and hormone therapy she underwent in Denmark during the 1950s
George Jorgensen was a clerk in the army before he underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1952
Her story was jarring for the American public even in the late 1970s when this composite was put together
After a stint in the post-war US Army as an honorably discharged private serving as a clerk at a New Jersey basic training base, George Jorgensen, then 24, decided to have a sex change in Denmark.
Although Jorgensen wasn't the first to undergo gender-confirmation surgery in Denmark - nor as widely known as Lili Ilse Elvenes, whose story inspired the hit film The Danish Girl - she was the first American to bring it to tradition-bound 1950s America.
As one creative headline writer put it, he went 'from GI Joe to GI Jane,' during two years of hormonal and surgical treatment, and came back into the world as Christine.
Jorgensen had adopted that name to honor one of the most important men in her life - Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist, who had diagnosed her as trans, conducted hormonal treatments and performed several surgeries on her at the Danish State Hospital in Copenhagen.
On December 1, 1952, the front page of the tabloid New York Daily News exclusively revealed her story, based on an anonymous tip, likely from Jorgensen herself, who always savored media attention.
The News headline blared, 'EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY, Operations Transform Bronx Youth.'
Inside, the story continued, 'Dear Mom and Dad,' Son Wrote, 'I Have Now Become Your Daughter.'
With Jorgensen's sex change instantly becoming the biggest news story of the time, the New York Times chose to take a less sensationalized angle, publishing just a short wire service account headlined, 'Bronx "Boy" Is Now A Girl'.
The letter Jorgensen wrote to her parents to inform them about her sex change was leaked to the tabloid New York Daily News, particularly one line (not pictured) that stated, 'Dear Mom and Dad, I Have Now Become Your Daughter'
The headline that would grip the nation on Daily News article was EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY, Operations Transform Bronx Youth'
Jorgensen's life changed almost overnight after her story captured the public's attention. She was presented with new opportunities, including a career as a popular nightclub performer and chances to mingle with A-list celebrities such as Jackie Gleason
The Times would later note that Christine's transition was 'covered with all the subtlety of a Martian invasion'.
Jorgensen's arrival at New York's ldlewild Airport aboard a Scandinavian Airlines plane from Denmark was met with a frenzy.
Scores of reporters, photographers, television and newsreel cameramen from around the world, and a mob of curious New Yorkers were there to greet her - a mad scrum that a decade later would only be rivaled by the craze-inducing arrival of the Beatles from Britain.
A quarter of a century before astronauts landed on the moon, the revelation that a man could transition to living as a woman captured New York's imagination and quickly reverberated across the country and around the globe.
The media swarmed as everyone talked about the soldier who returned home as a woman.
Virtually overnight,Jorgensen became a world-renowned celebrity—a popular nightclub performer earning as much as $5,000-a-week ($40,000 in today's dollars).
During these sets,she often performed her sexy rendition of 'I Love Being a Girl'—with her gravelly voice reflecting Tallulah Bankhead’s original rendition—along with a dance number in frilly gowns.
She was booked in major clubs,such as Manhattan’s Latin Quarter,run by showbiz impresario Lou Walters;Barbara Walters’s father.
Her biggest booking was at the famous Manhattan nightclub Latin Quarter where patrons would often see scantily clad female dancers adorned with feathered headdresses walking the catwalk
The club was owned by Barbara Walters’s father showbiz impresario Lou Walters
She turned her fame into a bestselling memoir,Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography,published in 1967.
The book's cover featured her signature look: bright red lips and striking blue eyes;the paperback edition sold an astounding 450,000 copies in its first year.
More than five decades later,in 2020,the memoir was re-released with a new introduction by Susan Stryker;underscoring Jorgensen’s lasting cultural impact.
'To read the book now,' wrote a New York Times critic, 'is to see how dearly Jorgensen wished to be understood even as she seemed aware of how resistant some of her readers might be.'
The Times story appeared in 2017 - nearly 30 years after Jorgensen's death - just as the next major trans memoir to capture public attention, Caitlyn Jenner's The Secrets of My Life, was released and six years before Bud Light was destroyed after taking on Dylan Mulvaney for an advertising campaign.
Hollywood also came calling. Jorgensen claimed that studios had courted her for years to star in a film, but she never signed a contract, insisting that none of the projects truly appealed to her.
But in 1970, a dramatic film about her life, 'The Christine Jorgensen Story' - a fictionalized version of her life based on her blockbuster book was released.
Jorgensen made her mark decades before trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who gained fame for her controversial Bud Light campaign
Jorgensen's autobiography was among the first written from the perspective of a trans woman, decades before the next trans memoir to capture public attention: Caitlyn Jenner's The Secrets of My Life in 2017
As Jorgensen later recalled, 'Every female impersonator in the world came flying into Hollywood demanding he was Christine.'
Cast to play Jorgensen before and after her sex change was not a drag queen,but rather a former member of Disneyland's youth choir,The Kids of the Kingdom,handsome 18-year-old George Hansen.
Jorgensen reportedly received a piece of the box office action - 10 percent of the gross and 3.5 percent of the budget.
While the 89-minute film didn't do blockbuster business,it received good reviews.
The New York Times critic Howard Thompson called it a 'quiet, even dignified little picture... that says a bit and implies much about human courage,sensitivity and plain pluck'.
Along with her celebrity,America's first trans womanhad romance in her life which also dominated headlines.
In April 1959 - two months before Jorgensen’s planned June wedding - the City Clerk of New York,Herman Katz,denied a marriage license to the 32-year-old entertainer because she didn’t have adequate proof of being a female as Katz argued that her birth certificate still had her listed as male.
In the wake of the denial,Jorgensen’s fiancé,Howard Knox,38,claimed he had lost his job as a typist in Washington,D.C.,when their wedding plans became public.Because of the controversy,the relationship ended.
A film about the trans icon's life,The Christine Jorgensen Story,was released in 1970,giving her a stake in its success - 10 percent of the box office gross and 3.5 percent of production budget
Jorgensen's love life also made headlines,especially when a judge denied her a marriage certificate to wed Howard Knox,38,citing insufficient proof that she was a woman because her birth certificate listed her gender as male
Before her surgery,she had fallen in love with another man,john Traub,a statistician for a labor organization,but that engagement was also called off.
She would later claim that numerous men had made passes at her and wanted to date her,but she never married.
In 1957,during what was billed as her first and only recorded interview,Jorgensen was asked by entertainer Nipsey Russell,'Are you a woman?'
Her response?
'That’s a very good question.We assume that every person is either a man or a woman,but we don’t take into account the true scientific value that each person is actually both in varying degrees.
‘My only answer to that is I am more of a woman than I am of a man.’
Jorgensen,would become active as a speaker on college campuses;was considered an elder statesman on sexual revolution;trans issue;died bladder lung cancer May 3 1989 San Clemente California hospital.
She was 62 years old.
Jerry Oppenheimer bestselling biographer icons Kennedys Clintons Martha Stewart other American icons frequent contributor Daily Mail.