The BBC has a retrospective on Christine Jorgensen, who started life as George Jorgensen, switching gender 60 years ago:
News of a pioneering sex change operation, one of the first involving both surgery and hormone therapy, was announced in 1952 — exactly 60 years ago this weekend.
“Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty!” screamed one headline as newspapers in the United States broke the news.
George Jorgensen, a quiet New Yorker, shocked a nation by returning from a trip to Denmark transformed into the glamorous Christine.
[. . .]
On her return to the US, Jorgensen was greeted with curiosity, fascination and respect by both the media and the public. There was relatively little hostility.
Hollywood embraced her. Theatre and film contracts began to roll in, she was invited to all the most glamorous parties and even crowned Woman of the Year by the Scandinavian Society in New York.
“I guess they all want to take a peek,” Jorgensen once said.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s she made a comfortable living, touring the country singing and doing impressions in her own show.
She was less successful in her personal life. Her first serious relationship broke down soon after their engagement. The next went as far as the register office, only for Jorgensen to be refused a marriage licence when she pulled out a man’s birth certificate.
