Casa Susanna (2022) - full transcript

Now, for reasons
which will become very clear,

we're going to use first names only.

Would you please
introduce yourselves?

Misty. Vicky.

Sonya. Simone.

Misty, what do you do?

I'm a bank teller.

And Vicky? Cosmetician.

Sonya? Hairdresser.

Window display.

Are those your own eyelashes?



Nope.

And, Sonya, is that your own hair?

No.

That's a very lovely dress, too,
that you're wearing, Simone.

Where did you buy it?
Oh, I made it myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, the reason
for using first names only

for these very, very charming
contestants

is that right now, each
one of them is breaking the law.

You see, each of our contestants
is a man.

MUSIC: But Not For Me
by Jackie Gleason

I would think that
none of these trees

had even started growing
when I was last here.

The times I was here
were very good times.

Yes, that's the house.



When I went there...

..there was a swing hanging
in the end of the veranda.

This was the old barn where
the theatricals took place.

Halloween, 1962.

I was being a little swan
in Swan Lake.

Susanna was doing erotic dancing,
South American dancing,

and three of my friends were being
the Andrews Sisters.

It looks as good as it did then.

We all used to have our meals there

and people used to sit out the front
on the veranda, on the lawn.

People used to do gardening work.

I just loved it, being here,
because they had total freedom,

total... chance to be themselves
for a change.

The weekend of Halloween 1962

was when Virginia Prince

formed a national sorority of
cross-dressers

called FPE,

which was for Full Personality
Expression.

And it was a very interesting
weekend, to say the very least.

There were psychiatrists
from the Kinsey Institute,

there were people from all over.

There were over 100 people
there that weekend.

But it's... it's much the same.

SHIP'S HORN BLOWS

Visiting Casa Susanna was almost
a necessity for me.

I had to leave my family
in Australia and come to America,

because I needed to know
more about myself.

I needed to know what it
would be like to live as a woman

for an extended period,

and, in the back of my mind,
I thought, if I go to Casa Susanna

and I find that I am more woman
inside than I am man,

that might be the point
where my new life starts.

I think there were very few
people like me,

because I was a white child
with a single sibling

living on a coral island
in the middle of the Pacific.

I can remember as far back
as about five,

my sister dressing me
in one of her old dresses.

The fact that I absolutely adored
the feeling and wanted it to go on,

wished it could happen every day...

..wished that when my father came
home from the sea,

I could say,
"You've got two daughters now."

One doesn't know
where these thoughts start.

It wasn't until a lot of years later
that I had that experience of joy,

of sheer joy at being able
to walk among people

and talk to them without hesitation,

to know that they understood
the person I was.

No matter what I looked like inside,
I was a real woman

and I wanted them to know it,
and they did know it.

Between my third
grade and fourth grade,

I would go to sleep at night praying
that I would wake up as a girl.

And I would pray hard, you know?

It was a secret that I had,

and mostly because I was very active

and I was very social
and very out there.

It didn't have much impact in terms
of what it appeared,

but I knew that it was... there was
something down inside of me

that was not right.

That was... That was not who I was.

And there was... And there was no
way to make it right.

I don't... I think it's very hard
to kind of have an appreciation

for the difference for me,

isolated in Iowa,

where literally, you cannot talk
to anyone about this at all.

You have to kind of understand

that my mother was very seriously
Lutheran,

which is a very literal
Christianity.

The Bible, the Earth
was created in six days.

So, when I began to have feelings
about wishing that I were a girl,

there was just no way
that could possibly be OK.

And I kept thinking
I would grow out of it.

And, you know, there was a kind
of almost optimism about it

in the face of pretty dark
frustration.

That, OK, you'll get through this.

Just... Just go to school,
do your school,

do your college, get married,

and this will go away.

And it never did go away.

That thing was always there,
and there was no way to express it.

There was nobody,
there was no information.

There was no library I could go to.

There was just no place.

And that was the real darkness,

that there was kind of nothing
to help me think about it, even.

You know, what must this be?

What is this that could be going
on with me

that makes me have these feelings?

ARCHIVE: Christine Jorgensen,
who used to answer to George,

creates quite a stir as she returns
home to New York from Copenhagen.

Christine hit the headlines
following the series of operations

in Denmark that transformed
her from a boy into a girl,

all of which made her a celebrity
to meet and talk to

when she stepped off the plane
at International Airport.

Gentlemen, please give her
a chance to talk.

REPORTERS SHOUT

I'm very impressed
by everyone coming.

Christine, are you happy to be home?

Yes, of course.

What American wouldn't be?

Have you been offered
a movie contract?

Yes, but I haven't accepted it.

Do you... Do you have any plans
regarding the theatre?

No, I don't think so.

Are you going to go on
with your photography?

I hope so, yes.

I see.

I'm very happy to be back,

and I don't have any plans
at the moment,

and I thank you all for coming,
but I think it's too much.

Fine. Thank you very much.

I was a paper boy
and I carried the paper.

And when I went down to pick
up the papers,

there was Christine Jordans
on the front page.

And I think I sat down
and I read the story.

I read it avidly...

..and that was it.

There was nobody
I could talk to about it.

If I were to talk about it,
"Oh, this is horrible."

That would be that, you know,
this horrible, sinful thing

that this person did to themselves,

and they will be damned to hell,

and all my friends
would just make fun of it.

Talking to my parents
would be a disaster.

It was illegal in this country.

So almost everybody in the country
thought it was wrong.

All the doctors thought
it was wrong. It was all wrong.

It was just barely beginning
to be contemplated

as something that was plausible,
might be conceivable.

I was pretty sure that my mother

would try to do something
pretty radical

if she thought
that that was how I was,

put me away in an institution or do
electroshock or pretty bad things.

Because she sort of believed

in how people who have these kinds
of thoughts are treated,

that they...they must be sick,
and they must be fixed.

I kind of knew that could be
really bad if I exposed myself.

So by the time I was in high
school, I was a good athlete

and I was a pretty good student
and I played the trumpet

and I played football
and I sang in the choir

and I grew up playing the game,
and I played it very well.

When I got a scholarship
to Valparaiso University,

I got into the theatre department
and I met Julie.

And through the years
we got closer and closer

and it became kind
of like, "We should...

"We should probably get married.

"We should probably..."

I think, you know, we thought
we loved one another.

And I told Julie about...

..that I had this problem,
and it was just like, "Oh, well, OK,

"so you have this little
feminine side" sort of thing.

It was not anything very
substantial about it.

But, "I'm glad you told me."

It's a very frustrating thing

when you... when people speak
as though this is not a problem,

all you have to do
is change your mind,

and I... and I say,
"OK, when will my mind change?"

You know, "How does it change?
What makes it change?"

Well, you just don't think about it.

None of those things are even close
to relevant, in my estimation,

and they certainly
didn't work for me.

Around 1994, my mother was
about to go into surgery.

It was a 50-50 chance that
she might die on the table.

That weekend, that Saturday,
she started to tell me everything.

She brought out
boxes of photographs.

She brought out the book my father
had written,

A Year Among The Girls
by Darrell G Raynor,

a book that nobody realises he wrote
except my mother.

I was fascinated.

Suddenly, everything seemed
to snap into place.

I suddenly realised that the church
architect in California

that we... that I was so fond of,
was so fun,

he was one of the cross-dressers.

People I had stayed with in Ireland,

he was a cross-dresser.

Everybody that my parents
were most close to

was in the transvestite scene.

I suddenly realised why I went
to summer camp for two months

every single year, starting when I
was seven - two entire months away -

so my father could go up
to Casa Susanna and dress.

My mother drove him there and stayed
with him because he couldn't drive.

A lot of women were up there,
too, the wives,

and I think they hung out together.

But my mother drove him to Casa
Susanna every weekend of the summer,

and I know that, because that's why
I went to summer camp

for eight years.

My father was Donald A Wollheim.

He was one of the founders of
the entire science fiction industry.

He wrote 18 science fiction novels

in a world where people had never
even heard that term.

He grew up in Manhattan.

My grandparents owned a townhouse
on 81st and York,

and his childhood was extremely
complicated and Gothic.

My grandfather was a doctor.

He graduated from Columbia Medical
School in 1903,

and he practised on the second floor
of the house -

and in a brownstone, you have to
walk through an entire floor

to get to the next staircase.

So his children had to walk
through his medical offices

to get to their bedrooms.

And my grandfather was a specialist.

He was a urologist who specialised
in venereal disease,

syphilis and gonorrhoea, which at
that time was incurable and deadly.

So, he was terrified

that his children would,
running through the second floor,

touch a wet door knob,
put their hand in their mouth

and get gonorrhoea of the mouth.

So he filled his children
with a terror

of the human body, really,
and of germs.

And I think that moulded
his personality his whole life.

He was a very isolated introvert.

So, you know, he really wasn't...

He wasn't really a naturally
social creature.

He was a shy man.

I'm sure he felt ugly.

I think he had no relationship with
women at all until he met my mother.

Their first date,

they met at the Tyrannosaurus Rex
in the Museum of Natural History,

and she was two hours late and my
father was still sitting there.

And when she saw him sitting there,
she burst into tears

because she realised
he was really interested.

Otherwise he would have left.

I think she loved my father.

I mean, clearly she loved him
unconditionally.

Otherwise she would never
have driven him every single weekend

up to the Catskills.

I'm sure that she realised
very early

all about his cross-dressing,

for the simple reason that when I
was seven, eight, nine,

my girlfriends and I would play
in the house when my mother was out

and we would all put
on her negligees,

and there was one negligee
that was six feet long -

was the prettiest one -
six feet long,

and it had a kind of drawstring
at the chest

so you could expand the chest.

And we all wanted to wear that one.

Of course, this was
my father's nightgown.

And one year my father said he was
going to have a "dress rehearsal",

because he was going
to dress up as his sister

for Halloween the next day.

So, I was 12 and my father
was in the bathroom for five hours,

and even at 12 I realised
that wasn't usual

for somebody just getting ready
for a Halloween party.

And when he came out, I was really
quite frightened,

because he looked
very ghoulish to me.

He had shaved his arms,
his legs, his chest.

He had taped up his face.

I ran into my bedroom
and slammed the door

because I was, like,
momentarily shocked.

I knew pretty immediately
that he was really into this.

I just didn't know the extent.

"My wife and I drove up
Saturday morning.

"The weather was clear and
cloudless.

"There was a sharp chill in the air

"and it was a three-hour drive
upstate.

"Last part of the drive took us
along precipitous winding roads

"near the edges of cliffs and higher
and higher into the mountains.

"Were we nervous? Of course.

"Who would not be?

"Were we afraid? No.

"From these people,
we had nothing to fear -

"but there was still
that thrilling little tang

"in doing something secretive,

"something the rest of the world
knew nothing about,

"something which might have
an element of danger about it."

Kate! Hello, beautiful.

Hi!

It's so good to see you again.

It's so good to see your friends
from so long ago.

I know. I love hearing your voice.

So how have you been?

I take about seven pills
in the morning

and two in the middle of the day
and one in the afternoon.

It makes you feel any better,

I take 14 pills every night
when I go to bed!

So... You seem to be all right now!

God, I felt like it's been forever
since we've seen each other.

You were such a good friend.

Yes. I mean, I remember you,
I remember you coming to the house.

I remember your eldest,
when she was four.

What... What did you think about my
dad during this time?

I always found him an admirable man.

He knew a lot.

He spoke very intelligently
about any topic you cared to raise!

Yeah.

He never talked about sex.

Understandable enough between men.

They don't talk about sex.

Of course they do,
but he never did,

and so I never made that link.

He did tell me once about
the nightdress

and how he couldn't really be happy

unless he was sleeping
in the nightdress... Yeah.

..but that was something
that maybe I inferred,

maybe he implied,
that this happened in adulthood.

That's what I assumed.

And he said on one occasion

that he never even thought
of cross-dressing

until one time when he was
particularly down,

and your mother encouraged him to.

That's really nice to hear.

Yeah, she was sad
when she told me about it,

but I think she was just
a very romantic person,

and my father was probably the least
romantic man that ever drew breath!

So...

Although, in his book
he says they were in love,

and I'm surprised to see,

I'm really surprised to see that
he said that.

Because I never experienced...
I knew he loved my mother deeply,

but I didn't see the in-love part.

After I had completed all
the possible qualifications

for librarianship, which was my
profession in Australia,

I had to choose a place where I could
go to add to the theory.

At that time, I had also made
contact with cross-dressers

in the United States and Canada,
mainly,

through a magazine
called Transvestia,

and all of my friends
that I'd been corresponding with

said, "Do come. We'd love to see you.

"Love to know you."

And so I found myself on a ship
to Canada.

A ship! Remember ships?!

Yes, I was on a ship to Canada
by way of Miami,

and I was engaged at the time,

so I had the double confusion

as to whether I would go to Canada
and come back and be a normal man

and just get married and live
a normal life,

or whether, in fact,
I would stay in North America

and take the full change.

I didn't know, myself.

And, so, when... very soon after
I arrived in Canada,

Irene, my apartment mate,

said, "Why don't we go down
for the weekend to the Casa Susanna?"

I was extremely interested.

And so we went down
and Irene had warned people

that I was coming with her,

and so there were a select gathering
of people at the resort

waiting to meet this strange
marsupial transdresser

who was coming so far
around the world.

When we arrived at the resort,

it was dark by then.

Marie was playing a card game
with Gail,

and there was a Lee,
who was a city engineer I met

through the magazine Transvestia,

and there was, of course, Susanna.

Marie cooked a huge meal of spaghetti

and we sat around and talked
and played card games

and talked about each other
and talked about ourselves,

and for the very first time
in my life,

I could talk to anyone
I wanted to talk to.

I could talk to them about subjects

that the average person had never
even thought of as existing,

let alone as a difficulty in society.

You could actually react
with people on a one-to-one basis

without there being any
misunderstanding,

without there being any need to say,
"I know I sound like a man

"and I probably don't look much
like a woman,

"but deep down inside, I'm a woman,

"and I want you to treat me
like a woman."

There was no need for any of that.

The rest of the weekend,

a lot of people got into groups
and said, "Why me?

"Why am I like this?"

What was this thing,
and why was it us,

and how is it different
from being gay

and how is it different from...?

Well, in those days we thought
we were just cross-dressers.

So, how was that different
from being a transgender person

who really wanted to change?

It was a very difficult situation

to try and sort out these different
classifications of people.

The Catskills were a getaway
for people from the city,

go up to the country, enjoy
swimming and fishing and boating

and recreation,
especially in the fall.

The country place that became known
as Casa Susanna

was initially an incredible property
called Chevalier D'Eon,

which had a creek on it, a pond.

As a child, I got to romp
through the woods.

We had a cornfield.

We had cows, because my grandmother
leased out some of the fields

for them to graze on.

It was magical.

Maria was my grandmother,

an incredibly strong lady.

She came over from Italy
to bring back her father,

who had come to America
and become successful,

and somehow he got killed
and all the money was stolen,

and then Marie was left here
as a child of 15,

and she managed to get a job
and worked real hard

and finally built this wig shop
on Fifth Avenue

called Maria's, of course.

Maria was from a very traditional
Italian churchgoing family,

always went to church on Sunday.

Every weekend we'd come
and go over to her house

and she'd cook a big dinner,

and family was very important
to her,

and there'd be three different
types of pasta

and artichokes,

and I remember those meals,
they were absolute feasts

and the entire family came
over and partook of them.

And then one day she met Tito,

this gentleman
who came into the shop

and was trying on wigs
and pretending it was for his sister

or his niece or something like that,

and... she basically outed him

and said, "Oh, come on,
I know this is for you,"

and he was rather shocked, and...
but she did it in a loving way.

And Tito told me later that he was
so impressed by her openness

and by her acceptance of him

that, you know, she was the one
and special person in his life.

Tito was very affable and energetic.

He was a radio commentator

for the Latin American station
in the United States.

He used to come up to the country
place for us,

and he used to dress as a woman
and become Susanna.

And we weren't supposed
to know that, and...

So, one day I was at the porch
in the country,

and Susanna grabbed me and sat down
and had a conversation

and revealed himself to me.

And at the end of the conversation,

I said to him, "You know,
if my grandmother loves you,

"then you are OK with me,"

and he was very touched by that.

And then we found out that they were
getting married

and went to the wedding,
and it was...

You know, I was very happy
for Maria,

because she seemed very
happy at the time,

and I could see the sparkle
in her eyes

and I could see that they both
cared and loved each other.

But on the other hand, my mom,
Yolanda, Maria's only child,

thought morally, it was wrong.

She didn't understand it.

No matter how many times Tito,
Susanna,

tried to explain it to her -

but then again,
she couldn't avoid it,

because Maria said, you know,
"This is what's going to happen,

"this is what it's going to be,

and we're going to create a club
in the Catskills

"for... female impersonator shows,"
which she did.

And, you know, every Saturday night

they'd throw
female impersonator shows

and numbers and numbers of
performers would come in

and do different acts,

and it actually was, you know,
quite a success up there,

and every Saturday night they'd get,
you know, 50, 75 people

in the Wigwam, including
the mayor of the local town,

who would actually come to the show,
which we thought was hilarious.

And, of course, we weren't allowed
to be anywhere close to that,

but what we did as precocious
children was sneak around

and stand on soapboxes
and peek in the windows

and then get found out and dragged
back to the house,

and ten minutes later, we'd be back
to watch the show again.

So, she wasn't too happy about that,

but this was a part of
Maria's world,

and it was part
of her husband's world,

so she embraced it wholeheartedly,

and was very supportive
in any endeavour

that he wanted to get into with her.

The property was a
beautiful place, very private.

So a lot of people could go there

and be who they were,
and who they are.

So, we would have 10, 12, 15 people
coming up every weekend

to stay at the bungalow colony,
which is what it was back then,

and do a show every week.

MUSIC: Concerto for Violin and Cello
in B-flat major, RV 547 by Vivaldi

I have mixed feelings about that,

because there was, you know,
peer pressure

and there was a couple of incidents
where some of my local friends

would come over and said,
"Oh, guess what I saw today!"

and I said, "What?"

"I saw this big, burly guy
in the hardware store

"wearing a dress and a wig
and make-up.

And I said, "Oh, yeah, really?"

In the meantime, you know, the
gentleman was staying at our house,

so I was somewhat mortified by that.

But I came to a resolution
of that,

that, you know, I wasn't
going to be ashamed,

that this was who they were
and who they are,

and if that's what they wanted
to do and be,

and it made them happy,
who was I to judge them?

OK, passengers,
this stop, Hunter, New York.

Hey! Hey!

Good to see you.

Wonderful to see you, too.

I'll give you a hug.

Oh, man.

God, it's just unbelievable.

Did you ever meet Don Wollheim?

I met Don Wollheim once.

This is Betsy.
Hi! Great to meet you.

Very glad to meet you.

You remember, probably
even better than I do.

You and I met in 1962.

That was '62...

So, I must have been 24 -
23, 24, maybe 25.

That's the year my father
wrote about. Ah.

He said it was absolutely freezing.
Exactly!

But the cold didn't even affect me.

What cold? What cold?

He said everyone was sleeping
with all their male clothes

and all of their female clothes on.

That's how cold it was.

It was very cold. Wearing all the
blankets I could find! Absolutely -

and he said he believed

that that was the greatest group
of transvestites

that had ever
gathered in the history of humanity,

which is absolutely...
There were a lot of people,

but I don't think it was
a world record!

You know, my father said
it was wonderful. It was.

I mean, it was certainly
an incredible experience for me,

but it was almost
an out-of-body experience.

I mean, you know, it was so,
so powerful.

That weekend, for the first time,

an attempt was being made to take

all these disparate little groups
of cross-dressers

and form them
into a national sorority.

Right. And that was the work
of Virginia Prince.

Yeah. She was a scientist.

She lived on the West Coast.

She was a very forceful personality.

She was a pain in the neck
sometimes.

And she had the drive and she had
the organisational skills

to contact many of these
small groups.

And, of course, Virginia went
on editing the magazine Transvestia.

It was partly wish fulfilment
fiction, badly written,

and partly stuff stolen
from scientific magazines

on cross-dressing.

And there was a large social section.

"Would you like to meet other
people who cross-dress?"

And so people made their own little
internal networks as well.

Yes, that's how I did, too. Yeah.

And so that is the reason

why all those people finished up
at that resort.

You didn't get more involved
in the Casa Susanna, did you?

No. No, I didn't.

As I say, I mostly stayed away
from the culture.

Yeah.

I mean, mostly it's not
so much staying away

as not participating, you know?

I mean... Sure, I understand.

I never adopted people
because they were trans.

Uh-huh. I adopted people because
I liked them.

Yes! Yes.

So I want to go look
inside of one of these.

I don't remember...
See what they look like.

This is the one deluxe,
the one with the green side.

Yes, indeed. That's our specialty.

I wonder if there were 100...

I mean, putting 100 people in there,
that's a pretty...

Well, for an audience, you can do it,

because you've got ten rows of ten.
Yeah. That's easy -

but to accommodate them overnight,
that's more of a difference.

Touch wood.

You bet. You bet.

You know, two women standing here
leaning up against the wall,

you never know what kind
of trouble we can get into.

Well, we can try.

LAUGHTER

# Completely round
is the perfect pearl... #

I'll hit you with my stick
if you sing that awful song!

LAUGHTER

I sang it quite well, I think.

Oh, you sang it well.

The lyrics are silly.

They're very silly.
They're supposed to be silly.

LAUGHTER

I don't even know how I got
invited to Casa Susanna.

I desperately, of course, wanted
to go to this Halloween party,

and I had no idea
how I would ever pull it off,

but I sort of got Julie to agree
that it was a...

..you know, it would be...

..it would be OK for me to do that,

to maybe find some stuff out
about myself.

So, off I went, and it was an
incredibly dangerous adventure,

with a big suitcase,
stood on the highway,

and I hitchhiked from Valparaiso,
Indiana to Casa Suzanna.

The first thing that happened was,
I think we went into the main house

and there was somebody there
who would set my hair.

Now, I'd never had my hair curled,
ever,

and it was just the most
exciting experience!

It was unbelievable to me. It was...

It's so unbelievable to me
what those small pleasures,

you know, how thrilling they were.

I mean, it all seems kind
of silly and funny...

..and it is, I mean, even then
it was done with a light heart,

but it was also very piquant,
very poignant.

And one of the cross-dressers,
Gloria,

gave me this wonderful pair of shoes
that had these high heels

that were just spectacular -
and they fit -

and I was pretty successful.

So they were all kind of
oohing and aahing,

and that was, you know,
great support.

It made me feel really authentic,
you know,

made me feel like, "Wow, this is..."

you know,
"I could really be like this."

I remember that there were a lot
of people,

but individuals are not
so clear to me,

and I don't think that it's so much
that I didn't interact

with the people in fun ways,

but I was so out of myself,

it was just so incredible

that that remembrance is not a part
of what it felt like.

It's more, really, a feeling,

this incredible feeling of
exultation that was... sublime.

It was... I mean,
it was unreal, obviously,

I mean, there was something that...

it's just that something
I would never have...

..hoped could happen.

Oh, I remember that night.
I did The Dance of the Little Swans.

I had done a bit of training
as a classical ballerina.

So, yes, I could dance on toe
for... for 20 seconds.

Some of the cross-dressers
were excellent.

Some of them were very well done,

well made up, well dressed,
good taste.

But on the other hand, of course,
there were some

who looked like Donald Duck in a
drunken orgy or something like this,

but everyone wanted to just join in
and be another woman amongst women.

The style of Casa Susanna
wasn't vampy or very sexy.

They were dressing up
as middle-class women

that would be putting on their
Sunday best and their finery.

And it wasn't like they wanted
to be a Bettie Page

or something like that.

They wanted to be an accepted person
of the female persuasion in society.

And the transformation
for most of them

wasn't an easy thing to accomplish.

It took hours to get to the point
where they were satisfied

with their look.

To become Susanna took hours.

I mean, Tito was a perfectionist.

When he was becoming Susanna,

I mean, I saw him tweeze
every hair on his face,

which was an incredibly
long process -

and I asked him, you know, I mean...

.."It takes a long
for you to transform,"

and his answer was,
"Well, it's worth it."

She loved to play the starring role,

and aside from the cross-dressing
shows that we did at the Wigwam,

and then when she was
the grande dame at Casa Susanna,

loved to be up front and a
performer,

and she just had this incredible
personality

that just spilt over everything.

Susanna is owed the respect
that is due her.

She told me a story once
that she was growing up in Chile,

where she was from,

and that she always knew that she
wanted to be a woman,

so this was not something
that was a fad or a fixture.

And Tito felt actually blessed

that he didn't have to hide
it from Maria,

that she was accepting of it and
made his life a joy,

rather than constant paranoia
of - "Who's going to find out,

"am I going to lose my job,
am I going to lose my family?"

Which was what happened back then.

These have seen better days.

ARCHIVE: The big cities attract
homosexuals,

and the liberal law has made here
the biggest magnet in the nation.

The city can offer anonymity
and permissiveness.

The city's downtown Tenderloin
district is the home ground

of the always-visible segment

of the city's
homosexuals and transvestites.

The drag queens are here
at Turk and Taylor.

So frequent were the fights between
screaming queens

in the 2am to 3am period

that police had had enough
and asked an all-night cafeteria

to close by midnight.

One thing you have to remember is
that we are talking about the 1960s,

when the cross-dressers were in some
places illegal

and certainly in many places
looked down upon and bullied

and had a bad time.

It was a very hard time back then
to know who to trust.

Where do you get your information
from?

One of the reasons why there are
relatively few photographs

taken at the Chevalier D'Eon Resort

and at the, er,
at the Casa Susanna...

..people didn't like to have to...

They didn't like to lose control
of the photographs

that were taken of them.

You'd be very unlikely
to have someone come up and say,

"Would you take a photograph of me
on your camera?"

Because they would know then
that that negative, that camera

would go away somewhere,

that person could do anything
with those photos,

and we were all a little bit paranoid

about having our
reputations destroyed

or having blackmail exercised on us.

And because of the prejudice
against gay people,

they wanted
to differentiate themselves.

So the resort was designed
for cross-dressing men

who were exclusively heterosexual.

They wanted their wives to be
part of the organisation.

Well, they labelled themselves
as cross-dressers.

They didn't label themselves
as gay or transsexual.

Most of them claimed
that they were totally heterosexual.

The times were the middle '50s
through '60s,

which reigned of McCarthyism,
of anti-communist sentiment.

You know, if someone was perceived
as being gay,

it was, you know, just, um,
it was a crime.

Let's face it, you could go to jail
for that.

In that context, not only do you
come out and be a cross-dresser,

but then you're gay on top of that,

so that's like strike two,
you know, so you're getting,

you know, a double whammy
from the, um,

you know, from the religious front,

from the moral majority back then.

And that was a moral majority
back then.

I have approached many numerous
firms

asking them for any kind
of work that they had to offer.

Over a period of eight months,
the same response -

"We can't hire
anybody of your calibre.

"We don't want any of your people
working for us."

So what else was I supposed to do
when you get damn hungry?

I'm not up here tonight
for criticism.

I'm up here for help.

Now, I know about, roughly about
20 of us girls

who are very well
qualified to do work.

Legitimate work.
We don't want to hustle.

We hate hustling.

I do.

I hate it very bitterly.

But when I get starving for two
and three days

and somebody comes along,

I'm going to take a meal off them
if it's the only means available.

Not only did you have two strikes
on you,

but you were then
a total degenerate.

So I think they wanted to skirt
that issue

in order to again get a certain
amount

of acceptability or tolerance -

let's use that word instead
of acceptability. Tolerance.

Maria wanted to become the
landing pad, so to speak,

and she walked a very fine line

because these people
were major film directors,

they were attorneys,
they were tug boat captains,

there were airplane pilots,

there was all sorts of professions

that people reached, you know,
the pinnacle of their careers,

where they were making good money,
had great jobs.

It must have been an extremely
strong desire to do this

because they were rolling the dice

every time that they became
their alter ego.

And then, IF found out, the downside
of it was horrendous, you know,

I mean, who'd want to be brought
into jail dressed as a woman

in your community?

I mean, it would have been front
page anywhere in the United States.

So they risked a lot
for doing what they wanted to do.

That is Irene,
who was an aeronautical engineer.

She also was one who swore
that she would never go anywhere

near sex change.

She said, "Certainly not.
What an idea. Disgusting.

"I am a cross-dresser and
I will remain a cross-dresser."

And a couple of years
after I returned to Australia,

I had a letter saying,
"Sit down before you read this.

"I've just had the operation."

Felicity was an airline pilot
with many years' experience.

She had intended to be
the first person to fly solo

across the Atlantic. Wow.

But Lindbergh beat her to it. Yeah.

Gail. I miss him so much.

Gail was the first person I met
who used the technique of glueing

elastic to the skin and then pulling
it back to give a false

and temporary safe face-lift.

Yeah. I learnt many things from Gail

and one of the first was that there
was someone else in the world

like me,
which was very important to know.

That's Downtown Group.
Downtown Branch.

Donna is the only one I recognised.

Donna, I thought, was quite
beautiful. And elegant, too.

She wasn't just beautiful,
she was elegant. She...

Yeah, she could definitely pass.

That's Donna in male mode.

I have never seen Donna as Don.
Ever.

Had she transitioned?

She had transitioned
and she had de-transitioned.

Oh. Why do you think?
I don't know.

Maybe she saw herself deteriorating,

maybe she thought she was no longer
the person that she could have been.

Sadly, she decided just to walk
back down that path

she had just climbed her way up.

It's a fabulous dress.

Gloria was large. She was about
6ft 4, and she had a stroke,

so she was paralysed on one side.

But she did her best
with her accumulated wealth to help

other transgendered people.

I read about that, yeah. And she
paid for their operations

and she looked after them until they
felt free to go out into society.

When she died, the minister
who conducted the ceremony

had a problem because they had
invited a lot of people,

some of whom knew Rex
and some of whom knew Gloria. Yeah.

And so they put the Gloria people
on one side of the church

and the Rex people on the other,

and the minister had to stumble
his way through the eulogy saying,

"This, uh, um, person was a fine
p-person,

"and we should all...we should all
honour this, um, person.

Oh, that's me! Is that you?
That's me.

And that's the wig that Marie
put together for me. Mm-hm.

I love that photo.
Me in a swimming pool.

I love that photo. ..a swimming
costume and garter.

You've got great legs there.
Oh, great legs.

Of course, I admit that - honesty
forces me to admit that!

Oh, dear.

Bad. That was taken in my family home
in Sydney.

That was what I used to do for myself
with my little home-made

self-timer on the camera,
and I would stand in the corner

and take photographs, and
all the doors were deadlocked.

I love the photos with you
with your natural hair.

You look more like yourself.

And I like that.

I love that photo.

I love that photo!

Don't laugh, I LOVE that photo!

It's the sheepdog.

I know, but it's very...

The way it covers one of your eyes
is very fetching.

I like it. Veronica Lake...

I LOVE that photo.

I love this one, too,
cos you're so young.

Another one taken from my home.

How old were you there?

Well, that would have been
at university, so somewhere

between 16 and 20.

So young. That is my father.

That's in my mother's house.

Is it? And there he is again.

There's more of him around
in a dress than I knew of.

Oh, yes. There are many, many photos
of him in dresses.

I'm learning things about your father
every minute.

Oh, yes. And there's my dad again.

That's him again. Yes.

And again. That's him again
with my mom. With some short woman.

I love that. She always has a look
of adoration

whenever she looks at him, you know?

So you didn't really see him
dress much? No.

Well, only once ever, I think.

Oh, my God,
there's many, many photos of him.

There he is again.

I'm certainly surprised
because I had always

been under the impression
that he suppressed

it as much as possible,

that it was all going on in his head,
but not in real life.

I think that was true
for a few years.

And then it just popped out.

Yeah.

Look, he has good legs too. Yeah.

I don't know where these clothing
were cos they certainly

weren't in our house.

My mother always said that my father
was a pure clothing fetishist.

But seeing all these photos,
I can't help but wonder,

was there more involved?

Do you...what do you think?

What is your take on this?

My take on this is
that no-one knows.

No-one will ever know
what goes on in some of the depths

of someone's mind.

Who knows? The shadow knows.
Only the shadow knows. Yes.

Only the shadow knows.

Who is that? I don't know.

Quite attractive, though.

Yeah.

Is this a...?

Where? Is that me?

Is that really me?

Are you sure?

Somebody said so, huh?

Is that really me?

Where would that have been?

Oh, God, I can't stand it.

This is unbelievable.
I don't believe that's me.

Is that really me?
Oh, wait a minute.

"Diana and Dee." That's not me.
This is not me.

That's not me.

That's not me.

These are not me.

That could be me.

This is kind of an embarrassing
picture, but it says my name right

on the back. So it must be me.

THIS is me.

These are definitely me.

Those three are definitely me.

My hair had grown quite long
by that time.

This was right around
when I got the surgery.

And, um...

I was...I was feeling my oats.

I was pretty happy here.

Very, very happy.

Coming here made me realise
that this was really how I needed

to be, and I had to face up to that.

This was so powerful for me
and so important

that I had to figure out a way to...

..um, to allow it to...

..bloom.

So after this Halloween party,
we went to Gail's place in the city.

So I stayed there for a couple
of days. Always as Diana.

It was Diana the whole time.

Then I got this call from Julie.

And the sad part was
that she had had a miscarriage.

That was like a real, uh...

..kick in the head because,
you know,

kind of almost the worst thing
that you can imagine happening

when you're in the middle
of this blissful pleasure

and your...and your beloved is
having a miscarriage,

there's just something
kind of very dissonant

about that, and very unhappy.

When I went back to Australia
after my degree,

I was determined to marry.

I was determined to give up
cross-dressing and I thought

it would be almost automatic.
Very many cross-dressers think,

"Oh, once I get married,
it'll all go away.

"I won't need this imaginary woman

"that inhabits half my body and most
of my mind."

But it didn't work out that way.

I still had the urges to dress,
even when I was engaged,

and as the marriage drew closer and
closer, and finally I had decided,

I really, in fairness,
had to tell her about myself

before we got married.

And at that point, her father was
killed in a road accident.

So I couldn't tell her,

I couldn't bring two tragedies
into her life so close together.

So I determined instead to give up

anything to do with cross-dressing
for a full year.

And maybe I could give it up
completely then,

and at least I wouldn't have
committed myself to life,

I would be able to either renew
my vow of...masculinity

or else I would...give way

and go forward towards
being feminine.

So one year after we were married,
I told my wife about myself,

and she was quite naturally
very upset.

But in a few days' time, she came
back to me and said that we would try

and make it work because
that's what marriage was about.

And we did make it work,
through three children and 25 years.

In the early sixties, my father's
obsession was getting worse.

So he flew out to the West Coast
to meet Virginia.

He wanted somebody to talk to
about this very secret

subject, completely undercover.

And so Virginia suggested
Susanna and Gail.

Gail and Susanna both had,
um, meeting places

for men of this nature,

of this ilk.

Gail was in the village,
so she's the "Downtown Group".

And Susanna was in midtown,
so she was the Midtown Group.

So my father wrote a letter
to Susanna and Gail.

Gail answered within a week,
and they both just hit it off.

He would say he was going
book hunting on Saturday,

but I really think
a lot of those times,

he didn't come back with books.

He came back occasionally
with books, but not usually.

And I think he went to Gail's house
on 11th Street.

But he knew
he would have to tell my mother,

and he asked advice from Virginia.

And Virginia said,
"Come at it slowly."

And so he did.

He, you know, he started to wear
nylon tricot,

and he eventually went nightgown
shopping with my mother.

When I was 12, it was 1964.

So I think that was about the time

when he might have opened
the WHOLE door to her

cos I think she felt it was just
something between them originally,

but when she discovered the network

and she realised it wasn't going to
stop, it wasn't a phase,

there was some watershed moment
for my mother.

Julie and I, we loved one another,
and the love

was beyond all the other things
about ourselves.

But we were innocent in some ways

about life and about how people
are and can be.

So we thought that New York would be
a place where I could learn

how I really was.

And it wasn't so much
that it would all be healed,

but if there were any place
where it COULD be healed,

it would be someplace like New York.

Her hope was that it would be...
it would be something

we could live with.

And that was my hope, too.

So we decided to move to New York
and go visit Harry Benjamin

and see if there's anything
to be done for me.

At that time, anybody who was even
remotely thinking of surgery

had to see Harry Benjamin.

I didn't dress all that much,

I don't think.
Julie and I would visit Gail

and we would visit Susanna.

Julie was very much a part, although
she was often tortured by it

because she didn't understand it.

It was not pleasant for her.

But she was willing to go along
with it

because she wanted...
she wanted this to turn out...

..OK, for both of us.

And then I started to take hormones.

I started to develop a little bit,
and it became apparent

that that was what I wanted.

So we came to realise
that this really couldn't work.

She moved back to Valparaiso,
where a good friend of ours, Paul,

asked her to marry him.

So Julie and I were separated.

I was working
at a public relations place.

I was taking hormones.

I was doing electrolysis.

And I was...

It was...it became more and more
known that I wanted to have surgery,

but there didn't seem any way
for me possibly to do it

because it was thousands of dollars.

But then Gloria did call.

We went out to dinner and...he said,

"Well, if you really want to do
this, I'll help you out.

"I'll take you to California

"and we'll find a place
for you to do this.

"I'll pay for it
and you can stay with me."

So I resigned and I tried
to pull everything together.

I changed to Diana
the night before the flight.

And, um...

And that was the last time
I was David.

It was a very rough flight
to California.

I thought that I was going to die
and God would have gotten me!

And my mother was right all along!

But fortunately, the plane landed.

And we just kind of leisurely
made our way across the country.

And then we went to Tijuana.

In the United States,
this was illegal.

Everybody agreed that it was right
that it was illegal.

There was no way to find
a moral place to stand.

And that's a very isolating
experience for any human being,

I think, that to feel like
who you are is against the law.

There's still a little bit of anger
in me even now

that I actually had to leave the
country to have the surgery done.

I feel wronged about that.

I woke up,
and it was pretty fierce pain.

And my surgery was certainly not
the most refined of the surgeries.

I would have wished that I'd been
able to go in other places,

Casablanca was the place
at the time.

But I DIDN'T have that and I...I was
very grateful that I got what I got.

But it was very painful.

It was in a hospital
where nobody spoke,

well, everybody spoke Spanish.

So I learned "mucho dolor"...

..and "agua caliente".

Then we decided we should drive back
to Pennsylvania,

and on the way we should stop
in Iowa and visit my parents.

We drove across the country,
Gloria and I.

And we stopped in Omaha
and my father came to meet us.

And I remember I was in the room
and my hair was in curlers.

And he came into the room.

He just came across the room
and gave me a big hug and said,

"I'm so glad to see you."

And it was...

..you know, it was truly an amazing,
amazing gift of love.

He was an incredible kind of
marriage of strength and...softness.

He was both an incredibly strong,
masculine man,

but he was an incredibly gentle soul
as well.

And, um...

Uh...

That's...

That's always been a model
for how people should be,

um, that they should...

..have a zest for life

and a love
for the excitement of life,

but a willingness to...

..to give and to...

..and to, uh, have vulnerability.

To be vulnerable.

And, um...

And my dad was just an incredibly...

He crossed all of those.

And I don't... He was a simple man.

He was not, he was
not some super-educated or...

But he was just...

He was just a very good being.

But that didn't produce a super-good
relationship with my parents,

because my mother was just...
it was just too much.

You know, they were in a small town,

it was...it was embarrassing -
quotes -

"embarrassing" to them
for me to show up, to be around.

I was an embarrassment, you know.

So it was...it was just as well
to them that I was...

..kind of disappeared.

My relationship with my wife
was never the kind of secret

that is hidden away in a closet.

Back in Australia, when I went
to a dinner or a party,

she knew where I was going
and who I was going to be with.

And, in fact, she even came
to a few of the functions with me.

When we moved back to America
after a few years,

we met Downtown Branch
and sometimes others.

But after, I don't know,
four or five times, she said

she would really rather not come
because she was afraid of hurting

people's feelings
by calling them by the wrong name.

So from then on,
I would go by myself.

In those days, I should add,
that we didn't visit Casa Susanna,

mainly because the resort had
disappeared.

I would ask how, "How's Marie,"

and people would say,
"We think she's dead."

And I'd ask,
"What about the resort?"

And they'd say, "Oh, it closed
years ago. We don't know."

So although it was only four or five
years since I'd been there,

it was nonetheless as if the resort
had been all imagination

and had never existed.

And it was strange
because no-one knew.

You imagined that someone
at least would have known

the truth about something.

Whereas, Tito, nobody knows.

But that was only one part
of our lives anyway.

And I was too busy with myself.

It wasn't so much that
the urge was increasing,

but that time was passing.

And I knew that the proportion of my
life that I would have to spend

as a woman was diminishing compared
to the proportion of my life

that I had already spent
and would spend as a man.

And so the pressure became greater.

I kept wanting more and more.

I wanted to dress more frequently.

I wanted to dress with more freedom.

I felt that I'd spent the first
third of my life being the person

that my family wanted me to be.

And the second third of my life,
I had spent being who my marital

family wanted me to be.

And I wanted time for myself
to be the person I wanted it to be.

And, of course, several
of my friends committed suicide.

And I thought,
is this the way I have to go?

Is this the only way that I'll ever
get away from this circle

of being John then Katherine
then John then Katherine?

Maybe I have to break the marriage
or commit suicide.

And when I went to my wife
and told her that I needed to try

living as a woman, she seemed to be
very sympathetic and say,

"Well, we can't have anything
else happening that's worse."

Because I think I've raised it,

"I have to try living as a woman
or do something sillier,"

was my phrase.

And she said,
"Well, we can't have that."

And we obviously both were talking
about suicide and I thought

it was all going to be all right.

I told my family.

My eldest daughter burst into tears
and said, "Is that all it is?"

Because they'd seen the distress
that I was under and stress

that my wife was under,
and they had assumed that like every

second family around us,
I was having an affair with some

other woman, of which I was,
of course, but it was me.

So that was the situation.

That was really what pushed me
over the edge.

I had the operation early
in February, and at the end

of the operation I felt marvellous.

I felt that for the first time
in my life I was the real person

and that I had discarded those bits
of me that weren't necessary.

And I had gained those bits
of me that were.

But when I told my family,
it was such a shock to them

that there weren't really any
questions that I could answer.

One daughter has been
my best friend

virtually ever since the operation.

The other two don't want
to know me as Katherine.

One of them I haven't seen
for many years.

The other one wrote me a letter
of hope when I had my

first heart operation.

Hope that I would recover soon
and be well, and so on.

I thought, here is an opportunity
I can take.

It will have been worth having my
triple bypass if I can make

a contact with my daughter.

And so I wrote back to her
and thanked her and said,

"Maybe when I come out of
the hospital, we could sit

"down for coffee and have a talk."

And I received a reply which said,

"It's too soon."

So I still haven't seen her.

I drove home calm and filled
with thoughts of the astonishing

secret world I had come into.

I had heard some astonishing
stories, but I could not visualise

myself taking part in such
adventures.

There is indeed a certain dead end
element in Gail's life.

It was evident in everything he said
and did that he looked back on each

episode as something guilt ridden.

He was like a man on a toboggan
slide, enjoying the sensation,

unable to get off, and having no
idea of what cliff or wall might lie

at the bottom.

I saw Gail as a man laughing
to cover up a desire to scream

as joking to keep from crying,

as running to avoid having to
stop and look at himself.

My father was somebody, I think,
who really couldn't change...

..even as Doris.

My father was still Donald.

I have a letter from him to my
mother from 1942 where he says,

"This is the way I am.

"I am prone to moods.

"I wake up in the morning one
morning and everything is shit

"and all people are crap, and
there's no good place for anything

"and nothing good can ever happen,
and that's the way I feel.

"And then I wake up another morning
and everything seems fine and fun

"and nice and interesting."

And that's the way he was
his whole life.

After they had me, things were
really happy for the first ten,

maybe, years of my life.

But as I started to go through
puberty, my father started to get

insulting and say things like,

"Looks like me, poor kid."

He said things to me that were
absolutely unforgivable.

Unforgivable.

When I was 12 years old, I was 12 -
I was in sixth grade, 12 -

he said I was a liar, a cheat
and a fraud.

How could a 12-year-old be a fraud?

And I never lied.

I told my mother everything.

My friends would tease me
that I'd tell Mommy everything.

So, you know, I didn't lie.

I didn't cheat because I was
the smartest kid in school.

So who would I cheat from?

And, you know,
I wasn't a fraud because

what 12-year-old could be a fraud?

It's ridiculous. Impossible.

And it took me another...

..over 20 years to realise that
that was all

projection of how he felt
about himself.

He obviously had a lot of
self-hatred, which was like a black

cloud in our household,
like a hole, like a cloud.

My father was somebody who opened
his mouth and said things that most

people would consider unsayable.

Really, unsayable.

He would just say it like that,
no problem.

He told me I had no worth
as a person, that basically

I was just a broodmare.

I was a worthless piece of crap.

I mean, I really loved my father.

I worshipped him. I adored him.

I loved him. I idolised him.

So every single nasty thing
he said to me, I bought it.

I bought it all.

I believed it.

And I'm still trying to rid myself
of some of these beliefs

now at age 70.

I wonder if his own hatred
for his father -

he just assumed that I would hate
him because he was the father.

I don't know, I have no idea.

Maybe he hated me because I was
the girl that looked like him.

I really don't know.

I don't know.

So anything that made him happy
was a happy thing for our household.

That's why I feel happiness

that he got pleasure
from cross-dressing,

because that was, like, if you made
a chart and there was a negative

side and a positive side,
there were so many negatives

and that cross-dressing,
he was happy.

He was happy.

When I walked around yesterday,
I looked around here and I could

think, I could imagine
all of them, you know,

going through the grass in their
high heels, you know, coming

from the cabins.

And I could imagine them
all so happy.

And I thought, my father must
have been so happy here.

He had found a group that accepted
him with all of his quirks,

even his most outrageous quirk.

And he says in his book
that he bonded

with people immediately.

My father wasn't like that
with other people.

He really wasn't.

He could be very cruel.
He was very, very cruel.

He was cruel to my mother.

He was cruel to me.

He was cruel to a lot
of his authors.

He wasn't cruel at all to others.

It really depended
on their personality.

And I don't think he was ever cruel

to his fellow transvestites, ever.

He loved them and he bonded
with them in a way that he bonded

with nobody else.

I didn't feel love for my father,
until recently.

I'm almost 70, but just recently

I'm beginning to feel like

I remember the love I felt
as a child.

I can feel it again.

But really, it took decades.

Then it was time for me to sort
of imagine, how would I get out

into the world?

And one of the things that I wanted
to do was get married.

I even thought at the beginning
that I would love to have children.

And much of that was realised.

I was married to a man for a while.

And I had very traditional
ideas about...

..I think both of us did, actually,
about how it would be.

You know, he took me to meet
his parents and they were lovely

people and we had a wonderful time.

And his mother was
a Tupperware salesman.

And I got lots of Tupperware
and it was wonderful.

So for the first couple of years,
it really was just me kind

of learning how to be a homemaker,
getting to know his mother,

having that relationship with his
mother, just being domestic.

And I would have been very happy
to be just a housewife.

But it was not to be that way.

So eventually we split
and I had to find work.

And that became a whole new career,
and it was quite an exciting career.

And it had almost nothing to do
with being transgender.

It had a lot to do with
being a woman working in computers.

When I got to Xerox, the place
was just beaming with excitement

and energy and fun.

It was just outrageous
in a New Agey way.

So I sort of went
from being a secretary

to being a research scientist.

It was very funny.

We began to develop this language
called Smalltalk.

That was a big thing in the day,
and it did have a large impact

on a lot of the software
that exists to this day.

And here I was, a woman
in this research centre

that was mostly all men.

And they let me play.

There was no problem, you know?

It was just, welcome to the clan.

And still, it was hard for me
to tell people who I am.

I think there is a piece of me
that feels some regret, or kind

of sadness, because it's truly
very much a part of who I am.

My whole goal was to not be afraid.

I didn't want to be afraid.

I wanted to...

I wanted to be just a human being,
an alive human being,

having a fun, interesting,
useful life.

And then Carol Shapiro
walked into my life.

She put her hand up on the couch
and I put my hand on the back

of the couch.

And the next thing we knew,
we were kissing.

You have to get the idea
that that was not a common thing.

And we were not... That was not
our normal way of being.

I mean, you know,
our relationship, even to this day,

is just spectacular.

And it has nothing to do with
small talk and it has nothing

to do with transgender,
and it doesn't...

Now, Carol is actually
very proud of me.

And even my transgender past,

she thinks that, wow,
that's pretty incredible.

Maria sold this property
because it was just becoming

too large to manage.

I mean, again,
it's 288 acres of land.

There's always something
that needed to be done.

So she downsized a little bit
and moved a couple of miles away

to a 188-acre property,
which became known as Casa Susanna,

which was a totally different
operation.

They didn't do cross-dressing shows,
but it became like the bed

and breakfast of the cross-dressing
community where people could come

and stay and enjoy themselves
for the time that they were here.

That was another magical place.

And Susanna spent a lot of time of
her life up there and would go out

regularly to the store
or to parties.

She was her own individual
and wasn't sheltered to the house

and hiding undercover there.

She was quite flamboyant.

And she actually enjoyed
the property a lot more

than Tito did.

They were separate individuals.

Tito was a person who worked
for radio for years,

had his own show, and Susanna got
into the translation business

at the UN.

So she was also eventually
able to support herself.

Again, they were both separate
and individual people.

Although I think that Tito was
taking hormones to grow breast,

to transform and live as Susanna
full time.

I did, spoke to her about that
and I said,

"Well, you know,
suppose you became a woman.

"Would you want, you know,
the comfort of a man?"

And she said "No."

So she was pretty adamant
about her relationship with Maria.

So I guess that would make
them a lesbian couple.

This used to be the old
swimming hole down here.

We used to come here
almost every day.

My grandmother used to dam up
so we could get a big, deep

swimming pool here.

And then every year in the fall,
the water would just wash everything

away and we'd have to put
a new dam in every year.

I can see some of the rocks
that are still there

from when we used to do that.

What's remarkable is my family
used to own that mountain.

Maria was up in the house in Mount

Vernon because we had moved there

and I was actually staying

at her house on 103rd Street.

So my brother Richard called me

and said that she had fallen

down a flight of stairs

and that she had, you know, cracked

open her skull and was unconscious.

And he didn't know for how long

she was lying there

and called an ambulance

and brought her to the hospital.

But she was seriously hurt.

She had to have three burr holes

cut into her skull to relieve

the pressure from the haematoma

that was growing under there

and the bleeding,

and had a very long

convalescence after that.

And not only did we have to

go through that, helping

her with her convalescence,

but the hospital bills

from that incident were astronomical

and put an extreme

financial pressure on the family,

and especially on Tito.

You know, he had to take care of his
family and that's what he did.

And that became his motivation

in every waking minute,

and all of his energy
was put into that.

So they had to sell Casa Susanna

and that was the end of
the property.

And then I would say
in the '80s, my grandmother

was getting worse and worse
and then starting to get

into her hoarding phase.

She had a eight-room Upper West Side
apartment in the city,

and there was barely a path to walk
from the kitchen to the bedroom

to the bathroom.

So Susanna got her own apartment
on 42nd Street and started living

as Susanna full time.

And she slowly but surely
created her identity and got

a driver's licence
and a Social Security card.

But also during that time,

Susanna had developed
a brain tumour

which was inoperable, and eventually
she was going to die from it.

So Maria was a hoarder,

Susanna had brain cancer,

and their lives physically
were separated.

But they were always
in communication with each other.

And I would sometimes overhear
their conversations.

And they were very endearing
and always ending with, you know,

"I love you, I miss you.

"Lots of kisses, and someday soon
we'll be back together again,"

which was incredibly sweet,
I thought.

But they couldn't.

In fact, when Marie died,
Susanna was in such a state

that she couldn't move
from that apartment.

And she passed the week
after Maria died.

We were told she was laying
on the bed fully dressed as Susanna.

I loved your grandmother, Maria.

She was an incredible woman.

She was such a strong woman.

And I know she put you all to work
immediately when you got here.

There were some cross-dressers
who just wanted to get

into the washing-up
and scrubbing the floor.

That wasn't me. I was the
perch on the bar stool one.

THEY LAUGH

I mean, that building was fantastic.

There were so many, you know,
incredibly talented people

that came here.

For a long time,
for some time anyway,

there was the sort of belief that
you really didn't find

that community unless you were
intelligent and educated

and inquiring and, you know,
all these things.

It wasn't that at all, actually.
It was just communication.

You weren't allowed to put an ad
in the paper saying,

"Cross-dressers interested in
running a resort at the Catskills."

You just couldn't do that.

So it all had to be word of mouth and
word of mouth people

tended to be university
graduates and the professionals.

So, yes, it was a select group
that used to come here,

and it was a very interesting group.
Great to listen to.

So how old were you at that time?

I was, again, anywhere from five...

I was born in 1951.

So...

So you were just a kid?
I was just a kid. I know.

I mean, we couldn't come
and see the shows, so we'd peek

through the window
until we got called.

That's perfect.

So if you're born in the '50s,
I'm well ahead of you cos I'm 86.

God bless you.
Look at that.

So, you know, I want to
tell you both something because,

you know, it's long been a dream
or even a quest of mine,

because I actually am the holder
of Susanna, Maria's

and Yolanda's ashes.

And I've have always wanted to

bring them here and...
Excuse me.

..and pass them out,

cos I think that this is the place
for them to be, you know?

It seems like the perfect place.

Seems like the perfect place.

I would be honoured if you two
would help me do that.

It would be my great honour.

It would be my great honour.

So how do we go about that?

Yeah, I was going to do it
over by that tree over there.

OK.

Because it has some colour.

And I just think
that they should be here.