All language subtitles for casa patricia

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Now, for reasons which
will become very clear,

we're going to use
first names only.

Would you please
introduce yourselves?

Misty.Vicky.

Sonia.Simone.

Misty, what you do?

I'm a bank teller.

And Vicky? Cosmetician.

Sonia? Hair dresser.

Window display.

Are those your own eyelashes?

No.

And Sonia,
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 reasons 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.

♪

♪

♪

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.

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

And 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, or on the lawn.

People used to do
gardening work.

They just loved 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 F.P.E.,

which is for
Full Personality Expression.

And...

it was a very
interesting weekend,

to say the very least, though.

There were psychiatrists
from the Kinsey Institute.

There were people from all over,

there were over a hundred people
there that weekend.

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

Visiting Casa Susanna was
almost a necessity for me.

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

'cause 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'm more woman inside
than I am man,

that might be the point
where my new life starts.

I think there are
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 would
happen every day,

wished that when that 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
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 get...

have an appreciation
for the difference...

for me, isolated in, 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 okay.

And I kept thinking
I would grow out of it.

And some... you know, there was
a kind of almost

optimism about it,
in the face of

pretty dark frustration.

That, okay, 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?

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!

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 have any plans
regarding the theater?

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 Jorgensen
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.

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

I kind of knew that
it 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.

I played the trumpet,
and I played football,

and I sang in the choir,
and I grow up...

playing the game,
and I played it very well.

When I got a scholarship
to Valparaiso University,

I got into the
theater 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 we, you know,

we thought we loved one another.

And I told Julie about...

that I had this problem.

And, um, it was just like,

"Oh, well, okay, 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 they...
when people speak as though,

"This is not a problem,

all you have to do
is change your mind."

And I, I'd say, "Okay,

when will my mind change?"

You know, how does it change?

What makes me...
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.

There 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. Rayner,

a book that nobody realizes
he wrote, except my mother.

I was fascinated.

Suddenly everything
seemed to snap into place,

I suddenly realized 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 realized 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, um, 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 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 practiced 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 specialized

in venereal disease--
syphilis and gonorrhea--

which, at that time,
was incurable and deadly.

So, he was terrified
that his children would,

running through
the second floor,

touch a wet doorknob,
put their hand in their mouth,

and get gonorrhea of the mouth.

So, he filled his children with

a terror of the human body,
really, and of germs.

And I think that molded his
personality his whole life.

He was a very isolated
introvert.

So, you know, he really wasn't
a... 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 realized
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
realized 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--

it 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 realized 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
a Saturday morning.

"The weather was
clear and cloudless.

"There was a sharp
chill in the air,

"and it was a three-hour
drive upstate.

"The 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's 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.

So good to see 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.

If that makes you feel
any better, I take 14 pills

every night when
I go to bed, so...

You seem to be all right.

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, he knew a lot.

He spoke very
intelligently about

any topic you'd care 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 night dress

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.

Well, that's
really nice to hear.

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.

'Cause I never experienced...

I, 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,
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.

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,

trans dresser 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 Gale

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,

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
and go up to the country,

enjoy swimming,
and fishing, and boating

and, you know, recreation,
especially in the fall.

♪

The country place that became
known as Casa Susanna

was initially an incredible
property called Chevalier d'EÉon,

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

'cause 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 Maria 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 5th 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
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 arancinos and artichokes.

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, um, 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, um, 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 loved you,
then you're okay with me,"

and he was very touched by that.

And then we found that
they were getting married

and went to the wedding
and it was...

I was very happy for Maria

'cause 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 gonna be

"and we're gonna create a club

"in the Catskills for a, um...

female impersonator shows."

Which she did.

And, you know,
every Saturday night,

they'd throw
a female impersonator show

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, uh,

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

so she wasn't too happy
about that but, um...

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 endeavor 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

ten, 12, 15 people coming up
every weekend to stay

at the Bungalow Colony,
which is what it was back then,

and then do a show every week.

♪

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 say,
"Oh, guess what I saw today?"

I would say, "What?"

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

wearing a dress
and a wig and makeup!"

And I said,
"Oh yeah, really?"

In the meantime, you know,
the gentlemen were

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?

♪

Okay passengers, this stop.

Hampton, New York.

♪

Hey! Hey!

Ah!

Good to see you.

Wonderful to see you, too.

Let me 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.

He said it was
absolutely freezing!

Exactly, but the cold
didn't even affect me.

What cold?

He said everyone
was sleeping with all

their male clothes and all
their female clothes on,

that's how cold it was. DIANA: It was very cold!

I got as many
blankets as 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 was absolutely... There were lot of people,

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

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, I, 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.

And that was the work
of Virginia Prince. DIANA: Right. 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
organizational 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 wanna go look
inside of one of these.

I don't remember,
let's 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 a hundred...

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,
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...

♪ Completely round
is the perfect pearl ♪

I'll beat you with my stick
if you sing that awful song.

I sang it quite well, I think.

Oh, you sang it well,
but the lyrics are silly.

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

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,

it would be a good...

you know, it would be okay
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,
I stood on the highway,

and I hitchhiked from
Valparaiso, Indiana,

to Casa Susanna.

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 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.

Um... 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 "ahhing"

and that was, you know,
great support.

Made me feel really
authentic, you know,

it 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 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 the... that
that remembrance

is not a part of
what it felt like.

It's more really a feeling,
this incredible feeling

of exaltation that was, uh,
sublime.

It was...

I mean, it was unreal,
obviously.

I mean, it 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 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 at 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 Betty 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 so 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
Grand Dame at Casa Susanna,

loved to be out front
and a performer and, um...

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.

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 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. 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,

and where do you get
your information from.

One of the reasons why
there are relatively

few photographs taken
at the Chevalier d'EÉon resort

and at the, at the Casa Susanna,

people didn't like to have...

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 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 organization.

♪

Well, they label 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 middle
'50s through '60s,

which reigned of McCarthyism,

of anti-communist sentiment.

You know, if someone
was perceived as

being gay was, you know,

just... 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, you know,
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 caliber.

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 of them

if it's the only
means available.

Not only, um,

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 tugboat captains,

they 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, um, 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 a sex change.

"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,

"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.

Gale.

I miss him so much.

Gale was the first person I met

who used the technique of
gluing elastic to the skin,

and then pulling it back
to give a false

and temporary safe facelift.Yeah.

I learnt many things from Gale,
and one of the first was

that there was someone else in
the world like me,

which was very important
to know.

That's the Downtown group.

Downtown branch!

Donna is the only one
I recognized.

Donna, I thought,
was quite beautiful.

And elegant, too.

She wasn't just beautiful,
she was elegant.

Yeah.
She could definitely pass.

That's Donna in male mode.God.

I have never seen Don--
Donna as Don, ever.

Had she transitioned?

She had transitioned,

and she had detransitioned.

Oh, why do you think?

I don't know, maybe
she saw herself deteriorating.

Maybe she just thought
she was no longer

the person she could
have been, sadly,

she decided just to walk back
down that path

she just climbed her way up.

It's a fabulous dress!

Gloria was large,
she was about six foot four.

And she had a stroke,

so she was paralyzed
on one side.

But she did her best
with her accumulated wealth

to help other
transgendered people.

I read about that, yeah.

She paid for their operations,
and she looked after them for...

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.

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, ah, um, person,

"was a fine person,
and we should all,

we should all honor this,
um, person."

Oh, that's me.

Is that you?

That's me, and that's
the wig that

Maria put together for me.Mm-hmm.

I love that photo!

Swimming pool--
swimming costume and garter!

Great legs, though.

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 homemade
self-timer on the camera.

Yeah.

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!

But that's the sheep dog!

I know but it, it's very,

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

I like it. Veronica Lake resuscitated!

I love that photo,
and I love this one, too.

Yeah, that's another one... So young!

Taken from my home.

How old were you there?

Well, I 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?

There he is again.

There's more of him around
and dressed than I knew of.

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

I'm learning things
about your father every minute.

Yes, and there's my dad again.

That's him 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 dressed much?

No, only once ever,
I think.
Well, he's...

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,
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.

Oh, like, he has good legs too.

Yeah. I don't know where

these clothing were,
because 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 know,
only the shadow know.

Yes, 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 D, 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 is 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 realize

that 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, allow it to... bloom.

So, after this Halloween party,

we went to Gale's place
in the city.

So, I stayed there for a couple
days, always as Diana,

I was Diana the whole time.

And 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, the 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.

A great many cross-dressers
think,

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

"I won't need
this imaginary woman

that inhabits half of 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 lie

if 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're 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 '60s, 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 Gale.

Gale and Susanna both had, um,

meeting places,

for men of this nature,
of this ilk.

Gale 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 Gale.

Gale 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 Gale'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, 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.

'Cause I think she felt

it was just something between
them originally.

But when she discovered
the network

and she realized it
wasn't gonna stop,

it wasn't a phase,

there was some watershed
moment from 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 is

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 Gale,

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 on with that,

because she wanted, she wanted
this to turn out

okay 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 realize 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 it 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.

"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, um,

tried to pull everything
together.

I changed to Diana,

uh, the night before the flight,

and, um, 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.

My, my surgery was
certainly not the

most refined of the surgeries.

I would have wished that I'd
been able to go another place.

Casablanca was
the place at the time.

But that... 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...

everybody spoke Spanish.

So I learned "mucho dol..."
"mucho dolor."

And "agua caliente."

♪

Then, Gloria 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 a...

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.

Uh, that they should, uh...

have a zest for life,

and a love for the excitement
of life,

but a willingness to...

to give and to...

and to...

have vulnerability,
to be vulnerable.

And, 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 embarrassing-- quote
"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
for... 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 the 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, you know,
"How's Marie?"

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

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

They'd say, "Oh, it closed
years ago, we don't know."

So, what, 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.

Where's Tito?
Nobody knows.

But that was only one part
of our lives so anyways.

I was too busy with myself.

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

but the 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

what my marital family
wanted me to be.

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

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

And I thought, "Is this
the way I have to go?

"Is this... is there any 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, you can't have anything
else happening that's worse."

Because I think I phrased 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,
the stress that I was under,

the stress that
my wife was under.

And they had assumed that,

like all... every
second family around us,

I was having an affair
with some other woman.

Which I was, of course,
but it was me.

So that was the situation
that, 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 marvelous,
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, 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...

of hope when I had my
first heart operation.

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

I thought, "Here is an
opportunity I can take.

"It would've 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 came 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
visualize myself

"taking part in such adventures.

"There is indeed a certain
dead-end element

"in Gale'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 Gale 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, I'm prone to moods.

"I have very... 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 could
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, um, started
to get insulting...

And say things like,
"Look 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 tell Mommy everything.

So they would, you know...

I wasn't... I didn't lie.

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

So, who would I cheat from?

And I didn't, you know,

and I wasn't a fraud
because no...

what 12-year-old
could be a fraud?

It's ridiculous, impossible.

And it took me another...

over 20 years to realize that

that was all projection

of how he felt about himself.

He obviously had
a lot of self-hatred,

which was,
it was like a black cloud

in our household.

Like a whole... like a, 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 worshiped him, I adored him,

I loved him, I idolized him.

So, every single nasty thing
he said to me,

I bought it, I bought it all.

I believed it.

And, um, I'm still
trying to rid myself

of some of these beliefs
now at age 70.

I wonder if his own
hatreds 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 are 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,
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, um, 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 realized.

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.

He took me to meet his parents,

and they were lovely people,
and we had a wonderful time.

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 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 age-y 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 Small Talk.

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 center

that was mostly all men.

And they let me play.

There was no problem,
you know, it was just...

"Welcome to the...

to the, 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 a kind of sadness.

Because it's truly very much
a part of who I am.

My whole goal was
to not be afraid.

I, 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.

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.

As my...

in my... 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, uh, 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, you know,

worked for radio for years,
had his own show.

And Susanna got into

the translation business
at the U.N.,

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 breasts 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 can 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.

Um, 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 hematoma

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 inc... 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, you know, that became

his motivation in
every waking minute was...

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, um, 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 license,
and a Social Security card.

But also during that time,

Susanna had
developed a brain tumor,

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 percher

on the bar stool one.

I mean, that building
was fantastic.

There was so many, you know,

incredibly talented people
that came here. DIANA: Yeah.

For a long time--

well, 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 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..." Right.

"...in a resort
at the Catskills."

You just couldn't do that.Mm-hmm.

So, it all had to be
word of mouth,

and the 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.

So how old were you
at that time?

I was-- again,
anywhere from five...

I was born in 1951, so, um...

So you were just a kid!

I was just a kid, I know.

I mean, we couldn't come
and see the show,

so we'd peek through the window
until we got caught.

That's, that's perfect. So, if you were born

in the '50s, I'm well ahead of
you, because I'm 86.

Oh, God bless you, look at that.

So, um...

I...

I want to, I want to tell you
both something

because, you know,
it's long been a...

a dream or even a quest of mine,

because I actually am
the holder of

Susanna, Maria's,
and Yolanda's ashes.

Oh my goodness.

And I've always wanted to

bring them here and, um...

Excuse me.

And pass them out.

Because I think that this is

the place for them
to be, you know, and...

Seems like the perfect place,
seems like

the perfect place....place, and I would...

I would be honored, if you two

would help me do that.

It would be my great honor.

It'd be my great honor.

So how do we go about that?

Yeah, we were going to...

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

Okay.

...because it has
some color, and, um...

And, um...

I just think that
they should be here.

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪