LGBT History Paper
Katherine_xin
621Davis.pdf
E N G A G I N G A R C H I V E S
Using Archives to Identify the Trans* Women of Casa Susanna
Ms. BOB DAVIS
Abstract The publication in 2005 of a book of found photographs focused attention on a rural cross-
dressers’ resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains named “Casa Susanna.” At the time of publication,
the editors knew very little about the people in the photographs, and no one was identified. Interest
in these anonymous trans* women intensified when playwright Harvey Fierstein’s play, Casa
Valentina, based on Casa Susanna, opened on Broadway nine years later. This article discusses how
magazines, photographs, newsletters, private correspondence, and personal ads in private and
institutional trans* archives can be used to identify these trans* women and other members of the
early MtF cross-dressing community. It proposes a research methodology that uses aliases and
identification codes, originally intended for protection and anonymity, to connect archival holdings
to individuals, deepening our understanding of the lived experience of early community members.
Keywords aliases, Casa Susanna, cross-dressing, ethical trans* research, Transvestia
M ichael Hurst and Robert Swope have, almost innocently, made a significantcontribution to our understanding of the formation of the MtF trans* community in mid-twentieth-century United States. While shopping at a New
York flea market, they had the good fortune to discover hundreds of images of
men cross-dressed in conservative women’s clothes, and they had the foresight to
publish the images in a book, Casa Susanna (Hurst and Swope 2005). The book
takes its title from the Catskills resort, a cross-dressers’ hide-away, operated by
Susanna Valenti, whose male name was Tito, and her wife, Marie (fig. 1). It is both
a documentary and an art book. Hurst and Swope were fascinated by the images,
though at the time they knew very little about the people in them. Except for
Susanna, no one in the book is identified in any way.
Casa Susanna in turn inspired playwright/actor Harvey Fierstein’s most
recent Broadway success, Casa Valentina, which was produced at the Manhattan
Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre from April 23 to June 15, 2014. It takes
place on the weekend a cross-dresser named Charlotte visits from the West Coast
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to solicit members for her national cross-dressers’ support and advocacy group.
“The character Charlotte . . . is clearly based upon the late Virginia Prince,”
founder of the heterosexual cross-dressers’ organization Phi Pi Epsilon or
Foundation for Personal Expression (FPE; Denny 2014; fig. 2). In 1961, Virginia
Prince writes in her magazine, Transvestia, no. 12, December 1961, “I urge those of
you in the East who can get to the resort to GO TO IT. You don’t know what a
wonderful experience is in store for you. The cost is nominal; the value in
acceptance, sociability, freedom of expression, conviviality, and satisfaction is
tremendous” (Prince 1961: 17). Susanna is on the cover of this issue, and on page 18
there’s a photograph of six cross-dressers, including Virginia Prince, having
dinner at Casa Susanna. Hurst and Swope present the same photo as a two-page
spread in the book Casa Susanna.1
The book and Fierstein’s play have sparked considerable interest in Casa
Susanna’s mid-twentieth-century cross-dressers. Trans* activist and historian
Figure 2. Virginia Prince on a visit to Casa
Susanna, October 1962
Figure 1. Susanna Valenti performing onstage at
the Wigwam at Casa Susanna in a photo that appeared
in Transvestia, no. 11, October 1961. All photographs
are from the author’s personal archive.
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Dallas Denny has interviewed Andrea Susan, who, as a young attendee, photo-
graphed and developed many of the photographs in the book (Susan and Denny
2014). New York Times writer Penelope Green spoke with several other visitors to
Casa Susanna (Green 2006), including Katherine Cummings, author of the 1992
trans* memoir, Katherine’s Diary (Cummings 1993: 88).
This article explores how archival materials, such as photographs, letters,
community magazines, membership directories, and newsletters can be cross-
referenced and interconnected to constitute a research methodology that can be
applied to early community members’ trans* lives and the formation of their
trans* community. This article shows how archives may be used to identify trans*
people in collections of archival photographs, such as Casa Susanna, and place
them in the larger context of the developing trans* community. Though the focus
of this article is the Casa Susanna era, the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, the tech-
niques discussed here are useful when studying the identity formation of any
marginalized group. Archives, whether it’s the Transgender Archive at the Uni-
versity of Victoria (transgenderarchives.uvic.ca) or the Leather Archive in Chi-
cago (www.leatherarchives.org), contain evidence of ways in which communities
and individuals develop identities.
The Photos: Content and Context
The photographs in Casa Susanna can be better understood by comparing the
images to the personal archive of Bobbie Thompson, cover girl of Transvestia,
no. 22, August 1963 (fig. 3; Bobbie 1963: 2–13). She and sister cross-dresser Betty
Wharton rented a room in a Rochester, New York, boarding house as their safe,
trans* refuge, a place where they could store their femme wardrobes, cross-dress,
take photos, and entertain. I purchased the archive over twenty years ago from
Betty, who told me that the collection was originally Bobbie’s and that Bobbie was
deceased. A member of Virginia Prince’s FPE, Bobbie’s membership number was
32-T-3 (2).2
It seems clear that both Susanna and Bobbie were collectors. In the
introduction to Casa Susanna, Robert Swope writes that he purchased “about
four hundred images” from Susanna’s collection at that New York flea market
(Hurst and Swope 2005). Bobbie’s collection includes over eight hundred femme
photographs that also appear to have been taken during the 1960s and 1970s. The
majority are photos of Bobbie, but many are of other cross-dressers or of Bobbie
posing with other cross-dressers (fig. 4). Several images in Bobbie’s archive appear
in the book Casa Susanna. Also in her archive are other photographs of people
seen in the book taken at other times and in other places. From the photos it
appears that Bobbie was probably at Casa Susanna more than once.
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Both Bobbie’s archive and Casa Susanna are evidence that there was an
exchange of photos going on in this early MtF community. A significant number
of images from the book and Bobbie’s archive were not taken at their homes, but
at other locations. While it’s true that many images in Casa Susanna were shot at
the resort, the book also contains photos shot on city streets, in clubs, or at bars.
The book includes Christmas cards, each photographed in a different room.
Bobbie’s archive contains more. The photos, like the Christmas cards, were being
exchanged, leaving a trace of some of the interactions among community
members. These are more than snapshots of community members; they reveal
where they went, their activities, and their relationships. Personal ads in Trans-
vestia and other community publications often requested an exchange of photos
along with the offer of correspondence: “32-H-1 TV in N.Y. love to hear from all
TVs, will ans. At once. Exch. Pics & meet. Am undrstndg of most subjects.
Rita—N.Y.” (Rita 1961: 80). A letter and a photo of your femme self was the
standard community calling card.
There is little that is exclusively trans* about exchanging and collecting
photographs, which even now is a standard practice in personal ads intended for
making erotic contacts. This is true whether the advertiser is trans* or cis-gen-
dered, whether the medium is print or digital. The photos in Bobbie’s archive are
evidence of people actively seeking social connection for their femme selves. They
divide neatly into two groups: cross-dressers with whom it appears she had a
Figure 4. Bobbie and Sheila at Casa SusannaFigure 3. Bobbie at Casa Susanna
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limited relationship and cross-dressers she seems to have known well. Bobbie’s
casual acquaintances are usually represented by only a few photos, one to four.
Interestingly, these photographs are almost all of one person alone in a private,
anonymous setting like a motel room. The second group comprises photos of
Bobbie’s friends, people she trusts. We infer that she trusts them because she’s in
the photos with them; both are cross-dressed and smiling radiantly. There are
several sets of photos featuring Bobbie with another cross-dresser trying on dif-
ferent outfits, sometimes in a motel room, and then going outside for a tradi-
tionally “feminine” activity, like window shopping.
These people aren’t only collecting photos; they’re networking, making
personal contacts, and constructing a femme identity. For example, Bobbie’s
archive contains twenty-two photographs of Transvestia’s one-time literary edi-
tor, Sheila Norris (30-B-2). One of these photos appears in Casa Susanna, and
twelve others, including a Christmas card, were shot at the resort. Bobbie and
Sheila appear together in four. Apparently, Sheila wanted Bobbie to see and know
her as a woman, which is perhaps the reason Bobbie’s archive contains so many
photos of Sheila. Any exchange of photos carries with it the implication, “I want
you to remember me this way,” or “I want you to remember us this way.” When
Sheila wrote, “I don’t believe you have this one,” on the back of one photograph,
she probably knew Bobbie was a collector of trans* images. Having a complete set
Sheila’s photos en femme in Bobbie’s collection was one way Sheila was archiving
and preserving her identity.
How Deep Was Their Closet?
Trust between these early trans* community members was crucial because many
of the visitors to Casa Susanna had a great deal to lose in their male lives:
There was a pilot and a businessman, an accountant, a librarian, and a pharma-
cologist. There was a newspaper publisher, and a court translator. By day, they
were the men in the gray flannel suits, but on the weekends, they were Felicity,
Cynthia, Gail, Sandy, Fiona, Virginia, and Susanna. It was the dawn of the
1960’s. . . . In those pre–Judith Butler, pre–Phil Donahue days, when gender was
more tightly tethered to biology, these men’s “gender migrations,” or “gender
dysphoria,” as the sociologists began to call cross-dressing, might cost them their
marriages, their jobs, their freedom. (Green 2006)
These bigendered males managed multiple identities and lived in two worlds.
Aliases were de rigueur, though the number varied. For example, my experience
purchasing Bobbie’s collection showed me how some community members used
as many as three names. I first contacted Betty Wharton in May 1991. As our
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correspondence stretched through the summer, Betty told me that her real name
was Dick Wharton and asked that I address future correspondence to Dick
Wharton, which I did for almost another year. When it was time to close the deal,
Dick asked me to make the check out to a different male name, his legal name. He
also asked me to mail the check to a different address, not the post-office box he
had been using, but a street address in a nearby town. The female name, Betty
Wharton, and the male name, Dick Wharton, were both intended for use in the
trans* community. Though Betty may have shared her community male name
with other cross-dressers, her legal name was likely hidden from trans* friends
and associates, just as the femme name was hidden from family and friends in her
male life.
Virginia Prince used four names to manage her identity—two female and
two male. Her trans* community femme name was Virginia Prince. She lived as a
woman and used the name Virginia Bruce outside the trans* community. Her
male trans* community name was Charles Prince (Docter 2004: 45). Though
some people may have known her legal name, Arnold Lowman, it was essentially
hidden until 2004, when it appeared in Richard F. Docter’s From Man to Woman:
The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince, a book written with Virginia Prince’s
full knowledge and cooperation.
Another example of the key role of aliases can be found in Bobbie’s
archive, her completed four-page “Membership Application Form and Ques-
tionnaire” to Virginia Prince’s sorority Phi Pi Epsilon (FPE). FPE limited its
membership to heterosexual cross-dressers and prohibited gay men or trans-
sexuals from joining. The questionnaire was the first filter designed to confirm
that the prospective member either fit the policy or was at least willing to lie in
order to enjoy the benefits of membership. The application was used to qualify
prospective members for an interview, which determined whether they would be
invited to attend a meeting of the group. On this questionnaire Bobbie used her
legal surname, Thompson, for both her female and male trans* community
names. Other documents in the archive confirm that this was, indeed, her name.
So, Bobbie, like Susanna/Tito Valenti, did not avail herself of the added level
secrecy a fictitious surname would provide.
The use of aliases is evidence of the early community’s relationship to the
larger culture, a relationship based on fear of discovery and a need for secrecy.
Though we can never be sure of an individual’s motivation, it seems logical that
within their community transgender people use names that accurately reflect their
gender identities, rather than names assigned at birth. However, the use of
multiple surnames means that some early community members were not out in
their daily lives, a decision that archivists and researchers must respect.
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Confidentiality and the Ethical Use of Legal and Trans* Names
The use of aliases underscores both the bigendered nature of these community
founders and their desire for privacy. Such privacy, according to Michael C.
Oliveira, project archivist at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (one.
usc.edu) at the University of Southern California, is “regulated by a patchwork of
state and federal law” (pers. comm., January 27, 2015) and, for the vast majority of
people, ends at death, famous people being the exception. Marjorie Bryer,
managing archivist at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco (www.
glbthistory.org), agrees with this assessment. In her mind, the central question for
the researcher when deciding whether information should be made public is, “Is
this person still alive?” (pers. comm., January 28, 2015). If the person is not alive,
archivists, who are not attorneys, agree that legal liability virtually vanishes.
Those researching trans* communities have another consideration: what
is ethical to reveal about these people who may have literally led two lives? There is
no doubt that while the trans* women of Casa Susanna are alive, publishing
information about their male lives, lives they may have gone to great lengths to
conceal, is out of the question. Researchers must be scrupulous to ensure that the
data they publish cannot be “crunched” to reveal the male identity. Archivists
Oliveira and Bryer said that there is a general consensus that at one hundred years
after a person’s death any information can be published, which is based on the fact
that medical records are frozen for one hundred years. Prior to that, researchers
should limit discussion of the male lives to untraceable, aggregate data or
information presented using aliases.
Publishing information about the femme lives is a distinctly different
matter. These early trans* community members chose to put photos of their
femme selves and their femme names in magazines and directories. Their femme
identities were so important and meaningful that the desire to express them
overcame fear of social disapproval and the loss of status that discovery would
bring. They created a community and social history in their chosen identities as
women. Expressing their identities was not always limited to club meetings and
motel rooms and for many, like Virginia Prince, it included appearing in public as
their femme selves and writing personal narratives about their adventures for
others to read. These acts, risks, and sharing are trans* history. Understanding
how these trans* women managed multiple identities may provide insight into
how historic figures, such as Chevalier d’Eon or Dr. James Barry, managed theirs.
Though nothing about or leading to the male lives of Casa Susanna’s trans*
women may be published at this time, such things as how they managed multiple
identities, built networks, and traveled publicly en femme should be examined and
discussed.
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To this end, researchers may use individuals’ community femme names
freely, especially if they have appeared in nationally distributed magazines or
newsletters from national organizations. I have used the femme names from
Transvestia photo captions to identify the people in photos from Bobbie’s archive
and Casa Susanna. Clearly legal names are off limits, considering the lengths
employed to protect them. The only exception would be if the person is already
out, a rare case that may apply only to Virginia Prince, Suzanna Valenti, and other
such prominent community members. The community male name is a grey area,
and its use places a great deal of responsibility on the scholar. Unless the person is
deceased, this name should be used only if the researcher is sure that using it will
not reveal or provide clues to the legal surname. This level of certainty may be
possible only when the researcher already knows the legal surname.
Using Archival Sources to Write Biographies
of the Trans* Women of Casa Susanna
When researching Casa Susanna and the cross-dressers who stayed there, the
connection to Virginia Prince, Transvestia, and FPE cannot be ignored. Susanna
(32-V-1) had become “Our New York Columnist” in Transvestia, no. 2, March 1960
(Prince 1960). Her column, “Susanna Says,” ran until no. 61, 1970, the issue in which
she reiterated her decision “to become a full-time girl.” Judging by her writings, it
seems doubtful that Susanna would have had gender-confirmation surgery or
identified as transsexual: “No doubt some people would say that I have turned into
a transsexual. I don’t think so. Operation? Phooey! I don’t want sex, I want femi-
ninity [Amen—Ed.]” (Valenti 1970: 80–84). And, since Virginia Prince lived a life
of femininity without surgery, the parenthetical “Amen” is undoubtedly hers.
As was already noted, many of the photos in Casa Susanna appeared in
Transvestia some fifty years before the book was published. This includes photos
of Bobbie and Susanna as well as Bobbie’s friend Sheila Norris (30-B-2), who was
Transvestia’s literary editor and appears twice in Casa Susanna.3 Her first book
review, about Hedy Jo Star’s I Changed My Sex, appeared in Transvestia, no. 23,
1963, and she served as literary editor for almost a decade until 1972.
Several other Casa Susanna trans* women were both FPE members and
Transvestia cover girls. Lee (32-B-3), who appears in Casa Susanna,4 is cover girl of
Transvestia, no. 15, June 1962 (Lee 1962: 2–8). Lily, the Asian trans* woman
wearing a swimsuit in the first photo following the introduction, was cover girl for
Transvestia, no. 48, December 1967. On page 9 of that issue there’s a photo of her
posing next to the Casa Susanna sign from the book’s cover. The caption reads,
“Lily Thinks Nothing of Violating All of Susanna’s Guidelines For TV’S by
Wearing Pants, Bathing Suit, Bikini, etc. and does it at Casa Susanna, yet” (Lily
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1967: 15–19). Transvestia cover girls each wrote short personal narratives in their
featured issue. Taken together, these short biographies constitute a rich store of
social data.
Coded Communications
Photos of anonymous cross-dressers, like those in Casa Susanna, are found in
personal, institutional, and community trans* archives, as are letters without the
traditional salutation. Instead there’s a cryptic series of letters and numbers such as
38-K-3 or EC-615, identification codes of the early national trans* clubs and
publications. Early community members used them for anonymity. The next
section discusses the relevance of these codes to researchers and archivists. Pro-
tecting one’s legal name and identity was a major preoccupation for anyone plac-
ing sexual contact ads in this era, whether gay, straight, or trans*. Mail-forwarding
services provided an effective means of protection. Readers of Transvestia could
place a personal ad for a fee; replies were sent to the magazine, which forwarded
Figure 5. Inside back cover of Transvestia, no. 11, October 1961
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them to the advertisers (fig. 5). This practice was common, though the contem-
porary use of anonymous e-mail addresses has rendered it obsolete.
Transvestia offered letter forwarding from the beginning as a service to the
readers and a small income stream for the publication. Originally, Transvestia
coded ads with simple numbers; personal ads numbering 1–3 appeared in
Transvestia, no. 1, January 1960. By Transvestia, no. 11, October 1961, the cumu-
lative number of ads had reached eighty. Starting with issue no. 12, December 1961,
the code was changed to a three-part format: numbers-letters-numbers, followed
by an optional FPE. The magazine had been preparing readers for this change in
previous issues. In my copy of Transvestia, no. 8, March 1961, the last line on the
inside back cover reads, “YOUR PERSONAL AND PRIVATE IDENTIFICATION
CODE NO. IS 38-K-3.” The code itself, 38-K-3, is hand written.
Starting around 1961, these codes were used to identify FPE members
throughout the magazine, whether they posed in photographs, authored articles,
or wrote letters. Many of the trans* women from Casa Susanna were FPE
members and used the codes to identify themselves on the reverse of photos and
in correspondence. Susanna Valenti (32-V-1), Sheila Norris (30-B-2), and Lee (32-
B-3), all of whom appear in Casa Susanna, have FPE membership numbers, as
does Bobbie Thompson (32-T-3).
This code was also used in other FPE publications, such as Femme Mirror,
a newsletter published from December 1961 to January 1966 and in The Femme
Forum, another newsletter that used the codes from at least November 1966 to
January 1972. Of particular significance to researchers is the use of these codes by
FPE members in correspondence with each other. Codes are included with sig-
natures in several letters in Bobbie’s archive, and one letter’s only salutation is,
“TWD-18-33,” a code from Transvestite World Directory, a publication of the
Seattle-based Empathy Club.
In Transvestia, no. 19, February 1963, Virginia Prince explained how the
code can be used to identify in which state FPE members lived, a very valuable
research tool (Prince 1963: 74):
Many times it has been asked what the code meant and various readers have
indicated that they had “figured it out.” It is not difficult, nor is it intended to be
very secret. I devised it in the beginning as a means of avoiding the use of names,
but of being able to quickly find names in the file from the code number. Thus this
simple system. The first number is the number of the state in which the subscriber
lives in alphabetical order (see below). The initial is that of the last name so that I
could tell where to look in the card file, and the last number is the number of
persons whose last name begins with that same initial in the order of their addition
to our files. Thus, 32-J-8 might mean the 8th “J” (for Jackson, for example) who
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lived in New York State. FPE, of course, indicates membership in PHI PI EPSI-
LON. Below are given the states and their “order numbers.” Foreign countries are
preceded by “F” for foreign, and an “E” for England, for example. Canada being so
close and having a number of subscribers has her provinces numbered alpha-
betically after the states series.
The table below shows each state and the code number Virginia assigned to it
(table 1). With it the researcher can identify which state the club member was
writing from, probably their home state.
As important as FPE was, it was not the only national organization in this
period, and knowing in which state a community member lived can lead
researchers to other valuable sources, such as local support groups and archives.
The other national organizations and local, unaffiliated clubs were designed to fill
different needs for early trans* community members, and it was common for
people to participate in more than one. These groups had their own publications,
magazines, directories, and newsletters that form an additional avenue of
exploration for archivists and scholars.
Researching Casa Susanna beyond Transvestia
Researchers should not limit themselves to FPE and Transvestia, though they may
be the best-known resources from this era. Bobbie placed a contact ad in
Transvestite World Directory, published by Empathy Club (Slavik 1984: 25). Sus-
anna is listed as the associate editor in the masthead of the first issue of New York
City’s independent Turnabout: A Magazine of Transvestism. Her photo appears in
“A Turnabout Gallery” in the same issue (Fredericks 1963: 18). Lily, cover girl for
Transvestia, no. 48, is featured on the back cover of Turnabout, no. 7 and in that
issue’s “A Turnabout Gallery” (Fredericks 1966: 31).
There are at least two New York–based trans* organizations contemporary
with Casa Susanna. Trans* activist Lee G. Brewster sold large-size women’s
clothing and trans* magazines and books at his store, Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique
in Manhattan. He published Drag: The Magazine about the Transvestite from 1971
to 1983 and cross-dressing fiction under the Queens imprint. Lee’s trans* parties
and trips to the New Orleans Mardi Gras were attended by people from all over
the region. The other organization was Transvestite Independent Club or TVIC,
based in Albany, New York, where they held meetings, published a newsletter
called TVIC Journal, and put out at least two membership directories. According
to TVIC Journal, they were established in 1954 (Thordsen 1981).
There were also two trans* clubs on the West Coast, Empathy and Sal-
macis, whose national memberships overlapped with FPE’s. The Empathy Club in
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Seattle held parties, sold large-size
women’s clothing through the
mail, and published several maga-
zines such as New Trenns, Transves-
tite World Directory, and Transvestite
Photo Club. Their publications used
a variety of codes in contact ads,
many based on the title of the pub-
lication. Personals codes in Trans-
vestite World Directory contact ads
began with the letters TWD; those in
Empathy Club publications, EC. The
other organization, Salmacis, was
founded in Menlo Park, California,
in the late 1970s and later moved to
Eugene, Oregon. They had a much
more inclusive membership policy
than FPE and published Gemini’s
International Directory of Trans-
genderism, which used the most
elaborate code of all, under their
imprint, Gemini Press.
Conclusion
Contemporary interest in the
femme lives of the trans* women
photographed at Casa Susanna
honors them and their contribution to today’s trans* communities. Their photos
and publications, membership codes, and community newsletters are now the
tools of historians. When it is no longer possible to interview the cross-dressers of
Casa Susanna, or the people who knew them, these documents will still be
available in personal, community, and academic archives. Particularly useful are
community publications and club membership codes, which can be used to
identify anonymous trans* women in photographs, provide information about
where they lived, which contact ads they placed, and which letters they wrote. The
letters and ads can be revealing, often including marital status, sexual preferences,
and erotic fantasies. The codes create a methodology that can be used to link
individuals to their writings, making it possible to observe the development
of their femme identities over time or track the level of secrecy desired in
Table 1. FPE State Codes Used to Generate Membership
Numbers
Code State Code State
1 AL 29 NH 2 AK 30 NJ 3 AZ 31 NM 4 AR 32 NY 5 CA 33 NC 6 CO 34 ND 7 CT 35 OH 8 DE 36 OK 9 FL 37 OR 10 GA 38 PA 11 HI 39 RI 12 ID 40 SC 13 IL 41 SD 14 IN 42 TN 15 IA 43 TX 16 KS 44 UT 17 KY 45 VT 18 LA 46 VA 19 ME 47 WA 20 MD 48 WV 21 MA 49 WI 22 MI 50 WY 23 MN 51 DC 24 MS 52 PR 25 MO 53 Alba CN 26 MT 54 BC CN 27 NE 55 Ont CN 28 NV 56 Que CN
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intercommunity communications. Making these connections creates a context
within which trans* archival holdings can be understood and linked to organi-
zations or individuals to create a portrait of the lived experience of the early trans*
community of the 1950s–1980s. Researchers and archivists have the responsibility
to respect the bigendered identities of these early community members, by
publishing information about their lives outside their trans* community either
with their expressed permission or only after the appropriate lapse of time. The
cross-dressers of Casa Susanna may be anonymous in the 2005 book, but they
needn’t remain so.
Ms. Bob Davis is a music professor at City College of San Francisco. Her illustrated lecture, “Do
the Clothes Fit?—Searching for Transgender Identity in Archival Images of Cross-Dressing,”
was the opening keynote at last year’s 40th Annual Fantasia Fair and was presented at Moving
Trans* History Forward, University of Victoria.
Notes 1. Unfortunately, since there are no page numbers in Casa Susanna, photographs will be
referred to by their placement following the introduction. This photo is the second after
the introduction.
2. The significance of the FPE membership identification numbers to researchers and
archivists is discussed below.
3. Hurst and Swope 2005: seventh page after the introduction.
4. Hurst and Swope 2005: fifth page after the introduction.
References Bobbie 32-T-3. 1963. “Bobbie Goes Private.” Transvestia, no. 22, August.
Cummings, Katherine. 1993. Katherine’s Diary: The Story of a Transsexual. Melbourne, Australia:
Mandarin.
Denny, Dallas. 2014. “The Historical Roots of Casa Valentina.” Chrysalis Quarterly, May 10.
dallasdenny.com/Chrysalis/2014/05/10/the-historical-roots-of-casa-valentina.
Docter, Richard F. 2004. From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince.
Northridge, CA: Docter Press.
Fredericks, Siobhan. 1963. “A Turnabout Gallery.” Turnabout, no. 1, June.
———. 1966. “A Turnabout Gallery.” Turnabout, no. 7, Summer.
Green, Penelope. 2006. “Safe House for the Girl Within,” New York Times, September 7. www
.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/garden/07trann.html.
Hurst, Michel, and Robert Swope. 2005. Casa Susanna. New York: powerHouse Books.
Lee 32-B-3. 1962. “The Facts of My Life.” Transvestia, no. 15, June.
Lily. 1967. “Dual Personality.” Transvestia, no. 48, March.
Prince, Virginia. 1960. “Table of Contents.” Transvestia, no. 2, March.
DAVIS * The Trans* Women of Casa Susanna * Engaging Archives 633
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———. 1961. “Wonderful Weekend.” Transvestia, no. 12, December.
———. 1963. “‘Breaking the Code’ and FPE Membership List.” Transvestia, no. 19, February.
Rita 32-H-1. 1961. “Person to Person.” Transvestia, no. 12, December.
Slavik, Charles “Cathy.” 1984. Transvestite World Directory, no. 8.
Susan, Andrea, and Dallas Denny. 2014. “In the Beginning: How My Photos of 1950s Crossdressers
Inspired a Hit Show on Broadway.” Paper presented at Fantasia Fair, Provincetown, MA,
October 24.
Thordsen, William M. 1981. Masthead. TVIC Journal 10, no. 99, December 12.
Valenti, Susanna. 1970. “Susanna Says.” Transvestia, no. 61, February.
634 TSQ * Transgender Studies Quarterly
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