The Press: The Great Transformation

The New York Daily News, which covers sexy, sensational stories with a flair that no other tabloid can match, last week broke a story that surprised even hardened News readers. Splashed across Page One was a banner headline: EX-G.I. BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY. Said the story: “A Bronx youth, who served two years in the Army during the war and was honorably discharged, has been transformed by the wizardry of medical science into a beautiful woman.” Under the banner were pictures of George W. Jorgensen, 26, the George who “is no more,” and Christine, “the new woman” he became after “five major operations, a minor operation and almost 2,000 [hormone] injections” in a Copenhagen hospital.

The paper was tipped to its exclusive by a letter that News Reporter Ben White received from a friend who is a laboratory technician in Copenhagen. White tracked down the parents of George and/or Christine in New York City, talked them into giving him the full story, together with pictures of Christine in a low-cut dress and a letter from her breaking the news to the folks at home. Wrote she: “I am still the same old Brud, but my dears, nature made a mistake, which I have had corrected and now I am your daughter.” Wire services and other papers pounced on the News exclusive, phoned Copenhagen directly and sent dozens of correspondents converging on Christine’s room in the hospital, where she is awaiting a final operation.

Needlework or Ball Games. “Lying in a hospital bed,” said an A.P. dispatch from Copenhagen, “her long yellow hair curling on a pillow, [she] widened her grey-blue eyes and lifted her hands in a surprised, frightened gesture.” One newsman got into her hospital room using a bouquet of flowers as a pass key. Others bombarded her with such questions as “Do you sleep in a nightgown or pajamas?” “Will you ever be a mother?” “Do you still have to shave?” “Are your interests male or female? I mean are you interested in, say, needlework, rather than” a ball game?”

The News added its own fillip from its correspondent in Copenhagen who cabled: “Chris now is a girl I could have fallen in love with had I met her under different circumstances.” At Bentwaters Air Force Base in England, reporters found a U.S. Air Force sergeant who said he had dated Christine six months ago. When they asked him for details, he obligingly observed: “She’s got a personality that’s hard to beat, and the best body of any girl I ever met.” Many an editor and reporter found himself in the same fix as father Jorgensen, who blurted out amidst all the uproar: “This business is very confusing. I’ll be in the middle of a conversation and I’ll say ‘he’ when I mean ‘she.’ ”

Expert Opinion. After the first flush of excitement wore off, papers turned to doctors for expert opinion on the case. They pooh-poohed the story as anything new, pointing out that sex transformation is far from a medical rarity, that there are similar cases in hospitals all over the U.S. right now. Nevertheless, papers ran semi-learned stories sprinkled with such terms as hermaphrodite and pseudohermaphrodite (see MEDICINE), and reporters manfully tried to translate the medicalese into journalese. Said the New York World-Telegram and Sun: “Once the internal situation is known, plastic surgery can be used to build up or play down the [external] characteristics that correspond or do not correspond respectively with the organs found inside.”

By week’s end, the Jorgensen family, which had seemed reluctant to be pushed into the spotlight, was fast learning the sweet uses of publicity. Christine’s parents announced that they would sell Christine’s life story for $30,000 “in order to help others” who need similar treatment. On her part, Christine, who had protested the blizzard of Page One publicity, also made a discovery. She had been “shooting a little 16-mm. color travel film on Denmark . . . not a bad little movie.” She had never really thought about it before, but now, Christine said, widening her grey-blue eyes, she was afraid that all the publicity in the newspapers might spoil her plans to “take it back to the States and perhaps tour the country, showing it in schools, small towns and places like that, and giving lectures.”