Before the word ‘transgender’ existed, there was Bambi, the dazzling Parisian icon

PARIS – The infinitesimal that changed queer past occurred connected a sweltering summertime time successful aboriginal 1950s Algeria. An effeminate teenage lad named Jean-Pierre Pruvot stood mesmerized arsenic postulation halted and crowds swarmed astir a scandalous spectacle unfolding successful the blimpish Algiers streets.

All had stopped to look astatine Coccinelle, the flamboyant “transvestite” prima of Paris’ legendary cabaret, the Carrousel de Paris, who strutted defiantly down the boulevard, impeccably dressed arsenic a woman, sparking awe and outrage and virtually stopping traffic.

What Pruvot — who would go celebrated nether the pistillate signifier sanction “Bambi” — witnessed was much than specified performance. It was an enactment of absorption from the ashes of the Nazi persecution of the LGBTQ+ community successful World War II.

“I didn’t adjacent cognize that (identity) existed,” Bambi told The Associated Press successful a uncommon interview. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to bash the same.’”

Decades earlier transgender became a household connection and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” became a worldwide hit — earlier visibility brought rights and designation — the Carrousel troupe successful the precocious 1940s emerged arsenic a glamorous, audacious resistance. Bambi soon joined Coccinelle, April Ashley, and Capucine to revive queer visibility successful Europe for the archetypal clip since the Nazis had violently destroyed Berlin’s thriving queer country of the 1930s.

The Nazis branded cheery men with pinkish triangles, deported and murdered thousands, erasing queer civilization overnight. Just a fewer years aft the war, Carrousel performers strode onto the planetary stage, a glittering frontline against lingering prejudice.

Remarkably, audiences astatine the Carrousel knew precisely who these performers were — women who, arsenic Bambi puts it, “would bare all.” Elvis Presley, Ava Gardner, Édith Piaf, Maria Callas and Marlene Dietrich each flocked to the cabaret, drawn to the allure of performers labeled “travestis.” The stars sought retired the Carrousel to flirt with postwar Paris’s chaotic side. It was an intoxicating contradiction: cross-dressing was criminalized, yet the venue was packed with celebrities.

The past of queer liberation shifted successful this cabaret, 1 sequin astatine a time. The opposition was chilling: arsenic Bambi arrived successful Paris and recovered fame dancing bare for movie stars, crossed the English Channel successful aboriginal 1950s Britain the code-breaking genius Alan Turing was chemically castrated for being gay, starring to his suicide.

Evenings spent with legends

Today, nearing 90, Marie-Pierre Pruvot — arsenic she has been known for decades by immoderate — lives unsocial successful an unassuming flat successful northeastern Paris. Her bookshelves spill implicit with volumes of lit and philosophy. A achromatic feather boa, a lone susurration from her glamorous past, hangs loosely implicit a chair.

Yet Bambi wasn’t conscionable portion of the show; she was the amusement — with expressive almond-shaped eyes, pear-shaped face, and quality indistinguishable from immoderate desired Parisienne. Yet 1 cardinal quality acceptable her isolated — a quality criminalized by French law.

The extent of her past lone becomes evident arsenic she points to striking and glamorous photographs and recounts evenings spent with legends.

Such was their then-fame that the sanction of Bambi’s housemate, Coccinelle, became slang for "trans" successful Israel — often cruelly.

Once Dietrich, the starry queer icon, arrived astatine the tiny Madame Arthur cabaret alongside Jean Marais, the histrion and Jean Cocteau's cheery lover. “It was packed,” Bambi recalled. “Jean Marais instantly said, ‘Sit (me and Marlene) connected stage' And truthful they were seated onstage, legs crossed, champagne by their side, watching america perform.”

Another day, Dietrich swept successful to a hairsbreadth salon.

“Marlene ever had this distant, untouchable aerial — but erstwhile precocious for the hairdresser,” Bambi says, smiling. “She rushed in, kissed the hairdresser, settled beneath the dryer, stretched her agelong legs imperiously onto a stool, and lit a cigarette. Her gaunt pout arsenic she smoked — I’ll ne'er hide it,” she says, her content exaggerated arsenic she sucked successful her cheeks. Perhaps Dietrich wasn’t her favourite star.

Then determination was Piaf, who, 1 evening, teasingly joked astir her protégé, the French singing fable Charles Aznavour, performing nearby. “She asked, ‘What clip does Aznavour start?’” Bambi recalled. “Someone said, ‘Midnight.’ So she joked, ‘Then it’ll beryllium finished by 5 past midnight.’"

Reassignment surgery

Behind the glamour laic changeless danger. Living openly arsenic a pistillate was illegal. “There was a constabulary decree,” Bambi recalls. “It was a transgression discourtesy for a antheral to formal arsenic a woman. But if you wore pants and level shoes, you weren’t considered dressed arsenic a woman.”

The injustice was global. Homosexuality remained criminalized for decades: successful Britain until 1967, successful parts of the U.S. until 2003. Progress came slowly.

In 1950s Paris, though, Bambi bought hormones casually over-the-counter, “like brackish and capsicum astatine the grocery.”

“It was overmuch freer then,” but stakes were high, she said.

Sisters were jailed, raped, driven into enactment work. One comrade died aft botched sex reassignment country successful Casablanca.

“There was lone Casablanca,” she emphasized, with 1 doc performing the high-risk surgeries. Bambi waited cautiously until her champion friends, Coccinelle and April Ashley, had safely undergone procedures from the precocious 50s earlier doing the aforesaid herself.

Each nighttime required bonzer courage. Post-war Paris was scarred, haunted. The Carrousel wasn’t specified amusement — but a fingers' up to the past successful heels and eyeliner.

“There was this after-the-war feeling — radical wanted to person fun,” Bambi recalled. With nary television, the cabarets were packed each night. “You could consciousness it — radical demanded to laugh, to bask themselves, to beryllium happy. They wanted to unrecorded again … to hide the miseries of the war.”

In 1974, sensing a shift, Bambi softly stepped distant from celebrity, unwilling to go “an aging showgirl.” Swiftly obtaining ineligible pistillate individuality successful Algeria, she became a respected teacher and Sorbonne scholar, hiding her dazzling past beneath Marcel Proust and cautious anonymity for decades.

‘I ne'er wore a mask’

Given what she’s witnessed, oregon due to the fact that of it, she’s remarkably serene astir caller controversies astir gender. This transgender pioneer feels wokeism has moved excessively quickly, fueling a backlash.

She sees U.S. President Donald Trump arsenic portion of “a global reaction against wokeism… families aren’t ready… we request to intermission and respire a small earlier moving guardant again.”

Inclusive pronouns and connection “complicate the language,” she insists. Asked astir Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans stance, her effect is calmly dismissive: “Her sentiment counts nary much than a baker’s oregon a cleaning lady’s.”

Bambi has outlived her Carrousel sisters — April Ashley, Capucine, and Coccinelle. Still elegant, she stands softly proud.

When she archetypal stepped onstage, the satellite lacked the connection to picture her. She danced anyway. Now, words exist. Rights exist. Movements exist.

And Bambi, inactive lasting serenely, softly reaffirms her truth: “I ne'er wore a mask,” she says softly, but firmly. “Except erstwhile I was a boy.”

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