THE REAL ROXANNE

We hear a lot today about the mainstreaming of LGBT culture, but for the tabloids it was always a popular subject.

This January 1967 Confidential offers up cover star Roxanne Lorraine Alegria, a famed transvestite-later-transgendered cabaret performer who was billed as “The First Topless Sex Change Dancer.” You may remember that we’ve already featured one Confidential and one Whisper containing mention of the transsexual dancer Coccinelle, another Whisper concerned with Christine Jorgensen, and a National Insider featuring Abby Sinclair. Other tabloids we’ve posted contain similar stories, but we’ve ignored them in favor of other content. The point we’re making is that the frequency with which the old tabloids focused on transsexuals is striking.

You’ll also note in the banner at the top of the above cover that Confidential offers a story about a gay convention in San Francisco. This was a subject the old tabloids flogged even more relentlessly—often with the added twist of the alleged gay cabal, usually poised at the threshold to the corridors of power and influence. The language in such articles is shocking by any standard, with the undercurrent of fear that such pieces tend to contain. With so much global attention being devoted of late to LGBT issues we think it’s a good time to go back and look at some of those old articles. We’ll get to that just a little bit later.

Confidential, Roxanne Alegria, Coccinelle, Christine Jorgensen, tabloid, lgbt

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

May 23

1934—Bonnie and Clyde Are Shot To Death

Outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who traveled the central United States during the Great Depression robbing banks, stores and gas stations, are ambushed and shot to death in Louisiana by a posse of six law officers. Officially, the autopsy report lists seventeen separate entrance wounds on Barrow and twenty-six on Parker, including several head shots on each. So numerous are the bullet holes that an undertaker claims to have difficulty embalming the bodies because they won’t hold the embalming fluid.

May 22

1942—Ted Williams Enlists

Baseball player Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox enlists in the United States Marine Corps, where he undergoes flight training and eventually serves as a flight instructor in Pensacola, Florida. The years he lost to World War II (and later another year to the Korean War) considerably diminished his career baseball statistics, but even so, he is indisputably one of greatest players in the history of the sport.

May 21

1924—Leopold and Loeb Murder Bobby Franks

Two wealthy University of Chicago students named Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks, motivated by no other reason than to prove their intellectual superiority by committing a perfect crime. But the duo are caught and sentenced to life in prison. Their crime becomes known as a “thrill killing”, and their story later inspires various works of art, including the 1929 play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film of the same name.

May 20

1916—Rockwell's First Post Cover Appears

The Saturday Evening Post publishes Norman Rockwell’s painting “Boy with Baby Carriage”, marking the first time his work appears on the cover of that magazine. Rockwell would go to paint many covers for the Post, becoming indelibly linked with the publication. During his long career Rockwell would eventually paint more than four thousand pieces, the vast majority of which are not on public display due to private ownership and destruction by fire.

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