CALL HER COCCINELLE

Ladybug sings the blues for French music lovers.

This is a cool little item. It’s a record sleeve from famed transgender entertainer Coccinelle, whose nickname is French for “Ladybug.” The record is called Jacques Dufresnoy dit Coccinelle, referencing her pre-trans name, and there are two tunes—“Je cherche un millionaire” on the a-side, and “Avec mon petit faux-cul” on the b. We think both songs are pretty cool evocations of a bygone era of supper clubs, cabarets, and jazzy dance numbers. We were born too late to go to such places, but we can listen to this type of music and pretend. If you want to pretend too, you can listen to the songs here and here.

France, Jacques Charles Dufresnoy, Coccinelle, album art, lgbt

Sex Files

August 2 2010

COCCINELLE FESTIVAL

I know why the caged Ladybug sings.

This golden issue of Confidential from August 1961 contains an article about the one and only Coccinelle, who was a French transsexual performer, almost forgotten outside her home country, but who set the world on fire fifty years ago. Born as Jacques Charles Dufresnoy, he adopted the stage name Coccinelle—Ladybug—in 1953 when he debuted at the nightclub Chez Madame Arthur.

At the outset of his career, Coccinelle was a male cross-dresser, but in 1958 he underwent sex change surgery in Morocco with spectacular results, and her re-emergence onto the stage as a woman made her world famous. Adopting the persona of blonde bombshells like Mansfield and Monroe, she was able to parlay her status into film roles, and was also featured in a few shockumentaries, but it was on the stage that she shone, performing at some of France’s most exclusive clubs, including Le Carrousel and Paris Olympia.

Her fame was a controversial subject of course, if not a public obsession, and her marriages caused epic scandals, but also prompted the French government to legalize unions between transgendered participants.

By 1989 Coccinelle had moved to Marseilles, where she headlined at the Cabaret Spitz. She was still performing there in April 2006 when she had a stroke.

She died after three months of hospitalization, but over forty years she had carved out a successful career, made a difference politically, and, at the forefront of her own small sexual revolution, helped scores of people in her exact circumstances. We’ll look for more information on the fascinating Coccinelle at our usual French sources and perhaps report back on her later.

France, Morocco, Paris, Marseilles, Confidential, Chez Madame Arthur, Paris Olympia, Cabaret Spitz, Jacques Charles Dufresnoy, Coccinelle, tabloid

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 23

1986—Otto Preminger Dies

Austroâ€“Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

April 23

1998—James Earl Ray Dies

The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.

April 21

1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down

German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is “Kaputt.” The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes.

April 21

1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity

An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.

April 20

1939—Holiday Records Strange Fruit

American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.