Coccinelle (1931 - 2006)

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PARIS (AFP) - (note, this is an internet translation from a French article, many of the pronouns in particular are incorrect)

First mediatized transsexual, Ladybird, singer, actress and driving of review, died Monday evening (October 16, 2006) in Marseilles at the 75 years age, was, since its operation in 1958, pionnière and icon of the transgenre cause. She was hospitalized since the end of July in Timone following a cerebral vascular accident. Her funeral will be celebrated “in the most strict intimacy” Saturday in Marseilles, indicated one of her close relations.

Born in August 1931, it lived in Marseilles since about fifteen years. It had founded association “To become Woman” (in order to come to assistance of the people wishing to change sex) and had taken part in the birth of Information and Research, Assistance the Center on Transsexualité and the Identity of Kind.

According to the French law which recognizes the operated transsexuals --thanks to its own combat besides-- its marital status had been modified after its operation. Become Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy, it was regarded officially as “born woman”. Singer and driving of review, known abroad, Coccinelle had begun in 1953 “At Mrs Arthur”, celebrates Parisian cabaret transformists, with a song of Daniele Darrieux drawn from film “First go ".

Its last album, left in 2005, contained resumptions of songs of its reviews of Alcazar or Carrousel of Paris, in the Sixties where she knows one fulgurating notoriety but says herself wounded “to be regarded as a phenomenon of fair”. In 1963, Bruno Coquatrix crowns it star while making of it the driving one of review of “Seek the woman”. Ladybird will make a round in several European countries of which Germany and also in South America.

In 1990, Coccinelle is last once at the poster in Paris, at the time of a spectacle assembled by Pascal Sevran with the Casino of Paris. It told how, one day of Carnival, being disguised with a red dress with black peas, had come to him the nickname from “Ladybird.”

“I did not feel transsexual, but in transit of sex”, she said.

“It is by chance in round into 58, that I knew that a gynaecologist practised in Morocco a surgical operation which made of a man a woman. I thus went to Casablanca to meet the doctor who was going to rectify this error of the nature of which I was victim. Lastly, I was going to be a true woman, in perfect harmony, interior and outside! After the operation, he told me +bonjour Miss! + I was reassured”, it told.

“When the journalists knew it, I was with the one of all the magazines, which made the fortune of the surgeon. And superstar propelled me! I was the first to have changed sex into France. Incredible! But true”, that added which married three times, after the modification of its marital status.

In 1960, it marries a sports correspondent. The first marriage of a transsexual attracts the media of the whole world. Divorced two years after, it remarie in 1963. It contracts a third union in 1996, in Marseilles, with Thierry Wilson. Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy signed in 1987 her autobiography “Ladybird by Ladybird” (Daniel Filipachi).

Jean Tinder, one of his more faithful friends, paid homage recently to him: “few people can be prided as much as it to have forged their destiny, since it inflected the decision of nature, at one time when the taboos, the sacro-holy rigours morals were not beaten in breach as they are it today”.

From the tabloids, from Uncensored, December 1956

 

 

      

Exclusive article from "Female Impersonators" magazine, NYC, 1965

Yes, she was marked as kind of a sex kitten, so some of the poses may seem tacky

 

   

 

   

 

 

.....and, from "Female Mimics," 1966

     

 

Still more on Coccinelle....found these juicy pics from the same magazine, from 1963:

  

  

  

   

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I found the ad at the above left in a 1963 issue of "Female Mimics," and found it interesting
that the ad does NOT mention Coccinelle's name, as you can easily see in the book cover
on the right. She was a Very famous personality in Europe, but apparently not in the U.S.,
so it seems like the ad was going more for exploitation.

Candid shots, circa 1993/94