HOTEL SAHARA PRESENTS… CHRISTINE JORGENSEN (1953) Die-cut flyer

Las Vegas: Hotel Sahara, [1953]. Vintage original 9 1/2 x 8 1/8″ (24 x 21 cm.) die-cut promotional flyer. A holograph note indicates that someone attended this show on Monday, November 16, 1953. Near fine.

“A New York Daily News article in late ’52 that brought instant notoriety to Christine Jorgensen, the first person in the US to become famous for having sex reassignment surgery. Celebrity agent Charles Yates teamed with Jorgensen to turn this notoriety into an unlikely nightclub act. The Sahara booked Jorgensen for a summer 1953 engagement with singer Marguerite Piazza and dancer Gene Nelson, but was fired when both Piazza and Nelson protested the co-billing. Piazza and Nelson’s show opened in July as planned, and Jorgensen sued the hotel.

“Jorgensen was a controversial figure in the press, treated with sensationalism, praise, respectful curiosity, and indignantly. The Sahara’s firing was done with a public letter that began, ‘Dear sir’. Despite this, Jorgensen was rescheduled at the Sahara and opened in November that year. A mostly-positive column about the show in the Las Vegas Review Journal commented that Jorgensen was ‘either an opportunist of supreme magnitude or an individual of indescribable courage.’ Jorgensen returned to Las Vegas later for a show at Silver Slipper. There is a large photo of Jorgensen on stage at the Silver Slipper hanging at the Cosmopolitan in the hotel’s second-floor Las Vegas News Bureau exhibit.” (vintagelasvegas.com)