Back in Liverpool, she checked herself into a mental hospital, where she begged the doctors to “make me more manly,” she wrote in a first-person account for News of the World in 1961. They administered drugs and electroshock treatment to her. “It lasted a year,” she recalled, “and at the end of the day they told me it was no use.”
Unwelcome at her home, she moved to London and began dressing up as a woman. During a vacation to France, she met a group drag performers who offered her a job at Le Carrousel in Paris, a famous Paris nightclub.
Ms. Ashley was already taking estrogen and saving money for her transition surgery. She traveled to Casablanca, Morocco, in 1960 with a reference from Coccinelle, a Carrousel performer and the first French person to undergo gender transition. She met Dr. Georges Burou who was a pioneer in gender transition techniques.
The surgery took seven hours. Ms. Ashley recalled that just before she went under, Dr. Burou said, “Au revoir, Monsieur.” When she woke up, he greeted her with “Bonjour, Mademoiselle.”
She returned to London and registered as a woman with the government under the name April Ashley. Her stunning looks and her background as a dancer eased her way into London’s fashion world, and she was soon modeling lingerie for some of Britain’s top designers. She began acting, too, appearing in a small role in “The Road to Hong Kong,” the last of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby “Road” movies, which was released in 1962.
But her budding career was cut short in 1961 when a friend sold Ms. Ashley’s story to a British tabloid. Six months of modeling contracts ended immediately and Ms. Ashley’s name was dropped from the credits by the producers.
Source: NY Times