Friends Celebrate Jorgensen’s Life

It was the kind of party Christine Jorgensen would have thrown for herself.

Overlooking the ocean on a Laguna Niguel hilltop, 250 of the renowned transsexual’s friends gathered Sunday at her favorite restaurant for a final goodby to their sassy and sweet pal, who died last month of cancer.

But the so-called “wake” for Jorgensen--whose sex-change shocked the world the same year “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” hit television--was decidedly convivial.

And that, her loved ones said, is exactly how the delightful ex-soldier would have wanted it.

“Well, come on in and have a drink,” said Brenda Smith, Jorgensen’s roommate and hostess of the celebration, greeting guests at the Crown House Restaurant. “It’s party time!”

Although the 62-year-old Jorgensen died May 3, Smith and other friends waited until Sunday to raise their cocktails in a three-hour series of toasts so more people could attend.

Singer Johnnie Ray, who met Jorgensen at a Madison Square Garden concert in the 1950s, and June Wilkinson, an actress who has appeared many times in Playboy magazine, most recently in January, were among the entertainment-industry figures who attended the party.

Other longtime friends like actress Dorothy Lamour and comedian Martha Raye were unable to be at the party.

Most everybody laughed and shared stories of Jorgensen, her sunny nature, her inspirational personality, how she had helped them through this or that tribulation, even while she was struggling herself to beat cancer.

Former roommate Sean Bingham, who said “we loved each other from the moment we met,” also joked as how “you never called Christine before 11 o’clock in the morning.”

Lois Johnson, who met Jorgensen at a San Clemente cancer treatment center more than a year ago, told of how the patient never complained of her illness and inspired other patients to keep their chins up.

“When she’d finish a treatment she would cater a lunch for all of us and bring it to our department. She would invite some of the other patients too,” Johnson said, smiling at the thought. “She was just that kind of person.”

“We closed this place many a time,” Susan Constans, a friend of 11 years, said with a giggle. “She got her taxes done in the office where I worked. I didn’t know who she was, but I fell in love with her. She was sort of like my adopted mother. I was like the daughter she never had.”

“And I,” chortled friend Jerry Delman, “was the lover she never had!”

“She was a lady through and through,” said Constans. She smoothed her party dress--a royal blue, sequined number with a plunging back that she said she selected because it was as flamboyant as Jorgensen herself. Momentarily weepy, she added: “She was beautiful. I miss her.”

Born George Jorgensen Jr. in 1926, the Bronx native served quietly in the military and lived a rather private life. But on Dec. 1, 1952, Jorgensen underwent sex-change surgery at a Danish hospital. After a family friend tipped the press that George had become Christine, Jorgensen spent the rest of her life in the spotlight.

An unwilling celebrity when the scandal of her sex-change broke, Jorgensen came to accept all the attention, and parlayed it into a nightclub act, a book, a 1970 movie based on her life, and steady talk-show and lecture appearances.

As she said eight months before her death: “I am very proud now, looking back, that I was on that street corner 36 years ago when a movement started. It was the sexual revolution that was going to start with or without me. We may not have started it, but we gave it a good swift kick in the pants.”

A chain-smoker who battled cancer since January, 1987, Jorgensen asked to be cremated, although her roommate persuaded her to arrange for a grave site that her friends could visit. Her friends honored her wish to have her ashes buried at sea. It took a few more weeks to arrange her other request--a wingding of a party, said Smith.

The Crown House seemed the obvious place to party in Christine’s honor. It was her favorite restaurant, situated 1 1/2 miles from her San Clemente home. Smith brought over a miniature Christmas tree with lights that Jorgensen kept up year-round at her house, and set it beside a 1954 oil portrait of her former roommate.

“When she wasn’t traveling and on the (talk-show) circuit, she would come in, oh, a few times a month,” said Jean Peters, owner of the restaurant. “We’ve been here 18 years, and Christine was a good customer of ours. . . . Her friends asked us to participate.”

There was nothing close to maudlin at the afternoon gathering, and that would have pleased Jorgensen too.

“It was how Chris would have wanted it,” Smith said. “As she said, ‘You put people together with enough booze and food and it’s up to them to have a good party.’ And we are.”