In a period when many gender-nonconforming people did not yet have the vocabulary, resources or supportive loved ones to help them understand their identities, a humble farmhouse secreted away in the Catskills Mountains of New York served as a sanctuary for an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men. It was a safe haven for those who elsewhere lived under the threat of being ostracized, institutionalized or even arrested.
This place, dubbed Casa Susanna, hosted visitors from around the world for weekend gatherings and longer retreats throughout the 1950s and 60s, well before the internet existed to connect isolated and historically excluded communities. They found it through whispered word-of-mouth and Transvestia magazine, activist Virginia Prince’s groundbreaking publication for readers who identified at the time with the now-disused term transvestite.
Run by Susanna Valenti, a former army man, and her wife Marie Tonell, an eccentric older Italian woman who welcomed her spouse’s clandestine gender-nonconforming community into her life and onto her estate, the hush-hush hideaway was a rare place where people born male could freely explore dressing and living as women — for a period, perhaps, or as an early step to a permanent lifelong transformation.
Casa Susanna, a documentary film produced by AMERICAN EXPERIENCE making its broadcast premiere on June 27 at 9pm on GBH 2, uncovers the untold history of this special place. Offering a unique glimpse at early expressions of transgender identity in modern American society, it shares firsthand stories from former visitors who return to the property, now as elders in their 80s, for the first time in decades.
“When I came on board, something I wanted to do was recenter people whose stories have been left out of the narrative,” said Cameo George, executive producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, the longest-running history documentary series on television, which coproduced Casa Susanna with France’s Agat Films and ARTE. “This chapter of American history is as deserving of our attention as any chapter of civil rights history, any film on World War II, or any biography of a president.” “We need these stories to understand this country. Without them, we have a very limited view of who and what we are.” Read an interview with George here.
The road to Casa Susanna started about 20 years ago, when critically acclaimed French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz discovered a treasure trove of photographs while researching his film Wild Side, one of several he has directed about trans identity. Many years later, Lifshitz connected with Isabelle Bonet, a photographic historian who had written a paper on Casa Susanna and tracked down some of the subjects. Eventually, in 2021, Lifshitz was able to visit the Catskills and document stories from people with connections to the house: Katherine Cummings and Diana Merry-Shapiro, two trans women who found solace and support there; Betsy Wollheim, a New York publisher who discovered after his death that her father, an influential science-fiction author, had been part of the Casa Susanna community; and home’s owner.
Together they paint a picture of a rural refuge where people who presented as male in day-to-day life were liberated to be their authentic selves — to share spaghetti dinners, tend the garden together and play card games wearing the skirts, wigs and makeup that afforded them the otherwise elusive comfort of feeling safely at home in their skin. They came from all occupations and walks of life, and many had wives and children at home. At Casa Susanna, though, they bonded over shared experiences and were bound by a sense of finally belonging.
“For the very first time in my life I could talk to anyone I wanted to talk to,” said Cummings in the film. “I could talk to them about subjects the average person had never even thought of as existing, let alone as a difficulty in society.”
Casa Susanna places all of this in the context of the oppressive mores of midcentury America, where in many major cities cross-dressing was a technically illegal act. Today, as lawmakers around the country roll out new legislation to limit gender expression, its filmmaker sees the subjects of Casa Susanna as important ambassadors for a maligned community. “The unsettled nature of their existences and their bravery ring loud and clear,” Lifshitz said of his subjects and their community. “But now a new conservatism is rearing its head again and the rights of yesteryear, fiercely won, may yet again be challenged. The struggle isn’t over.”
Stream Casa Susanna here.
