Unpaginated (32 pp.) program completely illustrated with reproductions from black-and-white photographs. Quarto (9 5/8 x 7 1/2 inches). Original side-stapled red cardstock wrappers with stenciled and embossed front cover. Some light creasing to front cover, soiling and minor staining to back cover, light wear around staples, overall very good. Paris: [Le Carrousel], n.d. (circa 1950s). Le Carrousel de Paris was a Parisian cabaret founded in 1947 at 40, rue du Colisée. It was most famous for its revues in the 1950s of 'cross-dressing' and trans performers like Coccinelle (Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy), a French cabaret singer, sex symbol, and transgender woman who was the first widely publicized celebrity to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Europe, in 1958. Le Carrousel also regularly featured acts by other transgender woman including April Ashley and Bambi.
Marcel Ouizman, a club owner in Paris, already ran Madame Arthur, the first gender-twist cabaret in France, which opened the year before, in 1946. In 1947, he moved a pre-existing club-cabaret to rue du Colisée and called it Le Carrousel. From 1947 to 1961, Le Carrousel was one of the most expensive nightclubs in Paris. In 1954, the French police made Le Carrousel close for three months and banned Madame Arthur from having male cross-dressing. It continued in the space on rue du Colisée until 1961, when it closed for a year before reopening in 1962 at 22, rue Vavin. It moved again in the 1980s and continued hosting cabaret performances up until 2016.
This program from Le Carrousel contains 32 pages of black-and-white glamour shots of male impersonators who performed at both Le Carrousel and at Madame Arthur, with small inset photographs of the men without costumes and makeup. These include Bambi, Tony April, Sonne/Sone Teal, Rubis, Capucine, Les-Lee, Dany Dan, Kiki Moustic, Zarah, Sylvain, Everest, Manon, Coccinelle, Pamela, Maxime, Tanya, Hula, Toinou Costes, Lucky Sarcell, Claude André, Michou, Rolandys, Jan Carlove, Cora Delly, Gina Ginns, Carol, Violetta, Chantal, Pompilia, Sophia, Michaelli, Claude Christy, and Rita del Oro, along with a handful of male performers and dancers. Most of the photographs were taken by Paul Koruna and MARTI, along with Daniel Frasnay, Chevert, and Nisak. In 1966, Sonne Teal died in a plane crash at Mount Fuji in Japan along with four other female impersonators who were on an international tour.
The back cover of the program indicates that the revue was conceived, written, designed, and directed by French artist Robert Lasquin, with choreography by Albert Morandi and musical arrangements by Sam Stinn. Very rare; as of April 2026, OCLC locates only a single copy in a North American library.
