Before the word ‘transgender’ existed, there was Bambi, the dazzling
Parisian icon
[May 22, 2025]
By THOMAS ADAMSON
PARIS (AP) — The moment that changed queer history occurred on a
sweltering summer day in early 1950s Algeria. An effeminate teenage boy
named Jean-Pierre Pruvot stood mesmerized as traffic halted and crowds
swarmed around a scandalous spectacle unfolding in the conservative
Algiers streets.
All had stopped to look at Coccinelle, the flamboyant “transvestite”
star of Paris’ legendary cabaret, the Carrousel de Paris, who strutted
defiantly down the boulevard, impeccably dressed as a woman, sparking
awe and outrage and literally stopping traffic.
What Pruvot — who would become famous under the female stage name
“Bambi” — witnessed was more than mere performance. It was an act of
resistance from the ashes of the Nazi persecution of the LGBTQ+
community in World War II.
“I didn’t even know that (identity) existed,” Bambi told The Associated
Press in a rare interview. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to do the
same.’”
Decades before transgender became a household word and “RuPaul’s Drag
Race” became a worldwide hit — before visibility brought rights and
recognition — the Carrousel troupe in the late 1940s emerged as a
glamorous, audacious resistance. Bambi soon joined Coccinelle, April
Ashley, and Capucine to revive queer visibility in Europe for the first
time since the Nazis had violently destroyed Berlin’s thriving queer
scene of the 1930s.
The Nazis branded gay men with pink triangles, deported and murdered
thousands, erasing queer culture overnight. Just a few years after the
war, Carrousel performers strode onto the global stage, a glittering
frontline against lingering prejudice.
Remarkably, audiences at the Carrousel knew exactly who these performers
were — women who, as Bambi puts it, “would bare all.” Elvis Presley, Ava
Gardner, Édith Piaf, Maria Callas and Marlene Dietrich all flocked to
the cabaret, drawn to the allure of performers labeled “travestis.” The
stars sought out the Carrousel to flirt with postwar Paris’s wild side.
It was an intoxicating contradiction: cross-dressing was criminalized,
yet the venue was packed with celebrities.
The history of queer liberation shifted in this cabaret, one sequin at a
time. The contrast was chilling: as Bambi arrived in Paris and found
fame dancing naked for film stars, across the English Channel in early
1950s Britain the code-breaking genius Alan Turing was chemically
castrated for being gay, leading to his suicide.
Evenings spent with legends
Today, nearing 90, Marie-Pierre Pruvot — as she has been known for
decades by some — lives alone in an unassuming apartment in northeastern
Paris. Her bookshelves spill over with volumes of literature and
philosophy. A black feather boa, a lone whisper from her glamorous past,
hangs loosely over a chair.
Yet Bambi wasn’t just part of the show; she was the show — with
expressive almond-shaped eyes, pear-shaped face, and beauty
indistinguishable from any desired Parisienne. Yet one key difference
set her apart — a difference criminalized by French law.
The depth of her history only becomes apparent as she points to striking
and glamorous photographs and recounts evenings spent with legends.
Such was their then-fame that the name of Bambi’s housemate, Coccinelle,
became slang for "trans" in Israel — often cruelly.
Once Dietrich, the starry queer icon, arrived at the tiny Madame Arthur
cabaret alongside Jean Marais, the actor and Jean Cocteau's gay lover.
“It was packed,” Bambi recalled. “Jean Marais instantly said, ‘Sit (me
and Marlene) on stage' And so they were seated onstage, legs crossed,
champagne by their side, watching us perform.”
Another day, Dietrich swept in to a hair salon.
“Marlene always had this distant, untouchable air — except when late for
the hairdresser,” Bambi says, smiling. “She rushed in, kissed the
hairdresser, settled beneath the dryer, stretched her long legs
imperiously onto a stool, and lit a cigarette. Her gaunt pout as she
smoked — I’ll never forget it,” she says, her impression exaggerated as
she sucked in her cheeks. Perhaps Dietrich wasn’t her favorite star.
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Marie-Pierre Pruvot, 89, known as Bambi, one of the first trans
women in the world to become a public star, and a pioneer in global
LGBTQ+ history, poses during an interview with the Associated Press,
in Pantin, outside Paris, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas
Padilla)
 Then there was Piaf, who, one
evening, teasingly joked about her protégé, the French singing
legend Charles Aznavour, performing nearby. “She asked, ‘What time
does Aznavour start?’” Bambi recalled. “Someone said, ‘Midnight.’ So
she joked, ‘Then it’ll be finished by five past midnight.’"
Reassignment surgery
Behind the glamour lay constant danger. Living openly as a woman was
illegal. “There was a police decree,” Bambi recalls. “It was a
criminal offense for a man to dress as a woman. But if you wore
pants and flat shoes, you weren’t considered dressed as a woman.”
The injustice was global. Homosexuality remained criminalized for
decades: in Britain until 1967, in parts of the U.S. until 2003.
Progress came slowly.
In 1950s Paris, though, Bambi bought hormones casually
over-the-counter, “like salt and pepper at the grocery.”
“It was much freer then,” but stakes were high, she said.
Sisters were jailed, raped, driven into sex work. One comrade died
after botched gender reassignment surgery in Casablanca.
“There was only Casablanca,” she emphasized, with one doctor
performing the high-risk surgeries. Bambi waited cautiously until
her best friends, Coccinelle and April Ashley, had safely undergone
procedures from the late 50s before doing the same herself.
Each night required extraordinary courage. Post-war Paris was
scarred, haunted. The Carrousel wasn’t mere entertainment — but a
fingers' up to the past in heels and eyeliner.
“There was this after-the-war feeling — people wanted to have fun,”
Bambi recalled. With no television, the cabarets were packed every
night. “You could feel it — people demanded to laugh, to enjoy
themselves, to be happy. They wanted to live again … to forget the
miseries of the war.”
In 1974, sensing a shift, Bambi quietly stepped away from celebrity,
unwilling to become “an aging showgirl.” Swiftly obtaining legal
female identity in Algeria, she became a respected teacher and
Sorbonne scholar, hiding her dazzling past beneath Marcel Proust and
careful anonymity for decades.
‘I never wore a mask’
Given what she’s witnessed, or because of it, she’s remarkably
serene about recent controversies around gender. This transgender
pioneer feels wokeism has moved too quickly, fueling a backlash.
She sees U.S. President Donald Trump as part of “a global reaction
against wokeism… families aren’t ready… we need to pause and breathe
a little before moving forward again.”
Inclusive pronouns and language “complicate the language,” she
insists. Asked about Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans
stance, her response is calmly dismissive: “Her opinion counts no
more than a baker’s or a cleaning lady’s.”
Bambi has outlived her Carrousel sisters — April Ashley, Capucine,
and Coccinelle. Still elegant, she stands quietly proud.
When she first stepped onstage, the world lacked the language to
describe her. She danced anyway. Now, words exist. Rights exist.
Movements exist.
And Bambi, still standing serenely, quietly reaffirms her truth: “I
never wore a mask,” she says softly, but firmly. “Except when I was
a boy.”
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