An Unexpurgated and Intimate Autobiography
 of the
Great Star
as told to
Jack Fitzgerald

Synopsis

       Clyde Dillard of Rosedale, Arkansas, from the moment he could remember is convinced he was born with the brain of a woman in a man's body. Unfortunately he happens to be the son of the local despot who runs everybody and everything in a rural Arkansas fascist, bootleg empire in the late 1940's and 50's. Rather than admit he sired a misfit,  he intends to have Clyde committed to an insane asylum and lobotomized. 

       Clyde, only 18, escapes and goes to Mexico where he meets a wide assortment of people who open his eyes to many of the facts of the world. Later he joins the Army only for the G. I. benefits he can get afterwards-but first he must transverse the three years of hell that awaits a person who is "different." He is beaten and pounded by life at every turn for no other reason than his inability to be "normal". After the Army he attends an Ivy League university in the east where he majors in French and Spanish. For the first time he connects with people on an intellectual level rather than an emotional one. Even so, he still feels his body and mind are not in sync.

       He decides in 1957 to go to Havana,  Cuba, to have a sex change. While there he meets a group of people who not only help him during his transition from male to female, but train him where his real talents lie-in entertainment. After the operation, he becomes Contessa whose theatrical and film career in singing and acting is successfully launched in Havana. Love, fame and true friendships clash with Fidel Castro's 1958 starkly brutal and tragic Cuban Revolution. Contessa escapes from the island and, with the aid of theatrical friends, goes to Paris. From that point on Contessa gains international celebrity on stage and screen. Her wide public is totally unaware that she started off life as a man-and it is only through this autobiography that she makes known her complete and intimate experiences for the first time! Contessa is brilliant, daring and unconventional--and tells her story as she pleases with not a sequin left unturned.

       Her autobiography is more than just an account of her illustrious career. Here is a totally candid and intimate self-portrait of a remarkable woman, her personal failures as well as her public successes. Contessa, the human being, is warm, witty, humorous and relentlessly honest. This woman has been to hell and back in her fight for happiness. Each chapter is filled with luminous drama--hilarious at times, heartbreaking at others. But Beware! One of CONTESSA's sentences can lead anywhere, from a ringing condemnation of the powerful forces of self-righteousness, bigotry and ignorance in our society to a resounding discussion of America's sexual injustice.

       CONTESSA is not only a literary work which is enjoyable to read but one which hopefully will open many closed eyes, ears and hearts.

You won't soon forget Contessa's fascinating, unsanitized and
behind-the-scenes  portrait of her life.