Zdeněk Koubek Newsreel (1936)
Newsreel footage of transgender athlete Zdeněk Koubek, filmed during his trip to America, on August 12, 1936.
Today’s post is by Michael Waters (@mwaterswrites on Instagram), author of the new book “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports.”
In August 1934, Zdeněk Koubek—a Czech track star assigned female at birth—reached the height of his sporting career. He won gold in the 800 meters at the Women's World Games, a now-forgotten event that was the highest level for women's track-and-field sports at the time. (The Olympics didn't offer the 800 meters.)
A year later, Koubek stepped away from sports and began seeing a doctor to answer unresolved questions he had about himself. By the end of 1935, he decided he wanted to live as a man, and he told the Czech press that he was transitioning. The story spread internationally, and Koubek became famous. To London Life, Koubek’s transition was a “marvellous story” that “definitively proved” that transition was possible in humans: “Within the last five years there have been at least six authenticated cases in this country of women becoming men, and men becoming women.”
The world’s curiosity had been awoken, and on August 5, 1936, Koubek set sail for the United States, where he performed on Broadway in the Folies d’Amour. American reporters couldn’t get enough. Neither could producers. Koubek claimed that he was in talks to star in a Hollywood movie based on his life.
After leaving New York, Koubek traveled to Paris, where he danced alongside Josephine Baker. Decades later, in 2001, a Canadian woman recalled catching him at intermission. As she wrote in a letter to The Vancouver Sun, “There he was, all in white, wearing runners, shorts and a sleeveless top, smiling and flexing his muscles.”
Michael Waters reported on Koubek's life in depth in his new book “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports” which you can now get at your local library or anywhere books are sold.
**Footage of Koubek is from the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
