Long before it was safe, or even really possible, to live openly as a trans woman in America, Liz Eden did it
anyway, loudly, unapologetically, and on her own terms. Born Ernest Aron in Brooklyn in 1946, she lost her mother at
fourteen, left home at eighteen, and remade herself in Greenwich Village, taking a new name after Elizabeth Taylor
and finding a chosen family among the drag balls and after-hours clubs of the city's queer underground, in the same
orbit as Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn. Fate handed her a strange kind of fame: her partner John Wojtowicz's
botched 1972 bank robbery, carried out in part to fund her surgery, became the basis for Dog Day Afternoon (1975),
one of the most celebrated films of the decade. Yet Liz herself was reduced to a deadnamed, misunderstood footnote
in it. She refused to stay a footnote. She used the notoriety to pay for her own transition, told her story in her
own words in a 1977 magazine piece, and kept living boldly and openly through the rest of her life, eventually
settling in Rochester. She died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987, at just 41, but not before insisting, in her own
writing, that hers was a story worth telling. This interview, and Anni Arbour's research behind it, are an answer to
that wish.
Anni Arbour writes Trans Ascending, a Substack publication devoted to telling transgender history and contemporary
trans lives with the depth and accuracy they're too rarely given elsewhere. Her subjects have ranged from Lynn
Conway, the pioneering computer engineer who transitioned decades before it was safe to do so publicly, to working
artists, activists, and everyday trans women whose stories don't usually make it into print at all. The Herstory of Liz Eden, published across eight parts in late 2025, is Anni's most ambitious project to date. It is a full-length
reconstruction of a woman who has spent fifty years as a footnote in someone else's story, first as a side character
in a magazine article, then in a Hollywood film, and now, finally, as the subject of her own. Built from archival
research, original manuscripts, and interviews others overlooked, the series recovers Liz Eden's own voice from
underneath five decades of secondhand telling. I am so happy and grateful that Anni agreed to sit down and chat with
me about this work.
Monika: Anni, thank you so much for this. I have to say, I fell down a rabbit hole reading all eight parts in one
sitting. Of all the trans women history forgot, why Liz? What was it about her that grabbed you and wouldn't let
go?
Anni: Thank you for having me, Monika! To me, Liz Eden was the epitome of the pervasive transphobia that has
existed in our society, well, forever, I guess. It wasn't until transgender people joined the push for gay rights
after Stonewall that most Americans even became aware of us. Liz was right in the midst of all that. She came to
New York City in the mid-1960s, had to go into sex work since so many other mainstream jobs were closed to trans
people, and she became the subject of a classic trans "chaser," a cisgender man who pursues trans women as part of
a fetish fantasy. When that chaser robbed a bank to supposedly get money for Liz's gender-affirmation surgeries, he
became a media sensation, first as the subject of a long profile in LIFE magazine, then as the protagonist of a
popular film, Dog Day Afternoon, played by Al Pacino.
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"She was far more interesting than her chaser, or the film itself. Photo: LGBT Community Center |
But Liz's part in the film was portrayed as if she was
mentally disabled, pathetic. And despite all the media attention given to the chaser-turned-bank-robber, she was
forgotten. Doing research on the film and its backstory for another article, that struck a chord with me, and I
wanted to know more about the trans woman who was the alleged inspiration for the bank robbery. What I found out was
that she was far more interesting than not only her chaser, but the film itself.
Monika: Okay, I need to know about the manuscript. You had her original typed pages for that 1977 CLUB piece,
stuff that never even made it to print. How on earth did you get your hands on that? What was it like reading her
actual words for the first time?
Anni: Well, I've been a writer and journalist for many years. As such, under my deadname, I made my reputation on
writing deeply-researched articles and books that got their information from primary sources: personal
correspondence whenever possible, contemporaneous news stories and interviews, and anybody I could find who had
eyewitness accounts of the people and events I was researching. In Liz's case, I used all my usual resources and
dug up these papers during a deep dive into her life. Her typewritten autobiographical story turned up unexpectedly
in my search. But it provided an honest, uninhibited telling of her life story that truly touched me as a trans
woman myself. Many, many trans people have similar backgrounds to Liz and many have similar traumas. I identified
with much of her early life, and it allowed me to understand her later life choices better.
Monika: Here's what struck me: everyone who ever told this story before you knew John so much better than they
knew Liz. The LIFE magazine writers, the movie, all of it. How do you even begin untangling her real voice from
that mess?
Anni: As with any subject I take on, Monika, I try to find as many viewpoints on my subject as possible. The LIFE
magazine article gave me a starting point because it was the basis of the story used in Dog Day Afternoon. But I
also view every such second-hand telling of a story with a skeptic's eye. Despite their pronouncements of being
even-handed and honest, most journalists have biases that come out in their writing. They can't help it. And the
writers of the LIFE piece were obviously writing for the readership of that magazine. When the article came out, in
1972, transgender people were only vaguely known to the average American reader. So Liz was of little to no
interest to the LIFE writers. They focused on John, the bank robber and her deranged chaser. In real life, he was a
strange guy with a stalker mentality. But to the authors of the LIFE piece, he was far more presentable to the
American public than a trans person. I understood that as I read their piece, and I only picked out the pertinent,
factual information that I followed up on.
Monika: Set the scene for our readers. Early seventies, Greenwich Village, you're visibly gender-nonconforming
and most people don't even have words for what they're looking at. What was that actually like?
Anni: Greenwich Village of that era was the edgy bastion of American counterculture. The country as a whole was
undergoing changes brought on by the emerging Baby Boomer generation: anti-war protests, drug use, "free love," and
so on. When the Stonewall Rebellion occurred in 1969, in Greenwich Village, it sparked the LGBTQ+ rights movement,
and right in the midst of that rebellion were trans people. They blended into the early gay rights movement
initially, but eventually pushback from certain lesbian advocates tried to exorcise trans people from the movement,
claiming they were simply "men in dresses" and not actually queer. Out of that division sprang the transgender
rights movement, led by people like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. And Liz was right there, right in the
middle of all that.
Monika: Her mother died when Liz was just fourteen, and that's the same year she first attempted suicide. That
timing isn't a coincidence, is it? How much of who Liz became do you trace back to that loss specifically?
Anni: In my opinion, a lot. I also lost my mother early on, when I was sixteen, and since she was my only ally in an
otherwise conservative Italian family, I was lost. A lot of my own trauma occurred after her death, and I'd expect
that was true of Liz too. Her father, a wealthy businessman, apparently didn't support her transition at first, and
she was out on her own, and eventually on the streets, while still a teenager. I can relate, because I came
dangerously close to that myself.
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"Trans people don't normally. have many friends." Photo: LGBT Community Center |
Monika: And her sister, Barbara, did they stay close as adults? I'm curious whether Barbara became her anchor
later on.
Anni: I can't speak to their early years together, because I couldn't find any first-hand accounts discussing their
relationship. However, Barbara obviously came to Liz's rescue later in life, after she moved to Rochester and
eventually became sick with AIDS. She placed Liz's obituary in the newspapers and apparently paid for her burial. I
wish I could have spoken to her, but she passed away years before I could.
Monika: Before she had a dime for transition, Liz was out there surviving in a city where just wearing a dress on
the street could get you arrested. How did she manage that impossible gap, being who she was in a world that
criminalized it?
Anni: It wasn't easy. Trans sex workers like Liz are always targets for physical abuse from their clients. Liz
likely experienced this, and it hardens a person who has. Often such abuse victims turn to hard drugs just to get
through the trauma. Liz did too. Basically, it was an almost impossibly horrific life for a trans person in that
situation. And sadly, Liz lived in the era when AIDS became prevalent. Ironically, though, she contracted it from a
blood transfusion during leg surgery, not from an infected client. It led to a tragic end to a life that could have
been so much easier if society had been kinder to her.
Monika: She was in that same scene that gave us Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, the balls, the after-hours
clubs. Did Liz actually cross paths with Warhol's crowd, or was she always circling the edges of that world?
Anni: Definitely! Liz frequented the same clubs, hung out with Warhol's crowd, and socialized with all the other
denizens of Studio 54 and other trendy discos of that era. She even lived in the same gay boarding house as Holly
Woodlawn for a while. Woodlawn briefly mentioned Liz in her autobiography, and apparently didn't care much for her.
Monika: Can we talk about the name for a second? Elizabeth Taylor, of all people. Was that real admiration, or
was Liz having a laugh at everyone's expense?
Anni: I expect it was real admiration. I think trans people have a great affinity for iconic people
of the gender they are affirming. Liz Taylor was not only one of the best-known actors of her time, but also one of
the classic beauties of Hollywood. It makes perfect sense, at least to me, that Liz Eden would look to emulate
Taylor's style and aspire to be as beautiful as her. In my opinion, she accomplished that goal.
Monika: So by her own telling, meeting John was basically repulsion at first sight. She tried to hand him off to a
friend! What actually kept her around, when she clearly wasn't feeling it?
Anni: Trans people don't normally have many friends. We tend to be isolated and remote. Society has made us leery
of strangers because of the abuse we often experience. While Liz probably had no romantic interest in John, he was
an easy lay who was always available. He satisfied the sexual urges she had, which weren't satisfied by the cold,
impersonal sex she had with her paying clients.
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| Marriage with John. Photo: LGBT Community Center |
Monika: He called Liz "him" the entire relationship, apparently. Reading her own account of it, do you think he
genuinely never got who she was, or did he get it, and just didn't care?
Anni: He just didn't care. Many chasers view trans women as a fetish, not a human being. To them, they are simply
women with penises, and for those guys, that is a sexual turn-on. Like many people of that era, John viewed
transgender women and crossdressers, called "transvestites" at the time, as one and the same. We are most
definitely NOT the same!
Monika: Honestly, by every account this was a mismatch, she says herself he was too short, too old, not her type
at all. So why did she stay, when we know she had zero problem walking away from men who didn't do it for her?
Anni: After Dog Day Afternoon was released and John became this weird media star, she looked at teaming up with him
as a way of making money and building her own brand. That was only partially accomplished, as she only became
better known in the gay community and in the burgeoning porn industry of her time. John was a partner to her in the
sense that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were partners: close in public, but not when the public wasn't looking.
Monika: Her marriage with John was advertised as the first gender-nonconforming marriage! It was filmed, public,
at a time when most trans women were trying desperately to disappear. Was Liz chasing that spotlight on purpose,
or did it just find her and she ran with it?
Anni: Her "marriage" to John was mostly symbolic, and probably a publicity stunt to gain media attention. Liz
obviously wanted mainstream notoriety. Everything she did seemed to support that. She was classically beautiful
after her surgeries, and she desperately hoped to turn that into a career. She was ahead of her time by several
decades in that ambition, since it wasn't until the rise of trans personalities like Laverne Cox that such
mainstream acceptance became possible. Just another sad aspect of Liz's tragic life.
Monika: The wedding party was wild, especially with the bridesmaids parading past the police precinct. I have to
ask, whose terrible, wonderful idea was that? Did anybody in that wedding party stop and think, "wait, we could
actually get arrested for this"?
Anni: Apparently they had a level of understanding with the police in that precinct where the wedding party took
place. The officers probably didn't take their campy street display as anything more than a harmless stunt. They
weren't working the streets as sex workers at the time, so they weren't really viewed as doing anything criminal.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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