* The following real stories from 1934 Newspapers were added as a footnote to convince Depression era audiences it wasn't wild fantasy, but based on established scientific fact:
GIRL TURNS INTO BOY
Henriette, 16, to Become
Legally Henri.
LILLE, Aug. I8 (U. P.).Henri Aceeg, 16 years aid, powdered his upper lip today to conceal a budding mustache, donned A dress and prepared to sing In the church choir at Lens,
He hopes next Tuesday, however, to obtain legal permission to become a boy, and shed forever the skirts he bas worn. all his life as Alice Henriette Acceg, In time he hopes to marry.
A growing tendency of Henri/Henriette's soprano voice In the Lens choir roused suspicions which led to an examination by experts. They decided Henriette bad become Henri.
The decision was announced yesterday. Henri celebrated by bor. rowing a pair of his father's trousers for temporary use, smoking his first cigarette and making plans to encourage, rather than to conceal, the sprouting mustache. ,
On Tuesday he plans to go to the town hall and have the sex space on his birth certificate changed from female to male. Until then he is legally a girl.
Dr. Henri Minne, the family physician, confirmed to the United Press today that Henriette had undergone a metamorphosis.
"Henri's masculinity is unquestionable," said Dr. 'Minne, "I shall recommend a n operation to make his) metamorphosis complete."
Manhood for Girl
Sought in Surgical Test
Dayton, Pa., Aug. I8.-In one of the strangest and most daring eperiment ever attempted by modern science, a surgeon's knife this Fall will seek to transform a dwarfed farm girl of 20 years, afflicted with a. sex deformity since birth, into a normal young man.
The girl is Clara Schreckengost, second of ten children in the family of C. W. Schreckengost, farmer in the hill country above Dayton. When she was born doctors examined her rare malformity and said she could never live more than three years,
She lived, -but she grew into an awkward , undersized creature, who became so well known in the rural community that a humane society beard of her not long ago.
Operations Planned.
Physicians from a Pittsburgh hospital studied her, and decided that only by an operation which would change her sex characteristics could she be turned into a
normal being. Two preliminary operations have already been performed, and she will undergo the principal one in October.
Traits Are Feminine.
For example, Clara shows feminine traits and instincts. She, prefers dresses to overalls, and she’d rather take care of the young farm children than work In fields.
Pittsburgh specialists who have studied Clara's case declare that it proves definitely something that science has long sought to establish-that sex is not the unchangeable trait that it has always been
believed, and that occasionally it can be unmistakably altered by an operation.