01 / JAHNA STEELE
Singer. Showgirl. A woman making a life on her own terms. Jahna Steele’s story moves through Texas, Las Vegas, Hawaii, and the many stages where she kept finding reasons to perform.
BEGINNINGS
Jahna’s story begins in Texas, with family, early ambitions, and the first steps toward a life onstage. Photographs and memories bring her beginnings into view without treating the woman she became as a foregone conclusion.
LAS VEGAS
Modeling, hosting, singing, and casino work led toward the Riviera’s Crazy Girls revue. Jahna’s talent and presence made her a performer audiences remembered. In 1991, she was voted Las Vegas’ sexiest showgirl.
1992
A Current Affair brought Jahna’s transgender identity before a national audience. The film examines the coverage, the surviving recordings, and the consequences for her career, preserving the differences between documented events and the recollections of those involved.
NEW STAGES
Television appearances, touring, and a one-woman show gave Jahna opportunities to speak and perform. She also explored study and work beyond entertainment. Reinvention was part of her life long after the initial headlines faded.
2004
Jahna returned to the Riviera to host a transgender beauty pageant. At the hotel where her own career had changed course, she introduced other performers to the stage. The pageant was documented in Trantasia.
BEYOND THE PUBLIC IMAGE
Family, friendships, ordinary days, and the pleasure of being in someone’s company give this story its intimacy. Photographs and the memories they open reveal a life that could never fit inside a television segment.
REMEMBERING JAHNA
Her voice is still here. So are the performances, the laughter, the images, and the people who remember what it felt like to know her. Steele Crazy is being made from that living connection to the record she left behind.
Jahna is born in San Antonio, Texas.
Jahna is voted Las Vegas’ sexiest showgirl.
A Current Affair airs the segment outing Jahna as transgender. Her career and relationship with publicity change course.
Jahna hosts a transgender beauty pageant at the Riviera.
The documentary Trantasia features Jahna and the pageant.
Jahna dies in Las Vegas. Family, fellow performers, and the archive carry her story forward.
Aaron Bear and Skylar Nielsen are developing a feature documentary through ongoing archival research and production.
THE STORY IS STILL UNFOLDING
Did you work with Jahna, see her perform, share a friendship, or know her through family? We would love to hear from you. Photographs, recordings, letters, programs, and the details that never made the papers may help us understand her life more fully.