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If you think celesbian gossip these days is crazy, you should’ve been alive like 100 years ago because DAMN these ladies were BUSY. Well, I mean, we’re pretty sure they were busy — it’s hard to know for certain in most of these cases, ’cause even if one woman claimed it happened, it’s likely the other swore it didn’t. But that hasn’t stopped historians from writing books like The Sewing Circle: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women , The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood , Hollywood Lesbians , Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars . Using those books and the internet, I made you this chart, and compiled the list beneath it. This chart is focused on actresses of the early 20th century — everybody on this chart is connected, somehow, to a member of “ The Sewing Circle .”
Again, a lot of this information could be false, but it is also possibly true! As hard as it was to find information about the actresses on this list, however, information about the sexual relationships between Black stars was even harder to nail down. I’m working on that, though, for a follow-up post that’ll center on the big names of the Harlem Renaissance.
Without any further ado, here are the ten most prominent ladykillers of early Hollywood and Broadway!
Alleged relationships & lovers: Joan Crawford, Ona Munson, Alla Nazimova, Billie Burke, Marion Morgan
The only female director in Hollywood at the time, Arzner defied expectations on multiple levels. She directed over 20 films in 24 years, taught Francis Ford Coppola and was the first female member of the Director’s Guild Association. She also spent many years with her partner Marion Morgan, after rumored relations with many other actresses IN THE BIZ.
Alleged relationships & lovers: Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Helen Ferguson, Tallulah Bankhead
Barbara Stanwyck pinged hard for her lesbian fans, even in movies where she had to pretend to be in love with a dude. A gay actor named Clifton Webb, who played her husband in Titanic, called Stanwyck “my favorite American lesbian.” “Stanwyck’s screen characters defined themselves on their own terms,” writes Axel Madsen in The Sewing Circle: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women . “Stanwyck was emotionally honest, and the way she related to men was different.” She was deeply closeted, burying her secret underneath her well-defined and daunting career ambitions and a really shitty but relatively brief marriage to a gay vaudeville star that inspired the film A Star is Born. She ultimately spent thirty years with her publicist Helen Ferguson.
Alleged romances/affairs: Alice Delamar, Barbara Stanwyck, Martha Raye, Dorothy Arzner, Claudette Colbert
Crawford, who’d started her career as a stage dancer, was stoked to be cast in a film with Greta Garbo, even though they didn’t have any scenes together. When they met, Garbo took Crawford’s face in her hands and said, “What a pity; our first picture together and we don’t work with each other. I’m sorry. You have a marvelous face.” Crawford said of this encounter, “if there was ever a time in my life when I might have been a lesbian, that was it.” BUT WAS IT REALLY, JOAN? Her lovers — and she had many, male and female — called her “Billie.” MGM paid $100 grand in 1935 to suppress the release of a pornographic lesbian film Crawford had appeared in at the age of 19. Unlike a lot of the other women on this list though there isn’t a lot of concrete solid evidence about her affairs.
Alleged relationships & lovers: Josephine Hutchinson, Tallulah Bankhead, Alla Nazimona, Laurette Taylor, Beatrice Lillie, Mercedes De Acosta, Alice Delamar
Although Eva didn’t actively attempt to hide her sexuality, she wasn’t exactly proud of it either. At the height of her fame, she began a relationship with Alla Nazimova. After their breakup she began dating Mercedes de Acosta, with whom she traveled to Europe, often showing up in the salon of famed openly lesbian socialite Natalie Barney. Her relationship with actress Josephine Hutchinson, who was married at the time, ended up being a huge scandal in the press, inspiring Eva to tell a friend, “If you have any thoughts about being a lesbian, don’t do it. Your life will be nothing but tragedy.” She then became involved with director Margaret Webster, with whom she co-founded the American Repertory Theater.
Alleged relationships & lovers: Marlene Dietrich, Mercedes de Acosta, Salka Viertel, Louise Brooks, Billie Holiday, Lilyan Tashman, Tallulah Bankhead
Garbo dated men but unlike other Sewing Circle members, never married one. Rather than lie to the press about her private life, she established a reputation as mysterious and aloof. Like Kristen Stewart! At the age of 19, while working on an obscure German film — before moving to America and becoming a star — she was seduced by 23-year-old Marlene Dietrich, described by Hollywood historian Diana McLellan as a “bohemian young mama with a notorious and compulsive appetite for the sexual seduction of other beautiful women, particularly backstage.” Garbo, on the other hand, was “simple” and “sensitive,” and ended up so hurt by Dietrich that she denied knowing her for the rest of her life. You know how it is. Then Garbo moved to Hollywood, where she continued an intimate relationship with actress-writer Salka Viertel and was introduced by Viertel to Mercedes de Acosta.
Alleged relationships/lovers: Elissa Landi, Irene Mayer Selznick, Phyllis Wilbourn, Laura Harding (heiress to the American Express fortune), Jane Loring (film editor), Judy Hollywood, Billie Burke
As a kid, Katharine shaved her head and went by “Jimmy,” and as a grown-up super-famous actress, was known for her boyish attire and bohemian attitude. Her agent’s third wife referred to Hepburn as “that dykey bitch.” Her first relationship was allegedly with her college friend Laura Harding.
Alleged relationships/lovers: Jean Acker, Natacha Rambova, Eva Le Gallienne, Mercedes De Acosta, Dolly Wilde, Bridget Bate Tichenor, Glesca Marshall, Grace Darmond, Dorothy Arzne
Stage actress Alla Nazimova cointed the term “The Sewing Circle,” referring to her group of lesbian, bisexual, or bi-curious Hollywood ladies. She held “outlandish parties” at her Sunset Boulevard estate, the legendary queer hangout known as The Garden of Allah, which was converted into a hotel in 1926. Alla was unusually open about her relationships with women and was instrumental in launching the careers of Sewing Circle members Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova. Alla lived with her partner Glesca Marshall from 1929 until her death in 1945.
Alleged lovers/relationships: Edith Piaf, Greta Garbo, Mercedes de Acosta, Claire Waldoff, Tallulah Bankead, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck
Marlene Dietrich was a glamorous Hollywood extrovert of whom film critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, “She has sex but no positive gender. Her masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men.” Dietrich was a big fan of gay Berlin in the 1920s, and after moving to the states and becoming one of Hollywood’s biggest female stars, had a lot of affairs with men and women. She even went above and beyond by having affairs with men who’d had affairs with women she’d also had affairs with.
Alleged lovers/relationships: Greta Garbo, Hope Williams, Beatrice Lille, Patsy Kelly, Katherine Cornell, Billie Holiday, Libby Holman, Hattie McDaniel, Eva La Gallienne, Barbara Stanwyck, Mercedes De Acosta.
Tallulah Bankhead, best known as a stage actress but also prolific in radio, film and television, was crass, hilarious, and unapologetic about her sexuality, an outgoing alcoholic and drug addict who “sought sex of every variety constantly, hungrily, and without reservation.” Actress Hope Williams, at 19, initiated 16-year-old Tallulah into the world of lesbian sex and she took to it pretty damn quickly. It’s difficult to find any lesbian or bisexual woman of the era who is not rumored to have had a thing with Tallulah. She married actor John Emery for four years and then never married again again. She didn’t find The Kinsey Report remotely surprising, declaring, “I’ve had many momentary love affairs. A lot of these impromptu romances have been climaxed in a fashion not generally condoned. I go into them impulsively. I scorn any notion of their permanence. I forget the fever associated with them when a new interest presents itself.” She was considered “unsuitable for the public” by the Hays Committee on account of her “Verbal Moral Turpitude.”
Alleged lovers/relationships: Greta Garbo, Alla Nazimova, Katharine Cornell, Isadora Duncan, Eva Le Gallienne, Marlene Dietrich, Ona Munson, Eleonora Duse, Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Salka Viertel, Eva Hermann
Play and screenwriter Mercedes de Acosta was the Shane of her era, bedding pretty much every lady-loving-lady in the West Hollywood region. Prior to becoming a bisexual seducer of the stars, she was a little girl who thought she was a little boy. Her Mom used to call her “Rafael.” Alice B. Toklas said of de Acosta, “Say what you will about Mercedes, she’s had the most important women of the twentieth century.” She had lengthy love affairs with actress Eva Le Gallienne, Alla Nazimova and Isadora Duncan. Her most legendary relationship, though, was with Greta Garbo. She married a heterosexual man in 1920 but insisted the wedding remain private and was notably frowning when carried over the threshold that evening.
Here’s a glossary with information about some of the other women on The Chart:
Riese is the 39-year-old Co-Founder and CEO of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, blogger, fictionist, copywriter, video-maker and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and then headed West. Her work has appeared in nine books including "The Bigger the Better The Tighter The Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards Of Being Female," magazines including Marie Claire and Curve , and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word , and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. Follow her on twitter and instagram .
Riese has written 2950 articles for us.
The history of lesbian closeting in Hollywood -- and why, even today, so many lesbians prefer to stay in the closet. Also a Desperate Housewives lesbian storyline mini-cap, Tila Tequila's Australian karaoke, an amazing Taylor Swift parody and Lindsay Lohan's new interview.
This epic megapost is your glorious opportunity to meet more than 100 amazing black LGBT women who've made their mark over the last 150 years.
Conversations among their own group consist of sexual gossip, certainly in excess of what we might have designated as "good taste."
It Gets Better, we've got proof: it's on video. Celesbians inside!
In which I dive into piles of mostly-confusing data to figure out where the girls are in a country where gayborhoods tend to be filled with boys.
topics explored include work-related circumstances, tragic accidents, hot lady cops, confusing figures from the past, lesbian power suits, raunch and deceased lovers. Oh and sex. Lots of sex.
Stunned, I’m a pillar of salt looking back at women I never knew.
Billie Burke (are you a good witch or a bad witch) is my all time favorite. So feminine & that beautiful girly lady voice.
I’m speechless & thats a shocker.
Why? Very few of the ladies mentioned actually admitted that they were lesbian.
It isn’t as though they came out as lesbian.
I’m just saying. Don’t bludgeon me anyone…PLEASE!
To be that dotted line between Nazimova and Goldman…
I know there’s a lot of really cool information here. But truthfully, my very first thought was:
“Well, this puts Shaw’s enjoyment of the Beatrice Lillie sandwich from Park’s Deli in a WHOLE different light!”
Fantastic Riese! Now imagine if someone (you know you want to) could actually cast, write, direct and produce this chart as a new series called…
If I’d know where to put it, I’d print, frame and hang this chart on a wall.
If they made it in poster form, I would purchase one immediately.
AS, let me give you my money in exchange for this graphic in poster form.
Yes, this needs to be in the merch, please!
It goes on your ceiling, right above your bed.
A (Lesbian/Bisexual) star studded ceiling so to speak?
I would put it right next to my poster of Katharine Hepburn from Sylvia Scarlett when she is in a suit!
aww! ok we are thinking about this! we feel like it would be cutest if we had an illustrator do it so the names were faces and not just names.
If I won’t find a place to hang ist, I’ll find a friend to gift it to!
I wish I could nominate you for a Peabody award for this, Riese.
I think Chloe would like to nominate you for a Peggy Peabody Award for this one, Riese.
We all know that she’d pop up on that chart somewhere, sometime.
THANK YOU EVERYBODY
I’D LIKE TO THANK MY FRIEND HAVILAND FOR TELLING ME ABOUT MERCEDES DE ACOSTA IN 2006
WITHOUT HER WE WOULD NOT BE HERE ON THIS FINE DAY
AND ALSO PIKTOCHART FOR MAKING IT EASY FOR ME TO MAKE INFOGRAPHICS EVEN THOUGH INDESIGN DOESN’T MAKE SENSE TO ME
There’s a Katherine Hepburn/On Golden Pond joke and innuendo here somewhere.
And I’m gonna find it.
Had higher hopes for Dietrich as the centre of the universe.
wow that picture was so much bigger than I thought it was gonna be. soz!
she’s super dreamer. but I also thinks she had a complicated/turbulent love life overall.
Thank you for showing me that I need to find a print of this and hang it.
I am such a bad lesbian for not knowing some of these women were lesbians! But I have seen the light! This is my kind of herstory lesson! Thank you Riese.
I wish that that my parents had made more clearly LGBT supportive statements to me as a kid, but now I realize that my mom’s default reference to Katharine Hepburn whenever she needed an example of a Beautiful Tough Boss Lady were those statements…
Read somewhere that Ava Gardner and Lana Turner were thing at some point even making Frank Sinatra go all crazy calling them “goddamned lesbians”.
Sewing circles have suddenly taken on a whole new meaning, and I like it.
(sorry, i know not how to do fancy things with links)
I already have two scissoring tees but I’d buy a third one with the words “sewing circle” in a hot minute.
Wow. I didn’t know ANY of this. Amazing.
HOW do I go back in time and get invited to these Hollywood lesbian parties?
Just an FYI: Your picture of Mercedes de Acosta is actually a picture of Maude Adams in the play L’Aiglon: http://www.digitalhistoryproject.com/2012/08/actress-maude-adams.html
huh, that’s bizarre! i found that picture labeled as being of mercedes de acosta on like five different sources. the uncropped original:
I know, I found it strange too when I reversed image searched it, but yes, a friend of mine pointed it out to me and sent me the link. Thanks for this article by the way, it’s incredible!
You know, that WOULD explain the hat.
This is everything I have ever wanted. So who do I have to pay to get a biopic or mini-series made about these lovely women and their affairs?
When will we get a movie about the tumultuous love lives of Old Hollywood starlets (and/or the circle of queer artists & writers in Paris at the same time)? When??
Oh my goodness. I applaud the research that must have gone into this. If someone wanted to do a miniseries I’d KickStart the hell out of that.
Riese, it’s like you peered into my brain for this one and said, “I know the perfect article to write for Blackmar!”
Seriously, I love this shit. I’ve spent way too many hours doing my own research on this. It’s so interesting to me how, during this era, the actresses were somehow simultaneously more closeted and more open-minded. I mean, you can find quotes from half of these women about how it’s not true and their surviving family members love to deny it, but then you’ll find super romantic love letters that they wrote to their girlfriends, too.
*cough*
You don’t happen to have a link to said Love letters?
I’m in need of some sap.
I haven’t read many in full. Just quotes here and there in different articles. Here’s one about Greta Garbo and her Swedish drama school girlfriend, Mimi Pollak.
And I don’t think it’s mentioned in the article, but she also once wrote a poem about Mimi and not being able to touch her hand. :(
Later, in a telegram to mark the birth of Pollak’s son, Garbo writes: ‘Incredibly proud to be a father.’
Right! there’s this weird dynamic where like, they all know that they will literally NEVER have to go public, and it’s not like they worried about being outed by Perez Hilton, so it was like everybody was on board with things happening in secret. whereas in the 80s/90s/00s, people were not all on board and so you risked things being revealed. back then nobody *wanted* to believe that this is what their favorite stars were up to.
Oh, and my favorite Tallulah Bankhead story is that once Joan Crawford showed up to a party for Tallulah and upstaged her by wearing some fancy ass gown and she was dusted in gold glitter. So, Tallulah stormed off, then returned completely naked with gold glitter in her pubic hair and said, “Guess who just went down on me!”
“My father warned me about men and booze, but he never said anything about women and cocaine.”
Both stories are just excellent and almost had me fall of my seat. Thank you.
I read The Girls many years ago and have been team Garbo and hated Dietrich ever since.
Yes! This is exactly my kind of thing! I have read so much about Katherine Hepburn, and there isn’t much about her life with women but what there is, is so good. If I was good at attaching pictures, I would link to a picture of her in the movie Sylvia Scarlett. Worth googling! She is in drag most of the movie and there are some gorgeous stills of her from it.
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