Forget newcomers Jodie Foster, Portia De Rossi and Angelina
Jolie - sapphic stars have always been on the silver screen. We
take you through 10 top lady-loving starlets of Hollywood's
'golden' era and the stars to whom they "shadowed"…
1. Marlene Dietrich (pictured right, in No
Highway)
Whilst Dietrich might have been one of the few actresses to
successfully negotiate the transition from the silent movies of the
1920s into the "talkies" of the 30s, she certainly wasn't the only
one to be negotiating life as a bisexual in Hollywood. Dietrich
enjoyed the thriving gay scene of Berlin in the 1920s, where she
starred in her break-through role as cabaret singer Lola-Lola in
Josef von Sternberg's Blue Angel (1930) before moving to
Hollywood.
Dietrich married but enjoyed a notoriously open relationship,
pursuing a string of (often overlapping) affairs with leading
Hollywood figures, writers and artists including John Wayne, James
Stewart, writers Erich Maria Remarques and Mercedes de
Acosta.
2. Greta Garbo
Noted for her reclusive later years and for uttering those
infamous words "I want to be alone" (Grand Hotel, 1932), Greta
Garbo was another of Hollywood's leading bisexual ladies. Unlike
Dietrich, Garbo never married, had no children and for the majority
of her life, lived alone. She had public affairs with fashion
designer George Schlee and conductor Leopold Stokowski, as well as
more private relationships with actresses Lilyan Tashman, Louise
Brooks and Mercedes de Acosta (Hollywood's original 'hub').
However, it seems that Garbo's soulmate was Swedish actress Mimi
Pollak, who back in 2005 released their private correspondence,
including poetry Garbo wrote about Pollack and a letter from 1928
where, writing to the now-married Pollak she says, 'I dream of
seeing you and discovering whether you still care as much about
your old bachelor. I love you, little Mimosa.'
3. Josephine Baker
Actress, dancer, singer and civil rights activist, Josephine Baker
(also known as "the Creole goddess") was the first African American
woman to star in a major motion picture, in Siren of the Tropics
(1927), Zouzou (1934) and Princesse Tam Tam (1935). The original
Brangelina, Baker adopted 12 children from around the globe and
raised them in France as her "rainbow family". Baker married
and divorced, but throughout her career she had relationships with
leading black female performers including Bessie Allison, Clara
Smith, Ada Smith, plus French writer Colette and Mexican artist
Frieda Kahlo.
4. Joan Crawford
The queen of the Depression era's 'rags-to-riches' movies,
Crawford was one of Hollywood's most prominent film stars and one
of the highest-earning actresses at the height of her fame. After a
string of flops at the end of the 1930s, Crawford re-launched her
career with Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won the 1945
Academy Award for Best Actress. Crawford was a notorious womaniser
in addition to her four failed heterosexual marriages, the most
famous of which was her fling with otherwise-heterosexual Marilyn
Monroe.
5. Eva Le Gallienne
Despite her openness about her sexuality within the acting
community and her very public associations with Tallulah Bankhead
(the rather outspoken bisexual actress) and Estelle Winwood, Le
Gallienne was opposed to being 'outed' publicly in an era when an
acknowledgement of her sexuality would have signified her
professional demise. Like Garbo and Dietrich, Le Gallienne had a
five-year love affair with writer Mercedes de Acosta, as well as a
shorter relationship with the actress Alla Nazimova, who at the
time was at the height of her career as the leading lady of
Hollywood. She was named as 'co-respondent' in the divorce
proceedings between actress Josephine Hutchinson and her husband
after the two started an affair.
6. Alla Nazimova
Alla Nazimova started her career in the theatre, but by 1918 had
become Hollywood's leading actress. During this period she was also
romantically involved with many emerging Hollywood actresses
including Eva Le Gallienne, Anna May Wong and Rudolph Valentino's
wife Natacha Rambova (although the latter has never been officially
confirmed). Nazimova is arguably more recognisable to modern
audiences for coining the phrase "Sewing Circles" to refer to
bisexual and lesbian circles within Hollywood of actresses who hid
their sexuality. Nazimova lived with long-term partner Glesca
Marshall from 1929 until her death in 1945.
7. Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead was an outspoken award-winning actress, as
notorious for her sexual liberalism and political ideas as her
professional accolades. Bankhead was linked romantically with
singer Billie Holliday, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Alla
Nazimova and - are we sensing a trend yet? - Mercedes de
Acosta.
8. Lilyan Tashman
Although Tashman never obtained 'superstar' status like Crawford
and Nazimovam, she did have one of the longest enduring careers of
any actress at the time, and her performances won praise for their
quality, comedic turn and tongue-in-cheek bitchiness. Tashman
started a love affair with Greta Garbo that endured for four years
before Garbo broke it off, leaving Tashman heartbroken. Ironically,
despite being openly lesbian within Hollywood, Tashman's lavender
marriage to fellow gay actor Edmund Lowe made them the darlings of
Hollywood. Tashman died at the tragically young age of 37 following
an ongoing battle with abdominal cancer.
9. Josephine Hutchinson
American actress Josephine Hutchinson made her acting debut at the
age of 13, playing alongside Mary Pickford in The Little Princess
(1917). She was one of the few actresses able to make the
transition into the "talkies" at the end of the silent movie era of
the 1920s and married stage director Robert Bell in 1924. Two years
later she met and fell in love with Eva Le Gallienne, which led to
Hutchinson's divorce in 1928 and her public outing by the media as
La Gallienne's "shadow" (a term used at the time
instead of lesbian). Hutchinson's career weathered the scandal and
she married again in 1935, and again in 1972. Le Gallienne and
Hutchinson continued their relationship for a number of years
although Hutchinson married three times (Le Gallienne never
married.)
10. Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead starred in more than 70 films, including Orson
Welles' iconic film Citizen Kane (1941), but is perhaps best known
for the role of Endora opposite Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York
in hit 60s television show Bewitched. Like Tashman, Moorehead
rarely played lead roles but her talents as an actress won her four
Academy Award nominations, two Golden Globes and an Emmy. Moorehead
married in 1930 (divorcing In 1952), but was widely considered to
be a lesbian. In an interview with author Boze Hadleigh, Moorehead
was asked point-blank about her sexuality and responded wryly by
saying: "You apparently have your own informants. I don't know what
you've heard, and I don't want to hear, and some of it may be
true."
