The sewing circle: Hollywood's greatest secret: female stars who loved other women

Description

Cover Page; Title Page; Dedication; Contents; Author to Reader; 1. The Odd Couple: Mercedes and Thalberg; 2. Tangled lives: Women Who Loved Women; 3. In Love: Garbo and Mercedes; 4. "In America, Men Don't Like Fat Women"; 5. Lover to the Stars; 6. The Perfect Sapphic Liaison; 7. Enter Joan Crawford and Katharine Cornell; 8. Dietrich on the Rebound; 9. Queen Christina; 10. The Flaming Twenties; 11. Stanwyck: The Best-Kept Secret; 12. Hollywood and Broadway: Transcontinentals; 13. Sodom-on-the-Pacific; 14. Talking Pictures; 15. Hepburn and the Lady Director; 16. Odd Girls Abroad.;Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Barbara Stanwyck, to name a few, maintained their images as glamorous big-screen sex symbols complete with dashing escorts, handsome husbands, and scores of male admirers, thanks to studio publicity departments. But off the set, all three box office divas were involved in "lavender" marriages (marriages of convenience, often to a gay man) or remained stoically single. They and several other Hollywood starlets of the era were all members of a discreet women's "club" called the Sewing Circle, Hollywood's underground lesbian society. Madsen takes a candid look at the very complicated dual lives these great stars led and the impact their preference for same-sex relationships had on their movie careers.