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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: GENDER AND SEXUAL NON-CONFORMITY

LN THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD ERA

by

Brett Leslie Abrams

submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of Doctor of Philosophy [Education]

in

History i I Chair:lir: / a . . Vanes«a Schwartz Q .

>0ttglas GfomeryC # y{JrHL. 1 ___ Rodger SKreitmatter

Dean or the College of Arts and Sciences

Date

2000

The American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

»• ^ • «»■ • -• ?3I7

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9983652

Copyright 2000 by Abrams, Brett Leslie

All rights reserved.

__ ___ UMI

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Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © COPYRIGHT

by

Abrams, Brett Leslie

2000

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: GENDER AND SEXUAL NON-CONFORMITY

IN THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD ERA

by

Brett Leslie Abrams

ABSTRACT

Most historical scholarship has asserted that the mainstream motion

picture industry has reflected and created images that promote very traditional gender

roles and idealized versions of heterosexual romantic and sexual behavior. This study,

however, takes issue with that belief. When filmic and extra-filmic representations of the

motion picture industry in novels, motion pictures, and newspaper stories focusing on

Hollywood between 1917 and 1941, a greater range of gender and sexual behavior

appeared. A wide variety of these three media forms presented representations of people

connected to the motion picture industry who adopted mannerisms of the opposite gender

and exhibited romantic and sexual interest toward members of their biological sex. This

dissertation argues that the depictions of nontraditional gender and sexuality played a

significant role in Hollywood publicity. These images brought private activities into two

public locations, a place in Hollywood and the mass media. The link between sexuality

and both public locations reprivatized the image and offered audiences the thrill of

receiving titillation and private information.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hollywood developed a mystique as a special place, summarized in the phrase

“dream factory of the masses.” This mystique, built by the movies and by the marketing

of itself, occurred by showing motion picture celebrities in particular locations

specifically associated with Hollywood or in places Hollywood “made” spectacular.

Among the most prevalent locations were the nightlife locales, the celebrity home, the

Hollywood party, and behind the scenes of the studio. This dissertation asks how these

ambi-sextrous images help differentiate the representations of these Hollywood locations

from the images of similar locations that also appeared in the mass media? The study also

asks how these images of nontraditional gender and sexuality shaped the understanding of

each of these locations and the mystique of the rich, exciting, and absurd Hollywood life­

style.

This study observes that these images have implications for current

celebrity and entertainment culture. These Hollywood images represent a precursor to the

depictions of the private lives of celebrities that appear in abundance throughout current

day mass media. Images of nontraditional sexuality in fictional characters is prevalent in

today’s television programming. Like these Interwar Hollywood images, these televised

depictions of gays and lesbians offer audiences peaks at the “exotic” while amusing them

and enables these programs to distinguish themselves from other shows.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the time that I have worked on this project, I have accumulated many

debts. Each of the members of my dissertation committee, Douglas Gomery, Rodger

Streitmatter, and my dissertation director, Vanessa Schwartz, deserve great thanks.

Vanessa Schwartz has provided incisive and profound guidance. Her standards and

expectations appear on each of these pages. My fellow students at American University

also have offered invaluable assistance, particularly Debbie Doyle, Heidi Hackford, Uday

Mohan, and Elizabeth Stewart. The American University History Department has

provided significant help in several ways. Other scholars have done yeoman work in

helping me understand and empathize with these representations, and I particularly want

to thank Peter Hoefer, Patrick Loughney and Clay McShane.

I also want to express my appreciation to the numerous librarians and archivists

who helped with this project. I am grateful for the assistance that I received from the

staffs at the Motion Picture Division of the Library of Congress, the Rosenbach Museum,

the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at

the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles City Archives, and the American

University Interlibrary Loan Department.

My heartfelt thanks go to those people who have made my life rich and kept it

sane during this process. My parents have provided financial and moral support. Many

iv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. friends have lent their ears and minds as I have worked through various issues. Joining

Mr. Hoefer and my department friends among the amazingly helpful are Deborah Garcia,

Cameron Fletcher, Tom Drymon, Daniel Emberley, Bill Hillegeist, Joel Denker, Jon-Carl

Lewis, Jim O’Laughlin, Michael Seto, and Tim Tate. My deepest gratitude goes to Ira

Tattelman, the man who gives me things that I can not put down on this page.

V

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iv

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION TO AMBI-SEXTROUS IMAGERY IN THE REFLECTIONS OF HOLLYWOOD...... 1

II. HOLLYWOOD NIGHTLIFE: CROSS DRESSING AND GENDER HIJINKS...... 38

III. THE PUBLIC HOLLYWOOD PARTY: SPLENDOR AND DATING 96

IV. THE PRIVATE HOLLYWOOD PARTY: SECRET ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE...... 121

V. THE HOLLYWOOD STAR HOME: CHIC BACHELORS AND ODD BED FELLOWS...... 155

VI. HOLLYWOOD BEHIND THE SCENES: GLAMOUR AND MYSTERY IN THE WORKPLACE...... 212

VII. RECALLING POLYMORPHOUS IMAGERY FROM THE MARGINS...... 261

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 270

vi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO AMBI-SEXTROUS IMAGERY IN

THE REFLECTIONS OF HOLLYWOOD

We drank a couple of more rounds while Sammy told the girls what pals we had been in New York, and it was funny to see how he could carry himself away with his own salesmanship... “Maybe you boys want to be alone,” Billie said, knowing that was always good for a laugh. It was, but of course Sammy managed to top it. “Don’t give up, girls,” he said. “Haven’t you heard we’re ambi-sextrous?”1

Budd Schulberg’s play on the word “ambidextrous” in his novel about

Hollywood, What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), made a provocative link among deft

manipulation and the ability to use multiple forms of sexuality. This combination

suggested that persons working in the motion picture industry, such as Sammy Glick, had

the ability and desire to consciously manipulate a variety of sexual interests for personal

gains. Earlier in the book, Schulberg equated Glick with mass culture, defined as a

dynamo show without substance.2 Schulberg’s coined word, “ambi-sextrous,” and the

previous equation of Glick and mass culture, suggested that the motion picture industry’s

mass-produced culture was deftly manipulative and used all forms of sexual titillation

and seduction to achieve its market gains.

1 Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run? (New York: Random House, 1941), 47-48. 2 Ibid, 88-89, 124-125.

1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Historical scholarship has asserted the mainstream motion picture industry has

reflected and created images that promote very traditional gender roles and idealized

versions of heterosexual romantic and sexual behavior. Gaylyn Studlar argued that the

star images, which emerged from both filmic and extra-filmic texts, generally promoted

patriarchal values and family discourses. However, examining filmic and extra-filmic

representations of the motion picture industry in novels, motion pictures, and newspaper

stories focusing on Hollywood between 1917 and 1941 revealed a greater range of gender

and sexual behavior. A wide variety of these three media forms presented representations

of people connected to the motion picture industry who adopted mannerisms of the

opposite gender and exhibited romantic and sexual interest toward members of their

biological sex. Although David Ehrenstein’s recent book, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood,

1928-1998 (1998), recognized an association between Hollywood and homosexuality, he

did not expose the mechanisms of how Hollywood used same-gender sexuality.3

If most scholars have discerned a striving to present gender and sexual norms

in Hollywood representations, this dissertation asks why so many representations of the

Hollywood motion picture industry contain gender and sexual ambiguity. Reviewers

deemed Schulberg’s novel an incisive commentary about the people and the operation of

the motion picture industry during the studio era. Schulberg argued that the industry

intentionally fostered the presentation of nontraditional images in its products because

sex sold mass-produced cultural products, and mass-produced cultural products work best

3 Gaylyn Studlar,This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); David Ehrenstein, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998 (New York: William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1998).

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when they stretch boundaries. Schulberg noted that Hollywood sold the phenomenon of

Hollywood itself and ambi-sextrous imagery played a part in this marketing. If more than

just the traditional sexual object choice and interest existed in Hollywood, then such a

difference in gender behavior existed there as well. Thus, within this Hollywood era there

existed a variety that can best be described as a polymorphous sexuality. This dissertation

argues that the depictions of nontraditional gender and sexuality played a significant role

in Hollywood publicity.

The interplay between the public and the private appeared within sexuality,

celebrity and Hollywood locations. Historian Michel Foucault observed networks exist in

modem societies to prompt, channel, and record discourse about sex. Sexual discourse

functioned around the endless public presentation of sex while exploiting it as the secret.

Scholars have noted that the mass media presentation of celebrity centered on the

dynamic between public and private. The celebrity has an endless discourse about their

personality and activities appear in numerous public channels. Most of this information

features the celebrity’s private emotions and activities in private locations. This

interaction between the public and private titillated the public. It also enabled them to

develop a false sense of intimacy with the celebrity and helped audience members to

maintain their interest in him or her.4 Hollywood publicity of nontraditional gender and

4 Michel Foucault, The History o f Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume (New I York: Random House, 1978), 32-35.

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sexual figures located them within specific Hollywood locations that were private to

varying degrees, thereby making public the information about these industry places.

While providing audiences with the sense of intimacy with celebrities, sexuality, and

Hollywood, this publicity appeared in a manner that led audience members to believe that

additional secrets about these three areas remained.

Public/private is the key organizational principle for this study. The chapters

progress from more public to highly private locations. The locations represent places that

Hollywood made spectacular. The introduction to the motion picture,Hollywood Hotel

(1937), featured the important locales. As the newcomer landed in Hollywood, images of

the Brown Derby, Cafe Trocadero, a sign selling personal guides to movie star homes,

Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and scenes of studios and their lots indicated the method of

showing Hollywood as a place. These images included nightlife locales, star homes, the

theater where premiere parties occurred, and the behind-the-scenes on the studio lot.5 The

more public locations, including the nightclubs and theater premieres, allowed access to

those who could pay or wait in line. The private locations, including private parties,

celebrity homes, and the studio lots, increasingly restricted entry to the public and made it

impossible for outsiders to see the celebrities within these locations. The home had a long

tradition of being considered a very private space, and, in Los Angeles, homeowners

added walls and built on hills to ensure increased privacy. Factories combined a history

of restricting access with gates and guards at the entry points to enforce privacy. The

5 Hollywood Hotel (W arner Brothers, 1937).

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images of the Hollywood places were then highly significant because they served as the

way audience members received information about the locations.

Each of the five chapters that follow focuses upon an element of the

Hollywood mystique. The element that forms a vital part of Hollywood as a state of mind

has correspondence to geographical locations in Hollywood and Los Angeles. These

places include restaurants and nightclubs that formed the Hollywood nightlife, the staged

events and semi-public affairs that comprised the public Hollywood parties, and the

private galas that constituted the private Hollywood party, the star residences that forged

the celebrity home, and the stage sets, dressing rooms, and studios that comprised

Hollywood behind the scenes. The discussion of the locations begins with those places

most accessible to the public and ends with the places where few outside of the industry

could enter. Each chapter proceeds with an introduction to the mass media’s depiction of

the location in other areas of the country, then follows with a description of the social

world of Hollywood and Los Angeles. Images of the Hollywood location that use

traditional gender and sexual behaviors are included before the polymorphous images are

analyzed. While the description of the social world offers the ability to appreciate the

social context in which the imagery emerged, the images of similar locations and more

traditional behavior provide an understanding of the manner in which these locations

frequently appeared in the mass media. The polymorphous images that occurred within

these spaces reinforced the components that comprised Hollywood nightlife, star homes,

the Hollywood party and Hollywood behind the scenes in the public imagination, and in

so doing, fortified Hollywood’s image as the dream factory of the masses.

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In its marketing, Hollywood developed a mystique as a special place,

summarized in the phrase “dream factory of the masses.” This mystique, built by the

movies and by the marketing of itself, occurred by showing motion picture celebrities in

particular locations specifically associated with Hollywood and Hollywood made

spectacular. Among the most prevalent locations were the nightlife locales, the celebrity

home, the Hollywood party, and behind the scenes of the studio. This dissertation asks

how these polymorphous images helped differentiate the representations of these

Hollywood locations from the images of similar locations that also appeared in the mass

media and also asks how these images of nontraditional gender and sexuality shaped the

understanding of each of these locations and the mystique of the rich, exciting, and

absurd Hollywood life-style.6

This dissertation defines nontraditional gender and sexual behaviors as those

not following the norms widely held in U.S. culture. “Traditional” gender behavior

equated gender with biological sex. Thus, traits and attitudes associated with the gender

opposite one’s biological sex became nontraditional. For men, going hunting and being a

father were traditional, and cooking fell within the nontraditional, whereas for women,

cooking was considered traditional and playing baseball or being childless,

nontraditional. The predominant attitude during the era stipulated sexual expression

should only occur between husband and wife. Other sexual activities generated varying

degrees of condemnation. The double standard remained such that the man having sex

before marriage might be forgiven, but the woman earned disrespect and the onus of the

6 Margaret Tante Burk, Are the Stars Out Tonight? The Story o f the famous Ambassador and

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“bad woman” status.7 Similarly, although males and female adulterers received labels of

sinner and a loss of position and respect, women were more vigorously condemned. The

U.S. culture reserved its most fervent attack for people who engaged in same-sex sexual

activity. This study employs a three-part selection process to determine same-gender

sexual interest images, including sexual object choice, coded words and phrases, and

gender inversion (when a person o f one biological sex incorporates the style, dress, and

behaviors typically associated with the other sex).

The direct expression o f nontraditional heterosexual behavior and homosexual

interest appeared within the Hollywood novels, as characters referred to as adulterers or

homosexuals. Most often, the novels, the newspapers, and fan magazines contained

allusions to polymorphous gender and sexual behaviors. The trade newspaper,Variety,

used the word “pansy” to indicate the locations where female impersonators worked and

feilow homosexuals watched in the audience. Daiiy newspapers used phrases such as

“happy couple” to impart their understanding of two men sharing a home. The gender

inversion method of expressing these images appeared frequently in each of the three

media.8

Coconut Grove (LA: Round Table West, 1980), 150-155. 7 Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1996). These traits and roles were so widely accepted and the ability to fulfill them of such great concern that the psychiatric profession developed tests that were widely used on children of the era. John D’Emilio and Estelle Friedman, Intimate Matters: A History o f Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 257-262. s Douglass Shand-Tucchi, Boston Bohemia: Ralph Adams Cram. Life and Architecture. 1881- 1900 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995); Variety, 21 November 1933, 59; Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 7 April 1933, sec. B-6; William J. Mann, Wisecracker: The Life and Times o f William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star (New York: Viking, 1998), 230-233. For example, the motion picture, Hollywood Hotel (1938), contains an illustration in the character of a fluttering, swooning male dress designer who wears dresses. Hollywood Hotel script, Warner Brothers Script Collection, University of Southern California Cinema and Television Library.

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During the first half of the period of this study, the medical community

evolved from interpreting homosexuality in terms of sexual inversion ~ the adoption of

opposite gender characteristics — to viewing homosexuality as evidenced by sexual object

choice. Even after achieving this new consensus in 1930, many psychological experts

continued to discern the presence of homosexuality by focusing on “inappropriate”

gender style and behavior. Literature in this era containing homosexuals frequently used

gender inversion to identify the character and as the reason behind the homosexuality.

People within the motion picture industry reveal the awareness of the connection between

homosexuality and gender inversion crossed several boundaries. Vincent Sherman, a

heterosexual male director, stated that he and others recognized homosexual males

through feminine delicacies and gracefulness in the way they walked and used their

hands. He stated that homosexual women had butch qualities, such as mannish suits and

stride. The Production Code Administration reviewers agreed. They warned against the

depiction of a male dress designer with “feminine” behavior, as well as a song about a

woman wearing men’s clothes, because they suggested homosexuality.9

9 George Chauncey, “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female ‘Deviance,’” in Kathy Peiss, Christina Simmons and Robert A. Padgug, eds.. Passion & Power: Sexuality In History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1989), 87-94; George Henry, Sex Variants: A Study o f Homosexual Patterns (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1948); Felice Flanery Lewis, Literature, Obscenity and Law (Carbondale: South Illinois University Press, 1976), 109- 111; Lisa Ben, Vice Versa v. 1, no. 2, 3-10; v. 1, no. 3, 16; Jane Rule, Lesbian Images (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1975), 102; Richard Meeker [Forman Brown] Better Angel, (second ed., Boston: Alyson Publications, 1995), 90-100; Vincent Sherman, interview by author, Telephone interview, 26 January 1998; Gene Harwood, interview by author, Telephone interview, 26 December 1997; Joseph I. Breen to Jack Warner June 29, 1937, July 23, 1937 and August 19, 1937 in “Hollywood Hotel,” (1938) and James Wingate to Eddie Mannix June 1933, “Hollywood Party,” (1934) Production Code Administration files. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, hereafter AMPAS.

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The focus on the variety of gender and sexual behaviors enables this

dissertation to avoid particular limitations scholars of gender and sexuality have raised. It

shifts attention toward the representation of behavior and away from interpreting gender

and sexual activities as identities established by nineteenth-century sexologists. These

codes still privilege the “obvious” among these behaviors, which could result in missing

some individuals who adopted homosexual-like attitudes and behaviors, thus solidifying

the gender standards of the dominant culture. However, this dissertation presents lesbians,

gay men, bisexuals, and heterosexuals, thus disrupting the heterosexual/homosexual

binaries. The concentration on obvious behavior led to an over-representation of

stereotypes. Still, these images illustrated how the culture and many within the

homosexual communities understood nontraditional gender and sexual activities and

behaviors. The study does not explicitly focus on heterosexual hegemony. Instead, it

emphasizes a range of sexuality and uses these representations to illustrate the

constructed nature of cultural norms of gender and sexual behavior.

This study found these nontraditional gender and sexual images during an in-

depth examination of three sets of materials. Hollywood novels, Hollywood movies about

Hollywood, and articles about the industry in newspapers and magazines were items that

many people of the time could have and did read or watch. All of the material featured a

major character who worked in the industry and Hollywood as the most important setting.

I surveyed and read the Hollywood novels available at the Library of Congress, one of the

world’s largest libraries. Most of the thirty motion pictures that exist in their entirety were

viewed at the Library of Congress’ Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound

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Division. The print media included important and representative metropolitan dailies and

tabloids, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Evening Herald,

and Los Angeles Examiner. These newspapers employed the most important syndicated

columnists who covered the Hollywood scene. The magazines include trade types, such

as, the Hollywood Reporter, and fan magazines, including Photoplay. This analysis

benefits from an examination of the variety of styles in a genre, from the devotion of

careful attention to both the successful and marginal works in these genres, and from

consideration of several media formats.

Film scholars observe to analyze a genre effectively, a scholar needs to

identify the genre’s systems of conventions and observe the relationship between those

conventions and cultural attitudes. This requires examining the range of material within a

genre.10 The “Hollywood on Hollywood” genre incorporates a wide variety of styles.

Some of the motion picture styles included in this investigation are David O. Selznick’s

drama What Price Hollywood? (1932), Columbia’s quickie romance Let's Fall In Love

(1934), George Kaufman’s farce Once In a Lifetime (1932), and Busby Berkeley’s

musical comedy Hollywood Hotel (1938). The Hollywood novels examined include F.

Scott Fitzgerald’s tragedy The Last Tycoon (1941), P. G. Wodehouse’s comedyLaughing

Gas (1936), secretary Silvia Schulman’s roman a clefI Lost My Girlish Laughter (1938),

and film journalist Tamar Lane’s Hey Diddle Diddle (1932).

As many cultural studies scholars argue, an investigation of cultural attitudes

and beliefs benefits from the examination of high and low cultural works. This

10 Barry Keith Grant, ed. Film Genre Reader (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

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dissertation investigates books and movies that received no notice and those that received

rave reviews. It examines popular authors including Vicki Baum Falling( Star, 1934),

niche writer James M. Cain (Serenade, 1937), and a precursor to the Jackie Collins’ style

named John Preston Buschlen (Screen Star, 1932). This dissertation considers highly

acclaimed motion pictures includingSullivan's Travels (1941) and the low-budget Stunt

Pilot (1939), as well as money-making pictures such asGoing Hollywood (1933) and

box-office failures such as Hollywood Party (M-G-M, 1934).11

Many scholars investigating the representation of women argue for the need to

examine representations in more than one mass media source. This method enables the

scholar to attain insight into the cultural attitudes and beliefs across media formats and

into the appeal of the form to its various audiences. As noted above, this dissertation

examines the Hollywood novel and motion picture genres. The dissertation also

investigates the highly esteemed, tabloid, and sensational daily newspapers in Los

Angeles. The study examines the industry’s top fan magazines and a range of general-

interest periodicals. This range allows the investigation to account for materials that

appealed to the Hollywood-phillic, fans of particular genres, and people who enjoyed

these movies, novels, and newspapers on a casual basis.12

" See Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence o f Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Anthony Slide, The Hollywood Novel, 202-203. 12 Carolyn Kitch, “Changing Theoretical Perspectives on Women’s Media Images: The Emergence of Patterns In a New Area of Historical Scholarship," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (Autumn 1997): 484-485.

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The scope of the aforementioned materials results in this dissertation

addressing a variety of entertainment consumers. These consumers include people who

read everything a novelist writes and spectators of motion pictures within certain genres

or with particular performers to readers of a variety of newspapers. I argue that most of

these consumers of this popular culture could notice these images of same-gender

sexuality. As culture studies scholars of audience analysis note, most consumers view

mass-produced media within interpretative communities. These groupings share similar

forms of discourse and frameworks for making sense of the media, and would provide

assistance in “understanding” the same-gender sexuality representations. Equally as

important, producers of news and entertainment rely upon mass appeal and continuing

purchase of their product, thus they strive to make all aspects of their product

understandable to their potential audience. Thus, the tabloids that discussed the taboo

topic of homosexuality through code words and phrases needed to use those words that

would have to be obvious and enjoyable enough to maintain and expand its circulation.13

This dissertation argues that these nontraditional images emerged because of

the celebrity culture that Hollywood helped forge from the 1910s through the dawn of

World War Two. Hollywood played an enormous role in the redefinition of celebrity

from fame usually based upon accomplishments or social status toward high visibility in

the various mass media. The studios systematized this high visibility through the constant

13 Denis McQuail, Audience Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 1997), 17-20; Simon Michael Bessie, Jazz Journalism: The Story o fthe Tabloid Newspaper (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1938).

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promotion of their stars and other industry figures.'4 These activities of the publicity

departments and ancillary agents in the system led the way toward making the production

of celebrity into an industry.

Celebrity retained many of the components it had when defined as fame. Both

celebrity and fame images presented a singular personality that appeared different and

special. However, by the early twentieth century, as depictions of celebrity began to

eclipse those of fame, sexuality appeared more frequently connected with that

presentation of personality. The illusion of intimacy between the notable figure and the

audience for the image increased because of the expansion and changes in mass media

forms. These polymorphous images fulfilled all the criteria for celebrity. Each appeared

as a singular personality, the image of a person who lay outside the culture’s normative

categories. The images were adept at forging the illusion of intimacy between the

celebrity and audience member. The deeper the “intimacy” that existed between the

character behind the image and the audience member, the stronger the influence the

image had on making Hollywood appear special. These representations suggest an

important challenge to scholarship’s understanding of how Hollywood represented

gender and sexuality, and how both celebrity culture and same-gender sexuality appeared

in U.S. mass culture during the early twentieth century.

14 Previously most people achieved notoriety because of their accomplishments, an element labeled fame. In the late nineteenth and particularly in the twentieth century, notoriety came to people less because of what they accomplished but because of their frequent appearance in the media, a factor known as high visibility. Irving J. Fein, Philip Kotler, and Martin R. Stiller, High Visibility (NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987), 7,21-22,36.

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This dissertation will discuss these images of nontraditional gender and

sexuality within materials about Hollywood at their height in the Interwar era. These

images declined significantly in the early 1940s. During World War Two, the industry

publicity diminished its focus upon the Hollywood mystique and promoted Hollywood’s

similarity to other American locales in focusing on the war effort. The federal

government created the Office of War Information and located it in the center of

Hollywood to assure itself that the motion picture industry would adopt this focus and

became an integral part of motivating Hollywood to present material promoting

conventional cultural values.15 After World War Two, the representation of nontraditional

gender and sexual behavior in Hollywood materials did not resume to the same degree.

Material about these behaviors appeared in much more marginalized cultural locations,

including homophile newsletters, high-brow literature, and European movies, and in

newspapers to reporting the suppression of a criminal activity.16

This dissertation will explore these representations of this gender and sexual

panoply in the context of social and cultural developments in gender roles, the heightened

position of sexuality in the culture, and the increased importance of commercial

entertainment in the lives of people in the United States. The era between the late 1800s

and 1941 witnessed the replacement of separate spheres with a heterosocial system, the

15 Thomas Cripps,Hollywood's High Noon: Moviemaking and Society before Television (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 140-144. 16 Rodger Streitmatter, Unspeakable: The Rise o f the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995); Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History o f Movie Presentations in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Edward de Grazia and Roger K. Newman, Banned Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment (New York: R. R. Browker Co., 1982); Roger Austen, Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel In America (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merriil Co., Inc., 1977).

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expansion of women’s presence in the public sphere and the workplace, and the reduction

of control at work for many males. The separate spheres cultural norm that males and

females spent the majority of their time apart and engaged in activities with people of

their own sex eroded as women entered the workforce, and commercial amusements

promoted the mixing of the sexes during leisure activities. Many women challenged the

notions that their role mandated that they stay in the home and not work. Between 1890

and 1920, the number o f employed women increased by 40 percent. These and other

women expanded the women’s presence in the public sphere by serving in voluntary

associations and as the primary consumers for themselves and their families. Many men

in the culture of the working classes and middle classes experienced a diminishment in

their control and influence within the larger factories and bureaucratized work

environments. Many found they could no longer look to work as a definition for their

sense of being male and asserting their masculinity.17 These transitions forged a cultural

climate in which gender roles underwent significant turmoil and redefinition.

While gender roles experienced flux, sexuality also received increased

attention. The discussion of sexuality increased in daily living, advertising, and in mass

culture beginning at the time of the United States involvement in World War One.

Contemporaries and scholars of the period have observed, it was “sex o’clock” in

17 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions o f Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Christopher Lasch, Haven In a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1977); Lois Scharf, To Work and To Wed: Female Employment, Feminism and the Great Depression (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 9-10; Anne Frior Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations In American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Peter N. Steams, Be A Man: Males in Modern Society (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979); Joe Dubbert, A M an's Place: Masculinity in Transition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979).

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America, and this “revolution of manners and morals” reached its apex in the Interwar

years. Under the auspices of the Commission on Training Camp Activities, over a million

armed servicemen received more details about sexual hygiene than they had ever before

through the presentation of venereal disease films. After the war, Sigmund Freud became

a household name among middle-class Americans. This popularization of Freud’s focus

on sexuality in determining personality was so pervasive that James Thurber and E. B.

White could sell a classic parody,Is Sex Necessary? (1929). Many women placed an

emphasis on exploring this “new-found” personal freedom. As Jane Addams noted, the

new trend was “always associated...with the breaking down of sex taboos and with the

establishment of new standards of marriage.”18

Modem advertising began during this period, as ads shifted their style to

creating consumer desire by appealing to people’s fears, their interest in sex, and the

desire for emulation. Most advertising targeted women, and one of its main components

included making women think they needed to attract and retain men. Males who appeared

in advertisements most often either approved or disapproved of the women based upon

their sex appeal or their social skills.19

18 Ellen Rothman, Hands & Hearts: A History o f Courtship in America (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995); Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal Account o f the Nineteen-twenties (New York: Harper& Row, 1931); Caroline F. Ware, Greenwich Village, 1920-1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935); Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Nancy Cott, The Grounding o f Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 148. Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex and Cigarettes: A Cultural History o f American Advertising (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co, 1998); Jackson Lears, Fables o f Abundance: A Cultural History o f Advertising In America (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

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Mass culture content and publicity contained greater sexual discussion and

titillation. During the late 1910s, the focus o f many advice books and newspaper columns

switched from recipes and child care to kindling romance. Mass market books, such as

Sex Problems Solved, illustrated the existence of the more frank discussion of sexuality.

The musicals, comedies, and dramas of the Broadway stage increased their presentation

of bare female legs and suggestive dances, jokes, and stories. This content grew so wildly

that bans on bare legs and suggestive dancing soon followed. The New York City District

Attorney’s Office conducted hearings and brought charges against several producers,

playwrights, and casts for the presentation of lewd material. Plays used greater sexual

suggestion in their advertising. By May 1921, the editorial board of theNew York Times

attacked producers for advertising the used sex to intice audiences to their shows.20 This

growth in the discussion of sexuality occurred during an era when medicine and science

grew increasingly confident and powerful. As western culture expanded its enthronement

of sexual behavior and identity as the primary factors in constructing personal identity,

the consideration of sexual anomalies increased in importance. While the sciences

classified all people in order to predict their attitudes and behaviors, representations of

sexual anomalies also helped establish the boundaries of acceptable gender and sexual

behavior.21

20 Sheila Rothman, Woman's Proper Place: A History o f Changing Ideals and Practices , 1870-to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Sivulka, 140-160; New York County District Attorney Scrapbooks, v. 319-330, (1921-1927) New York City Municipal Archives; New York Times, 27 May 1921. 21 Foucault; Vem L. Bullough, Science In the bedroom: A History o f Sex Research (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

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Mass-produced culture became an important arena in which gender and

sexuality received consideration. Numerous Americans experienced the erosion of their

island communities and focused on local events. The majority of the United States

population lived in urban areas; large businesses and the mass media disrupted the

emphasis on local activities, concerns, and acquisition of knowledge and experiences.

The era witnessed a dramatic rise in the volume of commercial amusement sites and the

expansion of mass media. National newspaper syndicates formed and carried a growing

number of national features and syndicated columns. The legitimate stage offered more

locations and a larger number of productions, reaching its all-time high in the 1927

season. The motion picture industry expanded most dramatically. Vertical integration

during the 1920s established a market composed of the Big Five (Paramount, M-G-M,

Warner Brothers, Fox, which later became Twentieth Century Fox, and R-K-O) and the

Little Three (Columbia, Universal, and United Artists) studios. These studios employed

between 28,000 and 34,000 people monthly, with an annual payroll of $133,000,000 to

$155,000,000, to create an average of 700 pictures yearly. These motion pictures

accounted for 75 percent of the United States gross income spent on amusements in the

late 1930s, and drew 40 million of the United States’ 130 million citizens on a regular

basis.”

22 Robert Wiebe, The Search fo r Order, 1877-/920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); William R. Taylor, ed.. Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture At the Crossroads o f the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 120-132, 290; Douglas Gomery,The Hollywood Studio System (London: MacMillian, 1986), 15; Tino Balio, The Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 Vol. 5, History o f the American Cinema, ed. Charles Harpole (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 31-32, 76.

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Movie audiences represented a cross-section of the population. While the

working classes spent more of their increasing income and leisure time at the motion

picture shows, mmbers of the middle classes joined them in large numbers during the

1910s. These audiences devoted more attention to these motion pictures and celebrity

images because their culture switched from a producer to a consumer-oriented culture and

gave greater value to celebrities and activities associated with the world of entertainment.

In the increasingly egalitarian society of Progressive Era United States, many people

desired human images and identified with stars to escape the stresses and anxieties of

competition. While this switch toward entertainment images occurred, the consensus

based on a genteel realism, moral certainty, and progressive change that had dominated

the arts for decades began eroding during the mid-191 Os.23 The breakdown of this

consensus enabled many arts, particularly literature and the motion pictures, to include

more images of sexuality and gender difference.

Despite the increased discussion of sexuality during this period, the motion

picture industry was unique among entertainment businesses in presenting a so-called

“polymorphous perversity.” Neither vaudeville nor Broadway’s legitimate theater

associated itself with the variety of sexuality that Hollywood did. These businesses

lacked several of the motion picture industry’s components that prompted the

23 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours fo r What We Will (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Lauren Rabinovitz, For the Love o f Pleasure: Women, Movies and Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998); William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932 (University of Chicago Press, 1993), 178; Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), xix; Benjamin McArthur,Actors and American Culture, 1880-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 163-165; Henry F. May, The End o f American Innocence: A Study o f The First Years of Our Own Times, 1912-1917 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959).

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representation of same-gender sexuality. Neither vaudeville nor the Broadway stage

created a product that could be seen everywhere and had the broad appeal of the motion

picture. Neither created the publicity machine to promote its business, or drew the

attention that the motion picture industry did.

Additional factors illuminate the differences among these entertainment

businesses regarding the presentation of homosexuality. Unlike the “Hollywood on

Hollywood” motion pictures, vaudeville skits about its own or Broadway’s views of

Broadway rarely noted the presence of homosexuals within that genre of entertainment

business. Neither the theater nor vaudeville had as pervasive or amplified a star system as

the motion picture industry. Their star systems usually promoted star images that

corresponded to the role the star performed on stage. For most stars, this resulted in a

focus on them as one or two major characters, such as James O’Neill as the Count of

Monte Cristo. Neither Broadway nor vaudeville promoted the degree of investigations

into and discussions of their performers’ private lives and thereby, their sexuality

activities and interests. This absence inhibited vaudeville and Broadway from emerging

as the mass public’s dream factory. The motion picture industry promoted itself as the

granter of titillation and wishes. Nor did these venues have the staying power in the

twentieth century that Hollywood evinced. By 1932, the last vaudeville theater closed.24

During the 1910s, the Broadway stage underwent a rapid decline in its national scope as

24 Robert C. Toll, On With the Show: The First Century of Show Biz in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Samuel L. Leiter, ed., The Encyclopedia o f the New York Stage, 1920- 1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985); McArthur, 43-47; Samuel L. Leiter, ed., The Encyclopedia o f the New York Stage, 1930-1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989); Joe Laurie, Jr., Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks To the Palace (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1953), x-xi.

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road shows dwindled. A decade later, the business began a significant drop in the number

of productions that reached the stage.25

The motion picture industry blossomed during this era, and a vast amount of

cultural material featured discussion of Hollywood and its influence upon culture in the

United States. The majority of the nation’s newspapers during this era contained articles

and syndicated columns that provided daily discussions about the motion picture

industry. Several fan magazines devoted themselves to content that gratified the intense

personal interest of the 70 to 80 million people attended the movies. A few, including

Photoplay and Modern Screen, reached circulation figures of over one million.26 Many of

the general interest magazines with the largest circulations, such as Life and The Saturday

Evening Post, also ran frequent articles and photographs featuring industry figures.

These entertainment-reporting organizations had a variety of motivations for

presenting negotiated celebrity images that contained hints of nontraditional gender and

sexual behavior. Foremost, these organizations wanted to market their product to a mass

audience. A number of groups of people would have been interested in seeing this type of

celebrity imagery. Harry Hay, a Los Angeles-based political activist and gay man,

commented that he and friends met at a cafe on a weekly basis and read items in motion

picture gossip writers Louella Parsons’ and Hedda Hopper’s columns to see who

appeared in queer company over the prior weekend. Homosexuals would not have been

the only persons who enjoyed these celebrity images. As the scholar Jack Levin notes,

25 Robert C. Toll, The Entertainment Machine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 10-15. 26 Roland E. Wolselen, The Magazine World: an Introduction to Magazine Journalism (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1951), 36-37.

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while celebrity images offered escape into glamorous and extravagant lifestyles, they also

provided vicarious enjoyment and revealed the human side of the celebrities, supposed

insight into how these people behaved, and what they did with themselves.27

These types of images appeared in the newly developed illustrated tabloid

newspapers. TheIllustrated New York Daily News, which became the first successful

tabloid in the United States in 1919, specialized in articles and photographs depicting

confessions and “hot” subjects, approaching as near to the threshold of taboo as public

morality would allow.28 The tabloid made these hot topics understandable to its audience,

trumpeted them in bold headlines and graphic photographs, and often featured the stories

over several days, so that interested readers became regular customers. As a media critic

of the era noted, the tabloid’s size, brevity, humanness, and intensified drama made it an

enormous success. At least in urban areas, such as New York City, tabloid readers

crossed class lines and included a cross-section of the urban population. The enormous

success of the tabloids influenced the format and content of other newspapers. Across the

country, older and more established metropolitan dailies, including theNew York Times,

increased the number of photographs they printed and included more sports, society, and

features pages. Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst ran theLos Angeles Evening

Herald and Express tabloid, which carried many features regarding nontraditional

behavior in Hollywood, and the established daily, Los Angeles Times, expanded its

21 Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1990), 71; Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke, Gossip: The Inside Scoop (New York: Plenum Press, 1987), 28-31. 28 Helen MacGill Hughes, News and the Human Interest Story (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1940), 24.

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coverage of sensational stories and features, including making Hopper its regular gossip

columnist.

Individual editors, reporters, and writers in these entertainment-reporting

organizations had their own professional reasons for presenting these nontraditional

images. Certainly, providing a unique story could also give an editor and reporter a sense

of personal accomplishment.29

In Hollywood, which had the nation’s third largest daily press corps covering

its moves, the competition was harsh and the stakes were enormous.

The top columnists, including Parsons and Hopper, enjoyed their influence and would

attempt to reward and punish members of the Hollywood community through exclusion

from their columns. Celebrity images that included hints of same-gender sexuality served

as another method of punishment. Parsons presumably had a problem with director

George Cukor at one moment and played on the stereotype of a homosexual man. She

wrote in her column, “When I was talking to George Cukor on the phone I heard him let

out a yell. A mouse ran over his foot.” A member of Hopper’s staff observed the

columnist enjoyed setting people straight by putting information in her columns. He

wrote Hopper had many tiffs with Hollywood figures and used her column to chasten

them. “Her feuds not only made interesting reading,...proved to be a healthy disciplinary

medium among the stars and bigshots who sometimes delude themselves they’re entitled

29 Martin Weyrauch, “The Why of the Tabloids,” The Forum 77 (April 1927): 492-501; Bessie, 93, 224-227.

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to special privileges, like, for instance, adultery, taking dope, and indulging in strange sex

aberrations.” However, the inclusion of these representations enabled some Hollywood

figures to seize a platform to fashion a gender identity which their culture lacked words to

describe and escape the social ostracism and censorship that befell other women who

challenged gender conventions in other places in society.30

The newspapers and fan magazines constituted only one set of materials that

represented Hollywood. Novel and film representations of the motion picture industry

emerged as early as the late 1910s. From then through the 1940s, almost all Hollywood

novels and movies about the film industry used geographic Hollywood as their setting.

As James Parris Springer observes in his dissertation, “Hollywood Fictions,” as with any

genre, these novels (and movies) employed stereotypical characters (avaricious producer,

disillusioned writer) who encountered ritual situations (Hollywood party and

premieres).31

More generally, literature in the United States in the interwar period became

more explicit in its presentation o f topics o f homosexual interest. In 1929, the New York

Special Sessions Court overturned a lower court ruling Radclyffe Hall’s,The Well o f

Loneliness obscene because it “idealized and extolled perversion.” Over 100,000 copies

30 George Eels, Hedda and Louella (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 277; Jaik Rosenstein, Hollywood Leg Man (Los Angeles: The Madison Press, 1950), 30; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Discourses of Sexuality and Subjectivity: The New Woman, 1870-1936,” ed. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey Jr., Hidden From History (New York: Meridian Books, 1989), 265-279. 31 James Parris Springer, “Hollywood Fictions: The Cultural Construction of Hollywood In American Literature, 1916-1939.” Ph.D. diss, University of Iowa, 1994, 26-27.

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of the book sold between the decision in April and the beginning of 1930. The decision

offered the publishing world the ability to print books with homosexuality as a theme.

Most of the handful of novels that presented these more overt homosexual characters

during the first half of the 1930s emerged from small “pulp” presses. This pulp fiction

marked its homosexual as half-man or half-woman and established the homosexual life as

horrific. These figures experienced emotional turmoil and became outcasts, suicide

victims, or engaged in self-loathing or hopeless passions.32 The motion picture industry

had no regulating organization, method, or powerful influence through which it could

exert control over the images that appeared in Hollywood novels.

The Hollywood novel differed significantly from this pulp press literature.

While several of the novels came from small presses, many others bore Random House,

Doubleday & Doran, and Knopf imprints. Publishers of the Hollywood novel expected

their books to engage a large audience fascinated with the motion picture industry. Some

pulp presses marketed books from fan magazine writers and others who aimed to exploit

the interest in Hollywood and the industry’s sensational aspects. The larger houses

marketed works from “literary lights,” popular, and genre writers, including P. G.

Wodehouse and James M. Cain, and Hollywood journalists and industry employees.

These novels generally focused on the corrosive influence of Hollywood's values. These

values destroyed individual stars or extras, or exerted a deleterious power upon the larger

32 Lewis, 109-111; Jeannette Foster, Sex Variant Women in Literature (New York: Vantage Press, 1956), 343-349; Rule; Austen, 20-30, 69-72; James Gifford, Dayneford's Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900-1913 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 10-47; Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: History o f Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 65, 100-102. Some of these pulp-press novels include: Blair Niles,Strange

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society through the promotion of an ersatz culture that eroded civilization.33 Over one-

third of the Hollywood novels contained homosexual characters or references to

homosexuality occurring within the motion picture industry.

The studios created the self-referential motion picture for both sensational and

edifying reasons. Some of these movies, such as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood

(1945), provided light entertainment without offering the degree of sensational detail

presented in the novels. Other industry self-examinations, such as RKO’sWhat Price

Hollywood? (1932), initially intended to reveal the “truth” about the motion picture

industry. Often, this promise to demystify the movie-making world and reveal the truth

behind the myths dropped in cuts during the editing process or became lost in the midst

of showing the excitement of eating at the Brown Derby, or the glamour o f being a star.

Many of these movies about the motion picture industry engaged in debunking yet

reanimating the myths.34

One movie, Bombshell (M-G-M, 1933), commented upon the star and

Hollywood publicity and offers insight into the reasons for the presence of polymorphous

images in Hollywood on Hollywood motion pictures and in motion picture publicity.

Brother (1931); Andre Tellier, Twilight Men (1931); Lew Levenson, Butterfly Man (1934); Sheila Donisthorpe, Loveliest o f Friends (1931); and Idabell Williams, Hellcat ( 1934). 33 Publishers Weekly, June 20, 1931, 2868. Doubleday in its several iterations published the works of Henry Leon Wilson (Merton o f the Movies), Vicki Baum ( Falling Star), known for Grand Hotel, and English playwright and humorist P. G. Wodehouse Laughing( Gas); Anthony Slide, The Hollywood Novel (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1995), 22-23, 105-106, 182; Diane C. Bonora, “The Hollywood Novel of the 1930’s and 1940’s.” Ph.D. diss, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1983, 1- 10; Nancy Brooker-Bowers, “The Hollywood Novel: An American Literary Genre.” Ph.D. diss, Drake University, 1983, ii-17; Springer, 31. 34 Rudy Behlmer and Tony Thomas,Hollywood's Hollywood(Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, Inc. 1978); Christopher Ames, Movies About the Movies: Hollywood Reflected (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997), 3-7.

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Actress Lola Bums (Jean Harlow) had a thriving career but did not like her image as sex

kitten and “bad woman.” She strove to adopt a child and get married, not necessarily

because she wanted to be a mother or wife but because she wanted to change her image.

Her career was so important to her and “engrained in” her that she thought mostly about

herself and how others viewed her. Despite her career-woman status, the series of events

that revealed her inability to fulfill the traditional woman gender roles won the audience

through humor and confirmed that Hollywood mystique of the celebrity home being

mysterious, in this instance, run by a bohemian woman who cannot fulfill domestic

duties. The opening sequence ofBombshell suggests why this image, outside the bounds

of gender and sexual norms, would appear in all kinds of materials about Hollywood.

This image appealed to a wide variety of people, including members from several classes,

age groups, and sexual orientations. After watching a middle-aged woman and male

commuters reading the headlines in the opening sequence, the movie showed several

young and older women enjoying the products that Bums endorsed. At the end of this

sequence, a few working and middle-class women movie spectators watch Bums’ screen

image intently, in a type of identification that cultural studies scholar Jackie Stacey

argues might be a kind of homoeroticism. Indeed, a newsletter created by lesbian

secretary Lisa Ben included comments on various motion pictures, illustrating that these

women watched movies and shared insight and opinions through an interpretative

community.35

35 Bombshell (M-G-M, 1933); The American Film Institute Catalog o f Motion Pictures produced in the United States, 1931-1940, Patricia King Hanson, executive editor, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 199 refers to the image and publicity as scandalous. Jackie Stacey,Star Gazing:

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When Bombshell was released during the 1930s, a variety of images with

nontraditional sexual behavior, including Mae West’s sexual innuendoes and racy figure,

gold diggers, or numerous male “pansy” figures, appeared in motion pictures. Scholars

have argued that these images disappeared with the re-institution of the Production Code

Administration (PC A) in 1934 after the industry feared that the Legion of Decency would

effectively boycott its product. This dissertation agrees with Roger Maltby that stronger

regulation of motion pictures under the PCA occurred gradually over the early 1930s.

However, as David Lugowski notes, the PCA’s efforts to remove images, such as of gay

males and lesbians, proved incomplete.36 In Hollywood on Hollywood motion pictures,

effeminate and homosexual males continued to appear seven years after the PCA’s

revitalization.

Recently, studies have investigated the production of Hollywood images in

publicity materials. This scholarship on the development of the star system and the

position of the star in the operation of celebrity in U.S. culture has offered greater

perspective on Hollywood publicity than earlier works which discussed the Hollywood

publicity department briefly as a portion of the studio factory during the “Golden Era.”

Richard de Cordova’s Picture Personalities (1990) establishes the links that existed

among the star identities', sexuality, and an increased awareness of the variety of private

Hollywood cinema andfemale speclatorship (London: Routledge, 1994); Lisa Ben, Vice Versa V.l, No. 3 (August, 1947), 10. 36 Among the works describing these filmic images are Marybeth Hamilton, 'W hen I ’m Bad, I'm Better, " Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment (New York: Harper Collins, 1995); Lea Jacobs, The Wages o f Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 (Madison: University o f Wisconsin Press, 1991); Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (New York: H arper & Row, 1981); Roger Maltby, “The Production Code and the Hays Office,” in Balio; and David Lugowski,

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life behaviors in Hollywood. Joshua Gammon’s Claims to Fame: Celebrity in

Contemporary America (1994) advances the publicity stories in the motion picture

industry had a particular structure. He observes that certain star images emerged from the

studios, while others developed out of a negotiation between the studios and the

entertainment-reporting organizations.37 This dissertation notes that the polymorphous

images conformed to the links among star, sexual behavior, and identity, and to the

structure of publicity stories. This conformity in style enabled these images to appear

without disrupting the relationship between the publicity system and the audiences. The

conformity also allowed these images to add their different sexuality without that

material presenting an image that many in the audiences would find alienating.

Scholarship on the variety of images that appeared in the print and motion

picture media during the early twentieth century has demonstrated that the expansion of

the mass media and the cultural importance of sex resulted in the appearance of images

that challenged heterosexual norms. These images, however, often sparked censorship

efforts or were particularly unfavorable depictions that reinforced the norms that the

image transgressed. A few images of heterosexuality outside of marriage emerged from

literature during the 1920s and 1930s, although the girl seducer in Sinclair Lewis’s Oil!

and the rape and voyeurism in William Faulkner’sSanctuary prompted court cases over

whether they could appear in print. More of these images appeared in motion pictures,

“Queering the (New) Deal: Lesbian and Gay Representation and the Depression-Era Cultural Politics of Hollywood’s Production Code,”Cinema Journal 38 (Winter, 1999), 22-28. 37 Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood(Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1979); Roland L. Davis, The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993); Richard de Cordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of

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particularly during the Pre-Code era, but the vast majority of these female images that

pushed gender and sexual boundaries were used to regulate social and cultural norms and

received punishments for their “transgressions.” Newspapers and magazines of the era

carried more images of nontraditional heterosexual behaviors and bedroom sensations on

their front pages, yet these people were often involved in criminal activity and they

appeared with little context to give them a positive preferred reading.38

Scholars of gay and lesbian history and representations in the United States

illustrate that imagery of homosexuality in the media of this era carried stronger

condemnation and was even more likely to use the image to reinforce traditional gender

and sexual behavior than nontraditional heterosexual images. The representation of same-

gender sexuality within newspapers and magazines has not received an enormous amount

of scholarly attention. Edward Alwood’sStraight News (1996) discusses the generally

pejorative presentation of homosexuality in mainstream newspapers between 1943 and

1990 based on a political events affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered

people. His tendency to document the use of the words “homosexual,” “gay,” and

“lesbian” leads to his assertion that homosexuals first appeared in newspapers during the

United States military’s psychological examinations in 1943. Two other narrowly focused

works observed an earlier presence of same-gender sexuality in newspapers. These three

works contribute to an area that has only begun to receive appropriate attention, which is

the Star System in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 140-143; Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 35, 66-68. 38 Lewis; Paul Boyer, Purity in Print: The Vice-Society Movement and Book Censorship in the United States (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968); Janet Steiger, Bad Women: Regulating

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suggestive of numerous reasons for the appearance of these images these works are a

collection of documents and narrowly focused.39

The representation of same-gender sexuality in literature most often focuses

on the writings of homosexuals. In their invaluable works, these scholars catalogued the

representations which appeared in a variety of literature into types, explained how they

are tied to the understanding of homosexuality in that era, and noted that many of the

images experience unfortunate circumstances and events.

Similarly, writing on homosexual images in motion pictures observes the

prevalence of unfortuante circumstances. Two of the strongest works to catalogue and

interpret representations of male and female homosexuals in Hollywood productions from

1914 to the 1980s are Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

(1981) and Andrea Weiss’s Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film (1993). These

important early studies categorized the vast majority of homosexual images as sad, killed,

or derided. However, this dissertation found differing images in its investigation of the

Hollywood on Hollywood genre.

More recent work on images in motion pictures observed that a larger number

of same-sex representations appeared in motion pictures during the Great Depression.

Most significantly, David Lugowski’s article, “Queering the New Deal: Lesbian and Gay

Representation and the Depression-Era Cultural Politics of Hollywood’s Production

Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Jacobs; Bessie; Hughes. 39 Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men In the U.S.A. (New

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Code,” argues that these images could generate laughter and identification for gay and

lesbian audience members. However, not examining other sources about Hollywood

limited Lugowski’s opportunity to observe that queer images existed over a longer period

of time. This limitation impeded the opportunity to see queer imagery’s role in promoting

Hollywood itself. Lugowski observed that a widespread belief in the culture linked

queemess with the risk-taking decadence of money-grubbing mainstream entertainment.

Discovering queer imagery’s role in promoting Hollywood would have illuminated an

important reason behind this belief.40

This dissertation’s examination of literature, motion pictures, and sections of

newspapers and fan magazines broadened the scope of the images investigated and

discovered representations of nontraditional gender and sexuality that differed from those

generally described in the aforementioned scholarship. These representations are more

complex and varied than the psychiatric cases, worthless effetes, and pathetic figures,

gold diggers, neurotic and vampire ladies, and sissy and venal gentlemen these scholars

noted. These images might appear as warnings to follow traditional behaviors, but in

most cases their complexity undermines such a simple and direct reading and suggests a

variety of alternative readings for interpreters of the day. The presentation of a text allows

readers to draw a variety of conclusions regarding the material. Additionally, regardless

of their intention, these representations were always associated with topics many readers

York: Avon Books, 1976); Lisa Duggan. “The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Tum-of-the-Century America,” Signs (Summer 1993): 791-814. 40 Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets: Lesbians In Film (New York: Penguin Books, 1993); Richard Meyer, “Rock Hudson’s Body,” ed. Diana FussInside/Out Lesbian Theories/Gay Theories (New York: Routledge, 1991); Russo; Lugowski; Emily Dickinson, The Poems o f Emily Dickinson, ed. Lillian

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and viewers would have found enjoyable, intriguing and alluring: Hollywood in general

and the Hollywood nightlife, celebrity home, or party in particular.

The complexity of polymorphous representations resulted in their providing

important commentary upon the industry. These representations denoted the perception

that the motion picture industry was a venue for a variety of sexual attitudes and

behaviors without much negative judgment, and a place where certain women could

express feminist attitudes that were ahead of their time. The presence of these

representations in particular newspaper articles points to two surprising aspects of the

motion picture industry’s publicity. The first is that some marketers made choices to

deliberately incorporate same-gender sexuality for certain celebrities’ images. Second, the

star system’s promotion of fascination with particular celebrities sparked the

investigation of the gender and sexual images of the celebrity and subsequent

presentation of images related to those behaviors.

Representations of this panoply of behaviors in these sources do not reflect the

diverse population in the nation or within the motion picture industry. The most common

figure in this collection is a male, Caucasian actor between 25 and 35 years old. The vast

majority (70 percent) of these figures represent actors and actresses. Nearly 60 percent of

the total number of these representations are male. Approximately 90 percent of the

figures range between 22 and 35 years of age. These representations present few ethnic

and racial backgrounds. Almost every representation descended from Northern European

Faderman Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology o f Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (New York: Viking, 1994); Gifford; Austen; Rule; Foster.

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stock. One female impersonator and a few actors had Creole, Latin, or Southern European

backgrounds.

This bias toward youthful stars in the nontraditional gender and sexual images

partially results from the biases of the industry itself, particularly in the star system. The

industry used its vast promotional apparatus to give the stars the most attention, and the

media and motion picture audiences seemed most interested in the activities and interests

of these youthful, beautiful figures. The primary focus on males and Caucasians from

Northern European backgrounds certainly results from biases toward depicting these

groups’ stories. Their overrepresentation within this collection also occurs because of the

greater likelihood of these groups being in the industry’s upper creative positions.

As noted earlier, each of the five chapters that follow focuses upon an element

of the Hollywood mystique. This element that forms a vital part of Hollywood as a state

of mind has correspondence to geographical locations in Hollywood and Los Angeles.

These places include restaurants and nightclubs that formed the Hollywood nightlife, the

staged events and private parties that constituted the Hollywood party, the star residences

that forged the celebrity home, and the stage sets, dressing rooms, and studios that

comprised Hollywood behind the scenes.

Chapter II examines the polymorphous images that appeared in the restaurants

and nightclubs associated with Hollywood nightlife. These female impersonators and

cross-dressing women in the late 1910s and again in the 1930s played an important role

in helping the industry maintain a link between Hollywood nightlife and decadence. The

images of these figures with their gender hijinks and ribald humor made decadence seem

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fun and risque, rather than fearful. They enabled Hollywood to make its nightlife appear

distinct from Broadway’s neon lights and Chicago’s toddling town.

The investigation in Chapter III concentrates on the polymorphous imagery

within the two types of Hollywood public parties. The coverage of the public (staged) and

the semi-public parties revealed they contained more emotional expression than the

Presidential Inaugural Balls and the dances and dinners of the country’s elite. This made

Hollywood’s public parties appear more glamorous and unconventional.

Chapter IV examines the private type of Hollywood party. The private parties

featured polymorphous images who expressed a secret love that added an exotic

dimension to the aforementioned public images of the Hollywood party. This revelation

of sexy and exotic activities fostered the mystique of the weird and wild Hollywood

party.

The examination in Chapter V illustrates the role of two sets of “bachelor”

images in building the mystique of the Hollywood star home. The Hollywood celebrity

home shared large size and price tag with other homes presented in the media of the era.

The “bachelor” and screenwriters who challenged gender conventions, and bachelor

males who formed star homes with living arrangements of odd bed fellows, made these

homes appear emblematic of their owners’ distinctive personalities and yet repositories of

values that many readers shared. These nontraditional gender and sexual images helped

Hollywood star homes appear alluring and chic, yet used in ways that audience members

could understand. Thus, the figures appeared more colorful and accessible than the

depictions of the homes of other wealthy people of the era.

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Chapter VI examines the nontraditional gender and sexual behavior that

occurred behind the scenes in Hollywood. These images of performers and artisans in the

dressing rooms, offices, and studio stages reinforced the three components of the behind

the scenes mystique. Similar to backstage images in legitimate theater, these images

offered audiences the tease of receiving a look and “knowledge” of how the entertainers

functioned while not performing. However, the appearance, styles, and activities of these

images made the Hollywood workplace seem more elegant, glamorous and mysterious

than behind the footlights. They made off-screen appear to be a place where people

worked together like a family, and, if not, they pursued each other for romantic and

sexual interests.

The conclusion unites the themes of this dissertation. This section discusses

the Interwar images as precursors to the current celebrity culture and contemporary’s

television’s use of gay and lesbian representations. The decline of depictions of

polymorphous sexuality in Hollywood materials during World War Two is noted. The

presence of same-sex imagery in margainalized cultural locations during this era is also

noted, confirming the observations of gay and lesbian historians regarding the depiction

of homosexuality in the mass media during the 1950s and 1960s.

Scholars and the general public recognized the Hollywood motion picture

industry as one of the best at manufacturing publicity. This study illuminated that

Hollywood combined revelations about celebrities, gender, sexuality, and Hollywood

locations and moved between the public and the private in much of its publicity materials.

On several occasions, the representations linked celebrities and Hollywood locations with

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nontraditional gender and sexuality. The discovery of these complex images illustrated

that these quintessential capitalist institutions in the twentieth-century west promoted

nontraditional gender and sexuality in its effort to make money. Because the studios

created products for a mass market, the industry would not have used its resources to

create the images if a broad segment of that market did not find them appealing. Although

only a portion of total Hollywood publicity, these nontraditional images appeared

frequently, described important Hollywood figures, and were unique enough to be

significant. Indeed, these images played an important role in shaping the mass audiences'

understanding of Hollywood because few audience members would have encountered

these Hollywood locations as part of their social world. The dream factory knew that the

masses had a taste for the polymorphous.

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HOLLYWOOD NIGHTLIFE: CROSS DRESSING

AND GENDER HI JINKS

La Boheme Cafe owner Karyl Norman delighted patrons by dressing up in yards and yards of lace and feathers whenever he performed his incredible female impersonations. His impersonation of Joan Crawford doing a scene as Sadie Thompson brought down the house nightly, occasionally with Crawford enjoying the laughs.'

The most described aspect of Hollywood publicity involved Hollywood

nightlife. These depictions of celebrities indulging in extravagant romantic adventures

while encountering exotic and decadent figures included the earliest images suggestive of

nontraditional sexual and gender behaviors in Hollywood. They also became the first to

disappear from Hollywood materials. The images, particularly of female impersonators,

became more of a publicity liability as government repression and changes in the way of

understanding and representing homosexuality in cultural materials prompted the

1 Hollywood Reporter, September, 1932 in Tichi Wilkerson and Marcia Borif, The Hollywood Reporter: The Golden Years (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1984), 48. Sadie Thompson was a South Seas island trollop who was confronted by a fire-and-brimstone preacher in Rain (M-G-M, 1932). The movie was based on Somerset Maugham’s story. The story became a highly popular play titledRain during the early 1920s and the subject of a 1928 film starring Gloria Swanson as Sadie Thompson.

38

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transition from interpreting these figures as entertainers with their manipulation of gender

to freaks associated with the public congregation of “the vicious.”

The fascination of reporters and audiences since World War One with

Hollywood’s world of restaurants and nightclubs centered on the activities of movie stars

within their walls. Audience members could visit their own local nightclubs and have

them as part of their everyday experience; however, they could not experience the size,

splendor, and unorthodox people that media images associated with Hollywood

nightclubs. The style of the images heightened these elements and contributed to the

fantasy aspect of Hollywood nightlife. Media depictions of celebrities’ gender and sexual

behaviors in nightclubs and restaurants brought private affairs into the public realm and

provided readers and viewers with the thrill of finding out “private” information about

celebrities. These representations reinforced for audience members the perception that

they had special knowledge about these celebrities and shared a sense of intimacy with

them. Women in mannish attire and female impersonators during the 1930s brought camp

humor and gender bending to these locations. Media images of these gender hijinks

placed Hollywood firmly in the demimonde and enabled Hollywood to maintain the

connection between decadence and nightlife a playful atmosphere of the exotic. This

fostered the perception that Hollywood’s middle and upper classes made direct contact

with denizens of nightlife at a time when nightlife in other cities strove to separate these

classes.

Hollywood built its mystique around nightlife because evening activities held

an increasingly significant place in the U.S. culture. “Nightlife” meant fun and notoriety

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during a time when leisure activities were becoming an area in which people thought they

could define themselves. Few public entertainment places in the early and middle

nineteenth century United States received significant coverage in the press. Saloons

limited their clientele to males and rarely became the subject of reporting except when a

disturbance appeared in police reports. Brothels, dance halls, cabarets, and other nightlife

locations existed within urban vice districts and had “debased” reputations so they rarely

appeared in polite society and its printed media. More respectable nighttime amusements,

such as the theater, stratified along class, race, and gender lines. Most middle- and upper-

class men and women spent their leisure time in private homes and locations where

admission came through membership in either a formal or informal social circle. Many

within the culture viewed places of public nightlife as disreputable, and groups of

organized citizens, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, worked to close

them.2

By the end of the nineteenth century, a new nightlife emerged as locations

moved to additional areas of United States cities and mass circulation publications

presented nightlife to the general public. Hollywood’s nightlife establishments needed to

2 Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman's Saloon, 1870-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 2-5; Helen MacGiil Hughes, News and the Human Interest Story (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1940), 11-13; Paul G. Cressey,The Taaci-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), 3; Lewis Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation o f American Culture, 1890-1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 22; Lawrence J. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence o f Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Leonard Harry Ellis, “Men Among Men: An Exploration of All-Male Relationships In Victorian America.” Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1982, ii-xii; George Chauncey,Cay New York: Gender. Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Norman Clark, Deliver Us from Evil (New York: W W Norton & Co., 1976); Kevin J. Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in New York and Chicago in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

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compete for media space and the attention of the audience with other industries’ and

cities’ restaurants and bars. Commercial locations increasingly emerged to replace the

family, neighborhood, and private clubs as places to meet people and receive a variety of

stimulations. Restaurants in hotels opened in more respectable neighborhoods, which

attracted both men and women from the upper classes. The dominant social life for most

people functioned around the private party. However, the luxurious environments of these

lobster palaces and fancy restaurants such as Delmonico’s in midtown New York City

allowed the wealthy to mix and compete for attention and a public claim to leadership.

These battles occurred in the daily newspapers. The sensationalist newspapers of the

major cities, ever interested in increasing their circulation, discovered readership interest

in the activities of society people and covered parties and restaurants in society columns.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, dailies in the largest US markets

regularly ran weekday columns and a Sunday section that chronicled “Society’s” affairs.

Many newspapers began running columns containing notes on the lives of those in the

theatrical world that included their activities in restaurants and nightclubs. In New York

City, the large number of figures from show business and publishing sometimes even

eclipsed the well-positioned society figure. Still, theatrical figures appeared only

inconsistently in newspapers because they had to work out of town or lacked a steady

home in the city.3

3 Cressey, xiii; Kathy Peiss,Cheap Amusements: Working Women & Leisure in Turn-of-the- Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); Frederic Cople Jaher, “’’Style and Status: High Society in Late Nineteenth-Century New York,” ed. Frederic Cople JaherThe Rich, the Well Born and the Powerful: Elites and Upper Classes In History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 262- 264, 277; Simon Michael Bessie, Jazz Journalism: The Story o f the Tabloid Newspaper (New York: E. P.

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Media images of socialite nightlife provided a very limited presentation of the

people and their activities as the patrons and management of the hotels and restaurants

maintained a bevy of restrictions regarding entrance and behavior. Lobster palaces - large

restaurants that featured numerous courses of very expensive food and drink - were not

open to the “fast” crowd of show business people and the new wealth from the

professional ranks. The places insisted on respecting social and economic hierarchies,

dressing their staffs in uniforms and providing guidelines to enforce gentility among their

workers. Even Broadway restaurants that opened their doors to the new wealth and

theatrical crowd enforced a variety of rules governing behavior in their establishments

and thus the images that appeared in print. Lobster palaces and Broadway restaurants

featured a lavish decor that mimicked aspects of earlier great civilizations while offering

enormous amounts of food and the opportunity to watch other patrons. Patrons generally

stayed at their tables, and the restaurant provided no entertainment or dance floor. These

places stayed within the bounds of propriety and insisted on a formal, hierarchical, and

restrained nightlife world.4

By the late 1900s, the lobster palaces and voluminous Broadway restaurants

had lost a significant amount of luster. Customers sought nightspots that departed from

Dutton & Co., Inc., 1938), 55-57. In the 1882-1883 season, the New York Tribune devoted coverage to 849 weddings, 205 dinner parties, 301 receptions and 61 theatrical and musical parties. May King Van Rensselaer, The Social Ladder (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1924), 199; Erenberg, 43; Benjamin McArthur, Actors and American Culture, 1880-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 70-71. * Erenberg, 40-55.

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viewing nightlife as an extension of the private home with large meals as entertainment.5

Cabaret businesses began with the establishment (and immediate failure) of the Follies

Bergere Theater in the heart of the theater district in 1911. With ritzy locations that

opened in the Broadway hotels, their dances, contests, and stress on drinking produced an

atmosphere of public sociability. While some patrons enjoyed the excitement of acting on

private impulses within a public space, many feared that they would compromise their

morals. The high cost of entrance and dining in many cabarets limited the variety of

clientele. Cabaret management further restricted interaction among audience members

through policies that restricted drinking to tables and discouraged cutting in on dances

and making new contacts. Despite these limitations, the cabaret of the 1910s expanded

the level of interaction among patrons and between audience members and performers

and lead to the invention of the nightclub in the post World War One era.6

Hollywood entered the twentieth century as a small town with one hotel and

numerous Protestant churches that endorsed a local ban on the public sale and

consumption of alcoholic beverages. The town voted to join the larger city of Los

Angeles in 1910 so that it would receive physical improvements of water and sewerage

lines. As movie-making companies began settling in the area in the early 1910s,

Hollywood incorporated bordering towns on each of its sides and organized a YMCA.

Despite these changes, Hollywood had only 7,500 residents and retained its village

5 Ibid, 113-114. 6 Ibid, 117-137.

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quality. The city’s eateries were mostly small cafes and lunchrooms located in and around

Spring Street, and one actor described the C.C. Hall grocery store as the main gathering

place in town. Movie stars of this era, such as Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin, went

to Holmens barbershop to get their haircuts and shopped at the newly established stores

along Hollywood Boulevard. The district had not yet spread west to Beverly Hills and

beyond. The film entrepreneurs that had recently filled farmland and orange groves with

bam-like structures that functioned as studios could see miles of undeveloped land in the

hills and canyons to the north and west. Much of Hollywood’s citizenry disliked the

reputation of entertainers and desired to maintain the area as the religious hamlet of its

origins.7

The small number of nightspots in Hollywood and greater Los Angeles

limited the places where industry celebrities could escape for evening amusements and

the opportunities for columnists to describe the stars on the town. Occasional items in

movie columns mentioned the industry’s celebrities engaging in communal celebrations,

such as the Thursday dances at the Hollywood Hotel. Although chic because of the

presence of industry celebrities in current fashions, the reporting that a chaperone

observed matters presumably prompted readers to view the events in these environments

as titillating. The Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles served as a meeting place, but because

7 Edwin O. Palmer, History o f Hollywood(New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1938), 99-200; City Directory of the United States, Segment IV,Los Angeles City Directory, 1917.

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the hotel bar served men only and women gathered in the lounge, the location did not

promote risque thoughts.

Several industry professionals characterized the city as dull and

unsophisticated. Screenwriter Ralph Block noted that the “...only relation between

Hollywood of 1920 and Hollywood later is that the latter grew somehow out of the

former.” The Hollywood Hotel on tree-lined Hollywood Boulevard was the center of the

community’s social activities, and occasionally people went out to eat at the Pig’N

Whistle and several Italian restaurants downtown. A postcard of Cafe Nat Goodwin

promised “never a dull moment” and, as if to fulfill expectations, occasional news stories

stirred up thoughts of romance for participants and audience members who read of

occasions such as this date at Goodwin’s. “[Actress Miriam Cooper and director Raoul

Walsh] went to Nat Goodwin’s restaurant down on the beach which over-looked the

ocean in Venice, Calif. Everything was glass and [you could] hear the waves breaking on

the pier.” Cooper called the scene romantic and noted after their goodnight kiss she first

realized she loved him.8 With such limited options among public evening establishments,

items detailing the evening activities of Hollywood’s movie community members also

included their attendance at social clubs and private parties. On occasion, these parties

8 Margaret Tante Burk, Are The Stars Out Tonight: the Story o f the famous Ambassador and Coconut Grove (Los Angeles: Round Table West, 1980), 45-47; Jim Heimann, Out With the Stars: Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985), 5-10; Los Angeles City Directory, 1917; Susan Struthers, “Resident recalls ‘Old Hollywood’” Hollywood History File, International Gay and Lesbian Archives; Ralph Block, The Zoned Quest, Box 9, Ralph Block Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Other unimpressed figures included screenwriter Anita Loos, Box 1, Folder 12, Mugar Library Special Collections Department, Boston University, hereafter, BU, and Ben Hecht, Ben Hecht Papers, autobiography, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Postcard of Cafe Nat Goodwin, Los Angeles Restaurant and Nightclub File, AMPAS; Miriam Cooper Walsh, “Raoul

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appeared as descriptions in area newspapers and several centered on the activities of

motion picture actor and female impersonator Julian Eltinge.

Tricksters Before the Cocoanut Grove: Earlv Hollywood Nightlife

Publicity about Julian Eltinge provided readers with various thrills, and in so

doing built the mystique of a special Hollywood nightlife. These images of the female

impersonator’s private life during the evenings enabled readers to believe that they shared

an intimate bond with him. Hints about Eltinge’s sexuality emerged from the images in a

manner that granted a playful decadence and exoticism to the Hollywood nightlife.

Julian Eltinge established himself as the premiere female impersonator of the

era. Bom in Newtonville, Massachusetts, in 1883, William Dalton made his professional

debut in the musical comedy Mr. Wix o f Wickham in late 1904. He became one of the

most notable female impersonators in vaudeville and Europe. Since the theatrical star

system revolved around the star’s stage image and female impersonation had the

connotation of homosexuality, Eltinge created publicity that promoted distance between

his stage image and his outside life. In the Julian Eltinge Magazine o f 1911, articles

discussed the star’s masculine activities and interests, or “revealed” his manhood by

showing him fighting those who made untoward comments about him.9

Walsh,” Letters & Writings: Drafts & Typescripts folder, Miriam Cooper Walsh Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 9 F. Michael Moore, DRAG! Male and Female Impersonators on Stage, Screen and Television: An Illustrated iVorId History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 1994), 95-99; Joan M. Vale, “Tintype Ambitions—Three Vaudevillians in Search of Hollywood Fame,” (M.A. thesis, University o f San Diego, 1985), 15-22.

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By 1916, two of the top motion picture studios in Hollywood, Paramount and

Mack Sennett, looked away from the legitimate stage for new stars and gave contracts to

vaudeville sensations Julian Eltinge and Bothwell Browne. Although Browne starred in

only one motion picture, Eltinge played in several motion pictures designed to showcase

his image and talent in the middle and late 1910s. Female impersonators thus represented

one of the first groups of proven performers from another entertainment field to receive

contracts and star in motion pictures.10

The publicity and gossip that emerged during the early years of Eltinge’s stay

in Hollywood featured his gender hijinks in the Hollywood nightlife. Besides giving

readers the sense that they knew the Hollywood nightlife scene and Eltinge more

intimately, these images made Hollywood nightlife appear fun and risque. In so doing,

these articles served as some of the earliest instances of Hollywood’s use of

nontraditional gender and sexual behavior to promote itself as a special place of

excitement.

A few images suggested that Eltinge was at the center of certain Hollywood

evening social circles. He gave a party with fellow actor Carlyle Blackwell at A1 Levy’s

Cafe for members of the Photoplayers’ Club. This gossip item placed readers inside

Hollywood’s important night spots and exclusive industry organizations and revealed that

10 During the 1910s, Hollywood turned to proven theatrical players to star in films, but most failed because they proved too old, too unfamiliar to the mass audience, and too theatrical in acting style. Garth Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976), 55-56; Benjamin McArthur, 200- 203; Donald Spoto, The Blue Angel: The Life o f Marlene Dietrich (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). Foreign stars included Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich. The industry also put many vaudeville comedians in motion pictures when sound technology became part of

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Bohemians belonged in these places. The item gave readers the opportunity to wonder if

Eltinge donned one of his famous gowns at this gathering and to imagine how fun it

would be to see him as well as other stars. Another gossip item placed Eltinge in the

company of an industry executive and his wife at a soiree. Eltinge recognized the gown

worn by the wife of the owner of the Matzene Feature Film Company. Mr. Matzene said,

“You must be mistaken, sir, only ladies’ clothes are made at the place.” ‘Yes, of course,’

[Eltinge] explained that he was referring to his gowns and not to his male attire.”

Eltinge’s comments demonstrated a sly humor that centered in playing with the notion of

gender inversion. This joke’s gender and sexual components also allowed readers to gain

private information, enhancing the titillation factor and further contributing to the risque

image of Hollywood nightlife. Hollywood appeared as one of the few places where

people discussed private, racy topics. A later item revealed that Eltinge attended some

Hollywood nightlife events, such as private parties, in his full feminine attire. As

producer and Eltinge friend Jesse Lasky observed, “When Eltinge in a wig and a Lady

Duff Gordon evening gown made an entrance at a Hollywood party, neither men

became part of most motion pictures. Additionally, the industry attempted to make stars out of successful athletes and singers, including Babe Ruth, Sonja Henie, Johnny Weissmuller, and Johnny “Scat” Davis.

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women could take their eyes off him.”11 Eltinge’s appearance enhanced the uniqueness of

Hollywood nightlife, adding an element of surprise and teasing about gender and sex.

Glamour drag on the stages in Western Europe and the United States owed its

existence to the newly conspicuous homosexual subcultures. Their slang phrase,go on

the drag, referred to dressing as a female in order to solicit men. During the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sexologists and others in the medical community

interviewed and wrote about individuals in the homosexual subcultures and described a

“new” person-- the homosexual. They defined the phenomenon of homosexuality as

“gender inversion,” an instance of a man or woman having the traits of the opposite sex

within themselves. With both the medical community and the urban homosexual

subculture presenting versions of “the homosexual” as a man with female clothing, traits,

and manners, female impersonators’ sexuality came under question. Vaudeville and

saloon audiences often whistled and heckled performers when they perceived that they

might have homosexual interests. Critics argued that there were more homosexual female

impersonators in the theater at the beginning of the new century [1900s] than

heterosexual ones. Many theater writers and critics called female impersonation a sign of

degeneracy and argued that if no laws controlled female impersonators they should at

least be removed by a vigorous expression of popular disapproval.12

including Babe Ruth, Sonja Henie, Johnny Weissmuller, and Johnny “Scat” Davis. 11 Los Angeles Times, 19 May 1915, sec. Ill, 4;Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 30 July 1918, sec. II, 3; Vale, 28. 12 Laurence Senelick, “Boys and Girls Together: Subcultural origins of glamour drag and male impersonation on the nineteenth century stage,” ed. Lesley FerrisCrossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross Dressing (London: Routledge, 1993), 84-90; Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, Sexual Inversion (London: Wilson and MacMillan, 1897), 3-15; Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings. Myths and Modern Sexualities (London: Routledge, 1985), 89-93; Laurie, 90-92; “At the

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Occasionally images provided information about Hollywood celebrities’

nightlife activities outside the geographic boundaries of Los Angeles. When Hollywood

figures went on publicity tours and location shoots they brought along their Hollywood

nightlife and their star power and allure. An image of Eltinge illustrated that he brought

gender hijinks whereever his film was shooting.

Eltinge has lots of fun working on location since he is frequently taken for a woman when he appears in his beautiful feminine togs. Eltinge having a few moments to spare strolled down the beach. He looked unusually beautiful, that day, he says, due to having on a sport suit of pale blue with a saucy little hat to match. Down on the beach he met a youth, obviously country bred but not the least bit backward. The youth pursued and while Eltinge pretended to run away he let the young man catch up with him...The two strolled, Eltinge using his “other” voice. The youth asked Eltinge out to an ice cream festival and Eltinge consented...Later he met at the spot dressed in male attire. “Howdy,” he said to the country swain. “Why I had a date with a lady!” stammered the youth. “Well you aren’t going to meet her’ cause I got a date with her myself.” The boy wanted to fight and Eltinge was about to accommodate him just to keep in trim when director Fred Bailshofer appeared and convinced them to call it off. Then the youth took another look at Eltinge and became the most sheepish-looking swain in the world.13

This passage presumably appeared as part of Eltinge’s publicity campaign to

retain interest in his motion picture career. But, after three successful productions,

Paramount did not renew the performer’s contract, because Eltinge weighed over 170

pounds and the camera magnified his figure so he had to be cast with larger women in

order to appear demure in his female role. This gossip story demonstrated that a young

man could mistake Eltinge for a woman, suggesting that Eltinge still retained a figure and

the mystique to be a successful female impersonator and kept Eltinge before the public,

Theater,” Los Angeles Herald, 11 February 1900, 13; Maschio, 31-32; Sharon (Jllman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality In A merica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 51-61. 13 Los Angeles Times, 6 October 1918, sec. Ill, 1,19.

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reminded readers of Eltinge’s skill, and hopefully stirred interest in his next motion

picture. The image tantalized readers because it offered them a peek at the celebrity’s

“dating” habits. Eltinge knew that he was really a male and not the female he pretended

to be, yet he offered himself as a date, one man presenting himself as romantically

available to another man. The story referred to the young suitor as a “swain,” which in

slang means flame, or boyfriend, for their date in his male clothes. This beau was “not

backward,” suggesting that he was not easy to fool regarding Eltinge’s biological sex.

This suggestion of same-gender sexuality was bolstered in other gossip items that offered

readers “insight” into Eltinge’s personality. Gossip columnist Grace Kingsley joked “it is

hinted that a good many of Mr. Eltinge’s forthcoming picture productions will have

nothing at all to do with skirts—that is, skirts as a term applied to Eltinge’s wardrobe....”14

The item suggested that one could imagine Eltinge making a movie without a female lead

or love interest. Julian Eltinge’s artifice and playfulness of gender performance helped

Hollywood nightlife maintain the link between the exotic and decadent in a humorous

manner. This aided the industry in forging a mystique of the Hollywood nightlife as

something special and apart from the depictions of the nightlife in other urban locations.

14 Variety, 25 January 1918, 46; Anthony Slide,The Vaudevillians: A Dictionary o f Vaudeville Performers (Westport, CT: Arlington House, 1994), 44-47. Eltinge formed a partnership in 1918 with independent producer Fred Balshofer to put several of his famous roles on celluloid. Balshofer had strong connections, including a motion picture distribution deal with Metro Studios. However, their first production, an anti-Kaiser story, proved itt-timed as the Armistace arrived and the major studios declined to release a motion picture they felt would lose money.Moving Picture World, 17 August 1918, 969. Most of the glamour drag female impersonators did not want to be mistaken for a woman off-stage, yet this representation of Eltinge reveals that he appears to court this. His comment about looking unusually beautiful in his saucy hat is noteworthy for its revelation that Eltinge notes how beautiful he appears as a woman. Los Angeles Times, 26 April 1918, sec. II, 3.

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Historians of entertainment in the United States during the early 1920s

observed a decline in interest in glamour drag performers. The performers had proven

useful in addressing the culture’s fear of the burgeoning woman’s movement and

providing cheap lessons in etiquette, bearing, cosmetics, and clothing for women. Their

routines helped to contain the potential of the new powerful woman image, but with post

World War One changes, their usefulness in that role ended. The decline in interest

resulted in changes in Hollywood. A gossip item noted that actress and producer Alla

Nazimova introduced female impersonator Freddric Kovert for her movie, Aphrodite.

However, in 1921, this impersonator never appeared in the movie or joined the industry

nightlife. The Hollywood motion picture industry, as scholars have demonstrated,

capitalized on rather than set trends.15 The studios witnessed the producers of revues and

Broadway shows and the proprietors of Manhattan nightclubs make attempts to introduce

a new variety of female impersonators during the mid-to-late 1920s. By the beginning of

the 1930s, the feasible nightclub locations and the female impersonator style merged in

Manhattan only to quickly face official repression. However, Hollywood would offer

itself as the place that had the nightspots to exploit the new female impersonator style.

The social world of nightlife in U.S. cities, which shaped the images of

nightlife that appeared in newspapers and literature, changed dramatically during

15 Thomas A. Bolze, “Female Impersonation In the United States, 1900-1970,” Ph.D. diss, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1994, 140-156; Robert C. Toll, On With the Show: The First Century o f Show Biz in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 240-256; Los Angeles Times, 13 February 1921, sec. Ill, 15. Richard Maltby’s ‘“To Prevent the Prevalent Type of Book:’ Censorship and Adaptation in Hollywood, 1924-1934,”American Quarterly 44 (December 1992): 554-583 illustrated the dependence the industry had on the legitimate stage for a large portion of its materials. Henry Jenkins’s What Made Pistachio Nuts documented the motion picture’s use of vaudeville performers and styles for a large portion of the comedy during the early years of talking motion pictures.

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Prohibition which lasted from 1920 to 1933. Reformers had fought against the presence

and operation of nightclubs prior to World War One. The Anti-Saloon League won

passage of legislation banning the sale of alcohol in many states, and their activities

culminated in the passage of the Volstead Act, which banned alcohol sales throughout the

country after 1919. This ban destroyed many of the lobster houses and older respectable

cabarets throughout the country. These businesses lost the significant portion of their

profit margin that came from alcohol sales, and they faced competition from speakeasies

that offered customers illegal drinks. Organized crime moved into this business world in

greater numbers and brought with them a cut in the emphasis on food, services, and other

extras. These factors significantly reduced the upper- and middle-class nature of

nightclubs and their emphasis on respectability. During this era U.S. cities witnessed a

tremendous expansion of nightclubs. The attendance of the top echelon of society and

entertainment celebrities rose and resulted in the public’s increasingly associating these

spaces with the height of romance and adventure.16

Nightclubs by the mid-1920s served as setting for newspaper columnists who

wrote about the doings of the country’s wealthy and famous. These scribes worked under

different conditions than earlier newspaper society page editors. The emergence of

illustrated tabloid newspapers, such as theNew York Daily News, prompted the need for

more photographs of celebrities and increased the coverage of these personalities,

particularly movie stars. Many of these writers wrote syndicated columns that appeared in

newspapers throughout the country. This national focus led to an increased concentration

16 Clark; Chauncey, Gay New York; Erenberg, 238-240.

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upon figures known by readers of newspapers across the country. This greater and

national coverage also brought an increased focus on entertainers rather than society

figures, local politicians, and business people. By 1930, celebrities from the

entertainment world replaced cafe society as the main attraction for newspaper coverage.

The press and public expressed greater interest in people whose fame arose from

attracting and maintaining the mass media’s focus than from their family, deeds, and

productive activities.17

The most extensive coverage of nightlife occurred in New York and Los

Angeles/Hollywood, the two cities that had the greatest concentration of entertainers and

society figures, nightclubs, and newspaper social arbiters (columnists). The majority of

this coverage focused on nightclubs in the established areas such as Times Square and

Sunset Strip. However, coverage of clubs in other areas, including Greenwich Village,

also appeared. The clubs in the other areas offered white middle class people the chance

to see “exotic” people as performers, an activity termed “slumming.” This continued the

visits to ethnic neighborhoods and theaters featuring “new” performers that had begun in

the previous decade. The performers included the “New Negros”, pansies, and working

class performers offered structured and sometimes highly stereotyped acts for the

audiences’ entertainment pleasure.18 Scholars note that slummers enjoyed a titillating

17 Hughes, 20-24; Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society? (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960), 136; Erenberg, 243. 18 Marybeth Hamilton, “When I'm Bad, I ’m Better" Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 93-97.

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experience of seeing something different from themselves at a distance — since there was

no interaction between audience members at their tables and the performers on stage —

and returned home to their daily routine without disruption. These viewers received labels

such as knowledgeable, daring, and hip, and appeared as sophisticated, jaded urbanites

for whom a familiarity with “decadence” was in some way a sign of status. However,

these adventurers cared little for the “different” people and held patronizing attitudes

toward the cultures these performers represented.19

Images of these performers came into the mainstream in New York City as

nightclub owners in the late 1920s and early 1930s attempted to bring exotic “other”

entertainers to the bright lights of middle-brow Broadway. But as with earlier attempts to

bring these images to a larger audience, city officials suppressed their presence. Historian

Marybeth Hamilton argues the plays that featured pansies generated local government

repression because they brought the perceived disreputable world of degenerate

homosexual nightlife into plain view. A few Times Square nightclub proprietors observed

the growth of a gay enclave in the Square as weli as a public fascination with

homosexuals -- reflected in slumming activities — and chose to use female impersonators

for their own profit. The Manhattan nightclub columnists wrote about the “pansy craze

scene” revealing to audiences that these performers were effeminate and pansies playing

19 Amory, 147. Among the works on slumming include David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: 1982); Erenberg, 240-250; Hamilton, 93-98; Chauncey, Gay New York, 311-323. A good source on Los Angeles’s gambling and prostitution is Bruce Henstell, Sunshine & Wealth: Los Angeles in the Twenties and Thirties (San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1984); Laurence Senelick, “Lady and the Tramp: Drag Differentials in the Progressive Era,” cited in Bolze, 162-163.

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pansies. This publicity and attacks from others in the newspaper ranks resulted in the

government taking repressive action within the year. Police raided several clubs in early

1931 and frequently placed themselves at the club door, making access to gay nightlife

and illegal liquor nearly impossible. After the repeal of Prohibition in early 1933, the

State Liquor Authority instituted a policy that provided a license to serve alcohol only to

places they deemed “orderly.” Since the agency interpreted the presence of lesbians and

gay men as “disorderly,” the state authorized the policing of bars that served gay and

lesbian clientele. Historian George Chauncey interprets this repression as part of a

powerful backlash against the visibility of homosexuals in the public sphere, where they

were preceived as a threat to the gender and sexual arrangements that were already in

crisis because of the Great Depression. The perception of this threat proved so powerful

that Chauncey notes even the representation of homosexuals disappeared from many

media forms by the mid-1930s. Thus, the city with the largest nightlife establishments

could not include images of gender non-conformity.20

Few images of female impersonators emerged in the mass media despite the

pansy crazes that emerged in other cities during the early 1930s. Newspaper coverage of

these performers consisted of accounts of successful attempts to drive shows out of town

or ban female impersonation. Historian Thomas A. Bolze argues that the official

repression in cities ranging from Chicago to New Orleans occurred because the

:o Chauncey, Gay New York, 333-354; Kaier Curtin, We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians: Gay Men and Lesbians on the Stage (Boston: Alysion Books, 1976), Hamilton, ch. 4. Actress Mae West twice tried to bring groups of “fairies” to the Broadway stage, drew condemnation and/or official repression. The theater establishment refused to offer West’s play, The Drag, a stage in February 1927. New York City officials removed her 1928 play, The Pleasure Man , from the boards on its opening night.

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nightclubs represented highly visible spaces and the culture increasingly linked female

impersonation with sexual deviance.21

By the mid-1930s the nightlife in the urban United States continued to reduce

its association with deviance and decadence, and media images reflected this change.

Revitalized by New Deal measures and the repeal of Prohibition, “volume restaurants” on

Broadway offered a large enough space to reduce cover charges and alcohol prices,

allowing more of the middle class to enter. These places suggested opportunities for a

“dangerous love” through romance coupled with the risk of fatal attractions and sex

across forbidden boundaries, but in fact they provided middle-brow theatrical

entertainment. Even a depiction of a Harlem after-hours club provided little raciness. On

a typical evening four bands played in the Lenox Avenue ballroom and people danced

well but many also sat half-asleep at the tables. There was no mention in media accounts

of heterosexual romance, let alone other romance.22

However, Hollywood nightlife, on the other hand, maintained the link with

exotic decadence. The representations of female impersonators and women in masculine

attire discussed later in this chapter indicated that nontraditional gender and sexual

behavior occurred over a much longer period and withstood local government attempts to

suppress them. This unusual presence suggests that Hollywood benefited from its

relationship with these gender and sexual non-conformists.

:i Bolze, 220-240. ~ Lewis Erenberg, “Impresarios of Broadway Nightlife,” ed. Taylor,Inventing Times Square , 159-175; Otis Ferguson, “Breakfast dance, in Harlem,” New Republic, February 12, 1936, 15-16.

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The nightclubs and restaurants that served as locations from which images of

Hollywood nightlife emerged became more voluminous as Los Angeles experienced

spectacular growth in population, industry, and cultural importance after World War One.

The population of Hollywood quadrupled during the 1920s as the area expanded west

through Beverly Hills and north into the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles developed a

manufacturing base in automobiles and aircraft, expanded its oil refinery industry, and

emerged as one of the top tourist locations in the country. The city developed a notable

research institute in the Huntington Library and a major institution of higher learning

with the University of Southern California. Professionals in the city promoted the

Mediterranean and Spanish Revival styles in architecture and Southland literature.

The motion picture industry brought both economic and cultural power to the

city and grew to become the eleventh largest industry in the nation. The large studios

employed nearly 3,000 people each and a single department, such as M-G-M’s make-up,

could handle 1,200 actors in an hour through the use of production techniques. Many of

these film companies transformed their “bam” structures the variety of buildings behind

tall gates that made the studios seem like fiefdoms. As the movie industry grew, related

industries including costume and prop stores, expanded. Restaurants and lunchrooms

quadrupled from 1917 to several hundred and spread, as did nightclubs, from the Spring

Street area to Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards and Melrose Avenue. The blocks around

the Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard intersection contained luxurious hotels,

elaborate beauty parlors, shops, and widely publicized restaurants such as the Brown

Derby. The old town of Sherman, later to become West Hollywood, centered its stores,

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nightclubs, and restaurants in groups along Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevards with

patches of undeveloped land in between. Despite this growth, Los Angeles retained

numerous orange groves and undeveloped areas, providing its inhabitants with the

freedom available in open spaces.23

A variety of people participated in the development of the area’s nightspots.

The Ambassador Hotel started as a heroic civic enterprise to bring more civilization to the

area, and after financial failure, joined the Ambassador Hotel chain. Its opening drew Los

Angeles’ society, but shortly thereafter the hotel opened the Coconut Grove nightclub and

developed an industry clientele. Stars continued to go to clubs run by Frank Sebastian,

such as The Cotton Club, and to towns like Vemon and Culver City to go slumming in

cabarets and speakeasies.24

However, by 1930, Hollywood had “more Neon lights than Broadway... It is

gayer, newer, brighter, younger than anything in the history of man.” The majority of the

places to be seen and photographed with the right people congregated on “Sunset Strip,”

a three square mile area that bordered Hollywood and Beverly Hills.25 The area remained

outside the city of Los Angeles, and was policed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff.

23 Hentsel, 8-15; Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 94,290-340; Leo Rosten,Hollywood: The Movie Colony—The Moviemakers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941), 5, 371; Palmer, 236; Neal Gabler, An Empire o f Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishing, 1988), 36-42, 63- 64, 104-154; Los Angeles City Directory, 1927, 2330-2335, 1933, 2637-2643; Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration, 232-233; Sandborn Fire Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, 1919-1950, v. 20; David Ehrenstein, interviewed by author, West Hollywood, California, 15 January 2000. 24 Burk, 25-39; Robert S. Sennett, Hollywood Hoopla: Creating Stars and Selling Movies in the Golden Age o f Hollywood (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1998), 86-89; Anthony Slide, “The Regulars” article in the Hollywood Community MFL, NC 2812 folder, New York Public Library (NYPL); unidentified clipping, Patsy Kelly folder, NYPL; Heimann, 23-37. 25 Mildred Adams, “The City of Angels Enters Its Heaven,” New York Times, 3 August 1930, sec. V, 7; untitled article in Cinema: Hollywood folder MWEZ, 14, 280 at NYPL.

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Many a famous star greeted by name the boys in the prowl cars in the unincorporated area

of West Hollywood. Such familiar relationships led to a more relaxed attitude toward the

enforcement of certain laws.

Some of the most famous nightclubs in the country, including the Trocadero.

and Earl Carroll’s, offered elegance and regularly attracted the weekend crowds. The

Bam, La Boheme, the Club New Yorker, and the Back Yard Cafe all featured cross-

dressing performers and clientele. These places gave the Strip its notoriety and made it

one of the most famous hot spots in the country. During the era, religious figures and

other citizens protested that the bars and nightclubs, gambling houses, and houses of ill

repute were invading the best residential districts. The County Sheriffs Office responded

“that the strip is cleaner than it has been in years.” This newspaper article illustrated that

the members of the culture perceived nightclubs as part of the demimonde, but revealed

the attitude of the authorities that enabled these clubs to continue to operate along Sunset

Strip. The Strip, along with Hollywood Boulevard, sported many important eateries,

including the Montmartre Cafe, the Oasis, the Bullpen, Hula Hut, Burp Hollow, and the

Toad in the Hole. Restaurants had become important socializing and business places by

the late 1920s and several prominent locations emerged to draw the stars, the aristocracy

and the politicians. These places, including the Brown Derby I and II and Chasen’s,

offered their patrons high quality food, elaborate decor, and late night ambiance that often

included impromptu events and performances.26

2b Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1979), 215-219; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 20 June 1933, sec. B -1; Los Angeles Times, 11 December 1939, sec. II, 11; Slide, “The Regulars,” Heimann, 43-47; Sennett, 86-91.

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These nightclubs and restaurants offered industry clientele and the readers of

social columns fantasy environments. The Montmartre Cafe seated 350 people and served

them on 2,400 pounds of solid silver service. Above their heads hung chandeliers from

Czechoslovakia. La Boheme created a version of the Normandy seaside, and the

Ambassador provided a Moroccan motif with gold leaf and etched palm tree doors

leading into a grand expanse. The Coconut Grove decorated its expanse to create exotic

environs such as a Venetian carnival. The Embassy Club’s French ballroom and roof

garden offered the best to the stars. Earl Carroll’s Theatre Restaurant, housed in an

ultramodern building, had two revolving stages 80 feet in diameter and a neon lighting

system used in extravaganzas. The six tiers accommodated 1,000 people, and inner circle

club members paid $1,000 to sit in the first tier.26

Columinists and participants have described activities in these nightspots and

their depictions helped forge the Hollywood nightlife mystique through images of

celebrities whose romantic and gender activities crossed the range of culturally accepted

behavior. Most of the columnists emphasized the size and styling of these restaurants and

nightclubs and observed that these features, coupled with the glamour of the diners and

drinkers, made the locations internationally famous. Several performers have included

brief descriptions of Hollywood nightlife in their biographies. Actor Ralph Bellamy

Everting Herald , 20 June 1933, sec. B -I; Los Angeles Times, 11 December 1939, sec. II, 11; Slide, “The Regulars,” Heimann, 43-47; Sennett, 86-91. 26 Heimann, 40-42; Burk, 20-30; Los Angeles Times, 19 January 1920, sec. II, 22;Los Angeles Times, undated article; Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration, 238.

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remembered dinners at Chasen’s, Romanoff’s, Lucey’s, and La Maze restaurants.

“Conversational subjects were wine, women, and song with occasional exchange of

opinions on a picture or a part.” A few scholars and participants have written of movie

industry figures who crossed gender and sexual boundaries in nightclubs. Actress Iris

Adrian noted, “The bars [and restaurants] were about the only place you could go when

you were a lesbian where people wouldn’t point and laugh if you were tattooed or wore

pants.”28 Locations ranged from the Hotel Brevoort to The Golden Bull, SS Friendship,

and the If Club. Ray Milland received an introduction to the Coconut Grove from M-G-M

publicist Jerold Asher.

I asked [Asher] about a famous film star whose success I didn’t quite understand and who seemed to be having quite an argument at the head of the stairs. ‘Well,’ said Asher, ‘he didn’t want to come tonight. He’d rather be in Long Beach.’ ‘Why Long Beach?’ Asher’s eyes were now glittering like freshly opened oysters. ‘Because that’s where all the sailors are and I hear he practically owns a destroyer down there.’29

By adding descriptions of stars’ attire and activities to these glamorous

environs, the media made Hollywood nightlife a fantasy to many audience members.

Most newspaper items simply informed readers of a star’s appearance at a club or

restaurant, such as “Magnificent Gloria Swanson was seen the past week lunching with

Times, undated article; Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration, 238. 28 Iris Adrian played cheap dumb blondes, talkative chorus girls, and gangsters’ molls in over 100 movies since the 1930s. Heimann, Burk, Sennett; Ralph Bellamy, When the Smoke Hit the Fan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1979), 140-141; Axel Madsen,Forbidden Lovers: Hollywood's Greatest Secret- Female Stars Who Loved Other Women (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1996), 96-97; Rodger Streitmatter, Unspeakable: The Rise o f the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995). 29 Ray Milland, Wide-Eyed In Babylon: An Autobiography (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1974), 119.

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the new boy friend, Michael Farmer.” Some articles described the special celebrations in

the nightclubs, such as individual and collective birthdays, wedding anniversaries,

welcome-back soirees, and affairs to honor visiting guests. A party at George Olsen’s

club honored actress Thelma Todd with a horse-shoe-shaped table banked with roses and

surrounded by miniature palms and papier-mache Deauville dolls. Some pieces informed

audiences that a party would have stars and a glamorous setting and include exciting and

crazy activities. These included turning a dance floor into a ring for boxing and wrestling

matches as well as hilarious burlesque stunts and songs. Occasional emotional scenes at

these nightspots enhanced Hollywood nightlife’s reputation for being wild. Real and

imagined professional feuds between certain stars led to a jousting scene at one major

nightspot, such as the Garbo-Dietrich rivalry at the Trocadero. Other times, the

suggestion of outside marital affairs provoked fights in nightclubs and hotels, such that

the owner of Ciro’s noted, “I guess we have about the highest-priced pugilistic talent west

of Madison Square Garden.” A few representations more directly suggested that certain

Hollywood figures might desire to cross gender or sexual boundaries. “The Billie Dove-

Howard Hughes affair is still ‘on’ but rumor has it that there are certain legal matters 0 1 a

marital nature which must be ironed out before the romance can be officially

culminated.’”0

30 Los Angeles Times, 14 September 1930, 22; 13 September 1931, sec. Ill, 25; 27 October 1940, sec. IV, 9; 27 June 1937, sec. IV, 5; 3 February 1935, sec. II, 1; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 2 January 1921; Herman Hover, “It Happened at Ciro’s,”Motion Picture Magazine, December 1950, 70, in Hollywood—Sunset Strip file, AMPAS;Los Angeles Times, 6 September 1931, 8.

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Doing Lunch: Proper Attire in Hollywood Restaurants

The first significant reappearance of gender hijinks in Hollywood nightlife

involved women wearing masculine attire in Hollywood’s restaurants. Media portrayals

echoed the general pattern of Hollywood nightlife images byemphasizing the trendy

environs and presenting information about the activities and personalities of Hollywood

celebrities. Women have crossdressed in a variety of world cultures and have often done

so in order to spend their lives disguised as men. However, the “exotic” nature of these

women and the advantage that the exposure of this private information had for audiences

and the image makers prompted Hollywood insiders to include them in their work. One

movie about Hollywood placed a crossdresser in Hollywood’s best-known restaurant,

gossip columnists included these figures in regular observations, and a studio based a

publicity campaign on this image.

A woman in mannish attire appeared in the Brown Derby inWhat Price

Hollywood? (RKO, 1932). The creative team behind the motion picture attempted to “tell

the truth about Hollywood.” Producer David O. Selnzick thought the “trouble with most

films about Hollywood was that they gave a false picture, that they burlesqued it, or they

oversentimentalized it....And my notion...dialogue was actually straight out of life and

was straight ‘reportage.’”31 One of the earliest scenes in the movie took place at the

Brown Derby restaurant:

Drunken motion picture director Max Carey walks in throwing gardenias he bought from an old woman outside. Smiling, he greets the people he knows. He briefly exits the screen. [The viewer sees a section of the restaurant as the shot

31 Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 168-172; Rudy Behlmer, Memo to David O. Selznick (New York: Avon Books, 1972), 132.

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switches from a medium to a long shot.] Carey continues walking around the restaurant and bumps into the mannishly-attired woman as she rises from her table. His mouth drops as he steps back and says, “I beg your pardon, old man.” As she straightens her suit jacket, Max slowly looks down then up her torso and rolls his eyes back in his head. Reaches out his hand and taps her elbow. “Pardon me, who’s your tailor?” She turns her back and strides out as he smirks then carries on giving out the flowers.31

The Brown Derby attracted the creative talents (actors, directors, producers,

and screenwriters) of the industry from noon until the early morning hours. The Vine

Street location reserved its booths and the north wall front tables for stars and executives

while others sat in the center. All hoped to get noticed.32 The movie placed its audiences

on the inside and put a variety of Hollywood types on display, including a lecherous

agent, an egotistical actor, and a producer with his sycophant dining in a booth. The

inclusion of the mannishly dressed woman indicated that these women were a part of this

Hollywood scene. Additionally, the women made the restaurant nightlife particularly

exciting because the image associated Hollywood’s nightlife with private information

about a celebrity’s romantic life.

The “private” nature of this woman received additional emphasis because her

introduction differed from the presentation of other Hollywood types. Carey’s brief exit

off the screen marked the moment before the introduction of the mannishly dressed

woman. This helped create surprise among the audience members when Carey returned

31 What Price Hollywood? (RKO, 1932). 32 Heimann, 44-49. “The big men came in [to the Derby] and casually nodded to unimportant folk. In-betweeners rated a quick smile and a vague, “H'yuh.” Top notchers received an enthusiastic back slapping, ‘Old boy-old-boy!’”Los Angeles Times, 29 May 1939, sec. II, 14.

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into view and immediately bumped into this woman— the only introduction to a

“Hollywood type” in this scene that incorporated surprise. This different introduction

suggested that the mannish woman held a specific fascination for spectators because of its

disclosure of gender and sexual activities. This person’s inclusion added the special allure

of gender hijinks to this Hollywood restaurant and to Hollywood nightlife in general.

The separation of this women’s image from the other industry types offered

significant conclusions about the role of gender hijinks in Hollywood nightlife. The

image provided audiences with an experience similar to slumming, allowing them to see

people who pushed the boundaries “perform” for them at a safe distance. The different

introduction also highlighted that the image represented a unique type of person and fed

the mystique that Hollywood was a special place where people behaved unconventionally

regarding gender and sexuality. This image convinced the audiences that in Hollywood

the nightlife embraced the dangerous love of crossing forbidden boundaries. The scene at

the Brown Derby and the image of the mannish woman would probably be understood in

the culture as a depiction of a lesbian and this enhanced the reputation of the motion

picture for RKO because they corroborated how many people around the world perceived

Hollywood. As critics for the trade magazineMotion Picture Herald informed theater

owners What Price Hollywood? was a serio-burlesque load of inside dope on what folks

everywhere thought Hollywood was. The box office returns from most U.S. cities

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validated the trade reviewers' perceptions that the motion picture would fulfill audience

expectations.34

The image presented to meet those expectations did so in part by sacrificing

verisimilitude for entertainment value. The mannish female character's tailored suit was

too large and ill fitting, which prompted Carey’s quip about wanting to know who her

tailor was. Actress Marlene Dietrich, director Dorothy Arzner, and screen writer

Mercedes de Acosta, who all wore masculine tailored suits during the era, all dressed

impeccably, looking chic with sharp lines and styles to their suits. Certainly producer

David Selznick, director George Cukor, and screenwriters Gene Fowler, Rowland Brown,

Jane Murfin, and Ben Markson knew about the styles of these women’s masculine attire.

But the production team wanted to add humor to the scene and chose this figure as the

object of the joke, which defined their mannish woman against type. Still, this “mannish

woman” had more “positive” attributes than depictions of lesbians in the literature of the

era: she had an attractive face and a torso that was neither overly boyish nor overweight.

Newspaper and magazine gossip columns frequently presented readers with

information about the dining activities of industry celebrities. The inclusion of women in

masculine attire while dining out in Hollywood added the titillation of knowing more

about the celebrity’s style and personal habits. Director Dorothy Arzner, who favored

“man-tailored suits,” dined with actress friends at La Maze. The director lunched with a

34 Motion Picture Herald, 18 June 1932, 35; Film Daily, 22 June 1932, 4; Variety, 28 June 1932, 8-10; 12 July, 1932,6-8; 19 July 1932, 24; 26 July 1932, 7; 16 August 1932, 8,21,46. The teaser campaign of what was happening behind the picture studios proved alluring to customers. Eastern and Midwestern and far western cities provided strong box office returns. However, it did poorly in southern cities like Louisville and Birmingham.

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variety of women friends, including actress Claudette Colbert, at the exclusive

Vendomes. Director George Cukor and screenwriter Zoe Akins held a party for their

friend actress Tallulah Bankhead at a downtown French cafe. Bankhead frequently

donned mannish attire and another guest, Mercedes deAcosta, was also known for her

mannish attire.34

While these representations of industry creative talent pushing gender

boundaries at various restaurants strengthened the links between transgressive behaviors

and Hollywood nightspots, the Paramount campaign that promoted a star wearing tailored

suits and slacks in restaurants illustrated the promotional value of this connection.

Marlene Dietrich wore tuxedos on screen in two films and Louella Parsons noted the

star’s preference for pants during her appearances in Hollywood in the fall o f 1930.

However, Paramount avoided discussing her clothing preferences until her popularity

appeared in decline and the studio had given the star an expensive five-year contract.35

The studio engaged in a huge publicity campaign forSong o f Songs (1933). In

early January 1933, a few articles and several industry columnists chronicled Dietrich’s

attire. A tabloid piece provided abundant detail about Dietrich’s apparel. “Marlene

3J Herbert Cruikshank, “Director Dorothy: The One Woman Behind The Stars,” Motion Picture Classic 30, (September 1929), 76; Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1927, sec. Ill, 15; 9 February 1936, sec. Ill, 2; 9 June 1935, sec. Ill, 3; 16 August 1936, sec. Ill, 2; Los Angeles Evening Herald , 15 November 1932 sec. B-4. 35 Los Angeles Times, 2 January 1933, sec. II, 2; Spoto, 100-102. As the contracts o f both director Josef von Sternberg and Dietrich approached their end, most of the studio’s executives wanted to break up this pairing. Dietrich’s last motion picture in 1932,Blonde Venus, earned unenthusiastic reviews and lackluster box office returns. The top executives released von Sternberg and strove to get Dietrich into another picture before her contract expired. Dietrich rebelled over von Sternberg’s absence and spoke of returning to Germany, but Paramount sued the star for irreparable loss due to its inability to proceed with filming of The Song o f Songs. The star agreed to act in the motion picture two days later and received a new five-year contract.

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Dietrich gave the photo snappers and autograph hounds a real thrill yesterday by

appearing at the Brown Derby with long gray flannel trousers, blue sweater, cap to match,

dark gray mannish coat and her attorney, Ralph Blum.” An item in theLos Angeles Times

offers slightly more context. “Lunching with Mamoulian [Dietrich was] still wearing

trousers and coats and evidently having them made to order. It is said she has just ordered

two or three Tuxedo suits to wear in the evening. It is also said that she ate considerable

humble pie in coming back to Paramount.” As another image made clear, Dietrich’s

Hollywood nightlife style caused heads to turn elsewhere. “Marlene Dietrich created a

mild sensation when she arrived at the El Mirador hotel in Palm Springs... She wore

masculine attire for all occasions at the desert resort....” This accomplished the studio’s

goal of having the star receive significant media coverage and the publicity department’s

aim to base the image on the star’s actual character and preferences. By sticking to what

the star did naturally, the studio believed they could sustain the image over a long period

of time.36

The studio’s interpretation of this “new” Dietrich image claimed the star

created a fashion trend. This linked her image with a cultural understanding of woman as

display object of consumer culture products. Some contemporaries writing on the

Dietrich masculine attire understood the Dietrich image similarly. ‘“Will it be overalls

next?’ an industry columnist wondered. ‘Depends probably on how much publicity

36 Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 5 January 1933, sec. B-4; 22 March 1933, sec. B-5; Los Angeles Times, 6 January 1933; Finch and Rosenkrantz, 273.

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Katharine Hepburn gets out of her favorite garb. Anyway, they seem to be organizing a

publicity campaign on them. It’s probably rivalry for Dietrich’s troussers [sic].”’37

However, others perceived that the “new” Dietrich image received attention

because it provided information about the exotic star’s attire and carried hints about

Dietrich’s gender and sexual behavior. Director Josef von Sternberg observed that both

males and females in the Berlin cabaret scene Dietrich partook in wore the clothing of the

other sex. “The formal male finery fitted her with much charm, and I not only wished to

touch lightly on a Lesbian accent..., but also to demonstrate that her sensual appeal was

not entirely due to the classic formation of her legs.” Her occasional beau and confidant

Maurice Chevalier expressed his feelings that Dietrich’s attire made her more alluring: “I

told Marlene myself that if she would wear men’s clothes and women’s garments even to

the extent of fifty-fifty, I would find it the most attractive and charming idea. ...she looks

wonderful in men’s attire.” The Dietrich image fueled audiences’ belief that they knew

more about the star and its sexual and alluring content made Hollywood nightlife appear

attractive and exotic. Infact, it proved so intriguing and memorable that by the late 1930s

that many Hollywood visitors regularly asked whether Miss Dietrich really wore trousers.

57 Paramount Collection, Press Sheets, August 1, 1933-July 31, 1934. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, (AMPAS); Rachel Bowlby, Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola (New York: Methuen, 1985), 10-13. Los Angeles Times, I February 1933, sec. II, 5. Dietrich used her body to display clothing in an attempt to inspire women spectators to purchase the clothing for themselves. The marketing of this clothing promoted the conflation of the star and the product to motivate film audiences and magazine readers to consume the products associated with the image, promoting sporting and work clothing that might offer women more freedom in their opportunities and roles. The man-tailored pants became widely available in 1937 and an article in Life revealed that female college students began appropriating pants and menswear in 1940. Sarah Elizabeth Berry, “Screen Style: Consumer Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood,” Ph.D. diss. New York University, 1997, 133-158.

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Guides told visitors that the Brown Derby would be a good place to see the star for

themselves.38

These three distinct images of masculine attired women in Hollywood

restaurants illuminated that Hollywood insiders sighted them in these locations and

shared their visions with audiences of various mass media. The images inspired other

Hollywood performers to include these masculine-attired women in their works. The

great songwriting team of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart wrote “I’m One of the Boys”

for the motion picture Hollywood Party in mid-1933. The song chronicled the activities

of a woman “...who goes to the tailor that Marlene employs because no dresses from

France are so modem as these And under my Pants are B--V—D’s —.” The head of the

Studio Relations Committee, the censorship organization of the era, wrote to M-G-M

executive Eddie Mannix. He advised Mannix that caution be used against playing “I’m

One of the Boys” in any way that might be suggestive of lesbianism.39 These gender-

38 Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Hollywood Androgyny (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 103-105; Josef von Stemberg, Fun In a Chinese Laundry (New York: The MacMillian Company, 1965), 247. As one industry columnist stated, “The truth about that masculine attire which Marlene Dietrich affects these day is this. She liked wearing that sort of clothes—trousers. Paramount objected. Marlene insisted on trotting about in pants. Finally they gave up. ‘Oh well,’ sighed Paramount, ‘then we’ll make a cult of it exploit Marlene in men’s clothes.’” That Dietrich’s image was alluring is confirmed by contemporaries. See Los Angeles Times, 25 January 1933, sec. II, 7. Film fashion scholar Patty Fox notes, “wearing blatantly man-tailored clothes appealed to the subliminal urges in both men and women. On a purely visual level, menswear on a woman, especially this woman, was incredibly sensual.” Patty Fox,Star Style: Hollywood legends as fashion icons (Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 1995), 52;New York Times, 22 March 1936, sec. IX, 4. 39 Hollywood Party MPP, AMPAS. The song in its entirety follows: “When beautiful Lillian Russell put on a great big bustle she glorified the backbone of a Nation! I wore it! I wore it! And made the world adore it! It started the first inflation. When Madame Sara Bernhardt wore the Hobble skirt I was the very first to Hobble on Broadway. I’ve always had a passion to wear the latest fashion. That’s why I have to look like this today. Chorus: I’m one of the boys-just one of the boys. I go the the tailor that Marlene employs. No dresses from France are so modem as these And under my Pants are B—V—D’s— I’m one of the boys, girls, I’m one of the boys. I handle a big cigar with manly poise. Once I was maternal- Now they call me Colonel. I’m One of the boys, one of the boys. Second Refrain: I’m one of the boys, just one of the Boys- I’ve got to go in for things a man enjoys. Men who bought me candy said “How sweet you are.”

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bending figures with their revelations about Hollywood celebrities formed an

unmistakable addition to the mystique of Hollywood restaurants. Their presence helped

restaurants appear as locations where these alluring figures met, and forged an

atmosphere of decadence that hinted at crossing normative sexual boundaries.

Swineiny Clubs to International Cafes: Merriment in the Great Depression

While images of certain female Hollywood figures provided gender hijinks in

the restaurants, female impersonators performed in Hollywood’s nightclubs. The

metropolitan dailies, tabloids, and trade newspapers all described nightclub

establishments that featured female impersonators and drew Hollywood celebrities,

especially during the early 1930s. Female impersonators continued to have significant

involvement in Hollywood’s nightlife over the remainder of the decade. Their presence in

Hollywood novels and newspaper articles illustrated that the “pansy craze” in Hollywood

lasted longer than scholars have thought and demonstrates their importance to Hollywood

nightlife.

Two figures received the majority of press coverage in the early 1930s. Long­

time vaudevillian Karyl Norman, who billed himself as “the Creole Fashion Plate,”

established himself at La Boheme; while Jean Malin, a key figure in Manhattan’s short­

lived pansy craze, served as master of ceremonies of the Club New Yorker. Both men

developed followings and friendships among motion picture industry people, and these

Now I take my Brandy at the Bar. Dice, cards, and tobacco are my favorite toys. People ask me “Dearie ain’t you Wallace Beery?” I’m one of the boys, one of the boys. Letter from James Wingate to E. J. Mannix, June 23, 1933,Hollywood Party MPP, AM P AS.

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relationships prompted publicity as readers wanted to leam what the stars did and with

whom they spent their evenings. The stars’ association with these female impersonators

brought gender and sexuality to the fore.

Karyl Norman, originally George Paduzzi, joined a minstrel show at 16 years

of age in 1913 and began his vaudeville career in 1918. His activities, including passing

notes to male dancers, earned him the sobriquet, “The Queer Old Fashion Plate,” a

disparaging nickname that illuminated the degree of vaudeville’s coarse homophobia and

clever word play. Jean Malin got his start at Paul and Joe’s, a personality club in

Greenwich Village during the 1920s. Brooklyn-born Victor Eugene James Malin

competed for prizes at Manhattan’s drag balls while in his mid-teens during the early

1920s. After losing several chorus boy jobs because directors perceived him as too

effeminate, he became a professional female impersonator at the Rubaiyat in Greenwich

Village, and then a master of ceremonies at Broadway’s Club Abbey. The six-foot, 200-

pound man with a lisp, attitude, and sharp tongue left for Los Angeles after the shutdown

of the pansy craze in New York City in early 1931.40

Representations of these female impersonators in the Hollywood gossip

columns revealed that they attracted celebrities for the clubs. “[There was a] large film

turnout for the revue headed by Karyl Norman... This was for the opening of La Boheme

cafe. The spot just outside city limits can feature dancing until wee hours,” and “A flock

of celebs turned out for Jean (swish!) Malin’s return to the Club New Yorker last eve.”

Mannix, June 23, 1933,Hollywood Party MPP, AMPAS. 40 Moore, 84-85; Slide, The Encyclopedia o f Vaudeville, 374; Chauncey, Gay New York, 239, 314- 338.

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Stars willingly lent their names to help the female impersonators. “[Karyl] Norman is

preparing a Club La Boheme menu, autographed by Claudette Colbert, Wallace Beery,

George Raft, Jean Harlow, and others to serve as souvenirs for guests.” As they appeared

in columns linked with stars, Malin and Norman became celebrities themselves and

gossip columnists included discussion of their effeminacy and homosexuality, providing

readers with intimate details about them. Columnist Jimmy Fielder represented Malin in

terms blatantly suggesting transgression of gender and sexual boundaries: “There’s an

artist chappie (in New York) who wears brown VELVET suits with WHITE polka dots,

and he wants Jean Malin to return that bathrobe he borrowed...his name is Samson, if

you’re interested...so there!”41 While a brown suit might be a normative outfit for a man

of the era, velvet was a fabric associated with females and the white polka dots gave the

suit a campy quality. The mention that Malin had the man’s bathrobe hinted at some kind

of evening and early morning exchange between these men, and the “artist chappie’s”

name, Samson, played at sounding virile.

This pair of female impersonators entertained Hollywood’s night prowlers and

provided for the gossip column readers. Their playing with gender and ribald humor often

presented amusing images, such as Norman appearing like a den mother looking after the

needs of one of his charges (La Verdie) or Malin swishing it up on stage. The revelation

of their sexual interests offered readers the sensation of knowing something intimate

about a celebrity and how these people spent their evenings with Hollywood’s glamorous

stars and the female impersonators’ campy drag brought a sharp humor and a caricature

41 Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express , 24 September 1932, sec. A-7; 7 April 1933, sec. B-6;

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of gendered figures to Hollywood’s nightlife, which thus appeared to offer adventure,

knowledge about relationships among Hollywood insiders, and an association with

decadence.

Associations between female impersonators and the motion picture industry

professionals during the Hollywood pansy craze extended beyond the slumming that

usually characterized relations between audiences and performing “others.” As the

representations indicated, some stars lent their names and aid to female impersonators.

Several stars enjoyed interactions with the female impersonators that extended beyond

the nightclubs and the late evening hours. Jean Malin continued friendships that started in

Manhattan with M-G-M’s major star William Haines and Hal Roach studio comedian

Patsy Kelly. Actress Polly Moran served as Malin’s “dinner date” to various Hollywood

functions. Performers such as Fifi D’ Orsay invited Malin and Norman to parties.42 Some

of the material the performers used ruptured the distance between exotic performing

“others” and motion picture industry audience members. As noted in the introduction to

this chapter, certain performers, such as Karyl Norman, regularly incorporated

impressions of famous Hollywood stars. Thus, industry audience members saw

themselves or someone they knew on stage being embodied by the performer. The

performer’s representation of audience members demonstrated the thinness of what

theater scholars term “the fourth wall,” the artificial distance between the person on stage

25 January 1933, sec. B-3;Los Angeles Times, 13 January 1933, sec. I, 6. 42 William Haines and Joan Crawford attended another quaint new spot with an equally “wicked” show. “After releasing The Song o f Songs, Marlene Dietrich, attired in her mannish clothes, Brian Aheme and Rouben Mamoulien went to the Club New Yorker.” William Mann, Wisecracker: The Life and Times o f William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star (New York: Viking, 1998), 184, 364; Los Angeles

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and the audience, and brought the performer into a closer to a relationship with the

audience.

This association between the female impersonators and motion picture

industry people appeared not to have occurred with other performers in Manhattan.

Newspaper articles and gossip columns did not detail the forging of friendships between

specific impersonators and stage actors and directors. The shared experiences between

female impersonators and industry people, coupled with the impersonator’s wit and style,

helped some impersonators travel in the highest circles of the motion picture industry

during the early 1930s. The female impersonators in Hollywood, unlike their brethren in

other United States cities and different “exotic other” performers such as “New Negros,”

were able to transcend their position as “other.” Certain performers identified with the

female impersonators. Some Hollywood figures, including actor Dan Dailey, borrowed

gowns and other female attire from studio wardrobes to wear on nights out on the town.

Others borrowed the idea. Actor Robert Benchley explained to his wife that “all my high-

class girls seem to be in Europe... However, Tallulah is here and Bill Haines and I

understand that Jerry Zeibe is coming out, so we can kid around in drag if there are no

girls.”43

Evening Herald and Express, 21 April 1933, sec. B-4; 17 December 1935; Los Angeles Times, 2 January 1933, sec. Ill, 8. 43 Hamilton, 48. For a discussion o f the history of the theater see Curtin, and Nicholas de Jongh. Not in Front o f the Audience: Homosexuality on Stage, (London: Routledge, 1992); Boze Hadleigh, The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music Industry (San Diego: Los Hombres Press, 1991), 225-229; Robert Benchley letter of June 29, 1936. Robert Benchley Collection, Box 11, Folder 3, Mugar Library Special Collections Department. Tallulah is actress Tallulah Bankhead mentioned earlier in the chapter as a woman who occasionally donned masculine attire (drag). Bill Haines is the actor noted in footnote 42. Jerry Zeibe was the “strikingly handsome and flirtatious" photographer and socialite who was a lover of both Cary

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Personal relationships among female impersonators and some of the

syndicated columnists who reported on night life also presumably developed and may

account for the degree of publicity the female impersonators received. In the first version

of A Star Is Born (1937), Franklin Pangbom brought “pansy” behavior to his role as a

motion picture industry gossip columnist: his character twice flicked his hand behind his

ear, raised his voice such that he was chirping effeminately, and changed the word divine

to “devoon” and crooned it. The representation suggested that some columnists enjoyed

playing with gender conventions and might even hold same-gender sexual interest.44 The

Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express ’ “grandmotherly” syndicated columnist

Harrison Carroll covered female impersonators in the Hollywood night clubs somewhat

extensively, and perhaps his same-gender sexual interest influenced that coverage.45

Stars and gossip columnists were not the only industry insiders who

established relationships with female impersonators and enjoyed their role in the

Hollywood nightlife. Irish novelist Liam O’Flaherty arrived in the late 1920s to work on

the script for the motion pictureThe Informer. He went on to use these experiences to

craft Hollywood Cemetery (1935).46 In his novel, a producer’s assistant used his humor

Grant and Randolph Scott, David Ehrenstein, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998 (New York: William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1998), 29-30. 44 A Star Is Born (Selznick International, 1937). 45 Actress Shelley Winters referred to Carroll as the grandmotherly type in her book,Shelley: Also Known As Shirley (New York: Ballentine Books, 1980), 250-265. 46 John Zneimer, The Literary Vision o f Liam O'Flaherty (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1970), 30-32.

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and gender play in Hollywood’s nightlife to propel himself into influence in the industry.

Meanwhile, the former chorus boy incorporated gender play so he could become a star

and bought glamour to Hollywood’s nightlife. Hollywood Cemetery centered on a

Hollywood producer named Mortimer who faced pressure from his talented director to

make a prestigious motion picture o f Brian Carey’s novel,The Emigrant. The producer

decided that he needed a new female star so the motion picture would make money at the

box office. Mortimer traveled overseas and found an Irish lass having sex in the woods.

He immediately knew that he wanted her as his new star. Upon returning with her to his

hotel room, Mortimer found his assistant, Larry Dafoe, draped in a white sheet and

preening in front of a full-length mirror while declaring, “I am Queen Victoria.”48

Mortimer laughed; like many in Hollywood, the producer considered himself fortunate to

experience Dafoe’s antics, for this was the humor and style that made Dafoe necessary at

Hollywood’s nightclubs and motivated Mortimer to hire him. The book took readers

behind the scenes at the studio and revealed private information focused on the gender of

one producer’s assistant. The image informed readers that the character’s behavior

enhanced Hollywood’s nightlife for the insiders and offered readers a glimpse of the

nocturnal activities in the cinema society and syndicated gossip columns.

As the story unfolded, O’Flaherty revealed how the assistant’s gender played a

larger role in Hollywood star making and nightlife glamour. The shrewd Mortimer placed

Dafoe in charge of teaching his discovery, newly named Angela Devlin, how to become a

female movie star. Dafoe taught Devlin women’s styles, behaviors, and attitudes, ranging

4S Liam O ’Flaherty, Hollywood Cemetery (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1935), 38-45.

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from putting on perfume to the proper carriage as one walked. Author O’Flaherty

suggested that female impersonators played an important behind-the-scenes role, shaping

the look and behavior of the people who brought glamour and style to Hollywood and its

nightlife.48

Tumultuous relationships existed between the main characters. Screenwriter

Carey and actress Devlin fought while slowly falling in love, as Devlin alienated herself

from the producer. Mortimer and Dafoe fought often. As the publicity campaign

increasingly focused on the as yet unseen Devlin, she proved unsatisfactory as either an

actress or a sex object. She and Carey escaped to Mexico where they married and sent

press releases damning Mortimer. Dafoe proposed to Mortimer that they replace Devlin

with his friend Jesse Starr, whose extremely effeminate manners and appearance made it

impossible for him to appear in movies as anything but a chorus boy. Amid chorus boys

Starr would have met many others who donned female clothes for both performance and

personal reasons. Increasingly desperate from the bad publicity, Mortimer agreed to

Dafoe’s plan. Dafoe, with the aid o f Dr. Karl Zog, made Starr into the new Angela

Devlin. The introduction of this female impersonator left the studio staff enthralled, and

48 Over the years people needing assistance with women’s clothing knew that Julian Eltinge had the reputation for dispensing recommendations for the most becoming women’s wear. Los Angeles Times, 16 December 1932, Billy Rose Theater Collection, Folder MWEZ 7394.

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the public crying thunderously, “She is. She is. She is. She is.”49

O’Flaherty used the images of female impersonation to critique the industry as

a “cemetery” of the bourgeois values of truth and nature. The author attacked the industry

for its hubris and because its motion pictures dealt in surfaces and false images that

undercut bourgeois values. O’Flaherty thought Hollywood studios believed they could

create any item and make it appear better than the item does in nature. The female

impersonator, Jesse Starr, through his imitative talents and the skills of Dr. Zog, became

Hollywood’s ultimate love goddess. He had qualities that the original Angela Devlin

lacked, most notably an expression of “barren ecstasy,” an empty-headed sensual

expression. According to literary scholar John Zneimer, O’Flaherty perceived the new

Devlin as Hollywood’s most perfect success and its most barren imitation. O'Flaherty

believed that only the motion picture industry would sabotage the nature of a woman’s

beauty and promote a female impersonator as a “better” woman.50

The critique of the influence of the motion picture industry’s artificiality

extended to the actions of the key characters. Mortimer cared foremost about making

money, so he would perpetrate any hoax on the public as long as it proved profitable. The

producer also had a Dr. Frankenstein/Pygmalion complex, desiring to create the perfect

star. Dafoe viewed his relationships in terms of how he could advance himself—he

maintained false relationships as he sought to make others serve his ends. And Starr

** O’Flaherty, 80-91; 270-288; Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express , 23 May 1933, 1. This article details how six Hollywood “male chorus dancers” were arrested for appearing in public in women's clothes. 50 Zneimer, 125-126; A. A. Kelly, Liam O 'Flaherty: The Storyteller (London: The MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1976), 116.

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looked ridiculous as a man so he willingly offered himself as available to become a

woman.

Despite this strong critique, Hollywood Cemetery granted most of its

characters, including the female impersonators, positive attributes and a positive

influence on Hollywood nightlife. Mortimer inspired his director, screen writer and staff

with the sight of Devlin to believe and feel they could do their best work. Dafoe aided a

friend. He concocted the idea that put a major talent before the motion picture audiences

and in the gossip columns, making people think about the unique glamour of Hollywood

nightlife. The producer’s assistant acted heroically, making himself indispensable as the

influential agent of the upcoming star in Hollywood. Starr/Devlin placed his talents on

the screen for the world to enjoy, and pleased audiences as a star in the Hollywood

nightlife. A reviewer observed that even in his attempt to debunk the mythologies

surrounding Hollywood, O’Flaherty gleefully presented Hollywood characters and

Hollywood's unusual developments and regular double-crossings.S1 One key component

was the continued promotion of Hollywood as fantasy and female impersonators as

upbeat public presences and manipulators of gender.

Many of the leaders in the city did not share this perception o f the public

presence of female impersonators in Hollywood nightlife. Two years prior to the

publication of Hollywood Cemetery, the Los Angeles City Council passed a law that

prohibited the appearance of anyone in a cafe in drag unless employed by the cafe.

Contemporary observers and current scholars noted the high number of raids of clubs

51 “Books o f the Day,” London Times, 19 November 1935, 8.

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with female and male crossdressing in late 1933 and thought passage of the law would

close the clubs presenting female and male impersonation. However, in late 1935, two

Council members continued to see the public presence of female impersonators in various

night clubs and complained that these establishments attracted homosexually inclined

performers and audiences. They further argued that the activities associated with the

gender and sexual non-conformity in those nightclubs were dangerous. Council Member

John Baumgartner complained about the “hell holes and dives” operating in his district.

“They are openly soliciting patrons of lewdness and degeneracy with signs on their

windows....One place is so well-known people come from all over the city to see it.”

Council Member Edward Thrasher declared, “while we sit here debating, these men of

degenerate tendencies continue to dance in Councilman Baumgartner’s district.” As the

former president of the Water and Power Commission that controlled Los Angeles’ water

and hydroelectric resources, Baumgartner represented a significant figure in the Power

Bureau, one of the city’s two power brokers.53

Baumgartner’s district represented an unusual urban location for homosexual

bars during the early twentieth century. The Twelfth District lay northwest of downtown

and included portions of the Colegrove, Edendale, and Wilshire-Pico districts of the city.

The area contained mostly middle- and working-class housing (single-family detached

houses with garages and small courtyard apartments), a few hospitals and motion picture

53 Variety predicted that the craze in Hollywood ended in 1933,Variety, November 21, 1933, 59. Historian George Chauncey also believes that most of the spark in the pansy craze diminished with the passing of the ordinance law barring crossdressing in local night clubs and bars in 1933, although he observes that the craze continued for two more years before either the discovery or enforcement of the

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studios, and large undeveloped tracts. According to an analysis of 1940 data by two

sociologists, the census areas of Westlake, Temple Street, Beverly-Melrose and Vermont-

Hoover that formed most of the district had a high-middle social rank. The areas had an

average index of urbanization (density) and a high rank on the segregation scale, with

forty percent of the area’s population comprising five ethnic groups that tended to be

isolated to themselves.53 Small clusters of stores and restaurants appeared in the eastern

Hollywood area where Santa Monica Boulevard and North Vermont Avenue met and

across from the Sunset Studio on Sunset Boulevard. Stores appeared in patches along

South Western Avenue and on a few of the numbered streets in the Wilshire-Pico portion

of Baumgartner’s district.

The politicians reacted to several factors related to female impersonation and

the Los Angeles/Hollywood nightlife. Female impersonators in nightclubs were more

visible than their brethren in the vaudeville theaters earlier in the century, particularly

since they received publicity from the Hollywood industry press. Equally important, the

female impersonators’ presence in the nightclubs rather than vaudeville appeared

significantly different to many within the dominant culture. The major vaudeville circuits,

such as Keith-Orpheum, strove to create the public impression of vaudeville as a

decorous place of entertainment and worked to maintain that atmosphere. The nightclubs

of the 1930s did not foster a similar image. As noted earlier, during Prohibition,

ordinance led to the demise of the clubs. Chauncey, Gay New York, 321. Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 11 September 1935, sec. B-l; Starr, Material Dreams, 156-161. 53 The ethnic groups were Blacks, Mexicans, Italians, Russians and Asians.Sandborn Fire Insurance Maps o f Los Angeles, 1919-1950, v. 3, 7, 9, 11, Geography and Maps Division, Library of Congress; Los Angeles Times, 3 May 1933, sec. II, I; 4 May 1933, sec. II, 1; Eshref Shevky and Marilyn

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nightclubs acquired a stigma from being owned and managed by organized crime. “The

moral order prevailing in all public bars is questionable according to respectable middle

and [upper-class] Americans in terms of who patronizes them (deviants) and what is

thought to go on in them (lewd, lascivious, bawdy, drunken, and illegal behavior among

strangers).” Unlike vaudeville, nightclubs centered on the consumption of alcohol, and

although Prohibition was repealed, the attitudes and beliefs that had led to its passage into

law in 1919 did not disappear. Many Americans and psychology professionals continued

to adhere to beliefs about the evils of alcohol. Some, like the psychologist who argued

“when drinking, men fall on each other’s necks and kiss one another,” linked alcohol

consumption to male homosexual activity.54

The presentation of female impersonators in these two entertainment forms

differed dramatically. Hollywood nightlife images, with their imitations of gender and

sexual interests in order to thrill audience members, linked the female impersonator to a

challenge of gender and sexual norms. Vaudeville publicity depicted female

impersonators as virile men transforming themselves through magical skills of

performance. Their glamour drag received general support because it helped contain the

threats of the New Woman. The representations of female impersonators in the

Hollywood nightclubs contained the suggestion that female impersonation stemmed from

Williams, The Social Areas o f Los Angeles: Analysis and Typology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), 68-89, appendix C-E. 5-4 Chauncey, Gay New York, 304-328; Julian B. Roebuck and Wolfgang Frese, The Rendezvous: A Case Study o f an After-Hours Club (New York: The Free Press, 1976), 4-7; Kimmel, 124-125.

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homosexual self-expression and carried that idea to a national audience. While vaudeville

impersonators maintained the distance of the proscenium arch, impersonators in

nightclubs often bridged that distance and mingled with audience members. The

nightclubs interacted to a greater extent than the theaters with citizens in their

neighborhoods. Organizations such as the Women’s Law Observance Association of Los

Angeles protested against the activities in the nightclubs, including keeping their blinds

down and selling liquor overtime. As Councilman Edward Thrasher observed, nightclubs

with female impersonators became places where effeminate homosexual men gathered.

The camp style of these female impersonators posed a threat to gender and sexual

arrangements when many in the country perceived that the Great Depression already

placed those arrangements in a precarious position.55

The visibility of the female impersonators in urban nightclubs enabled Los

Angeles politicians to evoke a long-standing fear among citizens in their efforts to

eliminate the public presence of same-gender sexuality. They referred to the fear that

cities were places where heathen behavior festered until it undermined the health, safety,

and happiness of the “good” people and the culture at large. The politicians evoked this

55 Toll, On With the Show , 240-244; Mrs. Dora A. Steams, President and Mrs. O. P. Clark, Chairman, Women’s Law Observance Association of Los Angeles to Robert L. Bums, Council President, November 27, 1935 in Council Files, #4038, (1935). The Club New Yorker was at 6728 Hollywood Boulevard. The Clover Club, 1626 N. La Brea, La Paloma Cafe, 7566 Melrose and Newlands Cafe. 7367 Melrose were the other nightclubs that were found to have no violations according to the Los Angeles Police Department,Vice Division. The Great Depression placed an already reeling manhood in a further precarious position. West’s concerns received expression in the actions of politicians and employers who forced women out of jobs so some males could retain the “masculine” position of family provider. This concern over the precarious position of masculinity appeared in many art circles. A significant amount of New Deal-sponsored art depicted images of a comrade ideal that suppressed contemporary sexual conflict and refused women full equality with men in an effort to assuage the crisis. See Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (W ashington, DC:

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fear through a three-part process. Each councilmember mentioned one aspect of the

“degenerate” and “lewd” behavior that the clubs allowed. Mentioning this behavior

convinced the citizenry that a wickedness problem existed in their fair city. The members

further created the impression that many of these places existed, assuring the citizenry of

the pervasiveness of the problem. The final part centered on Baumgartner’s claim that

one club had so much notoriety that it attracted curious people who would normally

remain outside the ranks of the "degenerates." Baumgartner and the City Council’s

Welfare Committee introduced a resolution that led to ordinance number 75,626, which

required a permit from the Police Commission for shows held at places where liquor was

served. The resolution noted that these nightclubs had “entertainment which is

detrimental to morals and a disturbance of the peace because it led to the congregating

and loitering of undesirable and vicious people....”56 This promoted the greatest fear

among citizens, that these city places lured people who would normally stay “good” into

the “bad” way of life.

Their statements evoked another long-term fear in US culture that aided their

elimination efforts. As noted earlier, female impersonation destabilized the “normative”

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 1-8; Lois Scharf, To Work and To Wed: Female Employment, Feminism and the Great Depression (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980). S6 There is a significant amount of scholarship on how the various groups of citizens viewed the city as the site for corruption. Christine Stansell,City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982), observes that Protestant reformers interpreted New York as filled with sin, and that the concentration of vice appeared in working-class neighborhoods. Kevin Starr, Inventing The Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 88-95, observes that in the twentieth century many of the settlers in southern California saw the East as declining area filled with undesirable foreigners. They viewed southern California as a suburban land of sunshine, and “the new Eden of the Saxon home seeker.” Resolution to City Council of August 12, 1935, Number 2780 (1935) Council Files, Los Angeles City Archives. Ordinance Number 75,626 is noted in October 10, 1935 letter from Raymond L. Chesbro, City Attorney.

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gender and sexual arrangements, already under pressure from the Great Depression.57

Nightclubs that presented female impersonators and offered a place for homosexuals

appeared to promote this instability. Hollywood nightlife also promoted and encouraged

these clubs and their activities through their appearance in gossip columns, Hollywood-

on- Hollywood movies, and Hollywood novels. The citizenry could easily link the city’s

wickedness to the promotion of a weakened masculinity and fear that having this type of

nightlife would debilitate the area’s males.

Despite these public pronouncements and the new ordinance, the nightclubs

remained open and drew crowds as Hollywood figures continued to make female

impersonation clubs a popular part of Hollywood nightlife. B.B.B., the entrepreneur

whose B.B.B.’s Cellar drew the Hollywood stars to its famous female impersonator acts

in the early 1930s, operated a successful club through 1937. Industry fan magazines

described his Swing Club as the spot for industry stars in the wee hours of the morning.

“The lines could be ten deep, and an occasional raid was taken in stride, for the patrons

are never molested.” The piece informed readers that this type of club faced official

repression but could nonetheless continue to operate. The article gave readers inside

information about the kinds of activities their favorite stars participated in and the

obstacles they faced, while it also reassured them that the stars would have nothing to fear

from the authorities when they attended the club. The image appealed to readers who

57 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990) argues that gender behavior and identity are a performance. Gender is the product of the reiteration of acts and statements that the culture considers either masculine or feminine, and every person demonstrates through these culturally sanctioned attitudes and behaviors that they are in possession of the appropriate gender identity. This inherent

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desired to participate in this Hollywood nightlife and feel both decadent and safe. A

publisher understood that this desire existed among audience members and produced a

book to meet that need. How to Sin in Hollywood provided information to help tourists

find and experience Hollywood nightlife. Under the heading, “When Your Urge’s

Mauve,” the Cafe International on Sunset Boulevard. The location offered supper, drinks,

and the ability to “watch boy-girls who necked and sulked and little girl customers who ...

look like boys.”58

The attraction that these clubs held for Hollywood figures and tourists

promoted anxieties among some Hollywood insiders. InThe Day o f the Locust (1939),

novelist and screen writer Nathanael West used the a female impersonator in the

Hollywood nightlife to dramatize his concern over the loss of masculinity among

American men. Contemporary critics interpreted the novel as an indictment of the motion

picture industry and the culture it forged.59

The scene placed readers in the Hollywood nightlife of the 1930s. A set

designer in the movie industry took two “losers” who wanted to go out on the town to a

nightspot in Hollywood on Western Avenue, a street that bordered Councilor

Baumgartner’s district. The Cinderella Bar took the shape of a lady’s slipper. West’s

instability guarantees that specific events, such as the Great Depression, can disrupt common methods in which most males define their masculinity, sparking a “masculinity crisis.” S8 Heimann, 161; Jack Lord and Lloyd Hoff, How to Sin in Hollywood (Hollywood, CA, c. 1940), 39. 50 Robert Van Gelder, “A Tragic Chorus,” New York Times, 21 May 1939, sec. VII, 6-7; Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1939, sec. Ill, 6. Robert van Gelder argued, "...the combination of climate, cheap living and the entertainment industry have concentrated in Los Angeles too many shoddy minds and people who have energy without rational purpose.” The Los Angeles critic observed that West satirized the millions who make bad movies possible. “They will one day forge a mediocre-minded revolution unless something happens to stop the revolution at its source— Hollywood.”

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imagery revealed that Hollywood’s nightclubs, like its restaurants, had humorous and

extravagant architecture, often reflecting their name and theme. The design created a

public presence that would be hard to miss and flaunted the gender hijinks aspect of

Hollywood nightlife. The author described how the central characters in the novel, Homer

Simpson, Faye Greener, and Tod Loomis, watched a young man in a tight evening gown

of red silk sing a lullaby.

He had a soft, throbbing voice and his gestures were matronly, tender and aborted, a series of unconscious caresses. What he was doing was in no sense parody; it was too simple and too restrained. It wasn’t even theatrical. This dark young man with his thin, hairless arms and soft, rounded shoulders, who rocked an imaginary cradle as he crooned, was really a woman.

When he had finished, there was a great deal of applause. The young man shook himself and became an actor again. He tripped on his train, as though he weren't used to it, lifted his skirts to show he was wearing Paris garters, then strode off swinging his shoulders. His imitation of a man was awkward and obscene.

Homer and Tod applauded him.

“I hate fairies,” Faye said.... “They’re dirty,” she said.60

Most of the characters in the audience enjoyed the performance. They greeted

its conclusion with a great round of applause and appreciated the female impersonator’s

role in their Hollywood nightlife. West perceived that the characters suffered under the

tragedy of modernity, experiencing a loss of soul as human activity became mechanical.

60 Nathanael West, The Day o f the Locust (New York: Random House, 1939; repr.. New York: Bantam Books, 1975), 96. Diane C. Bonora “The Hollywood Novel of the 1930’s and 1940’s.” Ph.D. diss, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1983, examined The Day o f the Locust and four other Hollywood novels that appeared between 1930 and 1950 for their similarities and differences regarding the interpretation of Hollywood’s artificiality and immorality and the industry's shaping of manhood and womanhood. Bonora observed that West’s Hollywood figures faced disrupted love and marriages because of the industry’s artificiality. Women dominated both the action and the men in West’s book. Faye Greener used her body to influence men. Joan Schwartzen dominated Tod at a party. Maybelle Loomis was the

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Hollywood’s motion pictures played a role in the shaping of modernity, and to West the

industry promoted this soulless existence:61 Hollywood nightlife led citizens to suffer the

dual loss of their spirituality and critical mind. Thus, they could applaud an emasculated

performer and be oblivious to their own emasculinization and the crisis of the American

male.

West’s representation challenged the depiction of female impersonators and

gender hijinks as part of the glorious Hollywood nightlife. His female impersonator was

“obscene” and the Hollywood nightlife was not fantastic at all. West questioned the

Hollywood mystique of gender-bending men bringing ribald humor to the wild

Hollywood nightlife. The novel's female impersonator seemed incapable of having fun

himself and of creating a pleasant and exciting environment in Hollywood night clubs.

The nightclub he worked in was not the large, decorous places described in other

Hollywood materials, but rather a seedy dive. Instead of linking the gender bending with

private information about celebrity figures, this imagery bound the female impersonators

with insignificant people in the motion picture industry and the fringes of the Los

Angeles population. West’s representation stripped the “gender performers” of their

hijinks and humor, making the link between decadence and Hollywood nightlife appear

depraved and deleterious to the culture. His portrayal suggested that these “abnormal”

stereotypical stage mother over her son Adore. Bonora states that the female impersonator was the only favorably presented “woman.” 61 Dictionary o f Literary Biography vol. 9 (Detroit: Gale Publishing Co., 1991), 125. As scholars Leo Chamey and Vanessa Schwartz have argued motion pictures were the fullest expression of this modernity. Motion pictures expanded Impressionism and photography by using technology to stage actual movement. For millions, they became a primary mode for the representation of the reality of modem life. This increasing tendency to understand the “real” only through its re-presentations was a crucial aspect of

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males wanted to live out the Cinderella fantasy for themselves, and that Hollywood

promoted this as entertainment rather than viewing it as abnormal and destroying its

public presence. The arguments from the public officials began to influence certain

opinions. Reviewers of the novel agreed with West’s analysis of female impersonators

and the unfortunate Hollywood nightlife, arguing that “perverts” added to Hollywood’s

strange people and denying the humor and entertainment value these performers brought

to Hollywood nightlife.62

These arguments linking female impersonators and night clubs serving the

homosexually inclined with two long-standing crises in United States culture proved

effective in limiting the public presence of female impersonators in daily and

representational life in Hollywood nightlife. City Council members’ tactics helped stir

citizens and prompted fellow legislators to take action against these nightclubs. City

Attorney Raymond Chesboro told the media he would draft a new ordinance that

empowered the Police Commission to deny or revoke permits for shows it deemed

threatened the “public welfare.” Although no mention of this action appeared in the

records of the City’s Attorney, Council, or Police Commission, the Council enacted a

similar ordinance in late 1935. Female impersonators, Hollywood nightlife, and the

clientele of the nightclubs motivated the Council to adopt an ordinance embodying acts

modernity. Leo Chamey and Vanessa Schwartz, eds.Cinema and the Invention o f Modern Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 2-10. 6* George Milbum, “The Hollywood Nobody Knows,” Saturday Review o f Literature, 20 May 1939, 14; Edmund Wilson, “Hollywood Dance of Death,”New Republic, 26 July 1939, 339.

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constituting disorderly conduct in early 1940. The Council followed the earlier lead of

New York City. The new law declared that any man who frequents or loiters about any

public place soliciting men for the purpose of committing a crime against nature or other

lewdness committed disorderly conduct.63

The public presence of female impersonators in Hollywood nightlife

motivated the Police Commission to fulfill its mandate to monitor shows in

establishments that served alcohol. The first officially documented action of the Police

Commission toward female impersonator shows involved Julian Eltinge. In 1940, Eltinge

applied to the Commission to receive a permit to present his famous act at the

Rendezvous Cafe. During the hearing several vice squad officers testified that “many

people of questionable character frequent the place,” highlighting the theme of the city as

a place of disreputable nightspots and fears over activities that promoted the presence of

homosexual figures. The president of the Commission, Henry G. Bodkin, announced that

while Eltinge’s entertainment was “clean and wholesome,” presumably compared to the

camp drag of the 1930s, the club had a notorious reputation. The Commission’s denial of

the permit solidified the change in viewpoint as female impersonators, formerly linked

with a humorously decadent nightlife, now found themselves associated with a morally

deleterious nightlife.64

63 Los Angeles Times, 20 January 1940, sec. II, 1; Number 1976 (1940), Council Files, Los Angeles City Archives. w Los Angeles Examiner, 17 January 1940, Julian Eltinge Biography Files, AMPAS; “Application of Julian Eltinge to operate as a female impersonator at theHollywood Rendezvous," 16 January 1940, The Official Minutes o f The Board o f Police Commissioners o f the City o f Los Angeles, 2 January 1940 to 28 June 1940; Vale, 38-40.

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The decision on female impersonators received mixed reactions from

Hollywood. David Butler, a former silent film actor who became a director and producer,

gave Eltinge a walk-on as himself in the motion picture If I Had My Way (Universal,

1940). Eltinge appeared in drag during a brief floor show scene with two other former

vaudevillians. However, reviewers panned the motion picture. The general feeling in

Hollywood became evident in the response to Eltinge’s opening at The White Horse on

Cahuenga Boulevard in 1940. Eltinge had received a permit for the show after agreeing to

display his female costumes on a clothes rack then stand beside each as he gave the

appropriate impersonation.Script magazine, a small publication that garnered numerous

contributions from motion picture industry people, sent its critic. Despite continued

media attention, the critic noted that only a dozen people attended on opening night, and

Eltinge closed the act after a few dates.65 The female impersonator craze that had richly

contributed to the depictions of Hollywood nightlife had reached its end.

Female impersonators and women in masculine attire influenced the depiction

of Hollywood nightlife during the two periods of transition in the representation of

nightlife in US mass media. In the mid-1910s, some studios willingly exploited the pre­

existing popularity of top female impersonators and starred them in motion pictures.

These female impersonators’ gender hijinks exposed the private actions and feelings of

celebrities, creating a tantalizing vicarious experience for Hollywood fans. This titillation

and the female impersonators’ antics helped Hollywood nightlife appear playful and

65 American Film Institute Catalog o f Motion Pictures produced in the United States, 1931-1940, 1003; Moore, 108-109; Variety, 1 May 1940; Slide, The Vaudevillians, 47; Slide, The Best o f Rob Wagner's Script (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1985), vii.

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maintain a fruitful connection between decadence and nightlife. This link played an

important role in distinguishing Hollywood nightlife from other types of nightlife

represented in the mass media while the motion picture industry worked to establish its

place in the leisure world. Over a decade later, masculine-attired women in restaurants

and female impersonators in Hollywood nightclubs continued the playful connection

between decadence and Hollywood nightlife. These depictions of Hollywood nightlife

differed significantly from those of other nightlife in the country that kept adventure and

romance under control and maintained a distance from the exotic and the decadent.

The combination of Hollywood stars and decadence in celebrity culture

enabled these Hollywood nightlife images to offer audiences the vicarious illusion of

being in the “scene” themselves. Celebrity culture involved representing peoples’ lives in

the mass media so that audience members could develop a type of identification with the

celebrity. Because of identification fostered between celebrity and audience these images

could provide audience members with an “intimate” experience of the exotic and the

decadent. In some cases, through the identification with celebrities at the nightclubs and

restaurants, these images offered audience members an experience similar to slumming.

They could witness exotic “performing others” from the security of their own homes and

“leave” at their own convenience. In other instances these images offered audience

members the opportunity to develop other types of identifications with celebrities who

transgressed normative gender and sexual boundaries themselves or befriended figures

who did. The number of representations of female and male impersonation and the

reactions of reviewers to the two Hollywood novels suggested that sections of the

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population enjoyed and/or expected that nontraditional gender and sexual behavior

existed in Hollywood nightspots. These representations and the tourist book on finding

sin in Hollywood might suggest that both readers and audiences sought the behavior out

of Hollywood nightlife.

The tourist book offered readers the appeal of being able to visit the

nightclubs and restaurants that Hollywood celebrities attended in their daily life.

Nightclubs and restaurants opened their doors to those with money and offered them the

possibility of discovering additional private information about Hollywood celebrities,

sexuality, and nightlife. Other Hollywood locations offered Hollywood’s public less

access and a significantly reduced chance of encountering celebrities in their daily life.

Unlike most nightclubs, parties restricted entry through invitations. Hollywood public

parties, the Hollywood location discussed in the next chapter, were more restrictive in the

access they offered to Hollywood audience members. Hollywood’s public could not enter

the Biltmore Hotel ballroom during the Academy Awards, nor could they enter a theater

during a premiere. Yet, they were not completly excluded from these events as they could

witness the entrance to these staged parties from behind barricades. The staged events,

aiming to create a decorous environment, did not use gender hijinks as the Hollywood

nightlife. Instead, they presented images of splendid environs, emotions, and dating as the

vehicle to reveal celebrities and sexuality in public Hollywood parties.

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THE PUBLIC HOLLYWOOD PARTY: SPLENDOR AND DATING

The crowd awaiting entrances of the stars at the premiere for The Gold Rush watched a movie of Rudolph Valentino swimming in the Pacific, unaware that theives were stealing his clothes. Valentino realizes he is late for the premiere and rushes away in the movie to appear seconds later at the premiere clad only in his bathing suit.1

The description of this premiere illustrated the pageantry associated with the

Hollywood public parties. Whether the Academy Awards banquet or the parties before

and after a premiere for a new motion picture, Hollywood public parties contained

splendid settings and glamorous fashions. Hollywood insiders used this clothing and

dating to indirectly comment on sexuality among its celebrities. Audience members

certainly attended parties in their own daily lives. However, Hollywood novels, movies,

and newspaper articles spurred the public to imagine that they never experienced the

splendor, unorthodox people, and deeply moving events that frequently appeared at the

center of these public and semi-public affairs.

1 Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1979), 266-267. The promotion was the brainchild of Sid Grauman, Hollywood exhibitor par excellence who had homosexual interests.

96

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Hollywood made the party a part of its mystique because the parties held a

significant position in US culture as a location where one could be extravagant and

pursue one’s desires. Hollywood parties were not the first type of social events to receive

extensive mass media coverage. Society parties appeared as a regular feature in theNew

York Herald during the 1830s. By the 1860s, newspapers including theNew York Times

devoted front page coverage to the inaugural balls of the Presidents. However, coverage

of all parties expanded significantly in the last decades of the nineteenth century.2 Three

types of parties appeared within the pages of books and newspapers. Public events were

highly formalized and structured functions intended for public consumption; these events

provided specific times and locations for attendees to interact with the press. Semi-public

occasions were comprised of privately invited people and the press and occurred in public

locations. Private parties consisted of privately invited people and excluded the formal

media; these parties happened inside individuals’ homes.

The Hollywood party fired the public’s imagination more than the parties in

other locales. As a journalist of the era noted, “[The Hollywood party was] the last word

in American social relaxation, rich with the super costly meats and drinks, alive with the

unrestrained wit, whoopee and love-making o f the Republic’s most romantic characters.”3

Highly emotional expressions and secret loves played a significant role in promoting this

Hollywood party mystique. These typically private acts were attached to the public

representations of the Hollywood parties. This made these party depictions appear as if

2 Mary Cable, Top Drawer: American High Society from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties (New York: Atheneum, 1984), chapter 8. 3 New York Times, 8 March 1931, sec. V, 11-18.

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they were revealing to readers and viewers the thrill of finding out private information

about figures whom they desired to know more intimately. This reprivatization played a

prominent role in separating the descriptions of Hollywood parties from the depictions of

the parties held by the elite Four Hundred, Cafe society and its theatrical friends, local

Elks, college and professional clubs. However, by the late 1930s, the climate had changed

significantly. Some Hollywood figures whose presence shaped these Hollywood parties’

polymorphous images, such as actor Nelson Eddy, faced pressure to conform to the new

romantic standards of dating and the companionate marriage. Meanwhile, other

Hollywood insiders made images that expressed greater consternation over Hollywood

party figures not abiding by these norms.

Public Parties: Structured Affairs

Hollywood parties vied for media space and the attention of the audience with

the galas that the wealthy and others in different entertainment industries held. The

descriptions of the public parties that occurred among society and political elites revealed

that these staged events functioned more like public ceremonies than fetes. These affairs,

such as Presidential inaugural balls and the Academy Awards, represented a ritual at

which to publicly congratulate the winner of an office or an award with food and drink.

More importantly, they were rites of passage and represented an induction of a President

or an award winner into a work-based group, such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts

and Sciences.4 Tacit as well as written rules governed how the affair functioned,

A Robert Darton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), in Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture:

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structuring guests’ activities, dress, and interactions. Guests sat at tables and ate, or

danced with their husbands and wives. They donned highly formal attire and expensive

jewelry. The prearranged seating restricted movement and limited interactions among

individuals and groups at these occasions. The most prominent guests faced the greatest

limitations, as their interactions with others often centered on exchanging greetings at a

particular location and at a specific time. Within this highly ceremonial atmosphere,

Hollywood used the expression of emotions to distinguish its affair.

The public aspect of Hollywood parties enhanced ceremonial environment and

dampened the conviviality generally associated with parties. They occurred within highly

public settings, usually within the ballrooms of hotels and other locations into which the

general public could enter. Many of the attendees were politicians and actors and

actresses, and were thus regularly before the public eye. These figures realized that to “go

public” involved coming under the gaze of others and having their image negotiated by

the audiences’ and media’s definitions. In reaction to this media coverage and the

resultant diminishment of their control over their images, politicians and actors developed

a routine to manage their relations with the press. Many of these public figures

consciously organized their public display. They adopted a public personality (persona)

that they constructed to intentionally highlight the presence of particular aspects of

themselves and to exclude or limit others. These ambitious public figures with the

Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1991): 97-119. These parties drew highly formalized media coverage, as the press tracked activities from certain areas of the party and the reporting of the event followed a similar pattern over the years.

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assistance of public relations experts that developed during this era, used clothes, words,

and image control to make their personas appealing.5

Public parties received extensive coverage in the media. Descriptions of these

events appeared in newspapers and general interest magazines, and eventually on radio

and television. The coverage enabled audiences and readers to enjoy the pageantry of the

events and also to vicariously experience the events as if they were already a part of the

group.

Hollywood created an annual public party in the 1920s. The Academy Awards

celebrated the industry and Hollywood strove to make sure that this party would make the

industry appear strong, vibrant, and decorous, yet exciting.6 An examination of the

representations illustrated that Hollywood captured the splendor of the largest, regularly-

held public party, the ball held to celebrate the inauguration of the country’s President,

but made the depictions of its staged party appear more spectacular and emotional.

Inauguaral Balls began after the second inauguration of James Madison. One

o f the first descriptions of the event was highly negative as newspapers lambasted the

affair after the celebration of Andrew Jackson’s first election resulted in the ransacking of

the White House. Newspaper coverage of the balls increased with the election of the first

Republican President. The articles contained a short description of the decorations, a

concentration on ladies’s gowns and jewelry, and a detailed description of the entry and

5 Leo Braudy, The Frenzy o f Renown: History o f Celebrity (New York: Vintage, 1986), 12, 490- 496; Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 27-33. 6 Neal Gabler, An Empire o f Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishing, 1988).

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greeting of the guests of honor. In the early twentieth century, the frequency, activities,

and coverage of the Presidential balls declined. Articles in tabloids about later balls

included photographs of the noted dignitaries that ofren filled a page and provided small

accounts describing the decorations and attendees of the balls themselves. By this time,

Hollywood executives and Washington politicians expanded their relationships with one

another; they attended each others’ public parties and basked in the reflected and real

power that the other group held.7

The Academy Awards served as the largest and most significant public party

in the motion picture industry. The first annual award dinners occurred in the Fiesta

Room of the Ambassador Hotel in 1927. One of the first grand hotels in the city of Los

Angeles, the Ambassador grew famous as the hotel that housed the well-known

nightspot, the Coconut Grove. The ballroom seated over 400 people, with a large dance

floor in the center. A huge panorama of a tropical island shone from the rear wall as tall

loco palms with monkeys hanging from them surrounded the tables. In the 1930s, the

dinner shifted to the Biltmore Hotel. This hotel in downtown Los Angeles housed an

enormous ballroom with long, elaborate brocaded drapes. The guests added to the

elegance with their specially made gowns and fine jewels. Many industry figures worried

about the publicity about the Academy Awards. As Cary Grant acknowledged years later,

7 Betty Boyd Carol, First Ladies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 13-33. Most balls received little more than passing mention in several newspapers through the ball for Franklin Pierce in 1853. Los Angeles Times, 5 March 1905, 1, 5, 10; Outlook (March 13, 1909), 576; New York Times, 5 March 1853, 1;5 March 1861, l,5M arch, 1873, I;5 March 1897, 3; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 5 March 1897, 1,5; January-March 1921; Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 4 March 1929, sec. A- 11; 21 January 1941, sec. A-1; Ronald Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990).

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“There is something embarrassing about all these wealthy people publicly congratulating

each other....”®

However, the Academy Awards party generated both media and audience

interest as people wanted to know about the attire and activities of their favorite

celebrities at this important Hollywood event. Media mogul William Randolph Hearst

wanted the Academy Awards to have prestige, and Hearst syndicated columnist Louella

Parsons covered them extensively. The Awards dinner received its initial radio broadcast

in 1931, and expanded this electronic media coverage during the decade. By 1940, the

ceremony appeared as a short subject in theaters. By the late 1940s, the entire ceremony

appeared over the airwaves. The fans in Hollywood flocked to the ceremony to try to

discover things about the stars. “Streets outside the Biltmore and the lobbies of the hotel

were congested with thousands of people, trying to get a glimpse of their favorite actor or

actress....

While the media reports on Hollywood’s Academy Awards shared many of

the components of the inaugural ball coverage, the studios accentuated the brilliance and

8 Ray Milland, Wide-Eyed In Babylon: An Autobiography (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1974), 119; Margaret Tante Burk, Are The Stars Out Tonight: the Story o f the famous Ambassador and Coconut Grove (Los Angeles: Round Table West, 1980), 3-21; Gabler, 250-252; Robert S. Sennett, Hollywood Hoopla: Creating Stars and Selling Movies in the Golden Age o f Hollywood (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1998), 87; Anthony Holden, Behind The Oscars: The Secret History of the Academy Awards (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 90-93. 9 Holden, 35-49; Emmanuel Levy,And the Winner Is...: The History and Politics o f the Oscar Awards (New York: Ungar, 1987), 2-24. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences initially served management efforts to resolve labor issues among the studios’ “creative” talents: writers, directors and performers. During its second year the Academy negotiated the first standard contract for a talent group, covering the free-lance actors and actresses. However, with the Depression, the Academy’s handling of the producers’ attempt to institute a substantial pay cut led to the perception that the academy was a producer-ruled body. Under Frank Capra’s leadership, the organization switched its focus away from labor and studio politics. Hollywood Reporter, 11 November 1931, 2 in Academy Awards Files, Clipping Folder, AMPAS.

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the glamour of their public party. The earliest coverage of the awards banquet illuminated

that the Academy Awards attracted a larger and more prominent crowd than the inaugural

balls. “The Hollywood public party outdistanced Hoover’s affair in population of

prominent people, including Vice President Charles Curtis, California Governor Rolph,

the members of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, and every major actor

and actress in Hollywood.” Prestigious speakers came from within the industry, including

the renown director D. W. Griffith, and from the outside President Franklin Roosevelt

addressed the 1941 banquet and recognized the industry’s importance in cementing

continental solidarity. The depictions of Hollywood’s affairs created the impression that

the Academy’s public party had more attendees wearing clothes with more elegance and

style than those at the inaugural balls. Will Rogers, the emcee for the 1934 academy

affair, quipped that the brilliant gathering was “...the last roundup o f the ermine.” In

1936, a tabloid reporter observed that the Academy’s ceremony contained “... the

beautiful and immaculately groomed who sported millions of dollars worth of jewels that

flashed as they dined, and sipped, and danced till the wee hours.”10

As one might expect, as a staged public party, the Academy Awards would

not serve as a location for the presentation of nontraditional gender and sexual behaviors.

However, the newspaper presentations of this Hollywood public party revealed that the

Academy Awards exposed the emotional expressions of Hollywood figures and visiting

dignitaries. This enabled readers to believe that they had secret information about these

celebrities’ feelings and thus knew them more intimately. These depictions fueled beliefs

10 New York Times, 11 November 1931, 26; 28 February 1941, I ; Los Angeles Evening Herald

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about the Hollywood party being alive with wit and whoopee, rather than the more stuffy

and staged inaugural balls. During the third award ceremony Vice President Charles

Curtis's speech suggested that he had established an emotional bond with Hollywood.

“This is my first venture into yournew and strange (italics mine) world. I am pleased and

interested with that which I see and hear...” This new-found feeling sparked Curtis to

make a bold statement that linked awards won for great courage during wars and for

world-changing activities with being picked as a contributor to a motion picture. “[I note

the] other great awards of distinction and honor, such as Napoleon’s Legion of Honor, the

Nobel Prize, and America’s Distinguished Service Medal, and observe that the Academy

Award is significant of much the same spirit that accompanies these famous badges.” 11

This image of Curtis expressing his emotions illustrated that Hollywood reprivatized

public images of prominent figures within the space of its public party. This

reprivatization offered readers the thrill of gaining private knowledge about this

important political leader’s feelings.

More readers, and later viewers, would receive this thrill from the

reprivatization of images of Hollywood stars who expressed emotions during the

Academy Award parties. Newspaper readers learned that their favorite stars expressed

enormous pleasure when something they liked happened. Although that emotion might be

expected, the pleasure of discovering that a star expressed the emotion enabled audiences

to believe they shared a more intimate bond with the star. The celebrity attendees almost

and Express, 17 March 1934, sec. A-3; 6 March 1936, sec. A-3; 28 February 1941, sec. B-l. 11 Los Angeles Times, 10 November 1931, sec. II, 9; Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 10 November 1931, sec. A-12; New York Times, 11 November 1931, 26.

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raised the roof with their applause when Marie Dressier won a best actress Oscar in 1931.

Some readers might have bonded with the stars because they shared an item in common,

in this case enjoyment of Dressier. A few years later during the awarding of a special

Oscar to director D. W. Griffith, readers learned that many of their favorite stars

applauded voraciously, laughed, and cried. “Griffith... brought tears to the eyes of the

throng as he told of the early days of the industry.” Fans could experience a “closeness”

to actor Spencer Tracy as being a stand-up man as he spoke during the acceptance of the

Best Actor award for Boy s Town (1938). Tracy explained that he was “moved to regard

the trophy in spirit as having been given [to] Father Flanagan, whose spirit of kindliness,

goodness, mercy and helpfulness, inspired him during production.” During each of the

Academy parties, audience members could feel more intimate with actresses Hattie

McDaniel and Ginger Rogers because they knew that each cried. The sharing of these

heart-felt moments presumably allowed audience members to believe that they knew each

of these celebrities when they expressed a deep emotion and thus were more open and

vulnerable.12

These representations distinguished the Hollywood public party from other

public parties. The prominence and attire of the guests gave the Hollywood party an

exceptional air and reinforced the idea that the Hollywood party attracted numerous

expensive items. The display stood as a tribute not merely to Hollywood’s talent but to its

12 Hollywood Reporter, 11 November 1931, 2; 6 March 1936, 2; 24 February 1939, 3 1 March 1940, 1, 3; in Academy Awards Files, Clipping Folder, AMPAS;Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 6 March 1936, sec. A-3; Los Angeles Times, 11 March 1938, sec. II, 1; 28 February 1941, sec. II, 1; Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The culture o f celebrity (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1985).

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ability to make money. The quips and effusive emotional expressions compounded the

understanding of Hollywood parties as filled with unrestrained wit and whoopee. Most

importantly, representations that depicted Hollywood stars expressing “private” emotions

provided “knowledge” about the stars. These Hollywood public party images gave

audience members the thrill of having knowledge about the star’s private behavior and

the sense that they knew the star better and shared a greater intimacy with him or her. The

pre-existing sense of intimacy between particular audience members and certain stars

allowed some audience members to feel themselves to be a part of the Hollywood public

party.

The Academy Awards did not focus on presenting sexuality. While fashion

scholars would observe that elegant gowns and tuxedos present romance and sexuality,

they did so indirectly.13 The Hollywood premiere parties, as the Valentino story at the

head of this chapter illustrated, used attire to demonstrate sexuality more directly. These

semi-public affairs used dating as a method of illustrating a celebrity’s romantic life,

particularly if this life involved nontraditional behavior.

Semi-Public Parties: Staged Segues Into the Private

This dynamic of private emotions leading to audience thrills appeared within

images of Hollywood semi-public parties. These affairs contained two parts, a staged

13 Patty Fox,Star Style: Hollywood legends as fashion icons (Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 1995); Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

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affair followed by numerous private parties. Like the public parties, semi-public affairs

occurred in public locations. However, these debutante balls, dances, and cotillions

tended to be smaller, and public figures constituted less of a contingent among the guests.

Although the debutante balls and cotillions shared an induction component with the

public parties, this attribute did not overwhelm the party aspect of these semi-public

affairs as they did in the public parties. Even the premieres, the most ritualistic of the

Hollywood semi-public parties, contained more playfulness than the public parties,

including suggestions of gender and sexual non-conformist activities.

Semi-public parties constituted the majority of the representations of parties in

the newspaper society pages and magazine articles. Newspaper editors and readers of the

society pages in the late nineteenth century tended to love the bland sameness of the

section, filling columns with coming-out party and wedding notices. Metropolitan dailies

expanded the daily column and added several pages of society news on Sundays. They

carried stories that included descriptions of the decorations and floral designs in the

church and ballroom and the glittering clothing and jewelry on the prominent persons in

attendance.14

M Cable, 192-201. The major metropolitan dailies and tabloids usually devoted a page or two to society news that included weddings, balls, waltzes, and dinner parties. Articles in magazines appeared in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature under the categories: balls (parties), dancing, dinners and dining, garden parties, masquerades, parties, and entertaining. Over the period of this study, the other categories produced fewer as entertaining increased in the number of representations. Still, a significant number of these articles contained little information about actual parties and often focused on providing advice about having parties. Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society? (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960), 160-162; Los Angeles Times, June, 1906; July, 1907, April, 1912.Los Angeles Evening Herald , January, 1903, February, 1903, June, 1909, September, 1911. These pages included different types of stories, describing society folks attending school performances, musical presentations of their children, or local theater, particularly of Shakespeare.

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The newspaper society coverage altered slightly after World War One.

Metropolitan dailies divided Sunday pages into sections with headlines such as “Affairs

of the Week” and “In the Realm of Society,” and they included greater details, such as

“...the bride was a direct descendent of an officer under the first Napoleon.” Tabloid

society pages regularly featured photographs of the notable and the pretty. These articles

offered descriptions of the decorations and attendees at weddings, college fraternity and

sorority suppers. However, they offered little detail regarding the activities of particular

people at these semi-public parties or provided little suggestion that anyone transgressed

gender and sexual norms.15

Semi-public parties represented in magazines from the early twentieth century

often contained more detailed descriptions of these events. Depictions of dinners for

diplomats might include descriptions of the choice blooms and plants and graceful palms

that added stately grandeur. However, they also noted that selecting guests had many

pitfalls and the party host needed to make sure that she/he maintained propriety. “The

visitor glanced [the list of guests names] then exclaimed in shocked surprise. ‘Oh, my

dear, you surely aren’t going to ask her!... She has no right whatever to be asked to an

embassy...Why, before she was married— ....’” This representation acknowledged that

people who crossed boundaries of gender and sexual behavior existed, but hosts had to

15 Los Angeles Times, June 1919, July, 1921, September, 1929, March, 1935 and December 1940, particularly, 3 July 1921, sec. Ill, 3, and 17 September 1929, sec. II, 6;Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, May, 1919, January, 1922, March, 1931, January, 1932, June, 1934, and January, 1940, especially, 4 January 1922, sec. B-5, 7 January 1932, sec. B-7, and 6 January 1940, sec. B-12. On occasion, the descriptions included more details regarding the dresses worn by the bridesmaids, or noted that the entertainment at a dance or gala included an up-to-date cabaret, or play that preceded the dance.

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make sure they never appeared at their semi-public parties. Debutante balls maintained a

similar strict decorum in all aspects.'6

A few representations of less politically oriented semi-public parties revealed

that sometimes people who stretched boundaries attended these affairs, but never as

invited guests. Individuals with less than “proper” decorum formed part of the

entertainment for the amusement of the partygoers, such as Gypsy Rose Lee’s striptease

at the Beaux Arts Ball during the mid-1930s. These performances continued a long

tradition of high society people enjoying the amusement created by people of the arts and

letters after they had dinner amongst themselves. By the end of the period of this study,

descriptions of balls suggested that guests might have enjoyed greater gender and sexual

play. Descriptions of the Architects Ball in Chicago and the Rhode Island Fisherman’s

Ball noted that colored lights played briefly on bare limbs as people danced. A

photograph revealed that a man donned a caveman costume that left him bare chested.17

These images did not necessarily suggest that transgressive people attended these affairs,

nor did they imply that transgressive behavior occurred at these parties. Still, these

16 A. Etheridge, “Christmas Cotillion,” Ladies Home Journal (December 1907), 9; A. W. Morrison, “For a garden party,”Delineator (September, 1904), 440-441; Josephine Grenier, “Garden Party,” Harper’s Bazaar (August, 1903), 733-735; “The White House as Social Treadmill,” Literary Digest 94, (August 20, 1927), 35-36; Maude Parker Child, “Diplomatic Entertaining: The Pomps and Pitfalls of Foreign Society,” The Saturday Evening Post , (May 16, 1925), 16, 178-179; “Life Goes to a Mass Debut,” Life (September 30, 1940), 99; Michelle Thurgood Haynes,Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas (Oxford, Eng.: Berg, 1998), chapters 3 & 4. 17 “Gay and Glittering Beaux Arts Ball,”Literary Digest 122 (December 5, 1936), 30; Cable, 135- MS; May King Van Rensselaer, TheSocial Ladder (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1924), 198-212; “Architects Ball; Chicagoans cavort as their favorite myth,” Life (February 5, 1940), 80-82; “Rhode Islanders moum end of summer at Fisherman’s ball,” Life (October 14, 1941), 120-123. These descriptions of the costuming probably illustrated changes in societal norms, such as the proper dress for women, rather than a transgression of those norms.

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representations made these semi-public parties o f the late 1930s and early 1940s appear

more risque and fun than parties from earlier in the century.

The calendar of Hollywood semi-public parties featured two major staged

events: the Mayfair Ball and world motion picture premieres. The majority of depictions

of these parties revealed aspects of the star’s personality to thrill audiences with the sense

of increased intimacy. Descriptions of the Mayfair Ball appeared to offer studio

executives the opportunity to present the industry as a social set. The parties occurred

within the city’s magnificent colonnaded ballrooms with elaborate decorations and motifs

that created glamorous environments. Stars and industry executives donned white tie and

tails and other formal finery and “...strove to better a ‘high-class’ society affair as they

danced until the wee hours of the morning.” As author Neal Gabler noted, Hollywood

executives envisioned the Mayfair Club as Hollywood’s society, captured in the phrase

'Hollywood Four Hundred.' Admission to the nine annual parties included the elite only

and offered newcomers the chance to come out into this society. Representations

generally enhanced the perception that this Hollywood party had the costliest food and

drinks. Fan magazine readers learned that stars wore spectacular clothes and expensive

accessories to the Mayfair Ball. Newspaper articles informed their readers that the

Ambassador ballroom contained stunning decorations. “Blue of smiling skies, flecked

with daisy white was even in the tableclothes last night when members of the Mayfair

Club gathered... The ballroom had been changed into a bower of flowers....”18

18 Finch and Rosenkrantz, 154; Gabler, 250-252; Photoplay (May, 1931), 30; Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1936, sec. IV, 12.

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The Hollywood premieres appeared even more spectacular. Los Angeles’s

movie palaces, particularly along Hollywood Boulevard, brought music, humor, and

excitement into one location. Theaters with grandiose names, such as the Riviera and the

Granada, offered the industry opulence and enormous scale for its world premieres. Two

of the most famous, Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, were

grandiose parodies of ancient building styles and fueled the exceptionalism of the

Hollywood premiere and its party. The studios situated searchlights, grandstands,

orchestras, and walkways made of everything from wood to red carpet in front of these

theaters to create a vibrant atmosphere for their unveilings. Spectators lined up the day

before to get views of the stars attending the showing. Radio announcers greeted the stars

and character players with microphones to carry their words to eager audiences.

Premieres continued numerous promotional gimmicks, including fashion

shows and novelty items. The shows in Los Angeles were wild and exciting. Some, like

Cecil B. DeMille’s The King o f Kings, drew over 100,000 people spectators. Studios took

press correspondents to extravaganzas that matched the theme of the movie being

premiered. Cinematographer Harold Sintzenich immensely enjoyed a premiere that

included a marvelous harmonica band. He stated that the Gaucho Theater “is impressive

in its riot of colouring and oriental atmosphere.” This atmosphere was so amazing this

glowing tribute came from a man who refused to leave the New York motion picture

industry until he could find no work and initially commented that Hollywood was not

impressive. Small articles about premieres listed whom the stars came with and what they

wore and noted the “verbal bouquets” bestowed upon industry figures. Occasionally, a

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longer article featured all the elements: the beams of forty arc-lights fencing in the sky,

lean limousines purring at the head of the procession of stars, orchestra, grandstanders,

press photographers, and a radio announcer waiting at the theater’s entrance. Stars

approached and the announcer placed the microphone before them to capture their

uttering about being thrilled to be there and finding the premiere all quite breathless.19 It

seems quite possible that the fantasy for the public was that they could enter these motion

picture palaces on other days and “experience” them for themselves.

Along with the fantastic environments, certain depictions of the public portion

of the Hollywood semi-public parties used hints of polymorphous gender and sexual

behaviors to entice readers. The presence of stars such as Cary Grant and Randolph Scott

or Alla Nazimova at balls and premieres illustrated that people who stretched gender and

sexual norms attended the semi-public Hollywood party. Newspaper gossip columns

provided other hints. Readers learned that popular director William Desmond Taylor

attended the Mayfair party without a date. Actress Claire Windsor remembered the

situation surrounding Taylor. “Bill never seemed very interested in women. If you know

what I mean. Well, he left the party [Mayfair] with a man....” A few years later, after

someone murdered Taylor in his Hollywood bungalow, newspaper articles noted that

Taylor seemed to have little or no interest in women but made countless friends among

19 Sennett, 169-171; Gabler, 100-101; Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History o f Movie Presentation in the United States, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Melrose Gower, “Hollywood Bestows A Dowry of Ballyhoo On Its Celluloid Children,”RKO Press Release, 5 March 1938, in Premieres and Previews File, AMPAS; Harold A. C. Sintzenich, “Diary for 1927,” November 12, 1927 entry, Harold A. C. Sintzenich Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Erik Bamouw, “The Sintzenich Diaries,” The Quarterly Journal o f the Library o f Congress, (Summer/Fall, 1980), 321; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 9 January 1922, sec. B-3;Los Angeles Times, 23 November 1930, 30; 17 May 1936, sec. IV, 11; 4 February 1940, sec. IV, 8; New York Times, 6 December 1936, sec. XII, 9.

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men. Hollywood men declared Taylor was not known as a “woman’s man”--that he never

sought the company of women, and the town frequently heard that Taylor was

exclusively a “man’s man.”20

Other hints regarding the presence of people who pursued nontraditional

gender and sexual behavior at the public portion of Hollywood’s semi-public parties

emerged through the issue of dating. Like others in the US culture, Hollywood stars

experienced a significant turning point in emotional standards during the late 1910s. A

new approach to courtship emerged with the dating system, and love shifted from an

ethereal and spiritual attitude toward overt sexuality. Images from advice manuals and

popular culture depicted a male sexuality divorced from higher emotions, but the deeper

fulfillment of love became more elusive. For women, the emotional experience of

courtship lost much of the higher emotions and omateness associated with Victorian true

love. The dating system added new stages to courtship and multiplied the number of

partners, while playing a significant role in the erosion of the separate spheres system and

in promoting interaction between the sexes.21

20 Herbert Howe, “Hollywood in a High Hat,” Photoplay (August, 1925), 29; Stanley D. Kirkpatrick, A Cast o f Killers (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1986), 124; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 7 February 1922, sec. A-12; 9 February 1922, sec. A-12; 10 February 1922, sec. A-10;Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1936, sec. IV, 12; According to Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van Den Bark,American Thesaurus o f Slang (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Co., 1953), 360, the term, “man’s man” was used to describe an effeminate and homosexual man. 21 Kevin White, “The New Man and Early Twentieth Century Emotional Culture in the United States,” John C. Spurlock, “The Problem of Modem Married Love for Middle-Class Women,” and David R. Shumway, “Something Old, Something New: Romance and Marital Advice in the 1920s,” ed. An Emotional History o f the United States, Peter N. Steams and Jan Lewis (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 346-349; Christine Stanseil, City o f Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986),25-30,77; Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 10-22; Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 290-292.

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This dating system proved so important and pervasive that those actors and

actresses not involved in dating members of the opposite sex had their sexual interests

questioned. At one event, Lillian Harvey pushed the boundaries of dating when she

arrived with fashion designer Joseph Strassner and director Paul Martin and called them

“the harmless ones.” Harvey’s statement joked that these men were not threatening to her

romantically. This raised a variety of questions, such as why Harvey did not come with a

date, why these men were not romantic figures, and why these men came together?22

The descriptions of premieres occasionally featured stars who raised questions

about their sexual interests. Bom in Durango, Mexico, in 1899, romantic male star

Ramon Novarro moved to Los Angeles in 1915 and worked odd jobs before getting a

series of bit parts. M-G-M launched him in 1922 as a “Latin Lover,” and he continued

playing romantic leads until 1934. An article about the premiere of his movieDevil May

Care noted that Novarro was host de luxe to a distinguished group of guests. The article

discussed the gowns on actress Dolores Del Rio, Novarro’s co-star Dorothy Jordan, and

Novarro’s mother and sister, making it apparent that the star did not come with a date but

squired his mother and sibling. A star referred to as handsome and romantic who does not

bring a date to his own premiere when Hollywood offered a world of great possibilities

from which to choose raised numerous questions. This depiction of Novarro offered a

suggestion of his emotional and sexual interests. This knowledge about whom Novarro

brought to his premieres gave readers the enjoyment that came with the idea that they

possessed private knowledge about a favorite star. During the early 1930s, audience

22 Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1933, II, 6.

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interest in Latin lovers declined, M-G-M cast Novarro less effectively, and rumors about

the star’s personal habits swirled. Novarro made a personal appearance in New York for

the premiere ofThe Cat and the Fiddle (1934) without a date, and reporters caught up

with him amid a throng of female admirers as he planned to embark on a concert tour.

During this interview that made almost every newspaper in the country, reporters probed

about his personal life and Novarro offered audiences insight with a declaration that an

actor who marries is a fool. His comment reinforced the perception that M-G-M’s

romantic star enjoyed himself while maintaining a lack of interest in dating, marriage,

and women in general. By the late 1930s, pressures based upon Novarro’s unwillingness,

fading stardom, and personal problems resulted in his departure from the screen for a few

years.23

Premieres and parties served as a location for some stars to date and form a

couple despite their marital status. Gossip columns during the mid-1930s indicated that

actor Clark Gable attended parties with his wife, listing the Clark Gables among the other

names of attendees. However, sometimes only his name appeared among the attendees

and actress Carole Lombard, also appeared amid the list. Over the next year, gossip items

23 Donald Dewey,James Stewart (Atlanta: Turner Publishing Co., 1987), 181; Sennett, 50-51. The gossip columnists and studio publicists played this game to such a degree that contemporaries complained. Fabricated romances created when legmen (publicists) sees anything remotely romantic and reports back. “Spare us from Momoulian and Garbo, Niven and Loretta Young, [Jimmy] Stewart and Norma Shearer, Crawford and Cesar Romero, Irene Harvey and TayIor...Enough. Also ridiculous.” Unidentified clipping, Cinema: Hollywood Gossip folder, NYPL;Los Angeles Times, 16 April 1933, sec. II, 6; Allan R. Ellenberger, Ramon Novarro (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1999), 110-129; Mann, 227; The Philadelphia Ledger raised similar questions about Novarro’s bachelor status. “Romance still stays far away from the handsome Ramon.... [His] name is never linked with that of a woman.” “Ramon Novarro’s Christmas Spirit,” Silver Screen (December, 1931), 20, 66 argued that his devotion to his mother kept him from marrying. Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1931, sec. Ill, 1 has a reporter tell how Novarro paid no attention to the women admirers all around him. Los Angeles Examiner, 20 February 1934.

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noted that Gable and Lombard attended public affairs and places together. In 1938, at the

premiere and party for M-G-M’s movieMarie Antoinette (the studio that employed

Gable), Lombard accompanied Gable. A huge photograph showed the pair smiling as

they sat at a table. The caption noted, “Carole Lombard and Clark Gable had the best time

at the Trocadero. Always full of fun and careless of dignity, they are one of Hollywood’s

delightful couples. They can not marry because Gable’s wife has refused to divorce him.”

This caption provided readers with detailed information about these two stars’ intimate

lives and forged a bond between them and readers. An article in a fan magazine offered a

suggestion about how they could pursue their relationship and flout adultery laws and

moral conventions. The reporter did not vilify any of the parties involved and explained

that the romance was about something uncontrollable: love. The story distanced the

Gable-Lombard romance from glittering Hollywood and stated, “It’s just two people in

love, faced by a problem that might be yours.”24 The article expanded the identification

audience members felt with either or both of the stars by declaring the similarity between

the stars’ dilemma and what the reader could experience. The article made it clear that the

pair would eliminate their nontraditional position and marry one another as soon as

possible.

One rare depiction of both the public and private portions of the Hollywood

semi-public party took a condemnatory attitude toward its figures who pursued an

24 Los Angeles Times, 4 August 1935, III, 5; 5 January 1936, III, I; 23 February 1936, IV, 6; 31 May 1936, IV, 8; 8 November 1936, IV, 8; 26 September 1937, IV, 10; 31 December 1939, IV 4; “Movie “Celebs” Show Off At a Premiere and Party for Marie Antoinette,” Life, 25 July 1938, 44 in Premieres and Previews File, AMPAS; Edward Doherty, “Can the Gable-Lombard Love Story Have a Happy Ending?” in Photoplay Treasury, ed. Barbara Gelman, (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1972).

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effusive, secret affair. Disgruntled with his experience as a screenwriter, novelist John

Dos Passos expressed a satirical perspective of the motion picture industry Thein Big

Money (1936). Dos Passos criticized the idolization and imitation of the industry’s

romantic stars. He also critiqued the carnival of greed and corruption and the pleasure

worlds of New York, Detroit, Hollywood, and Miami. The book, which received rave

reviews and sold very well for a Dos Passos novel, illustrated one set of problems with

Hollywood during a party scene after a premiere. Up-and-coming actress Margo Dowling

went with director Sam Margolies to an opening at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and

through the beating glare of lights and eyes, she and co-star Rodney Cathcart talked about

their new picture and association with Sam Margolies. After dining at a restaurant,

Margolies brought his stars home to dine at his apartment and presented them with a feast

before leaving them sitting on the couch. Cathcart took off his coat and vest, then reached

over and lifted Margo onto his knee. Cathcart kissed Dowling and his hands explored

under her dress. After protesting, Dowling declared, “Oh, hell, I don’t give a damn.” Both

drank more champagne then Cathcart jumped at her. She fell on the couch with his arms

crushing her.25 This image informed readers that at the private portions of Hollywood

semi-public parties unmarried stars engaged in sexual liaisons. The image revealed that

Hollywood parties were places where stars who built up sexual tension while filming a

motion picture together could release that passion. The representation illuminated that the

25 Alfred Kazin, “Dos Passos and the 'Lost Generation,’” ed. Allen Belkind, Dos Passos. the Critics and the Writer's Intention (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), 15-19; Townsend Ludington, John Dos Passos: A Twentieth Century Odyssey (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), 330-331, 352-358; John Dos Passos, The Big Money 10ed., (New York: New Amsterdam Library, 1989), 426-430.

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fiancee of the female star knew this so he set up the date at the premiere to promote

Dowling’s career then disappeared at the party for awhile so that the stars had time to be

together.

Dos Passos’s depiction of both portions of the semi-public party illuminated

several of his difficulties with Hollywood. The public portion, a premiere, illustrated the

staged nature of the romantic stars’ entries into the theater and the “empty” idolization of

those who waited in the grandstands to watch and listen to the stars. The private party,

illustrated that a secret love existed within Hollywood. Behind the closed doors of the

private party co-stars could engage in a secret affair. The male romantic lead lost all

manner of gentlemanliness as his drives turned him into a bully. The female star engaged

in “sex” despite being technically married to one man and days away from marrying

another. Despite the novelist’s belief that the presence of this type of emotional behavior

corrupted relationships in the motion picture industry, neither of the figures who stretched

the boundaries of gender and sexual behavior experienced problems in Hollywood

because of their love. While Cathcart continued behaving similarly, Dowling married her

successful director and continued her career. The director knew of the affair and still

married Dowling because in Hollywood being sexually exclusive with one another did

not form the central facet of their relationship. Their relationship centered on success in

Hollywood.

The reviewers indicated that readers did not necessarily form negative

opinions regarding either of the Hollywood stars’ actions. Two reviewers did not deem

Cathcart worthy of mention. Each expressed qualified support for Dowling without

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comment upon Dowling’s sexual activity with her co-star. Her marriage to the director

prompted one reviewer to express pleasure that Dowling at least escaped from her first

husband, while the other noted Dowling’s career-climbing ways but also her virtues, and

a core of softness.26 This comment suggests that, according to this observer, Margo

Dowling might have transgressed sexual boundaries but did not transgress gender

boundaries.

The polymorphous images associated the Hollywood semi-public parties with

private knowledge about celebrities, particularly, the secret: sexuality. The images offered

audience members glimpses of the reputed gender and sexual behaviors of motion picture

industry celebrities. The provision of this secret knowledge reinforced the sense of

intimacy that audience members believed they shared with these notables. This sparked

an increased interest in the celebrities and the industry on the part of these audiences. The

presence of people who defied traditional gender and sexual boundaries at the public

portions of the Hollywood semi-public party suggested that these affairs served as

locations for whoopee. The voracious love making at the private portion of these parties

depicted in The Big Money fueled the sense that Hollywood parties offered industry

people opportunities to have sex and gave sex an exotic appeal because of the debauched

behavior. Dos Passos’s representation of the “after parties” offered insight into the

significant role private affairs played in forming the Hollywood public party's reputation.

The representation from The Big Money illuminated the differences between

the public and the private Hollywood parties. While the public Hollywood parties

26 “A Private Historian,” Time, v. 28, no. 7, August 10, 1936, 51 \ New York Times, August 16,

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occurred within hotel ballrooms and theaters, the private affairs happened within the

bungalows and houses o f Hollywood figures, particularly its executives and biggest stars.

The Hollywood public had significantly less opportunity to see the Hollywood figures

before they entered the Hollywood private party in the flesh. However, as Lary May

argued, Hollywood sold the leisure life to the burgeoning consumer society and private

parties contained that enjoyment and pleasure.27 Hollywood insiders understood the value

of promoting its parties and entertainment-reporting organizations and Hollywood

novelists presented images of private-party leisure to their audiences. The clues about the

"whoopee," conjugal relations according to Cole Porter’s song “Makin’ Whoopee,” in

these images made them appear to present secret knowledge and excitement to the

audiences.

1936, VI, 2. 27 Lary May,Screening Out the Past: The Birth o f Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

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THE PRIVATE HOLLYWOOD PARTY:

SECRET ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE

Bonnie’s friend Anita met a writer who will take them to a party. It was at a beach house where this director holds bathing and other parties. All kinds of pawing occurred after enormous amounts of great food and drink. ...[When] Bonnie ran away as Tom Muro himself put a hand on her shoulder [Publicity director] Strickland tells Bonnie to come across and she’ll get into pictures.1

The imagery from the novel Laughter Limited suggested that even more than

the nightlife locales and Hollywood premieres, Hollywood private parties offered movie

stars and their guests places where they could fulfill all their desires. These images of

private parties expressed the celebrity figure’s sexuality more directly than the references

in the Hollywood public parties. Audience members certainly attended their own parties.

However, Hollywood novels, movies, and entertainment reporting articles spurred the

public to imagine that they never experienced the splendor, wildness, and unorthodox

people that flourished at the private parties held in Santa Monica bungalows, the famous

places along Malibu Beach,2 or the Hollywood star homes described in the next chapter.

' Nina Putnam, Laughter Limited (Sew York: George Duran Co., 1922), 115-123. 2 Los Angeles Times, 4 June 1933, II, 3. Home owners included directors John Stahl, David Butler, William Le Baron, and Frank Capra, actors Alexander Kirkland, George Raft, Norman Foster, Stephen Gooson, and studio executives Jack Warner and Bud Schulberg.

121

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As the woman who wanted to be a star and readers of the novel learned, Hollywood

insiders’ appetites included activities that extended beyond traditional gender and sexual

roles. Many of the men in the motion picture industry acted on their physical and

emotional desires and engaged in sexual activities. Single women interested in becoming

stars, such as Bonnie and Anita, had to violate the culture’s gender and sexual norms.

Private Parties: Wit and Whoopee Without Restraint

Many media representations of private parties in individuals’ homes depicted

these affairs in more exciting and racy terms that other types of parties. Hollywood

representations used the disclosure of secret nontraditional love to thrill readers and make

them believe that they knew intimate details about their favorite stars. These images

distinguished the Hollywood private party from others depicted in the media. However,

the humor associated with this behavior in images from the early 1930s declined over the

decade because of the increasing expectations about following the new romantic

standards.

The society pages of newspapers most often represented private parties as tea

and card game gatherings and dinners among the social elite of the local area. During the

late nineteenth century, these items featured discussions of the people present and the

decoration of the houses, along with numerous courses of food offered. Occasionally,

these representations were spectacular, such as Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish’s 100-person dinner

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on solid gold dinner service, or Mrs. Fish’s dinner party for dogs. Routine stories in the

early twentieth-century metropolitan dailies noted the pretty decorations of flowers and

greens and catalogued the guests of honor and other attendees. Sometimes, pieces also

noted that a musical performance or playlet entertained the invitees after they had

partaken of the food. While sensationalist newspapers generally offered similar coverage,

suggestions of boundary transgressions appeared occasionally. “There’s a sad story going

the rounds about a certain manly man with a lady-like nickname not the lady-like man

with the manly name who has the same surname.” Although this representation

concentrated upon the “manly man,” it acknowledged the existence of a person who

transgressed gender norms amid the society folk and their rounds of private affairs. The

representation also provided hints for readers to guess at each man’s identity. Despite the

mention, readers did not leam the person’s name or anything about the subjects’ attitudes,

behaviors, or character.3

This representation featured very important differences with Hollywood’s

polymorphous images. This society image did not provide a name for the transgressive

figure let alone focus upon a figure with whom audiences had developed a sense of

intimacy. The image required readers to possess a large degree of inside information

about society to know the peoples’ identities rather than providing the opportunity to

3 Mary Cable, Top Drawer: American High Society from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties (New York: Atheneum, 1984), 136-140; Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1912, sec. Ill, 3; Los Angeles Evening Herald , 15 February 1903, sec. Ill, I.

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acquire the knowledge about the private activity with the one reading. Thus, this

representation of society denied most audiences the special knowledge about their

members’ private lives.

Despite increased coverage of society in every type of newspaper after World

War One, depictions of private parties did not become racier or more risque. Descriptions

of home weddings, card parties, and other events continued to include similar phrases,

such as “handsomely-appointed,” “delightful party,” and “gorgeous flowers.” Even the

Hearst tabloid’s “Thru Eyes Gadabout,” column generally contained announcements of

weddings, new babies, as well as sightings of societal figures while offering few details

about gender and sexual behaviors.

Magazine representations of parties added occasional peaks “inside” the

parties that showed more of the activities of the people at these affairs. However, they did

not include the presentation of people who stretched gender and sexual boundaries.

Several articles offered brief glimpses at parties only to illustrate the author’s suggestions

about how to make the readers’ parties successful. One example from the first decade of

the twentieth century advised about the food and drinks to serve and offered suggestions

about decorations, including placing Japanese lanterns on the verandah for a great garden

party. By the early 1920s, while garden decor remained important, the main focus of

these advice articles switched from serving food to preparing invitations and creating

dancing space or a location for a tennis tournament. Another party advice article

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suggested a theme party, such as acting out a movie or acting as if guests were foreign

dignitaries.4

Representations revealed that early twentieth century private parties featured

enormous amounts of food and bland dinner conversation. Conversations excluded

political and religious controversy, money, servants, gossip, and sex as permissible

subjects and caustic wit as a style of conversation. Post-World War One parties began to

include profanity as a style and “degeneracy” as a topic. While some partiers at private

affairs discussed homosexuality, the disgust many dinners showed with the topic

suggested that people who engaged in transgressive behaviors did not attend. Private

parties were restricted affairs that occurred within a person’s sanctuary, a place where

conversations excluded much of what occurred in the outside, public world.5

Many novelists who focused upon both “The Four Hundred” and Cafe

societies depicted private parties in their works. These writers highlighted the beautiful

surroundings against the constraints that society placed upon the actions and thoughts of

its party attendees. Statesman John Hay recalled parties in provincial cities during the

1880s as three sets of people clustered into three separate areas of the party. While

4 Josephine Grenier, “Garden Party,”Harper's Bazaar 37(August, 1903), 733-735; Nathalie Schenck, “Everybody enjoys a garden party,”Ladies Home Journal (June, 1921), 74; Claire Wallis, “A Valentine Party in Five Reels,” Ladies Home Journal (February, 1921), 144; Leah F. Collins, “An Ellis Island Party,” Pictorial Review, 30 (May, 1929), 55; Elaine, “A Spanish Party for Gay Madrid,”Good Housekeeping 77 (March, 1924), 90; Phyllis Pulliam, “The Progressive Dinner Party,” Good Housekeeping 88 (May, 1929), 96; Elaine, “Famous Folks Valentine Party,” Good Housekeeping 100 (February, 1935), 110. 5 Sophie Kerr, “Twenty Years of Dinner Parties,”Saturday Evening Post (September 21, 1935), 30; Cable, 112.

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women drew a little entertainment from gossip as they sat in the living rooms, men

recounted their everyday affairs to one another in dens, and the young clustered together

in little knots. Novelist Henry James emphasized the perfection of the settings and service

at an early tum-of-the-century dinner party.6

A few novelists presented figures at private parties who defied gender or

sexual norms at great cost to themselves. For Edith Wharton in The House o f Mirth,

expectations about the woman’s role in society forced women to display clothes and

jewelry at parties that cost them a great deal financially. This cost exacted an emotional

toll, pushing many women into unhappy marriages. The parties served as places where

women appeared on display in order to attract marriage partners of appropriate wealth

and standing. Wharton’s character Lily Barth’s selectiveness about marriage partners and

her “too open” display of her bodice during a tableaux at a party created the appearance

that she had lost her sexual propriety. This perception led to her increased difficulty in

fulfilling her role as a woman. Barth’s inability to function successfully within the gender

and sexual norms of elite society eventually led to her death.7

After World War One, private parties in novels featured Cafe society and

theatrical figures than people who composed elite society’s “Four Hundred.” Despite

describing the theatrical world, most of the characters did not transgress gender and

6 John Hay, The Bread-Winners, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883), cited in Cable, 107; Francis Biddle, The Llanfear Pattern, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), cited in Cable, 108, 113. Many of Janies’ novels included parties that he depicted similarly. 7 Edith Wharton, The House o f Mirth (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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sexual boundaries. Characters often appeared as without grace or value, as heavy drinkers

who exhibited little compassion or concern. When figures who expressed desires

appeared, they received the author’s condemnation. In novelist’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe

Great Gatsby (1925), party host Jay Gatsby stepped outside these boundaries by coveting

a married woman and died to protect her. Mabel, a woman who committed adultery, met

a grisly death. Author Thomas Wolfe’s The Party at Jack’s (1940) roundly condemned

the theatrical and Wall Street figures who attended a party within an elegant New York

City apartment on Fifth Avenue. Wolfe viewed his characters’ actions and attitudes as the

degradation that capitalist society promoted. Several characters crossed sexual and gender

boundaries as a result of their decadence and boredom with all the elements of life.

Whether a sculptor who made crudely aggressive sexual advances to all the women or a

scandalous socialite who could not speak a complete sentence, guests appeared as

shallow, talentless, and decadent. Despite negative depictions of one male and one female

homosexual character at the party, the editors of the magazine that serialized the story and

the editor of You Can't Take It With You (the novel in which the story appeared) removed

them. This removal signaled that readers interested in Wall Street and Broadway parties

could or would not accept the characters’ presence and that the editors might not have

been able to accept the character themselves. Thus, in one of the rare instances in which

an author of a non-Hollywood novel included homosexual characters at a party, the

characters were removed before publication.8

8 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 1925 repmt. (New York: Banton, 1974); Thomas Wolfe, The Party at Jack's, ed. Suzanne Stutman and John L. Idol Jr. (Chapel Hill: University o f North Carolina,

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Private parties played the largest role in building the mystique of the wild,

whoopee-filled Hollywood party. Hollywood people knew that these parties played a role

in the promotion of the business and that they would appear in the media. The parties

occurred within the mansions and beach houses of the industry elite, under canapes and

tents on their sprawling estates, and across entire roller rinks and amusements parks.

Parties at the mansions featured white-jacketed boys with trays and a large orchestra

motivating everyone to fill the dance floor. Estate grounds contained a wooden dance

floor, and lanterns hung to create paths around the yards. Some parties presented the

unrestrained wit and sophistication of Hollywood. Guests at producer Arthur Homblow

Jr./s soirees including the worldly and witty Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester,

displayed sophistication and verbal dexterity. Edgar Allan Woolf, one of the wits of the

screen colony, staged novel dinners and performed his vaunted mimicry of notables.

Gossip columns fueled this perception with descriptions of parties that featured important

artists and writers, such as the battle of wisecracks at Zoe Akins’s party between the host

and guest William Haines. Other private affairs forged a sense that Hollywood parties had

amazing and exciting atmospheres. William Randolph Hearst’s 74th birthday party

featured a circus, complete with a carousel. Carole Lombard staged an affair over the

entire Venice Pier Amusement Park, and the stars reveled in joy as their sports clothing

1995), v-xxiii; 139-200; Robert S. Kennedy,The Window o f Memory: The Literary Career o f Thomas Wolfe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1962), 345-354.

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revealed sensuous legs and shapely bodices. Newspaper cinema society columns

described the whirling fun at roller rinks.9

Private parties served as the centerpiece in the Hollywood party’s wild and

whoopee reputation. At Dagmar Godowsky’s baby party, Nazimova appeared in a diaper

pinned with a cluster of cherries. Director Tay Garnett held parties at his aptly named

Hangover House, while character actor Frank Morgan christened a room during a garden

party at his house as the whoopee room. Each name suggested reckless abandon in the

pursuit of the pleasures of superior drink, verbal jousting, and the flesh. Anita Loos

realized how far Hollywood advanced from its naive beginnings after a party at Tallulah

Bankhead’s because of the actress’ enormous vitality, kindness, generosity, wit and that

she was a genuinely naughty girl. “She adored perversity for its own sake and only

required that...it had to be mixed with fantasy and wit.” The suggestion of sexuality at

Hollywood parties appeared in the media accounts as well. A gossip item described the

attendees at makeup department head Ernst Westmore’s swimming party as scantily clad.

Most notoriously, the trials of Fatty Arbuckle during the early 1920s made the

Hollywood private party a sight of sexual escapades and death.10

9 Los Angeles Times, 29 December 1935, sec. IV, 2; 30 August 1936, sec. IV, 8; 7 October 1934, sec. II, 1; 16 August 1936, sec. Ill, 2; 2 July 1939, sec. Ill, 2; Myma Loy and James Kotsilibas- David, Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 90-96; “A Stitch in Big Time,” and unidentified clipping of 3 May 1933 in Woolf: Edgar. Allan Clipping, NYPL; Aljean Harmetz,The Making o f The Wizard o f Oz (New York: Delta, 1977), 46-47; Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1979), 234-235; Howe, “Hollywood in a High Hat,” 29-30. 10 Finch and Rosenkrantz, 234; Tay Garnett, with Fredda Dudley Balling,Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973), 206; Los Angeles Times, 25 August 1935, sec. Ill, 9; 25 August 1935, sec. Ill, 9; “January 2nd,” Anita Loos Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, Mugar Library, BU The three trials received detailed coverage in metropolitan dailies from late 1921 through 1922. The scandal is discussed in Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age o f the

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Depictions of Hollywood private parties linked them with the private gender

and sexual behavior to a much greater extent than other types of parties. This accentuated

the process of audiences learning the names and sexual interests of these romantic stars

who defied conventional norms and their enjoyment over receiving information about the

love making of Republic’s most romantic characters. This reinforced for audience

members that they had special knowledge about these celebrities and shared a sense of

intimacy with them. These images made the Hollywood private parties distinctly different

from other private affairs because they offered glimpses into the private world of

celebrity and sexuality. The images enabled audiences to perceive that they shared an

enhanced “closeness” to Hollywood celebrities and the decadence of the figures’

sexuality granted both a wildness and an exoticism to the Hollywood private party.

Hollywood private parties offered Hollywood’s stars a location where they

could pursue their love interests. This enabled those figures who held nontraditional

interests to defy the cultural romantic standards of dating and the companionate marriage.

As noted earlier, some stars used the semi-public parties as an opportunity to exercise

their unwillingness to follow dating’s requirements. The Hollywood private party offered

a greater variety of stars the sense of privacy and secrecy that they needed to exercise

their unwillingness to follow the romantic standards emerging in the era.

One of the few movies about Hollywood private parties, the musical comedy

Hollywood Party (M-G-M, 1934), linked these gatherings with polymorphous behaviors

among industry figures. A song and a joke teased spectators with insider knowledge

Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. Vol. 3, History o f the American Cinema, ed. Charles Harpole (New

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about the private affairs that reportedly occurred behind the closed doors o f a star’s home.

The movie, initially conceived of as a revue, underwent a variety of idea and personnel

changes, including having four directors at the helm. Many of the critics noted the

inconsistencies and found the comedy more than a little disappointing. Box office returns

revealed that Hollywood Party achieved moderate success.11

Hollywood Party featured Jimmy Durante as Schnarzan, a star who threw a

large industry party in order to snare the lions he needed to make his next movie more

convincing. The announcement of the affair stirred much preparation among the stars

who would attend and the media covering the entrance. The movie used the telephone

switchboard operators who handled the barrage of calls being made throughout the

industry to enter the world of movie people preparing for a private party.

Through a visual montage and the Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart song

“Hollywood Party,” the movie offered insight into the secret world o f Hollywood parties.

Operators listened to the conversations and finished answering calls. The operators

proceeded to assure the spectators in the movie theaters that they were getting the inside

news on the happeaings within this secret world, as they exclaimed: “This is our dish.”

The operators sang that everyone was going to the party, then followed with a chorus that

urged the spectators to get into the Hollywood party, where nobody would sleep tonight.

Lyrics of the second stanza informed viewers that Hollywood partiers, “Bring along your

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990). 11 New York Times, 26 May 1934, 12; Variety, 29 May 1934, 12; Variety, 29 May 1934, 9, 11; 5 June 1934, 9, 10; 12 June 1934, 8-10. With the help of an advertising campaign, the movie did a big SI 7,500 in New York City and completed its second week with an okay box office return. The movie generated good trade from cities including Cincinnati, and San Francisco. Although Hollywood Party's

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girl, and go home with someone else’s. Forget about your girl, because she’s going to do

all right.” After a Busby Berkeley-like dance scene with the operators whirling on a dais,

the montage showed people bathing, dressing elegantly, then dancing and romancing at a

party. Lyrics reinforced these impressions. “All the minks and sables, wines with labels,

Garbos-Gables greet you... All the girls wear ermine coats they got from men, but they

have to give them back again. So, let the laughter spring out, music bring out, Satan sing

out, ‘Yeah man,’ at that crashing, furniture-smashing Hollywood party. Get out, get out,

get in it.”12 The song and montage depicted the Hollywood private party as an exciting,

glamorous, romantic, and sexy event. These items made viewers believe that they were

receiving secret insight into the Hollywood world, increasing the titillation component.

The lyrics informed listeners that the partygoers expressed emotions and that Satan

supported, demonstrating the debauched nature of the private Hollywood party.

The scene shifted to the party and reinforced the description of private parties

advanced in the song. The movie established the improbable situation of placing a radio

announcer at a Hollywood private party, creating a situation similar to the public portion

of a premiere. The announcer standing at the entrance to Durante’s mansion convinced

actor Robert Young to comment to the radio audience as industry personalities made their

way inside. Young gave the following monologue:

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, Is this a party? You should see them pouring in with boofy looks and their big blue eyes. Gorgeous girls! Brunettes who once were blondes. Blondes who were once brunettes. Hello, [he nods to a couple walking past]. And here comes a little platinum. Hello, Pansy, [he says as he steps

earnings of S9,000 in Chicago qualified it for only a one-week stint, this proved better than the movie’s light business in Kansas City, the weak earnings in Indianapolis, and the brutal return from Pittsburgh. 12 Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, “Hollywood Party,”Hollywood Party (M-G-M, 1934).

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away from the microphone to greet a female walking past. He rushed back to the microphone.]. That was a girl, not a man.13

These comments highlighted the number and variety of manufactured looks

and behaviors in Hollywood. Young’s comments preceding the pansy reference focused

upon the hair color of the women entering the party. In Hollywood, women used dye and

makeup to create hair styles and change facial shapes. The changes illustrated that, in

Hollywood, women, especially actresses, adapted their femininity to suit their purposes.

Thus, femininity was not a natural item but something performed. Similarly, male actors

could develop a set of behaviors and looks so that people would perceive them as

masculine. Off-screen, particularly at industry parties, these performers could adopt a

different set of behaviors and act less masculine and challenge gender norms by acting

like “pansies.”14

Young’s comments reinforced the song’s suggestion that the Hollywood party

invited crossing sexual boundaries. The punchline centered on the slang term “pansy,”

meaning homosexual. Young’s denial that the person he spoke to was a homosexual

implied that homosexuals existed in the industry. The joke suggested that this possibility

already existed in the fictitious radio audiences’ minds because he needed to explain that

the person who walked in was not a homosexual. The fictitious radio audience and the

movie’s real audience learned that attendees Jimmy Durante’s party, and the parties of

13 Hollywood Party (M-G-M, 1934). This motion picture is available on video. The script of the motion picture is in the M-G-M Script Collection, at the Cinema and Television Library, University of Southern California. 14 This view of the flexible and consciously adopted nature of femininity appeared in contemporary psychological literature in Joan Riviere’s 1929 essay, “Womanliness as Masquerade.” This psychologist argues that femininity is an act that a woman can adopt at will. Even the most masculine of

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other important motion picture celebrities, might engage in acting pansyish through

defying societal gender or sexual norms. Indeed, this scene and the song revealed that the

private Hollywood parties provided a space for engaging in pansexuality.15 Both scenes

from the movie suggested that they allowed audiences in on this secret knowledge about

Hollywood parties, making that knowledge seem more valuable and exciting. Performers,

industry executives, and other big names and hopefuls able to obtain an invitation could

swap romantic and sexual interests, kick up their heels, and express nontraditional gender

behaviors and interests.

The party at the house represented Hollywood’s attempt to display its

superiority to another important cultural medium of the era, the radio. Young played a

radio announcer who presented the Hollywood party event to the millions of radio

listeners. However, this scene revealed the limitations of the radio. Because the medium

lacked a visual element the audience only learned what the announcer chose to tell them

and that the announcer’s words could mislead them. The scene demonstrated that

Hollywood’s images of its parties were more truthful than radios because they took

audience members “inside” and gave them audio and visual access.

These images suggested that Hollywood private parties posed dangers to the

two emerging forms of romance. The presence of effeminate males who had homosexual

interests obviously disrupted the dating system. The availability of dating partners

women can act the feminine role when they choose. This suggests that gender is a nature that is flexible and can be consciously adapted. ,s The movie might have been even more disruptive of traditional romantic standards. The Studio Relations Committee mandated that the producing studio, M-G-M, eliminate four sexually suggestive lines from the script. Letter James Wingate to Mannix of September 5, 1933,Hollywood Party MPP, AMPAS.

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provided romantic actors and others with little incentive to accept the pratfalls associated

with any type of long-term relationship. This hampered Hollywood figures’ abilities to

follow the emerging style for marriage, the companionate marriage. This system

emphasized personal pleasure and satisfaction as characteristics of marriage rather than

duty and spiritual union. Advocates for the system asserted the healthiness of sexual

expression apart from procreative intentions and the existence of a strong female sexual

desire in an effort to promote a more content family life.16 The effusive emotions that

made the Hollywood party appear an exciting place of debauched and deleterious

behaviors challenged U.S. cultural understanding of sexuality occurring between married

partners only and positioned Hollywood in an orbit all its own.

Other Hollywood insiders noted the presence of romantic stars at private

parties and bound their effusive polymorphous love to secret knowledge of the “real”

Hollywood. Author Tamar Lane invited readers into the inner sanctum of a Hollywood

party in his novelHey Diddle Diddle (1932). The author of several nonfiction books on

16 John D’Emilio and Estelle Friedman, Intimate Matters: A History o f Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 265-266; Ellen Rothman, Hands & Hearts: A History o f Courtship in America (New York: Basic Books, 1984). A variety of cultural changes occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that eroded separate spheres as the ideology governing marriage. These changes included the transition from a predominantly rural to a majority urban population influenced the erosion in two ways. The increase in commercial activities that promoted heterosocial rather than homosocial groupings and the increased public political, social, and cultural influence o f women and the changes in perspectives of the public welfare and medical communities regarding homosociality. The term is rooted in images, such as the suburban father who emphasized companionship with his wife and spent more time with his children during the 1880s. Margaret Marsh, “Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915,” Meanings for Manhood: The Construction o f Masculinity in Victorian America ed. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 111-115. Ben Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, The Companionate Marriage (New York, 1927) vii-viii, cited in D’Emilio and Friedman, 266; Cott, 156. These educators, psychiatrists, and social workers advocated this system to reform problems they saw as divorce and other “deleterious” activities arose across the nation. The companionate marriage reform provided a number of advantages, particularly to heterosexually-oriented

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film appreciation and the people of the film colony, Lane mixed the names of living stars

with his fictional characters only in this scene.17 This decision provided readers with the

perception that they gained knowledge of how a “real” Hollywood party functioned. This

scene informed them that bohemian sexual types who talked about their secret and

effusive love interests fit within the Hollywood party milieu.

Chatting together in a group in the comer were Raymond Cauldwell, William Pearson and Rudolph Norman, famous throughout the world as romantic heart- breakers, but the fair sex seemed to hold no attraction for them off the screen— they appeared always far more interested in one another. It was probably fortunate that their female film admirers could not listen in on their conversation.18

These romantic stars enjoyed success in the motion picture industry

professional and leisure circles. The image informed readers that they had many fans

suggesting that they were all top actors and each received top billing, earned large

salaries, and owned the finest in clothing, housing, and automobiles. The representation

of the party featured the names of real big-name stars of the era, suggesting that this was

an important affair. Their attendance at this important affair and the use of the word

“always” in assessing their party behavior indicated that these heartthrobs regularly

appeared in the Hollywood’s party scene. The actors’ great interest in one another

presumably arose from their ability to talk highly emotionally, expressively, and deeply

with one another. This emotional involvement helped preclude each man from pursuing

males, while creating disadvantages, particularly for those women who derived great pleasure from their homosocial bonds. 17 Nancy Brooker-Bowers, The Hollywood Novel And Other Novels About Film, 1912-1982 (Garland Publishing Inc., 1985), 52. 18 Tamar Lane, Hey Diddle Diddle (New York: The Adelphi Press, 1932), 140.

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the gender and sexual normative behaviors of heterosexual dating and the companionate

marriage.

These emotions also aided them in performing as male romantic idols on

screen. Their characters presented the courtly manners, poetic language, and expressions

o f the soul associated with the courtship romance ideal. This older romantic style, along

with the men’s handsome faces, accounted for their popularity, especially among

women.19 Hence the representation noted that it was probably fortunate that the women

fans did not know the details of these mens’ off-screen lives or they might lose their fan

base. However, as readers reached the end of the description of these actors, Lane

returned the readers’ attention back to the issue of secret knowledge. The author

presented these three actors after readers had met many other partygoers, providing

readers with the feeling that they were in the midst of this private Hollywood affair

before they saw the trio. The image prompted readers to guess who the real-life

counterparts of these fictional romantic actors might be. The image fueled readers' belief

that they knew about these Hollywood figures’ secret nontraditional sexual interests

expressed with ease while at Hollywood private parties.

19 Many popular romantic male actors, including Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, and Robert Taylor raised suspicions about their gender and sexual activities and interests. Robert Taylor faced a series of questions about his masculinity after a female reporter sat on his lap and said she felt little excitement. Reporters and crowds followed the actor as he crossed the country on his way to filmingA Yank at Oxford in England. While one reporter questioned Taylor’s manliness quotient by asking the actor if he had hair on his chest, other reports emphasized that Taylor spurred more questioning when he chose protecting his brown hat and tweed coat over meeting the mostly female crowd waiting for him to detrain in Chicago. The largely female crowd in New York City asked Taylor questions, including, “Do you think you are beautiful?” and, “What do you think of the physical side of marriage?” Bosley Crowther,The Lion's share: the story o f an entertainment empire (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957), 247; Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1937. 2; 20 August 1937, 2. These stars raised questions inside the industry also. In Jane Allen’s (Sylvia Schulman, secretary for David O. Selznick ) novel, / Lost My Girlish Laughter Bruce Andres, a new actor, received the label romantic pansy despite doing nothing to provoke it.

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Gossip columns regularly described industry private parties and noted who

attended. These pieces made Hollywood private parties public and linked industry figures

together in actual and purported romantic couplings on the basis o f their arriving at these

parties together. This process of linking romantic activity to the public presentation of

Hollywood private parties brought these images back into the private area. The male

portion of “America’s Sweethearts,” Nelson Eddy attempted to live in Hollywood

similarly to the male romantic figures in these novels. Bom in Rhode Island in 1901,

Eddy worked in Philadelphia as a switchboard operator and reporter before winning a

competition to join the Civic Opera in 1922. After success in concerts and on radio, M-G-

M signed him to a motion picture contract in 1933. While Eddy engaged in old-fashioned

courtship with Jeannette MacDonald in movies between 1935 and 1942, he refused to

date women off-screen at Hollywood parties for the first few years. Eventually, the studio

perceived that his public display of romantic non-conformity invited a publicity backlash

and successfully forced Eddy to marry.20

The manner in which Eddy attended Hollywood private parties, as reported in

the cinema society pages of newspapers and fan magazines shaped his image as a holder

of non-conformist sexual interests. Unlike other stars whose names in representations of

private parties often came paired with dates, representations o f Eddy within these

columns did not link his name with that of a starlet or actress. These images provided

20 Henry Cory Baxter, “A Voice, a Phonograph and BRAINS,”Silver Screen (May, 1935), 56; Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), 373.

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readers with a glimpse into Eddy’s private life, offering them the information that the star

frequently attended parties with Isabella Eddy, his mother. The romantic star also gave

parties. His Hollywood parties were known for being a very democratic assembly of

musicians, writers, photographers, stars, and publicity men. This broad guest list

represented people working in a variety of studio occupations, including positions with

the reputation of having a predominantly homosexual male composition. Even among

long-term Hollywood community members, the private parties hosted by men who

engaged in nontraditional sexual activities, such as Cole Porter, made the Hollywood

party reputation. These were places where sophistication existed, with elegant and

socialite attendees who exchanged unrestrained wit. Hollywood parties redefined the

home to a place of fun and joy rather than one of decorum and restraint.21

These private party images depicted Eddy’s lack of dating and created the

impression that this handsome man had little interest in women. Fan magazine pieces

observed that the actor entranced studio secretaries and typists when he entered the

studio offices. The reporters noted that other women expressed the desire to get to know

him. Thus, readers of these pieces could conclude that Eddy’s lack of dating did not result

from his finding few women interested in dating him. Eddy sincerely and almost

belligerently pronounced that would never marry. This, the romantic star argued, was

why he figured he should not date.22 Eddy tried to offer this pragmatic answer for his

nontraditional romantic behavior. However, this still left reporters and readers puzzled

21 Los Angeles Times, 10 October 1934, sec. II, 3; Anita Loos Collection, Box 1, Folder 12, Mugar Library, BU. “ Helen Fay Ludlam, “The Romantic Nelson Eddy,”Silver Screen (July, 1936), 26, 55.

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over the reason the romantic star would not want to become involved in a love

relationship and follow the traditional pattern of dating and marriage.

These representations of Eddy’s nontraditional sexual interests at private

parties spurred reporters to continue to offer solutions to the mystery of Eddy’s romantic

behavior and present this secret to their readers. It did not emerge because Eddy disliked

people. One reporter noted that to her surprise as many men as women attended his

signing engagements and that the effusive romantic actor always clowned around with

members of his audience before a broadcast began.23 An article on the relationships

between mothers and single motion picture performers offered what had become the

typical potential answer for Nelson Eddy’s behavior. The reporter observed that:

Isabel Eidy, mother of girl-shy Nelson, is another of these Hollywood mothers said to be behind the bachelorhood of her 36-year-old son. She runs his house, protects him from unwelcomed feminine visitors, giving Nelson all of the comforts and none of the drawbacks of a wife-run domicile.24

This depiction of Eddy suggests that the actor had an “unnatural” relationship

with his mother. Phrases, including “his mother protects him” and “girl-shy,” depicted the

baritone as bound to his mother. This made him appear to be a classic case of Freud’s

view of the homosexual, which had become popularized in the 1920s and 1930s. A fan

magazine ran an article favorable to the actor that attempted to explain the actor's

behavior regarding dating and romance. “Too many have typed their message to the

world that Nelson Eddy’s abiding loyalty to a mother who has done everything in the

world for him amounts to that suggestive word: fixation....” The reporter observed the

23 Ibid, 64. 24 Los Angeles Times, 9 May 1937, sec. Ill, 1.

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effusive attachment between mother and son but explained this connection as the result of

a long, hard life together and interpreted it as beautiful and sweet. He viewed their

attending the exciting and glamorous Hollywood parties together as the sharing of the

positive portions of their lives as the mother and son had shared her divorce and the

subsequent difficult times.25

Despite this characterization from these reporters, representations of Eddy

revealed that he continued to attend Hollywood parties. Industry co-workers and other

friends included Eddy [and his mother] in the larger community. As with the trio of male

heartthrobs from the novel Hey Diddle Diddle, Nelson Eddy attended many important

Hollywood parties. Like the heartthrobs, the representations of Eddy showed him

attending parties and finding that they offered a space where he could express his

nontraditional sexual interests and not follow the dating system.26 These images provided

information about Eddy and fueled such interest among audiences and reporters that they

sparked an increased search for knowledge about the star’s private activities.

25 Howard Sharpe, “The Private Life of Nelson Eddy,”Photoplay 50 (August, 1936), 86. 26 Los Angeles Times, 30 January 1937, sec. IV, 11; 29 December 1935, sec. IV, 2. Actor Basil Rathbone (known for playing Sherlock Holmes) and his wife Ouida Rathbone gave parties that were command performances, with lavish dinners and champagne flowing like the conversation of the illustrious guests. Joan Fontaine, No Bed o f Roses (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1978), 118. For example, at Jack Oakie's come as your favorite star soiree, Eddy could mix with homosexually-active actors Rod La Rocque, Edmund Lowe, Eric Blore, Cary Grant, William Haines, Edward Everett Horton, Cesar Romero, Randolph Scott, screenwriter, Edgar Allen Woolf, and studio dress designer, Bernard Newman. Los Angeles Times, 31 March 1937, III, 10. The discussion of the sexuality of many of these actors appears within Boze Hadleigh’sHollywood Gays (New York: Barricade Books, 1996). The discussion of Woolf appears in Harmetz. However, as Eddy’s career blossomed and the representations of him as a mother’s boy increased, M-G-M placed more pressures on their romantic star to marry. By late 1938. Eddy and MacDonald had six box office hits. The studio viewed the continued off-screen representation of Eddy as an effusive lover as a liability they no longer wanted and placed pressure on Eddy to many. Eddy offered a few stipulations then allowed the studio to arrange a marriage between himself and Ann Demitz Franklin, the ex-wife of director and producer Sidney Franklin in early 1939.

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The presence of people who held homosexual interests among the performing

arts led to the development of ways to create the public image of heterosexual interests

for these figures. The motion picture industry borrowed two forms of marriages of

convenience that hid gender and sexual transgressions from the theatrical world. A beard

appeared as a romantic interest in public for a person of the opposite biological sex.

However, the beard actually provided cover for that second person’s secret, often

homosexual, romance. The reference included that a beard provided a disguise. Another

marriage of convenience received the label “twilight tandem.” Two figures who shared

sexual interest in the same sex married one another. Afterwards the husband and wife

allowed the other to pursue someone of their own gender.27 Several representations

revealed that the Hollywood party served as a unique place where romantic stars could

step from behind these marriage arrangements and express their secret effusive love.

Entertainment-reporting organizations provided regular coverage of the

weddings of notable motion picture industry figures. Revelations about their wedding

parties appeared in this coverage and sometimes in articles about the divorce o f these

couples. The representations of the private wedding parties of the quintessential male

romantic figure of the 1920s raised questions about Rudolph Valentino’s adherence to the

Axel Madsen, Forbidden Lovers: Hollywood’s Greatest Secret- Female Stars Who Loved Other Women (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1996), 18. 27 Random House Historical Dictionary o f American Slang A-G, ed. J. E. Lighter (New York: Random House Publishers, 1994), 115; Barry Paris, Garbo: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 249-252; Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylon (SanI Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1975), 171; Boze Hadleigh, Bette Davis Speaks (New York: Barricade Books, 1996), 130; Madsen, 52-53. The aforementioned instance of Nelson Eddy and Anne Franklin followed the style known as contracting with a “beard.” Among the actors and actresses who formed successful versions of these partnerships were Edmund Lowe and Lilyan Tashman and Charlie Farrell and actress Virginia Valli. Some actresses forged

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gender and sexual norms of the era. The presentation of sexual and gender behaviors

within these depictions of Valentino’s wedding parties provided audiences with the

excitement of gaining private knowledge about a celebrity. These images reinforced the

perception that Hollywood private parties contained odd “whoopee” activities. It also

suggested that Hollywood private parties were places where people did not have to follow

either traditional gender and sexual models or the companionate marriage model.

The son of an Italian army veterinarian, Rudolpfo Alfonzo Guglielmi failed to

qualify as an officer in a military academy. After struggling in Paris for one year and New

York City for a few more, the man who took the name Rudolph Valentino moved west.

He began getting extra and bit parts in Hollywood in 1917. There Valentino met a

depressed Jean Acker in 1919 and married the actress because she knew many people

who could help his career. Acker, upset from a quarrel with her “girl friend” Grace

Darmond, married him after knowing him for fewer than two months.28 Divorce

proceedings two years later, after Valentino made a splash in the motion pictureThe Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse, demonstrated that the marriage ended at the party after the

ceremony.

Mrs. Anna Karger testified that Jean Acker had not been a happy bride during the wedding reception party and Acker came into her room following her marriage to Valentino and said “I have made a mistake.” Valentino stated he was unable to find his bride when he awoke the morning after. Acker called weeping the morning after not consummating their marriage and said she could not live this

tandems with artisans including Janet Gaynor with studio stylist Adrian and Dolores Dei Rio with M-G- M’s Art Department head Cedric Gibbons. 28 Katz, 1181 - 1182. The 18-year old arrived in New York City in 1913. He took a series of odd jobs and ran into trouble with law enforcement before becoming a dancer in halls, nightclubs and in the theater. Gavin Lambert, Nazimova: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 222-223. NYC police raided the house of Mrs. Georgia Thym and arrested her for blackmail. Finding Valentino inside, they charged him as an accomplice.

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kind of life. The bride spent the night with her friend, actress Miss Grace Darmond. During Acker’s testimony Valentino’s attorney asked Acker why her husband could not visit her on location but Grace Darmond stayed with Acker at the Lone Pine Hotel. “There were two beds in the hotel room,” Acker responded. She referred to Rudy as a boy and confessed the cause of one of their arguments, “You see, he used the perfume out of my bottle. It was expensive perfume too.” The large courtroom audience broke into titters.29

These items illustrated that the wedding party and its aftermath contained

unusual whoopee and a husband and wife unable to fulfill a companionate marriage. The

private information suggested that the groom held nontraditicnal gender interests and that

the bride appeared to hold a secret love for another actress, Grace Darmond. After the

wedding party, Acker was unable to consummate her marriage and spent the evening with

Darmond. When questioned about her activities with Darmond, Acker instantly thought

of beds and sleeping together. J° Most audience members experienced wedding parties an

important component in their own lives, thus this polymorphous imagery would be

particularly powerful to them and solidify the notion of the Hollywood private party as

distinct from others of the ilk.

As his breakthrough motion picture opened in the theaters, Valentino began

the filming of Camille with Alla Nazimova and met the actress’ latest love interest,

designer Natacha Rambova. A highly talented and highly ambitious woman, Rambova

saw a great deal that she liked in Valentino and accepted his marriage proposal. The pair

29 Los Angeles Evening Herald, 26 November 1921, sec. A-7; 23 November 1921, sec. A-5; Los Angeles Times, 26 November 1921, sec. II, 9. 30 Roughly a year after Acker’s divorce from Valentino, readers of industry gossip columns discovered the latest on these actresses. Acker brought her vaudeville show to the west coast and visited Darmond on location on Catalina Island for a few days. She left to begin a two-week stay in San Francisco. Darmond finished her part in the motion picture, and departed on a personal appearance tour. Darmond went to San Francisco the final weekend of Jean Acker’s stay in that city. Los Angeles Times, 6 June 1923, sec. II, 11; 22 June 1923, sec. II, 9.

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and several friends departed for a wedding party in Mexico in mid-1922 and ran up

against the law. Jean Acker had won an interlocutory decree and not a divorce from

Valentino, so the romantic star faced charges of polygamy after his return to Los

Angeles.31

The investigation and Paramounts’ defense linked private activities with the

public presentation of the wedding party. This combination forged an image of a private

wedding party in which nontraditional gender and sexual behavior again appeared as

central. One witness observed the party’s gender non-normativity. They referred to one

wedding party member, actress Alla Nazimova, as a “strange lady,” most likely because

of her “bachelor” style observed in chapter three. Investigators from the District

Attorney’s office obtained numerous details that indicated such a degree of nontraditional

behavior existed during the wedding and honeymoon that the pair never consummated

their marriage. Dr. Floretta White of Palm Sprints testified that Valentino slept in one

room with actor and best man Douglas Gerard while the bride occupied another. Other

witnesses noted that even after Valentino and Rambova returned to Los Angeles, the new

bride and groom lived in separate homes. The presiding official, Justice of the Peace

Handy, in the polygamy trial, ruled that there was insufficient evidence presented to

support the complaint as co-habitation and bring a guilty verdict from a jury. This set of

images provided readers with the titillation of secret knowledge. They strengthened the

perception that the Hollywood private party had wild and love-making aspects and served

as a location for Hollywood figures to evade the constraints of the companionate

31 Los Angeles Evening Herald, 20 May 1922, 1.

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marriage system. These party images and images after Valentino and Rambova’s legal

marriage established the view of Valentino that prompted the famous Chicago Tribune

editorial where the star was blamed for the public presence of highly effeminate-acting

men.32

Novelists in the early 1930s represented married romantic stars who pursued

secret nontraditional love interests at Hollywood private parties. These figures attained

successful industry careers and lived full personal lives. Each presented the

polymorphous couple within a format that highlighted its secret nature. In the midst of a

party a tall redheaded girl walked over to a small group of gossips. She presented “the

dirt” on the relationship between two actresses. Author Keane McGrath’s presentation

emphasized the secret nature of this information by positioning the readers inside the

party and within a clique.

Leona Chrisman and little Sue Nesbit had a peculiar party by themselves in one of the upstairs bedrooms at Sue’s blowout last Wednesday night.... Well, you all know that Leona is ‘that way’ about other girls, and I had suspected that she and Sue were having an affair for some time. I guess the liquor went to their heads a little more than usual that night, and they sneaked off by themselves before the rest of the party noticed. Leona’s husband discovered them together. He dragged Leona out of that room by the hair of her head, and threw her into their car and

12 Los Angeles Times, 3 June 1922, sec. II, 1; 4 June 1922, 12; 6 June 1922, sec. II, 5;New York Times, 16 May 1922, 10; 20 January 1926, 1; “Wedded and Parted,”Photoplay, December 1922, 58-59, 117; “High Lights in the Life of Rudolph Valentino,” (reprints of articles the actor wrote forPhotoplay a few years earlier), Photoplay, (November 1926), 149. According to Valentino, “It wasn’t love at first sight. We were both very lonely but we had known each other more than six months before we became at all interested in each other.” The editorial follows: We personally saw two “men”- as young lady contributors to the Voice of the People are wont to describe the breed- step up, insert coin, hold kerchief beneath the spout, pull the lever, then take the pretty pink stuff and pat it on their cheeks in front o f the mirror... It is time for a matriarchy if the male of the species allows such things to persist. Better a rule by masculine women then by effeminate men...How does one reconcile masculine cosmetics, sheiks, gloppy pants, and slave bracelets with a disregard for law an aptitude for crime more in keeping with the frontier of half a century ago than a twentieth century metropolis?...Down with Decatur, up with Elinor Glyn. Hollywood is the national school of masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardener’s boy, is the prototype o f the American male. Hell’s bells. Oh, sugar. Chicago Tribune, 18 July 1926, sec. I, 10.

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took her home. “I’ll bet he gets a divorce after that one.” “I don’t think he will,” said one of the men. “He’s been married to her for a long time and he must have found out her peculiarities by now.”33

The Hollywood party appeared as a place where two women could engage in

romance and sexual activities with one another. The greater explicitness with which this

affair appeared presumably increased the degree of response the image generated among

readers. This explicitness of the image offered readers excitement and titillation and

would also influence the degree of identification that the image afforded readers. The

increased intensity of this image made it easier for readers to “place” themselves within

this situation, either as one of these women or with the two of them. The women’s sexual

desire for one another was so effusive that they made love despite the presence of many

people in Sue’s house.

The image revealed that Hollywood private parties offered industry people a

place to learn about other industry peoples’ affairs. It illustrated that industry people

wanted to know about the private lives of others in Hollywood and that this knowledge

made them feel titillated. As an industry columnist of the era noted, gossip did not create

problems in Hollywood:

While there isn’t a more gossipy town...people here believe that everyone has a right to live his or her own life. While marriage and a home life is becoming the prevalent thing, no one is shunned for preferring something else... The gossiping is more o f a pastime than anything else. As a matter of fact, there is very little criticism here of personal habits. It is a freeland in which persons are permitted to do as they please. As a result everything is done openly.34

33 Keane McGrath, Hollywood Siren (Sew York: William Godwin, Inc., 1932), 120-121. 34 New York World Telegraph, June 5, 1934 in NYPL, Billy Rose Collection, Folder MWEZ+ n.c. 6785.

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Thus, the representation equated readers and Hollywood figures in their interest in

celebrity culture, nontraditional sexual behavior and activities within Hollywood

locations, such as the private Hollywood party. This made the interest appear more

sophisticated because the in crowd pursued it. Their non-judgmental response illustrated a

sophisticate’s manner of viewing nontraditional sexual behavior among celebrities at a

private Hollywood party.

The sole voice of exasperation over the affair came from one of the industry’s

top “gag” writer. Presumably flustered by what Frederick Lewis Allen coined “the

revolution in manners and morals,” the writer complained about the way things were

nowadays. “What this country needs is a new position. Homosexuality is nothing more

than the result of boredom.” His comments revealed that he assumed that the actions of

the younger generation stemmed from Jazz Age ennui rather than personal interest.

Presumably the gag writer perceived that the companionate marriage might offer that new

position that would deter women such as Leona Chrisman and Sue Nesbit from engaging

in effusive love for someone of their gender. The others continued their partying.35

Amidst Hollywood’s biggest names of the era and the three heartthrobs

uninterested in women, a couple engaged in a twilight tandem used private Hollywood

35 Relationships between motion picture performers and their “beards” were neither unusual nor uncomplicated. Actress Elsa Lanchester described her initial discovery of husband Charles Laughton's love for men as hurtful. However, their relationship grew into one in which they were happy with and for each other. Evie Wynn Johnson shared several tumultuous years with actor Van Johnson. The couple raised her two boys from her marriage to actor Keenan Wynn and had a daughter. Although Johnson did have affairs and faced charges for homosexual behavior which M-G-M extricated him from, it surprised his wife when Johnson left her for a male dancer. Elsa Lanchester, Herself {New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 88, 97- 99,175-180; Charles Higham, Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1976), 106-125; Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 355; Ned Wynn, We Will Always Live in Beverly Hills: Growing Up Crazy in Hollywood (New York: William Morrow & Co. Inc., 1990), 52-59, 170-173.

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parties to satisfy their romantic interests. Author Tamar Lane’s choice of mentioning the

couple among the names of contemporary motion picture stars made this representation

appear more realistic and prompted some readers to believe this couple also represented

contemporary Hollywood figures. While some readers engaged in figuring out whom

they received “the dirt” on, all realized that they knew more about Hollywood figures and

the industry’s private parties.

Edgar Gray and Lydia Barnes, one of Hollywood’s most unique screen couples, were busy making new conquests [at the party], Edgar and Lydia had been married for several years but each took an extremely broad-minded viewpoint in regard to the heart affairs of the other. The only time they had ever seriously quarreled was when they both fell in love with the same girl.36

The representation demonstrated that the Hollywood party offered this screen

pair a unique place to sate their nontraditional sexual desires. At parties they met a variety

of people whom they could try to turn into emotional and sexual conquests. These

activities revealed them as figures who subverted the companionate marriage and its

ideals. Unlike in the ideal companionate marriages, neither partner in this marriage

obtained their sexual and emotional intimacy solely within their relationship. Their

marriage did not provide a location and a family from which each received nurturance

and space for personal expression. Many people in the United States associated the

activities and attitudes of these stars with decadent royalty, and corrupt and decaying

civilizations. Their beliefs received support from motion pictures depicting ancient

cultures and old European monarchies such asSalome (1923) and The Sign o f the Cross

(1932). These movies linked lassiez faire and conquesting sexual behaviors with the

36 Lane, 141.

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demise of people and civilizations. The Barnes and Gary effusive display of same-gender

sexual interest at Hollywood parties supported the perception of the wild and decadent

Hollywood party.

By the mid-1930s, Hollywood insider John Dos Passos inThe Big Money

criticized the idolization and imitation of the Valentino effusive romantic image and his

false, vapid companionate marriage. The author aimed to present a “real” view of the

actor in the newsreel titled “Adagio Dancer.” 37 Dos Passos then used polymorphousness

to thrill readers with inside knowledge, to expose a romantic actor’s off-screen romantic

life, and to offer a stinging rebuke of Hollywood and its image making. Antonio “Tony”

Garrido discovered the underside of Hollywood and the private Hollywood party with

disastrous results for the polymorphous character, yet the representation still enhanced the

mystique of Hollywood parties.

Cuban-born Garrido was a highly effeminate character who married main

character actress Margo Dowling (who appeared earlier in the discussion of premiere

parties in this chapter). Garrido had big brown eyes and a smooth oval face of a very light

brown. When Dowling observed his dark eyelashes “she kidded him and asked him what

he put on his eyelashes to make them so black. He said it was the same thing that made

her hair so pretty and golden ...” Tony used cosmetics as the men described in the

Chicago Tribune editorial. He even likened his use o f them to the way in which a woman

applies cosmetics, “...to make oneself pretty and draw peoples’ attention.”38

37 Townsend Ludington, John Dos Passos: A Twentieth Century Odyssey (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), 330-331. 38 John Dos Passos, The Big Money 10ed., (New York: New Amsterdam Library, 1989), 201-205.

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Neither character engaged in dating, before Dowling pushed Garrido into

marrying her, perhaps believing they would have a companionate marriage because of

their earlier confidences. When they arrived in Cuba, their marriage became more

extreme than a separate-spheres marriage in the United States. She could only go to the

market and church; he often ventured anywhere he desired. Although Dowling bought her

way out of the country to escape this Latin lover who could not fulfill the obligations of a

companionate marriage, she never divorced him. Later, Garrido reappeared in Dowling’s

life and accompanied her to Hollywood. Again, the pair would not pursue a

companionate marriage. Instead, Garrido told his wife that he would become a star. “If

Valentino can do it, it will be easy for me.”39 He fell for Hollywood superficiality,

becoming the lover of a phony Austrian count who introduced him to the drug-taking

“homosexual underground.”

Dos Passos used the Hollywood private party to heighten his critique of

Hollywood’s superficiality and corruption and corroborated the wild, whoopee, and love-

making aspects of the party’s mystique. The author juxtaposed scenes from the parties

attended by the budding star and failing extra. Dowling went to the party discussed in this

chapter’s semi-public party section. Garrido went to a secret underground affair. The

readers learned along with Dowling of Garrido’s demise as she read the newspaper the

next day. The headline blared that a Hollywood extra was slain. Two sailors, stupefied

from liquor or narcotics, were in custody after the police discovered them in an apartment

39 Ibid, 400-420.

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house with Antonio Garrido, whose skull had been fractured. The phony count fled

before the police arrived.40

Dos Passos’s presentation of this Hollywood private party with the drug-

taking and polymorphous behaviors enhanced each component of the mystique. Some

readers could have appreciated both the depiction and results of this Hollywood party

because of their dislike for the “Cuban pervert.”41 Dos Passos’ focused on depicting the

private Hollywood party as a dangerous place in an attempt to admonish readers and the

industry, yet further distinguished them from private parties represented in the mass

media. This element of danger presumably sparked fear, excitement, or both in the

novel’s readers and enabled them to link these terrific emotions with the Hollywood

private party. The negative tone of the author and reviewer might have provoked M-G-M

to express concerns over Novarro’s and Eddy’s romantic behaviors.

The Hollywood party attained a formidable position in the public imagination

because it offered audiences imagery with expensive dining and unrestrained wit,

whoopee, and love between the culture’s most romantic characters. Images that

associated the Hollywood party with effusive emotional expressions and secret loves

40 Ibid, 431. 41 “A Private Historian,” Time, v. 28, no. 7, August 10, 1936, 51.

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played a significant role in promoting the Hollywood party mystique. The private

information intensified the interests among audience members in both the celebrities

attending Hollywood parties and in parties themselves as distinct locations.

Images associated Hollywood celebrities and Hollywood’s parties with

nontraditional gender and sexual behavior. These depictions made the Hollywood party

appear as one of the few places in mass-produced culture in which figures could defy the

dominant culture’s two new cultural standards for romance. Like dating and the

companionate marriage, Hollywood celebrity formation sustained the idea that leisure

was the place where a person realized his or her self. All three emphasized that this self

was an identity formed in private and that the expression of sexual interests played a

foundational role in the formation of that identity. Scholars have noted that audience

members used popular culture images as guidelines for their own behaviors, and this

would be particularly true during a period when cultural arbiters advocated new romantic

standards.42 However, images of industry figures at Hollywood parties, particularly in the

early years, appeared as more than simplistic admonitions to follow the culture’s

romantic conventions; they were complex characters encountering romantic rather than

tragic circumstances. Despite the pressures that culminated in Eddy’s marriage,

Novarro’s departure, and Garrido’s death, Hollywood private parties' presentation of

images that defied the romantic standards of the period offered audiences alternatives. For

42 David Bergman, cited in James Gifford, Dayneford’s Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900-1913 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 1; Richard Dyer,The Matter o f Images: Essay on Representations (London: Routledge Press, 1993), 2-10.

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some, the images offered options toward how they could shape their behavior and

identity.

The images of the private Hollywood party provided audiences with an

understanding of how Hollywood celebrities used their homes. Audiences received a

glimpse at leisure activities within a location that U.S. culture viewed as a highly private

space offering sanctuary from the public world. Hollywood brought the public into this

space but the nontraditional gender and sexual images layered another level of the private

onto the space. Most significantly, these images promoted feelings o f titillation about the

Hollywood celebrity home and motivated audiences to read articles that informed them

about the homes and their owners. The next chapter will examine the Hollywood

representations that took audiences inside the private celebrity home and revealed

polymorphous behavior that made star homes part of the Hollywood mystique.

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THE HOLLYWOOD STAR HOME: CHIC BACHELORS

AND ODD BED FELLOWS

[Alla Nazimova appears] dressed in blue suit mannishly tailored, feet in low- heeled oxfords. She wears no chiffons, no morbidities. She thinks, succinctly, as a man thinks. She speaks without evasions. She has a Peterish handshake.1

The Hollywood private party made the Hollywood celebrity home look like a

fun house. The images increased many audience members’ interest in the layout, location,

and activities within the celebrity home. Representations of Hollywood stars’ houses

offered an expanded look inside the entire residence. Much more, the images promised a

peek into the private lives of these known figures and enhanced audience belief that they

shared intimacy with these celebrities. U.S. culture has idealized the home as the space

where every person could live self-sufficiently, and express his or her personality,

community status, and, in the twentieth century, status as a consumer. The audiences for

this Hollywood publicity understood this ideal because they all had residences that they

called homes, but Hollywood people wanted their homes to appear as the epitome.

Hollywood publicity promoted the grandest and most splendidly furnished houses, but

also homes that embodied the owner’s personality, especially figures who stood out

' Unidentified clipping in Alla Nazimova file, Lesbian Herstory Archives, Brooklyn, New York.

155

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because of their unorthodox manner.

The studios and celebrities projected images of homes like Nazimova’s

offering readers the titillation of entering a private space. As the images added

information about gender and sexual behaviors, this added private material to the recently

publicized information about the celebrity’s home. This enabled the image to provide the

thrill of presenting secret insight into the celebrity and his/her home. These images

identified the Hollywood star home with chic figures and with wondrous behavior that

helped separate the star home from other residences that appeared in the popular media.

Yet, toward the end of the interwar era, images moved toward stereotypes of people who

held same-sex interest. Simultaneously, highly complex depictions declined as the stars

evoking these images left the industry by the early 1940s.

Hollywood realized that the home held a vital place in the culture as

repository for the family and the American dream. Notable figures in the early American

Republic perceived home as the bedrock of the new nation. Thomas Jefferson promoted

the National Survey, a system of land allotment he hoped would encourage the

proliferation of independent homesteads as the nation expanded. For Jefferson, this style

of development would ensure the political economy and the independent voters necessary

to preserve the virtuous republic. John Adams and Alexander Hamilton consistently

emphasized that the foundations of national morality lay in private families. All strove for

housing based on the repetition of simple forms in order to realize equality. Other cultural

figures viewed the home as the most effective place to inculcate the values necessary to

make the nation the glorious republic. Beginning in the early 1830s, numerous school

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teachers, physicians, and jurists instructed their fellow citizens regarding how to create

good homes. Poets, writers, and composers of popular songs advocated that the home

mirrored the moral and religious state of those who lived in it. Ministers and other

religious figures pressed for houses to be buildings that did not stray too far from

economy and displayed moral associations. Ministers believed the home represented the

most suitable place for moral teaching. This panoply of figures illustrated that the word

“home” inspired a range of values in U.S. culture, including nostalgia, intimacy and

privacy, domesticity, commodity, delight, austerity, comfort, and well-being.2

The country’s top architectural minds and builders often agreed with this

definition of housing and home. Andrew Jackson Downing, who wrote three books on

domestic architecture, argued for two types of beauty that each contained a component of

morality. Downing argued that homes should express the owner’s class, occupation, and

background, but not so ostentatiously as to belittle the neighbors or aggrandize the

children’s manners. The principal American house in which to encourage these values

and realize the appropriate look had been the detached rural or suburban single-family

cottage for citizens of the middling sort.3

Alternative forms of housing emerged but did not establish themselves in the

2 Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic (New York, 1982); David P. Handiin, The American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815-1915, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1979), 4, 11-30; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History o f Housing in America (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981), 21-25, 75-80; Witold Rybczynski, Home: A Short History o f an Idea (New York: Viking Books, 1986). 3 Handiin, 40-44; Wright, xvi, 80-84.

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culture as proper homes. Tenements developed in the 1830s and housed an average of 65

people by the 1850s. Despite offering the advantage of housing large numbers of families

in single units, railroad tenements provided little sunlight or proper ventilation. As the

century progressed, the dumbbell design provided improvements in important areas.

However, housing and other reformers of the late nineteenth century observed that

tenements were still improper environments for living as they served as breeding grounds

of crime, juvenile delinquency, prostitution, and disease. Upscale housing emerged in the

nation’s cities but also fell short of the culture’s perception of a proper home. Apartment

buildings offered housing to the urban elite, beginning in the 1860s and captured the

fancy of many with technological advances, such as hot water heating and elevators as

well as bathrooms in each unit. However, many people disliked them because the thin

walls and floors made their residents uncomfortably aware of the neighbors and offered

too little overall space in which to live properly. Most Americans believed that any kind

of shared dwelling was an aberration of the model home and promoted promiscuity and

wifely negligence of duties toward the home and her children.4

These ideals continued through the early decades of the twentieth century.

Guide books stated that the home provided spiritual education for children and relaxation

for men. Each detail of a dwelling revealed the personality and virtues of the family.

Everyday phrases, such as “a man’s home is his castle,” indicated the culture believed in

the man’s right to own and rule in his home. Mothers blended in with the house itself in

4 Handiin, 199-213; As urban planner Raymond Unwin wrote, “[the multiple dwelling] was the most difficult with which to assimilate any sense of home, and absolutely the most miserable type o f place

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architectural books and popular culture during the mid-1800s, displaying those timeless

qualities that suffused the rest of the home. In the twentieth century, advertisements and

popular fiction pestered women readers about the appearance of their home, raising the

questions of what the neighbors thought about her family’s character. The preeminent

American architect of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright, designed prairie single­

family detached houses. He believed the quality of the home was all important for the

creation and maintenance of the state of family harmony. Developers, who created most

of the residences in the country, used uniform themes for suburban subdivisions to create

a vision of harmony and community spirit. Single-family detached house represented the

quintessential residential housing style in the twentieth-century United States. During the

period of this study, Los Angeles set the standard for metropolitan development. By

1930, single-family houses constituted over 94 percent of all dwellings in the city. The

city became the country’s twentieth-century city and a variety of places in the United

States used it as a model.5

The Hollywood star home appeared within the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The city grew dramatically in the half century between 1890 and 1940. The population

in which children can be raised.” Raymond Unwin, “Discussion,” Proceedings of the National Conference on City Planning 3 (1911): 110-111; Wright, 11-145. 5 Wright, 149-211. The editorial board of Architectural Record complained that apartment buildings proved deleterious to the important role of woman maintaining the home. “A woman who lives in an apartment hotel has nothing to do...Her personal preferences and standards are completely swallowed up in the general public standards of the institution. She can not create that atmosphere of manner and things around her own personality, which is the chief source of her effectiveness and power.” Roger Sherwood. Modern Housing Prototypes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College, 1978), 29-30; Handiin, 17, 307-308; Mike Davis, City o f Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 26- 29; Sam Bass Warner, The Urban Wilderness: History o f the American City (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972). The Greenes viewed the ultimate bungalow as a ‘cathedral in wood,’ and the masses could buy small but stylish imitations in ‘do-it-yourself kits that created democratic bungalows. These kits promoted the old ideals of equality and the repetition of simple forms in housing.

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exploded from 50,000 people in 1889 to over 2.9 million in its metropolitan area by 1940.

While migrants composed the majority of this growth, some occurred as Los Angeles

annexed neighboring towns and territories, including Hollywood in 1910. A large portion

of these annexations occurred because Los Angeles offered these smaller political entities

municipal improvements. The city underwent significant physical development to attract

and support its population. One of the earliest included the harbor at San Pedro. This

harbor gave Los Angeles deep water capacity so that it could receive and send out ships.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, Los Angeles spread pipelines carrying

sewage and electricity into the newly annexed and developing sections. The Pacific

Electric, known as “Big Red,” provided trains that linked fifty communities in four

counties (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino) by 1910. This

represented the height of mass transportation in Southern California. Within the next

decades, property owners and businessmen organized programs to reconstruct the city’s

street system and eventually create the freeway system that supported automobiles and

Los Angeles’ residential dispersal.6

While these changes shaped the physical layout of Los Angeles, the purchase

of water rights from the Owens Valley sustained the growth of the city. Despite the

sacrifice to the natural environment and the battles with the Owens Valley farmers in the

legislature and on the land itself, the city acquired its aquatic lifelines. The Department of

Water and Power (DWP) and the old city oligarchy battled over whether the

6 Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 70-72; Eshref Shevky and Marilyn Williams, The Social Areas o f Los Angeles

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hydroelectricity needed for irrigation, industry, and the lighting of the city at night ought

to be under public or private control. With the support of the Chamber of Commerce and

the Merchants and Manufactures Association, the DWP won referendums in Los

Angeles, Burbank, and neighboring cities in 1925-1926 that created the Metropolitan

Water District (MWD). After the legislature enacted a bill, the Metropolitan Water

District became the largest non-federal government agency in the United States.7

As a quintessential United States city of the twentieth century, Los Angeles

owed a significant portion of its expansion to an effective advertising campaign. Many of

the newcomers flooded the area from New England, Midwestern, and Southwestern farms

after hearing booster campaigns trumpet the promise of Los Angeles. Groups like the All-

Year Club advertised Los Angeles as the place to offer middle-class horticulturists time

for the finer things in life. Retirees and people searching for the quiet Anglo-Saxon

civilization constituted the majority of the early migrants. These people generally

opposed the presence of the motion picture industry in their “Eden,” because actors had

the reputation of being nomadic and promiscuous. During the 1910s, regularity of

employment in Hollywood allowed many performers and workers to settle permanently

in Los Angeles, yet no one district drew the cluster of big name stars and splendid

houses. While Wallace Reid lived north of Hollywood Boulevard, Roscoe “Fatty”

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), 27-35; Scott L. Bottles, Los Angeles and The Automobile: The Making o f the Modern City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 1 Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 45-50, 156-163.

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Arbuckle lived on West 5th Street and actresses Constance Talmadge and Lillian and

Dorothy Gish lived on different portions of West 6th Street. This dispersal presumably

discouraged companies from printing materials that sold star house tours to audience

members. Few Hollywood homes of the era had the palatial size or flamboyant style that

drew and held interests. As actress Miriam Cooper Walsh noted, comedian Charles

Chaplin’s palatial house on top of this hill was rare enough to fascinate her.8

During the next two decades, Hollywood homes and the citizenry's attitude

toward the movie industry changed greatly. In the 1920s and 1930s, an average of 350

people migrated daily to the 451 square miles that encompassed Los Angeles. The city

grew in all directions, but the most lucrative areas proved to be in the city’s north and

west sections, the areas where the motion picture industry stars lived. Promotional

materials described Hollywood as “Los Angeles’ Palatial Residential District,” and,

claimed a homeowner could travel abroad for a year and return to discover your property

increased significantly during your absence. Wealthy motion picture industry celebrities

moved into large houses in Los Angeles’ canyons, hills and valleys. The stars forged the

exclusive residential areas of Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, and Malibu in the west

and Los Feliz to the north. Up and coming people in the industry sought large,

Mediterranean-style houses with arches in the construction to create the “right” image.

These homes contained swimming pools, elaborate furnishings, and a household staff.

8 Starr, Inventing the Dream , 64; Benjamin McArthur, Actors and American Culture, 1880-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 70-71; Los Angeles City Directory, 1917. The residences of stars was gleaned from the alphabetical listing of residents in the first section of the directory. Certain stars, including Charles Chaplin, did not provide their home addresses. Miriam Cooper Walsh, “Chapter VIII," in

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The representations of Hollywood celebrity houses constituted a wealth linked to the

tradition of open opportunity, becoming an important component of the Hollywood

promise of the dream factory of the masses.9 Maps with listings of star homes began to

appear in fan magazines and other locations. This indicated an interest among motion

picture audiences and the industry’s active promotion of both this interest and the

mystique of the star home.10

Hollywood homes competed with the mansions of other wealthy and other

cities for media space and audience attention. With home holding such a valued position

within U.S. culture, media outlets presented many representations of Americans and their

residences. The earliest publications of people and their houses featured Americans of

notable achievements. Published in the 1850s, Homes o f American Authors and Homes o f

American Statesmen promoted the role of humble homes in shaping the positive

development of great Americans, including Nathanael Hawthorne, George Washington,

and Thomas Jefferson. Editions continued through the 1920s. Other publications emerged

covering how homes forged the honest and clean lives of classical music composers,

Californians, and women who accomplished significant deeds in a field of endeavor.

Lectures & Writings: Drafts & Typescripts folder, Miriam Cooper Walsh Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 9 Bruce Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth: Los Angeles in the Twenties and Thirties (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1984), 13-22; Norman M. Klein and Martin J. Schiesl, eds.. Twentieth Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion and Social Conflict (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1990), 1-27; Shevky and Williams; Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 65-77; Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1979), 5-7, 70- 75, 143-144; Larry May,Screening Out the Past: The Birth o f Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 220-235. 10 Maps listing the locations of star homes appeared in various locations including,Photoplay, November, 1938 and from private sources, such as a Souvenir Map and Guide to Starland Estates and Mansions issued in December, 1937. These and other maps appeared in the Cinema: Hollywood folder, NYPL.

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Since the late nineteenth century, popular magazines regularly ran stories featuring

people and their residences. Most frequently, images depicted the elite and nouveau riche

mansions in urban and suburban communities. These homes suggested palaces and

manors of Old Europe, striving to present elegance, class, and importance. These houses

favored architectural styles, such as Second Empire, Romanesque, or Renaissance, that

carried connotations of power. Most significantly, these social elite households presented

spotlessness, order, and tranquillity as their foremost personality traits and values."

The vast majority of the representations of houses during the twentieth century

featured males and married couples. Prior to 1918, approximately 93 percent (204 o f 228)

of these articles featured society and business men and married couples. Only one of the

few female representations was a single woman. Between 1919 and 1941, the percentage

of representations of women and houses nearly doubled (60 of 498) and the number of

women who were single or identified by first name rather than their husband’s last name

leapt to 21. Several of these representations featured people from the entertainment field,

particularly the motion picture industry. The most important aspect of these houses also

switched from an initial interest in stylish echoes of the architectural past to ranking

homes according to their cost and size. The articles about homes owned by women rarely

discussed these women’s attitudes or their positions as home owners. Some articles

established in the first sentence that the owner was a married woman. Most

" Handiin, 20-21. Among the books with these stories were: ------, Famous American Homes (New York: The Home Insurance Co., 1939), Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the homes o f the Great: Famous Women (New York: World Publishing Co., 1928). The former included statesman such as John Marshall and Andrew Jackson, and inventors including S.F.B. Morse and Robert Fulton. The latter contained writers from Elizabeth B. Browning and Jane Austen to Mary W. Shelley. Mary Cable, Top

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articles concerned themselves with describing the design and decoration of the home. In

one instance the interior has a highly “feminine” touch. Tellingly, another article barely

mentioned the woman homeowner, yet noted that every man who entered the house made

for the large sofa in the backroom.12

Hollyw ood homes appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers,

particularly with the increased focus on motion picture stars at the end of World War

One. The majority of these depictions shaped the Hollywood home mystique through

images of celebrities whose romantic and gender activities crossed the range of

culturally-accepted behavior. These images revealed aspects of the star’s personality to

thrill audiences with the sense of increased intimacy. Most of the representations

provided details about the exterior and interior of the home and grounds so that readers

could imagine that they were at the house. The articles also described how the home

reflected the personality of its owner, to offer readers the sense that they got to know the

celebrity better and were now more intimate with him or her. An article on Paramount’s

virile and rugged hero Jack Holt labeled him a family man. The grounds around Holt’s

big, rambling house contained a tennis court, gardens, and a small play house set in a

grove of eucalyptus trees for his three children. “There was a hospitable atmosphere

Drawer: American High Society from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties (New York: Atheneum, 1984), 85-90, 150-152. 12 This survey of the literature came from the Architecture-Domestic and Country Homes and Country Houses sections of theReaders's Guide to Periodical Literature between the years 1880 and 1941. This survey of literature reduced the number of representations of entertainment houses because it omitted film fan magazines. However, this sample enables us to understand what the larger reading public encountered. Handiin, 360-361; “West Indian colonial invades the deep South,” Norma Talmadge home, House and Gardens (February, 1935), 26; Mary J. Linton, “‘The Hedges’ The Home of Miss M. G. B. Clapp, Nantucket,” The House Beautiful (November, 1925), 550-554; Verna Cook Salomonsky, “The

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about his California home which suggested that its owner came from down south... Mr.

Holt was fond of his home and he loves the real, the simple, the sane things o f life... His

company, wife and children like him....” Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford

comprised the first family of Hollywood during the 1920s and early 1930s. The owners of

one of the earliest and most frequently represented Hollywood homes, the couple started

the migration to Beverly Hills. The representations often described their enormous home

as situated atop a climbing road, behind a white wall, a little like the Tuscan Hills. This

theme that this Hollywood house presented the best of “civilization” continued in the

descriptions of the interior, “...the rooms... furnished with eighteenth-century treasures,

with cabinets full of white jade, blond de chine and Waterford glass...” The stars’

personalities proved to be equally interesting and captivating and the reporter needed to

briefly stop the conversation so she could see Fairbanks’ Chinese dressing room and

Pickford’s collection of Cinderella slippers.13

Occasionally, representations of Hollywood homes featured the residences of

unmarried stars. These articles also featured descriptions of the house’s elegance and

revealed some aspect of the star’s personality. A brief item in a gossip column informed

readers that actor Douglass Montgomery rented an ultra-modem house with a swimming

pool outside his bedroom window. He christened the place “The Vicarage,” probably

because he rented the place from someone else, acting in the place of another. This item

Little White House, Margaret Owen home, House Beautiful (October, 1932), 224-228; Woife, “Modified Colonial in Iowa; home of the Misses Wolfe,” American (November, 1936), 41, 69. 13 Delight Evans, “The Man Uncomfortable,” Photoplay, (November, 1922), 30-31, 111; Anne O’Hare McCormick, “Searching for the Mind Behind Hollywood,” New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1931,4-5.

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linked a Hollywood heartthrob actor with a stylish and luxurious residence, attributing

class and taste to him and the industry. The information about the actor giving the place a

name provided readers with inside knowledge and the sense that they knew something

more about this Hollywood heartthrob through this information about his home. A spread

on director George Cukor’s six-acre estate in West Hollywood reiterated the Hollywood

home having the “best of civilization theme." The article likened Cukor's place to an

Italian villa and detailed descriptions of its interior treasures. The article noted that the

bachelor Cukor loved to entertain but did not mention the presence of any women in his

life. Cukor was best friends with former actor Bill Haines, and allowed Haines to

transform Cukor’s hillside cottage into an estate. Many articles and gossip items hinted

about Haines’ homosexual interests, and one year before the publication of the article on

Cukor’s house a scandal about Haines’ homosexuality erupted in newspapers across the

country.14

An article on Gloria Swanson’s magnificent new home in Beverly Hills also

contained discussion of a person who did not fulfill conventional gender roles. After

describing the beautiful art glass windows, peacock silks, velvet carpets, and gleaming

silver and glass and linens, the reporter observed that this glamorous house matched her

personality. Adela Rogers St. Johns assured readers that this glamour and her personality

14 William J. Mann, Wisecracker: The Life and Times o f William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star (New York: Viking, 1998) offers detailed descriptions of the anicles and the El Porto scandal. The article from The New York Times, June 3, 1936, 46, noted that Haines and a companion Jimmy Shields were beaten and that 19 other friends had been guests at a party Haines threw, all the guests were males. One example came from theLos Angeles Times in 1932. Reporter Alma Whitaker asked the question: why Bill Haines had not married. Whitaker offers her readers a complex answer, observing that he remains a bachelor, because factors within his identity convince women to view him as a fellow “sister,” and not as a romantic and sexual interest.

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made Swanson a great lady, then described the star’s failed first marriage and subsequent

divorce. In descriptions of Hollywood homes, a figure who failed in her gender role as

wife and homemaker remained a great lady and worthy of admiration rather than a failure

in those roles the culture viewed as essential for a woman to fulfill.15

Representations of women as owners in Hollywood homes appeared more

frequently because Hollywood offered women one of the few communities and

businesses in which they could thrive during the era. The industry hired women as

actresses, screenwriters, directors, editors, and other occupations. Several positions

provided women with careers and an income large enough to live independently, and

sometimes in great wealth.16

Representations of a few actresses, screenwriters, and a director and their

homes depicted them as more directly and significantly challenging gender and social

normative behaviors than the aforementioned image of Gloria Swanson. Hollywood’s on­

screen and behind-the-scenes examples of “bachelor chic” appeared in representations

that featured the masculine attire they adopted in their private lives and the sexual

subjectivity they promoted while challenging particular gender conventions.

15 “Keeping Bachelor’s Hall: George Cukor’s house, West Hollywood,”Country Life (June 1937), 52-57; Adela Rogers S t Johns, “Gloria! An Impression,” Photoplay (September, 1923), 28-29, 104-105. 16 Wendy Holliday, “Hollywood’s Modem Women: Screenwriting, Work Culture and Feminism, 1910-1940,” Ph.D. diss. New York University, 1995, 3-10.

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On-Screen Chic: Plavine It Their Wav

A few actresses established images that depicted their polymorphous were

behaviors around their homes. These images revealed behaviors as if they were secrets

about the actress’ personality, and this provided readers with the thrill of feeling as if they

insiders. The profession of actress had a tradition of sexual license and “immorality,”

including same-gender sexual behavior dating back to late eighteenth century France.17

Hollywood used this cultural “understanding” of actresses to promote the mystique of

Hollywood star homes. Insiders started with publicity surrounding a famous stage actress

whose theater interviews presented her exotic personality while limiting consideration of

her gender and sexual behavior.

Russian-bom Alla Nazimova immigrated to the United States in 1905. The

Shuberts saw her perform in New York City’s Russian theater and promised her a leading

role if she learned the English language in six months. The accomplished violinist and

Stanislavsky-trained actress achieved that goal and later became the leading interpreter of

Ibsen on the Broadway stage. Nazimova had immediate success in motion pictures in

Lewis J. Selznick’s War Brides in 1916. Metro Pictures wanted the prestige Nazimova

had, so the studio signed her to a contract that granted Nazimova approval over the

director, script, and leading man. Befitting her position as movie star, Nazimova built a

large homestead in Hollywood, and the place became known for its Sunday swimming

pool parties. The actress maintained a mysterious relationship with her “husband” Charles

17 David F. Greenberg, The Construction o f Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 320; Tracy Davis, Actresses As Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture

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Bryant during her years in Hollywood, while engaging in affairs with men as well as

women.18

The star exploited her house and her celebrity. She expanded her domicile,

forming a development and operating company and turned her homestead into a complex

of villas. These twenty-five bungalows lined the largest swimming pool in Hollywood.

Shaped like an eight on its side, the pool reminded Nazimova of the Black Sea of her

homeland. She named the place the Garden of Allah, adding the “h” to her given name to

associate it with the garden hostelry of sacred and profane love in Robert Hichens’ 1904

novel, The Garden o f Allah. These changes in her residence illuminated Nazimova’s

personality. They showed the star had a very strong business sense, exerted control of her

home and land, and created a swimming pool that reflected a nostalgia for her

homeland.19

Nazimova ranked among the top stars in the annual Photoplay popularity poll

for three years in the late 1910s. However, after three critical and financial failures and

only moderate box office success ofCamille, Nazimova and Metro ended their

relationship acrimoniously. Nazimova seized the production and financial responsibilities

for her next motion pictures but amassed miserable box office returns. The actress sold

her estate and returned to the stage for over a decade. In 1938, Nazimova pushed director

George Cukor, a leader in the industry’s homosexual circles, to bring her back to

(London: Routiedge, 1991), 18-19, 71; Donald Dewey, James Stewart: A Biography {Atlanta: Turner Publishing Company, 1996), 181. ,s Clippings from Nazimova’s stage career are in Alla Nazimova Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Gavin Lambert, Nazimova: A Biography(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 178-192. 19 Starr, Material Dreams , 216-217.

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Hollywood to serve as the technical advisor on the motion picture,Zaza. She returned to

a villa in the Garden o f Allah with her longtime female companion Glesca Marshall and

appeared in small character roles until her death in 1945.20

Representations of Nazimova in her house followed the pattern of describing

the house’s elegance and its reflection of its owner’s personality. Tabloid gossip columns

had already noted that “[there were] rumors around that Nazimova has adopted trousers

while lounging at the studio.”21 An interviewer for Photoplay observed her masculine

attire as he sat within the living room of Nazimova’s house:

“She enters whistling,” I observed aloud. Nazimova made a move and twirled into the comer of a divan, drawing her feet up after. The effect was boyish, shining black hair cropped very short and parted on one side, a white Eton collar over a dark blouse, a short plaid skirt and flat-heeled brogues, and an abnormally long cigarette holder properly functioning.22

Reporter Herbert Howe understood that Nazimova controlled herself and her

home. He described the house as having the dignity which one would expect from the

Madame. “It contrives to give the appearance of age and cloistered privacy. And that’s a

great piece of histrionism for a house in Hollywood.” Possibly unnerved by the discovery

that Nazimova appeared to make the decisions regarding the house, the reporter stated he

suspected her husband had something to do with the choice of home. As Howe described

the interior decor, the purple of great divans and the crystal lights reflected from a mirror

20 Lambert, 230-279; 362-385. 11 Los Angeles Evening Herald, 22 November 1920, sec. B-8. Nazimova hairstyle, coupled with her choice of clothing, creates a highly gender-crossing image that surpassed the normative New Woman visage. Ishbel Ross. Taste In America: An illustrated history o f the evolution o f architecture, furnishings, fashions, and customs o f the American people (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Co., 1967), 180-182; Simmons, 160, 168-169. 22 Herbert Howe, “A Misunderstood Woman: She’s addressed as Madame Nazimova, but one thinks of her as Naz,” Photoplay (April, 1922), 119.

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laced with gold, he discovered that the furnishings and style reflected Nazimova’s

personality. The article exposed some secret information about the star, noting that she

had a dash of diablerie (wickedness) about her that one could not precisely say that

heaven was her home. Nazimova desired to present this image to the public because she

invited the reporter into her home, transforming that home from a private to a public

space.23

While reporters may have perceived the star’s manners as distinctively

masculine, other instances of newspaper coverage focused on revealing another

personality trait, her preference for the company of women. One gossip columnist

observed that Nazimova had friendships with young actresses Jean Acker and Dagmar

Godowsky. Another columnist noted that Nazimova planned to leave the West Coast, the

reporter claiming that Mademoiselle Natcha Rambova would probably accompany the

star east and stay there. Metro linked the star’s trait and home in gossip regarding

Nazimova and women at her home when the studio aimed to attack her after she split

with it. One set of reports stated that the star’s swimming pool, crowded with Hollywood

ingenues, contained underwater lights that illuminated the water at night. The studio’s

piece of gossip centered on the readers’ understanding of Hollywood homes and parties

as places where whoopee occurred.

As one former screenwriter of the era informed a reporter, Hollywood had

sunshine, cheerful parties, pretty girls, and, most importantly, unexpected excitements.

News items about swimming parties highlighted that the stars appeared scantily attired.

23 Ibid, 24-25.

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Nazimova regularly had pool parties at the Garden of Allah on Sundays, often with only

women in attendance.24 The Nazimova items featured the additional titillation of the

release of information about the star’s private affairs within the confines of her home.

This polymorphous behavior, which many readers would find exotic and quasi-tropical,

occurred around the swimming pool, a unique item for most Americans. The pool

represented a location that readers associated with the wealth and pleasure of Hollywood

star homes and the ease and hedonism of wearing bathing suits and lounging around in a

private backyard. These representations of the Nazimova swimming parties linked her

house with revelations of secrets. They made the star home appear exotic and bound with

the aesthetics of female beauty, wealth, and bodily pleasures, similar to the understanding

of lesbianism.

Despite Metro’s attempt, reporters at her home found Nazimova forthcoming

about her friendships with young women. Nazimova told two interviewers that most of

her friends were young girls. The star offered insight into her personality and these

relationships. “They call me Peter and sometimes Mimi.” Nazimova’s first nickname

confirmed the reporter Hall’s link of the actress to Peter Pan. The latter nickname referred

to the bohemian character with the tragic love in the opera and playLa Boheme. The

actress then explained that, “To me the greatest of all pities is the inability to reach youth

and give it experience.” This statement exhibited the actions and attitudes of a second

generation of New Woman. Unlike the first generation New Woman, Nazimova’s

response did not emerge from a maternal instinct or use the power of motherhood to

24 Los Angeles Evening Herald, 15 March 1920, sec. B-6; Los Angeles Times, 20 April 1921, sec.

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explain her activities in the public realm. The actress explained that creative women, such

as herself, ought not to have children. Nazimova placed the life of the woman as a person

first and foremost, and insisted that she have the freedom to defy convention. “A woman

living a creative life is bound, necessarily, to do things sometimes defiant to convention.

In order to fulfill herself, she should live freely. Children bring fear and in that way arrest

personal development.”25 However, the star did believe in having young women friends

and helping them with their industry careers.

Nazimova’s position regarding women’s domestic role was unique even

among women who identified themselves as feminists during the 1920s. Feminist

advocates wrote that children resulted in complicating factors for career women. Some

offered compromise solutions, including returning to work once the children reached

school age. However, these solutions did not fully offset the professional and salary risks

and other issues that this path entailed. Most career advocates supported the gender norms

of wife and mother, and these advocates viewed women’s jobs especially promising when

this work stemmed from or aimed to improve family life. Most creative women argued

that being a mother helped their creative energy and provided grist for their mill.26

However, the Nazimova that emerged from the star interview was not just

HI, 4; 18 July 1920, sec. Ill, 15; 11 July 1937, sec. IV, 11; Lambert, 220-222. 25 Unidentified clipping in Alla Nazimova file, Lesbian Herstory Archives; Anne Frior Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations In American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 141-150. 26 Nancy Cott, The Grounding o f Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 197-201.

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another female artist. Nazimova defined the circumstances within the Garden of Allah.

The star dictated who would live in her home, what family she would have, and the

values that her home would reflect. Nazimova invited young women whose company she

enjoyed to congregate around her swimming pool but desired no children, using her star

home as a place for her comfort and delight. Nazimova appeared as the New Woman

battling industry executives and practices to ensure that when she appeared in motion

pictures she agreed and felt comfortable with her image off and on the screen.

As Nazimova’s fortunes in Hollywood dwindled, her former studio signed a

Swedish director and his protege, an actress named Greta Louisa Gustafsson. Greta left

her working-class family in Stockholm, Sweden, after winning a scholarship to the Royal

Dramatic Theater training school during the early 1920s. Renowned homosexual Swedish

director Mauritz Stiller discovered her and cast her in his movies. At M-G-M, while

Stiller barely completed two motion pictures as he fought with executives, the recently

renamed Greta Garbo did bathing suit publicity shots as the studio struggled to find an

image for her. After Garbo made a splash in her first motion picture, The Torrent, the shy

actress insisted on not talking to the media. The M-G-M publicity department used this

part of her personality to promote an image of Garbo as the mysterious Swedish Sphinx.

The studio and media built upon this image of Garbo as mysterious. The actress made the

transition into sound motion pictures and enjoyed nearly a decade of success. However,

World War Two paralyzed the actress on a personal level. This war closed the European

markets where Garbo’s movies earned profitable box office returns. The studio tried to

push her away from mystery and androgyny into a more straightforward character.

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However, Garbo, her friend and advisor screen writer Salka Viertel, and George Cukor

created the unqualified disaster of Two-Faced Woman (1941). As a result of these

changes, Garbo retired from the screen at the close of that year.27

The image of the private, mysterious Garbo resulted in little information

existing about her private activities and living circumstances. This intensified the allure

and excitement of Garbo’s home. Swedish writer Rilla Palmberg persuaded two friends

of Garbo’s to explain to her legion of fans how this elusive and alluring person lived

when off screen. Wilhelm Sorenson, the son of a Swedish millionaire, and English actor

John Loder described the star’s actions In masculine terms. “Garbo strides along like a

man and fairly races over the ground.” Sorenson stated. “She plays tennis like a man,

too,” added Loder. The two agreed on one final detail that makes the star seem stronger

and more aggressive than many males. “One of her favorite amusements is throwing a

huge medicine ball, weighing fifteen pounds or so. She would hurl it about her garden,

flattening shrubs, flowers and bushes.” These stories illuminated that Garbo cared more

about outdoor activities than things like interior decoration. “Garbo was not at all

domestic and never puttered around the house. A career woman, she worked, when work

was the order of the day. [She pursued] a variety of sporting interests,” many of which

would have been thought of as male activities.28

27 Two strong biographies of Garbo are Karen Swenson, Greta Garbo: A Life Apart (New York: Scribner, 1997) and Barry Paris, Garbo: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 374-385. 28 Rilla Palmborg, Photoplay “The Private Life of Greta Garbo,” (October 1930), 39, 143.

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These representations illustrated how Garbo viewed homes. The Photoplay

article made it apparent that, despite her desire for privacy, the Swedish star never owned

a home in Hollywood and continually moved around the city. She did not value a home

for financial security or comfort, but saw the home as a place of privacy and intimacy.

Garbo enjoyed being with herself, but she also enjoyed having friends at her home. The

article teased readers with alluring revelations that Garbo placed items from friends that

carried suggestions of same-gender sexual interest in her bedroom.

Garbo had guests over for luncheons somewhat frequently. On one occasion, Sorenson gave Garbo a drawing of her in a trench coat, derby, and men’s shoes. It had its basis in a Swedish folk-story that had an old man as its hero. The star framed the sketch and placed it on her favorite table beside her bed. Other friends knew she was fond of pansies and violets and often sent the flowers to her. A bunch of violets almost always appeared at the head of her bed.29

The presence of the flower violet was a well-known symbol for lesbianism

during that era, and this link blossomed with Edouard Bourdet’s international success, La

Prisonnaire. This play had a long run on Broadway asThe Captive until the police closed

it down in 1927. Many women would not purchase violets after their being tied to The

Captive, even within sophisticated circles decades later.30 Most importantly, the article

claimed that gifts represented her personality and the intimacy she shared with friends.

As one might expect from such as exotic figure, Garbo created a life relatively

free of restrictive gender conventions in her numerous homes in Hollywood. As noted

earlier, she used her home to engage privately in “male” sports. Garbo had a manservant

29 Ibid, (October, 1930), 142. 30 Kaier Curtin, We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians: the emergence o f gays and lesbians on the American stage (Boston: Alyson Press, 1987), 40-50.

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rather than a housekeeper or female dresser. She appeared to be more comfortable sharing

her house with another “single man.” Garbo probably forged a relationship with him

similar to the one between a male master and his valet, appreciating his advice on

common apparel. The presence of the servant gave Garbo’s home the allure of special

wealth and class and a degree of comfort and ease that many readers would desire but

never attain. In addition, the servant’s presence made the star’s home very unusual

because, in Garbo’s house, a woman alone ruled over a house staff of male servants.

Although not disposed to speaking to the media, Greta Garbo did make a few

pronouncements about marriage that defied the cultural gender conventions regarding

woman’s place in the domestic sphere. In the early 1930s, one newspaper article noted

that Garbo stated in a husky contralto, “No, I am not ever to marry.” One writer

attempted to make sense of such defiance of what the culture presumed every woman

wanted for herself. “She shall never marry, because she has set impossibly high standards

in the search for true love.” Garbo’s position on marriage moved against the trend for

both women and men during the first decades of the twentieth century. The proportion of

women who never married dropped from 10 to 6 percent between the generations who

came of age between 1895-1915, and those who came of age between 1917-1939. The

average age at which women married dipped from twenty-four years to twenty-two and a

half. As Garbo reached her thirties, she continued her defiance of this cultural norm

despite increasing professional advice to marry. Reporters questioned Garbo about the

time she spent with conductor Leopold Stokowski. A Los Angeles Examiner reporter

ambushed Garbo in order to get an answer on this question. “No, no— I will not marry

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Mr. Stokowski. These rumors are absurd. I won’t deny that Mr. Stokowski and I are very

good friends, but as for marriage to him—no. That is out of the question.” Caught by

surprise, the star demonstrated how deeply she valued living at home as a bachelor. Her

definitive answer to the prospect of marriage revealed how strongly the taciturn star felt

about controlling her own home and the living arrangements therein. Garbo would

control who lived with her in her home. When her manservant brought her [men’s] shoes,

the star laughed, “Just the kind for us bachelors, eh?”31

While not displaying Garbo’s choices in servants or words, images of actress

Patsy Kelly revealed some personal traits of this comedienne as she forged a home life

that suited her interests and lifestyle. Brooklyn-born, Kelly began her career as a teenager

working with Frank Fay in vaudeville. Kelly traded ad-libs with Fay, the man known as

the deadly ad-libber with the insouciant Irish charm. After she achieved success on

Broadway, producer Hal Roach brought Kelly to Hollywood in 1933 to star with Thelma

Todd in a series of popular short comedies. Although devastated after her dear friend

Todd’s death in late 1935, Kelly continued to play the wisecracking friend in many

motion pictures into the early 1940s. “The Queen of the Wisecrackers” suddenly

disappeared from Hollywood in 1943, and for the next two decades she struggled

professionally, surviving with the help of Tallulah Bankhead. Kelly returned to the screen

31 unidentified clipping from 8 January 1932, in Garbo Biography File, AMPAS; Mann, 185-186; Cott, 147; Paris, 351; Palmborg, Photoplay(October 1930), 142.

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in several small roles and enjoyed a career revival with successful Broadway appearances

in No No Nanette in 1971 and Irene before dying in 1981.32

Articles revealed the comedienne’s attitude toward the home decoration and

tied them to her lifestyle. Much of Kelly’s home did not contain furnishings and color

choices that directly reflected her personality. However, as an article suggested, the decor

of her home indirectly illuminated her personality.

Patsy lives, now, in a low white house in Beverly Hills. With her lives her friend, Wilma Cox, who was on the stage with her in New York. Wilma works occasionally in pictures on the Hal Roach lot. With them,...is a maid... Patsy’s house is all done, inside, in blue and white. Because blue and white are Wilma’s favorite colors, not Patsy’s...33

As a very successful actress in the motion picture industry, Patsy Kelly would

seem to have no financial need to have a roommate. Indeed, actresses including Garbo,

lived alone. Having a housekeeper reinforced the idea that Kelly did not have a financial

reason for having Wilma in her house. It was possible Kelly offered Wilma a place in her

home because she was her friend. However, it would be rare to allow someone staying in

the house for a brief period to make interior decorating decisions. The paint colors

reflected Wilma’s taste and not Patsy’s. This indicated that Wilma’s desires were very

important to Kelly. Kelly’s personality allowed her to defer the creation of a chic

31 Anthony Slide, The Vaudevillians: A Dictionary o f Vaudeville Performers (Westport, CT: Arlington House, 1994), 169; Ephraim Katz,The Film Encyclopedia (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), 646; David Ragan, Who's Who In Hollywood 1900-1976 (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1976), 221-222. Before her death, Kelly discussed her interest in women with Boze Hadleigh. Columnist Lee Graham observed that Kelly lost her position in Hollywood in 1943 because of her behavior. Kelly befriended mannish women, wore slacks in public, swore, and told off color jokes at lesbian bars and clubs. They figured she was a scandal waiting to happen. Boze Hadleigh, Hollywood Lesbians (New York: Barricade Books, 1994), 62-68. 33 Gladys Hall, ‘“ Tis the Likes of The Kelly You’ll Be After Liking Now!” Motion Picture Magazine (January, 1937), 104.

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household that offered commodities and comfort to her girlfriend, the woman who shared

her living quarters.

However, readers received titillation as they learned how Kelly’s interests

shaped the way she used her star house. “Patsy has a radio in every room of her house.

She has made her large patio into a game room. There, besides the radio, are games of all

kinds, a bar.”34 Kelly emphasized various forms of entertainment and luxury in her home.

The comedienne enjoyed having friends over to play and party, and she used her home to

promote delight. This representation made Kelly’s star home appear like a fun house and

a place where the chic bachelors might come to play.

Gossip columns exposed Kelly’s friendships and demonstrated how they

extended beyond sharing her home and its delights. “Patsy Kelly and Helen Ainsworth

went to actress Queenie Smith’s Malibu beach house to help swish an extra coat of paint

and be rewarded with a buffet supper.” This representation placed Kelly amid women

who painted their house themselves rather than hire someone, or have male friends do the

work. Kelly made a practical contribution to the benefit of her friend’s vacation home and

presumably to value domesticity within a home. While intended to evoke fun in readers’

minds, the representation also presumably stirred thoughts of the unique scene of three

Hollywood female stars painting, and of women in control of their house and their

34 Ibid.

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environment.35

As a comedienne, Patsy Kelly faced fewer questions regarding her unmarried

status than a romantic star such as Garbo. Some images carried references that thrilled

audience members with insight into Kelly’s personality. “[Kelly] was a wild kid who

preferred boys and their sports to the namby-pamby amusements of other girls of her age

and association.” The tomboyish Kelly herself noted that she always had an interest in

being a fireman and had her own baseball team and gang. “Patsy herself is no orchid...

She has a round face with a broad forehead and not very much chin. The amount of time

Patsy spends worrying about her looks amount to about ten minutes every other month.

Between those times she can’t be bothered.” A later article observed that “clothes don’t

interest her. She claims that she doesn’t look good even when she’s all dressed up and

that buying clothes is a waste of money for her.” These pieces revealed that both in

physical description and in her lack of interest in traditional female concerns, Kelly

defied cultural prescriptions for a woman. Despite these revelations, Kelly faced reporters

asking her about marriage. Once she quipped, “No, I can’t get up that early.”36 While not

as direct in her defiance of traditional norms as Nazimova or Garbo, like these stars,

Kelly made clear her choice not to marry. In so doing, Kelly forged a life that defied

many conventions.

35 Los Angeles Times, 22 March 1936, sec. IV, 6. 36 “It Comes Out Here,” Silver Screen (March, 1936), 58; Hall, 32; Los Angeles Times, 17 December 1935, 10. Oxford English Dictionary, v. XVIII, 212. In Royal Elsmere (1888) Mrs. Humphrey Ward writes, “As a rough tomboy of fourteen, she had shown Catherine... a good many uncouth signs of affection." The phrase “uncouth signs of affection” connotes “aberrant” sexual behavior. Since the character is a boyish behaving woman, the affection is most likely woman-loving-woman. New York World Telegram, 12 October 1935, Kelly, Patsy (actress) folder, NYPL; unidentified newspaper clipping from 12

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The motion picture industry promoted images of actresses that promoted

intimacy within these stars with the Hollywood home. Imagery teased readers and

audiences with the exposure that prominent actresses dressed and acted like men in their

homes. As big name actresses, the three figures needed to retain a large fan base in order

to stay in their positions in Hollywood. While playing roles to which the public

responded positively was the primary way to ensure one’s position, publicity had a

significant part as well. Each of these actresses presented themselves in the media in

houses that befitted her exalted status as a Hollywood movie star. The images of these

actresses provided readers with “revelations” of facets of their personalities. Supposedly,

readers now knew what alluring and powerful women did with themselves in their off­

screen lives within their homes. This successful link of luxurious residence with the

revelation of aspects of these popular personalities enhanced the stars’ positions with

their fans and new audiences. The images of these giant homes in the Hollywood hills

made the star homes appear like castles. When the actresses adopted clothing and

attitudes that “co-opted maledom” they positioned themselves as heads o f their castles.

Behind the Scenes Chic; Making It Their Wav

Publicity materials from Hollywood occasionally featured the activities and

personalities who did not appear on camera. Several articles discussed screenwriters and a

director who formed an example of behind-the-scenes “bachelor chic.” These figures

lived in more modest residences that received less media attention than the actresses’

August 1941 in Kelly, Patsy (actress) folder, NYPL;New York Daily News, 20 June 1940 in Kelly, Patsy (actress) folder, NYPL.

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homes, yet their places reflected their personalities and contributed to the Hollywood

home appearing exotic. These three screenwriters and a director maintained lifestyles that

challenged traditional norms for women in the culture and were vocal in explaining their

values.

Like actresses, women screenwriters in the motion picture industry sparked

public suspicions about their sexuality. As career women who earned significant incomes,

they faced questioning about their attitudes toward their careers, motherhood, and family

because women professionals were rare. A Photoplay magazine article realized the need

to assure readers that the twelve featured screenwriters were “regular” women. “These

women were not temperamental 'artistes,' short-haired advanced feminists, not fadists...”

The presence of this caption indicated that the industry publicized behind-the-scenes

people as they did their stars and thrilled audience members with information about their

personalities. The top female screenwriters faced questions about their “natures,” and

perhaps many readers of the motion picture fan magazines suspected that the top women

screenwriters were not “regular” women. Even those Hollywood insiders who were

critical of Hollywood ballyhoo followed this formula. F. Scott Fitzgerald noted that

successful screenwriter Jane Meloney received numerous labels, many focused on the

private world of her sexuality. “The little blonde of fifty could hear the fifty assorted

opinions of Hollywood...a sentimental dope, the smartest woman on the lot, and of

course, nymphomaniac, virgin, pushover, a Lesbian....”37

37 “How Twelve Famous Women Scenario Writers Succeeded,” Photoplay (August, 1923), 31; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 36.

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A bizarre love triangle involving two Hollywood screenwriters provided clues

regarding the home of an average screenwriter. The extensive coverage in a variety of

newspapers in the late 1920s thrilled readers with its revelations about the private

practices of the scribes of the screen. The Los Angeles Police visited screenwriter Beth

Rowland with the news that her husband Peter Stratford had died o f tuberculosis and that

Peter's biological sex was female. Rowland explained that her marriage resulted from the

love and respect that emerged from a two-year correspondence before Stratford declared

“his” love for Rowland. The widow thought Stratford only had a few months to live, so

she made her terms clear and accepted his proposal of marriage. Stratford settled in Niles,

California, in an effort to ward off the disease, but it worsened. So he requested that

Rowland establish a home with him. Rowland described herself as a platonic wife, nurse,

and homemaker to this fastidious gentleman. However, Rowland discovered that Peter

wrote endearing letters to Rowland’s screenwriter friend Alma Thompson. Rowland

requested that the letters stop and believed Stratford’s “infidelity” released her from a

continuing obligation. Rowland claimed that shortly afterward Stratford revealed “his”

true sex, and Rowland decided to move to Hollywood and earn money for the two of

them. However, she discovered that the letters to Miss Thompson had not stopped and

Rowland ended relations with Stratford.38

Other figures in this drama of a triangular relationship questioned Rowland’s

descriptions of her home. The former assistant manager, J. A. McDonald of the nursery

where Peter Stratford worked, observed that Peter had no problem moving plants and

3* New York Times, 4 May 1929, 40;Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1929, sec. II, 2.

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“....[Stratford] was a woman with no feminine attributes, loving horse races, masculine

sports and talking like a man.” However, even with those attributes, sometime within less

than two years, McDonald discovered Stratford’s biological sex and agreed to maintain

the secret from the other employees. Richard Rowland, Beth’s only child from her first

marriage, claimed his mother knew that Peter was a woman soon after the marriage. Beth

Rowland explained to her son that she faced a terrible dilemma because she could not

desert her physically disabled “husband,” and so decided to stay with him.39 This

testimony revealed to readers that Rowland and Stratford’s home had two healthy figures

some of the time. Readers could combine Rowland’s admission of love and with her

discovery of Stratford’s female biology to believe that the Hollywood screen writer loved

Stratford regardless of her sex and enjoyed sharing a house with “him.”

The exchange between Stratford and the screenwriter Alma Thompson

captured the focus of the tabloids as one of the strangest features o f the Stratford story.

Employed by a Hollywood studio, Thompson lived in a ranch house in Hollywood where

she engaged in the study of mysticism. Although she claimed to write Stratford out of

sympathy because of his affliction, Thompson sent Stratford secret rose petals. Stratford

wrote that Alma taught him Sufi beliefs and spoke to him with authority. Letters from

Peter to Alma contained appeals for a deeper love, and Alma’s replies carried the

3<> Los Angeles Times, 3 May 1929, 2;Los Angeles Evening Herald, 4 May 1929, sec. A -1.

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salutations “Dearest Lamb” and “Dear Pedar.” Peter referred to Alma as “my soul.”40

These accounts represented Alma Thompson’s home as an exotic place. The

screenwriter used the privacy of her home to explore her interest in mysticism. Perhaps

with the coverage of “fadist” beliefs and sect activities occurring in Southern California

during the 1920s, readers could envision that Thompson convened meetings and

gatherings within her bungalow. This knowledge provided readers with the idea that they

went behind the closed doors of the screenwriter’s house and gave them the chance to feel

titillation. They learned about Thompson’s use of her home and the screenwriter’s sense

of comfort and delight in her home. Most significantly, Thompson used the privacy of her

home to pursue the highly “temperamental” activity of exchanging deeply emotional

letters with a person she only knew through correspondence. Thompson engaged in this

behavior while knowing that the “man” she communicated with was her friend Beth

Rowland's husband. It was also possible that Miss Thompson might have known the

biological sex of her communicant because Mrs. Rowland might have informed her.

Ironically, Alma Thompson’s one screen credit came a few years later for a feature

entitled I Loved A Woman (Warner Brothers, 1933).41

Another screenwriter with few screen credits, known now for her women

loves, exhibited greater control over her image as it appeared in representations

throughout the 1930s. The child of an aristocratic Spanish family from Cuba, Mercedes

de Acosta’s mother called her Rafael, dressed her in male clothes, and encouraged her to

40 Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1929, sec. II, 2;Los Angeles Evening Herald, 3 May 1929, sec. A -1. 41 American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures produced in the United States, 1931-1940, Patricia King Hanson, executive editor, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1003.

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believe that she was a boy for several years, de Acosta married painter Abram Poole in

1921, but the pair led increasingly separate lives and were divorced in 1935. A novelist,

playwright, poet, and Hollywood screenwriter, de Acosta did not achieve critical praise or

popular note with her writing, but from the late 1910s moved in theatrical, artistic, and

motion picture circles. She became a confidante and companion to several women in each

grouping. “[A] Spanish Dracula with the body of a young boy,” according to Mia Riva,

Marlene Dietrich’s daughter, de Acosta had several prominent loves within the motion

picture circle, including Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, and Marlene Dietrich, de Acosta

introduced stars to other celebrities and the “high” arts and generally inspired them to

relax and have fun.42

Her numerous contacts and independent wealth helped de Acosta overcome

her tribulations with the studios. Theatrical producer and agent Elisabeth “Bessie”

Marbury arranged for de Acosta to write at RKO studios on the latest Pola Negri feature

in 1930. After RKO decided against pursuing that motion picture, Garbo eventually

helped de Acosta begin working under Irving Thalberg at M-G-M. The screenwriter

enjoyed a tumultuous professional relationship with the imperious, intuitive “boy

wonder” of Hollywood. Their biggest battle centered on de Acosta’s script for Desperate,

a motion picture that would put Garbo in pants. While the actress would eventually don

pants a year later inQueen Christina, Thalberg did not like the attire in this instance or de

Acosta’s script, de Acosta tried later with a screen play forThe Life of Jehanne D ’Arc,

42 Mercedes de Acosta, Here Lies The Heart (New York: Reynal & Co., 1960); 212-227, 240-245, 316-318; Paris, 257-264; Axel Madsen, Forbidden Lovers: Hollywood's Greatest Secret- Female Stars

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but this time Garbo refused the script. Although the American Film Institute does not

attribute any credits to de Acosta, she listed The Shining Hour (M-G-M, 1938), Rasputin,

and Camille as scripts to which she contributed.43 The writer left Hollywood in 1942 and

returned to New York City and the theatrical world.

The coverage of de Acosta illustrated the difference in the publicity

approaches of the theater and motion picture industries. During the years de Acosta spent

in the theatrical world, the limited amount of publicity and focus of newspaper theater

gossip columns resulted in few descriptions of the writer’s masculine attire. Within a year

as a screenwriter in Hollywood reporter Alma Whitaker visited de Acosta in her home.

The reporter noted that de Acosta was in the dangerous attractive late thirties and “affects

the strictly tailored idea, even unto a genuine walking shoe.”44

Hollywood columns expanded their disclosure of de Acosta’s private “self’

through informing readers that she established a residence different from other women

screenwriters. She lived alone in Hollywood while her husband stayed in New York City.

“Miss de Acosta has taken a delightful house at Brentwood Heights, where she is

Who Loved Other Women (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1996), 9,21-26, 66-79; Mia Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993). 43 de Acosta, 206-222; Madsen, 41-42; Swenson, 273-275; 327-329; Introduction o f Mercedes de Acosta during speaking engagement. Box 5 folder 3, Mercedes de Acosta Collection, Rosenbach Museum, Philadelphia. 44 The lack of mention of her clothing appeared in a Philadelphia Public Ledger piece o f April 12, 1925, in an unidentified clipping of May 8, 1928, and in most of the New York newspaper reviews for her plays. The article on the Lucy Stone League appeared in theNew York Sun, February 27, 1922, de Acosta Collection, Box 5, Folder 3, Rosenbach Museum; Alma Whitaker, “Change Her Name? Well, Mercedes Just Refuses,” Los Angeles Times, 27 December 1931, sec. Ill, 7. In a review column, a theater critic made the following observation: the actor who played the Moor, although highly accomplished, was physically unsuited to the part. He looked just like Mercedes d’Acosta (sic), which is a very good way to look, but not when one is acting Othello...When Othello flounced off the stage it was only for an instant that one found oneself saying, ‘Well, I never knew Mercedes d'Acosta (sic) had such a temper.’ Los Angeles Examiner, 31 May 1932 de Acosta Collection, Box 5, Folder 4, Rosenbach Museum.

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ensconced with her servants and her dogs and she says her stay is indefinite. She also

owns a home in New York and an apartment in Paris....” De Acosta appeared to have

established a new “family” in Hollywood over which she ruled. The screenwriter

expected a long, comfortable stay with them in her new, charming residence without her

husband whom she soon divorced. Unlike representations of many other screenwriters,

this representation did not describe de Acosta’s house in feminine terms, nor did it

actively demonstrate that the house contained commodities associated with females. The

article stated that the screenwriter had servants who maintained the house when stories on

woman screenwriters usually showed that the screenwriters were homemakers.45 The

representation did not associate de Acosta with valuing her house for domesticity or

efficiency; instead it highlighted that de Acosta valued ease, intimacy and control of her

home.

The screenwriter asserted her control over her surroundings with statements

illustrating that she chose her own family structure, de Acosta decried marriage. “Of

course, I think matrimony is out of date. I don’t approve of it at all....Divorce...should be

unnecessary. And if matrimony were abolished it wouldn’t be.”46 This representation

revealed that de Acosta acted upon her thoughts, including retaining her surname and

living thousands of miles away from her husband. She added that she had no children,

although she liked them. These positions made de Acosta appear as the feminist who

45 Whitaker, “Change Her Name?” 7; Holliday, 330-331. 46 Los Angeles Times, 27 December 1931, sec. Ill, 7.

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would bring about changes that Photoplay's editor and writer worried about nearly a

decade earlier. Even de Acosta noted that “she can imagine how some mothers will feel

about me.” The reporter qualified de Acosta’s statements, claiming that de Acosta was

not crusading, only expressing her views. However, this representation of de Acosta

revealed her flamboyant personality and made her home appear exciting as the residence

of a nontraditional celebrity.

Both the reporter and screenwriter perceived that de Acosta’s questioning of

the traditional home and family appeared highly inflammatory, de Acosta challenged the

prevailing family structure of the home while the country experienced the enormous

economic disruption of the Great Depression. The culture strongly encouraged women to

limit their aspirations to husband, family, and domesticity. Actress Majorie Main made

many public statements during the 1930s and 1940s that expressed regret about not

having children. The actress explained to an interviewer years later that she never wanted

children. Still, she made the public statements that belied her feelings because of the

enormous pressure that women faced to conform to the motherhood standard, “...a gal

gets asked those questions, and that’s the reply they expect [and would keep accusations

at bay].” Actresses might be able to deflect questions regarding motherhood but what

made de Acosta rare was that most depictions of female Hollywood screenwriters noted

that they had children and performed their motherly duties.47

47 As a gender role, the position of mother dramatically influenced the opportunities that women have had to enter the cultural, political, and social worlds in the United States. During this era opponents of women’s involvement in these worlds used motherhood to deny women the opportunity to enter those realms. As noted earlier, an ideology of motherhood enabled some women to enter these worlds during the Progressive era, if their activities stayed within those areas where the ideology could justify women’s

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The screenwriter acted on her philosophy and tried to bring her views on

gender into her work activities. A gossip piece noted that “Greta Garbo’s ‘best pal,’

writer Mercedes de Acosta wrote what she thought was a marvelous role for GG ...At the

last minute GG turned cool toward the script, Mercedes was offended and a long and loud

behind closed doors discussion went on - for days....”48 The role was as Joan o f Arc, a

cross-dressing woman with short boyish locks whose spiritual strength helped drive the

English out of France in the fifteenth century.

The coverage of the screenwriter’s past professional activities enhanced de

Acosta’s image as a woman who did what she wanted regardless of gender conventions.

A fan magazine article reinforced de Acosta’s careerist image by describing her as a

woman who attained scholastic achievement. “Miss d’ Acosta (sic) is the author of a

brilliant monograph on Benvenuto Cellini, XVI Century Italian artist and writer, and has

been on the scenario staffs of several major studios for the past two years. She is a highly

cultured and distinguished person.” Mercedes de Acosta’s status as a scholar and writer

granted her Hollywood home a sense of sophistication. Hollywood insiders as well as

audiences perceived this. Fellow screenwriter Anita Loss noted that she had dinner at

Mercedes de Acosta’s and found other evidences of true sophistication in this new

Hollywood.49

involvement. Boze Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays (New York: Barricade Books, 1996), 26. The description of Main’s sexual activity appears in Madsen, 105, 136, 144, 174; Susan Ware,Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston: Twayne Publications, 1982), 8-14; Holliday, 331. 48 The Hollywood Reporter, January, 1935, cited in Tichi Wilkerson and Marcia Borif, The Hollywood Reporter: The Golden Years (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1984), 78. 49 Movie Classic, undated, presumably late 1932 de Acosta Collection, Box 17, Folder 4, Rosenbach Museum. The screenwriter’s status as a scholar illustrated both the gains women made and the limitations they faced in academia in the middle of the twentieth century. Most professional women in the

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During the height of the studio era one woman made her living working in the

predominantly male occupation of Hollywood director. Bom in San Francisco in early

1900, Dorothy Arzner met motion picture industry personalities while waiting tables in

the cafe her father bought when the family moved to Los Angeles. She abandoned her

medical training and joined the ambulance corps in World War One. When she returned

Arzner encountered screenwriter William de Mille who helped her get work as a

continuity person with Alla Nazimova. Although some Hollywood figures testify that the

pair engaged in a romance, Arzner biographer Judith Mayne emphasized that the bachelor

chic star nurtured the career of the younger New Woman Arzner.50 Regardless, Arzner

presumably attended Nazimova’s women pool parties and contributed to the impression

that star’s home created.

Arzner worked her way up in the industry. At Paramount, Arzner became

chief editor in the mid-1920s and pushed to become a director. Although she faced

numerous struggles with studio heads, Arzner directed sixteen motion pictures that bear

her credit. Among the most noteworthy were The Wild Party (Paramount, 1929), Craig’s

Wife (Columbia, 1936), and Dance Girl Dance (RKO, 1940). Although weak health

necessitated that Arzner end her career, the wealth she accumulated thorough wise

1930s worked as nurses, and elementary and secondary school teachers. Within academics, women were confined to the lowest ranks of the professoriat and usually channeled into areas unofficially deemed women’s work, including nutrition and home economics. Only a few notable women emerged as highly accomplished researchers and writers. Cott, 215-222; Ware, 79-81; Notes, Box 1, Folder 10, Anita Loos Collection, Mugar Library, BU. 50 Judith Mayne, Directed by Dorothy Arzner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 20- 25.

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investments enabled her to retire in comfort Arzner shared this retirement as she had her

directing career with dancer and choreographer Marion Morgan.51

Judith Mayne has noted that depictions of Arzner’s looks wavered between

describing her “mannish” attire and styles and granting the director “feminine” qualities.

Like numerous reporters, Herbert Cruikshank presented the director’s New Woman look

and tried to mitigate this with appeals to the culturally accepted feminine style. “She

wears her clothes with a boyish ease, and despite an apparent distaste for the usual frills

and frothy furbelows of femininity, there is a softness in the very severity of her apparel,

which is very appealing.”52

Media figures exhibited less confusion over Arzner’s gender non-conformity

when depicting the director within the studio. Columnist Grace Kingsley described

Arzner’s office as “a place as bare looking and businesslike as a man director’s office

would be.” Hedda Hopper gleefully reported that Arzner blushed because she did not

know the period of her office furniture. Arzner’s inability presumably generated glee and

sympathy from readers whom either believed in furniture as a commodity or shared the

director’s lack of interest in this concern.53 A third reporter described Arzner on the studio

lot while shooting a scene.

To share even one characteristics with the great Napoleon is often the aim of men, but it is the real privilege of one woman in Hollywood, namely Dorothy Arzner,

51 Ibid, 13-30. 52 Herbert Cruikshank, “Directory Dorothy: The One Woman Behind The Stars,” Motion Picture Classic (September, 1929), 76. Other instances include: Photoplay (December, 1933), 24, Dorothy Arzner Biography File, AMPAS;Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1937, sec. Ill, 3; Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1927, sec. Ill, 15. 53 Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1927, sec. Ill, 15; 21 February 1937, sec. Ill, 3.

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only woman director for Paramount. She resembles the great Corsican in her posture— that of standing with her hands clasped behind her back.54

The representations of Arzner captured her control over her domain. Arzner’s

house appeared on a high hillside with a tremendous view. The director slept beside a

window and let the sunrise wake her. Arzner’s house illustrated a degree of wealth and

location that made it highly unusual. The director explained to a reporter how she used

her home. “Arzner announced that no one could expect her to be a little homemaker... Her

pet aversion is housework in any of its many phases. Dishes, perhaps, are the worst.”55

The director valued her home for intimacy, privacy and comfort. She made her place

different in the public’s mind by describing herself as a woman who abhorred domestic

chores, instead valuing her own ease within her home.

The self-description illustrated that Arzner challenged accepted cultural

gender conventions. Arzner’s representations revealed that she did not intend to become

someone’s wife. Early in her career the director appeared forthright in addressing the

question so that the interviewer noted, “Dorothy is unmarried, and does not plan to

marry.” As her career reached its height, her choice appeared such a matter of fact that a

writer stated, “Away from the camera Miss Arzner...has never married.” Arzner used one

opportunity to express a conception of herself defined through inclusion rather than

exclusion. Arzner declared that her biggest ambition involved ‘“to be a successful

woman,’ and set as a next goal to write a novel.”56

54 Mayne, 160. 55 Time, 12 October 1936, 32; Cruikshank, 76. 56 Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1927, sec HI, 15; 17 April 1927, sec. Ill, 2; Time, 12 October 1936,32.

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As top personalities in the motion picture industry, both the industry and

media outlets found the “bachelor chic” women noteworthy copy. The women, the studio

publicity machines, and the entertainment-reporting organizations each contributed to the

shaping of the stories about women in Hollywood who adopted masculine clothing. The

representations of the “bachelor chic” within Hollywood star homes made them appear

exotic. What also emerged in this transitional era of gender relations were images that

differed dramatically from the popular versions of the New Woman. The flapper, the

dominant image of the New Woman during the 1920s, enjoyed greater freedom in

consumption and sexual awareness. However, much of her consumption and her sexual

gratification focused on pleasing males, and she did not embrace a career for herself.57 A

few second generation New Women writers used their feminist language and its attacks

against gender conventions and calls for political and social change. However, the four

writers' public challenges to the new sexual taboos against female love sparked

representations that depicted them as unnatural. This also resulted in the writers receiving

a great deal of criticism and the full brunt o f social ostracism and legal censorship.58 The

57 The idea for a contestation of stories forming lesbian identities and media representations of the “mannish lesbian,” appeared in Lisa Duggan, “The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Tum-of-the-Century America,” Signs 18 (Summer 1993), 792-794; Cott, 155-165; Mary Ryan, “The Projection of a New Womanhood: Movie Modems in the 1920s,” ed. Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen, Decades o f Discontent: The Women's Movement, 1920-1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983). Depictions of New Women in mass culture, such as Hollywood movies, showed them desiring to escape work and winning retirement through the prompting of love and trusting submission to her man. 58 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Discourses o f Sexuality and Subjectivity: The New Woman, 1870- 1936,” in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York: North American Library, 1989), 276-280. Few women writers or New Women of the 1920s strove to publicly challenge a variety' of gender conventions. The radical Yiddish women writers generally married and had children, and they wrote before marriage or after widowhood. They rarely expressed hostility toward males for excluding them from the centers of power, or questioned the relationship of the sexes. Norma Fain Pratt,

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representations of these Hollywood women used the cultural association of women with

domestic spaces and offered images that challenged traditional definitions of domesticity

and women’s roles within the home.

Single women were not the only nontraditional figures that forged the

mystique of the Hollywood star home. Images of bachelors appeared in the mass media

amidst a culture that believed bachelors came from the ranks of young men,

homosexuals, sailors, and transient workers. Most cultural observers in this period

believed that landladies of these residences exerted social controls over single males and

their activities within their homes. In the late decades of the nineteenth century, the

culture associated bachelors with saloons, “improper conduct” in dance halls, prostitution

in back rooms and flophouses, and indigence. The rejection of domesticity and bourgeois

acquisitiveness in their lifestyles prompted hostility from the middle classes.

Even fashionable bachelor apartments had centralized kitchens and laundries

and were designed for entertaining, sleeping, and reading. They lacked kitchens because

U.S. culture expected single men to take their meals at their clubs, or with family or

friends in private homes. In this way, the bachelors had some exposure to “home

comfort” to combat fears that young men would become addicted to the independence of

living outside family structure. This revealed the understanding that the culture

disapproved of bachelorhood. Sociologists noted that children were important to all

“Culture and Radical Politics: Yiddish Women Writers in American, 1890-1940,” in Scharf and Jensen, 142-144.

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adults because they forced adults to plan and hope for the future and to consider other-

directed action.59

Bachelors rarely appeared in the representations of houses in the major

periodicals of the era. Approximately two percent of these images depicted bachelors'

residences. Only a few o f these made the person’s bachelor status the focus of the article,

and they catalogued the loneliness of living in a single room and eating poor food. A

representation of two bachelors from 1938 appeared less bleak. A music arranger and a

painter wanted a place near the city yet outside its noise and clutter. The reporter framed

their story through the adage inPoor Richard’s Almanac to never take a wife until thou

hast a house. The article detailed how “the boys” went about building their home and

described the colors and furnishings while providing no quotations from either of the men

or insight into their characters or relationship. The reporter perhaps offered a suggestion

of the latter when he leafed through the bachelor’s copy of the almanac and observed that

the page containing the adage was not even cut.60 These images gave the impression that

most bachelors lived a difficult life without a real home, and people expected them to

think about and want to marry a woman.

59 George Chauncey,Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making o f the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 75-86; Pan! Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 107, 216-218, 290-292; Wright, 141. 60 Sidney Wahl Little, “O ff Campus; new home in which a bachelor college professor finds life again worth living,” American Home (November 1936), 86-89; L. Morris, “Bachelors’ paradise in the Druid hills,” American Home (February 1938), 19.

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The Bachelor Pad: In Hollywood Before Plavbov

Hollywood’s images depicted bachelors who lived extravagantly in luxurious

residences and focused on the star’s personality, home, and the presence of nontraditional

gender and sexuality. While maintaining audience interest with revelations of secrets

about celebrities, these images made Hollywood bachelor star homes appear distinct. The

figures sidestepped the culture’s expectations for them to marry. Vicki Baum’sFalling

Star (1934) was one of the few Hollywood novels to make a life-long bachelor the main

character. Oliver Dent had hard, luminous strength and supple athletic shoulders. Despite

the women clustered around him for attention, the star remained single. He shared his

enormous home with his closest friend, Jerry, who served as Dent’s secretary and

confidant. Jerry was soft and effeminate, with a girlish face and a little bracelet encircling

his thin wrist. He attended the same college as Dent and talked Oxford slang with the star.

He loved Dent furtively, abnormally.61 Dent expressed no judgment when he explained to

an actress that, “Jerry’s not interested in the opposite sex.” When the star grew sicker and

was hospitalized, Jerry proved a true friend and stayed with the star until his death.

The novel featured the revelation of the activities that occurred within a

Hollywood star’s home. Baum revealed that this Hollywood star home had hidden secrets

and surprised her readers with the presence of a roommate who expressed gender and

sexual unconventionality. Although hardly charitable in her description of Jerry, Baum

61 Vicki Baum, Falling Star, (Garden City, NY.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1934), 5-7, 80-83. It is arguable that Dent would have married his flame, actress Donka, but the studio kept her working on their picture and lied about the time of Oliver’s death.

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made him the star’s unyielding friend and left the possibility in the mind of the readers

that Dent would leave the Hollywood home to Jerry.

Two of the industry’s top bachelors, Randolph Scott and Cary Grant, appeared

in a publicity spread about their home in Santa Monica, California, in 1935. Scott (nee:

Crane) attained an engineering degree, but opted to join the Pasadena Community

Playhouse in 1929. His encounter with Howard Hughes on a golf course led to his entry

into motion pictures. He moved from a romantic lead to a very successful career as a

western star. Through his production company, real estate, oil, and stock dealings, Scott

became one of the richest men in Hollywood. Scott died in 1987, leaving behind his

second wife and three children. Raised in a poverty-stricken home in Bristol, England, a

young Archibald Leach ran away at 13 in 1917 and joined a traveling acrobatic troupe as

a song-and-dance man. During the 1920s he acquired experience in the theater and a stage

name, Cary Grant. After success in early motion pictures, particularly with Mae West,

Grant’s career foundered and he bought himself out of his Paramount contract. In 1937-

1938, he revealed his knack for screwball comedy, and this witty character charmed

audiences through his retirement in 1966. Each of his four marriages ended in divorce,

and Grant strove to keep his screen image as his public image until his death in 1986.62

The first celebrity images of Grant and Scott began after they became friends

while filming Hot Saturday in mid-1932. Press reports during the first two years

62 Katz, 499-500, 1030; Beverly Bare Buehrer,Cary Grant: A Bio-Bibliography (New York; Greenwood Press, 1990).

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described the actors’ shared celebrity homes and domestic life through phrases including,

“Hollywood’s twosome” and “the happy couple.” Other articles attempted to understand

the actors' living arrangements in other ways, such as the need to reduce rental costs.

Similar to other single men, the actors shared lodgings earlier in their lives when they

struggled to make it in the arts. However, they had little financial incentive to continue

having roommates for this reason by 1935. Indeed, Cary Grant’s attempt to use this as the

explanation for his living arrangement carried a delicious irony. “‘Here we are,’ Cary

would say, leaning back in a chair, ‘living as we want to as bachelors with a nice home at

a comparatively small cost. If we got married, we would have to put up a front. Women —

particularly Hollywood women -- expect it.’”63 The pair continued their domestic

relationship even after Grant’s marriage to Virginia Cherrill in early 1934. Reporters

noted, “The Grants and Randolph Scott have moved, all three, but not apart.” Indeed, this

choice for living arrangements appeared preplanned. An item from two weeks prior to

Grant’s marriage observed that Scott would not seek any permanent quarters until he

heard from Grant. Innuendoes continued later that year. Shortly after Grant’s divorce

from Cherrill, an article proclaimed that Randolph Scott had moved back in with Grant.

63 Several of these extraordinary images hinted at homosexual interest between them. Several biographers of Grant and writers about homosexual Hollywood during the studio era noted that photographs with the two sharing a luncheon at their dining table and harmonizing at the piano are suggestive of this interest. Most significantly, while many of these writers believed that the photographs came from a subrosa source, in fact, Paramount controlled the copyright and offered newspapers and magazines reproduction rights. Buehrer; Warren G. Harris, Cary Grant: A Touch o f Elegance (New York: Doubleday, 1987); Charles Higham and Roy Moseley, Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989). Cary Grant shared a place with Hollywood dress designer who is described in chapter six of this dissertation. Vincent Sherman, Studio Affairs (Lexington, KY: University o f Kentucky, 1996); Dale Edwards, “Has Cary Grant Gone High Hat?” 1939, in MWEZ + n. c. 17, 956, Grant, Cary. Billy Rose Theater Collection, NYPL.

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This article’s title, “A Woman is Only a Woman,” suggested that the two men formed a

home life with one another that they probably could not have with a woman.64

Few images of two men living together existed in popular culture, literature,

or medical textbooks during this era. Motion pictures that had strong male comradeship

themes, including Wings (1927), did not have the pair cohabiting. These motion pictures

usually involved a group of men bonding through accomplishing a “manly” act, such as

going off to war or attempting to conquer a wilderness. One of the few instances of an

image of men living together appeared in Richard Meeker’s Better Angel, a 1933 novel

about homosexuals. Its protagonist Kurt stays in effeminate David’s apartment before

Kurt decided to commit to David.65

The Paramount publicity department made over thirty photographs of Grant

and Scott within different rooms of their Santa Monica beach house. They focused its

interpretation of these pictures on the stars’ personalities, bachelorhood, and use of the

house. The caption stamped on the back of each highlighted that the two actors were two

of filmland’s most eligible bachelors who shared quarters but lived independent lives.

The studio perceived that photographs of the actors using their swimming pool and sitting

at their den bar revealed the pair’s romantic handsomeness, and fun-loving spirits as they

shared a luxurious and beautiful place. Indeed, the photographs around the swimming

64 Mann, 230-233; Los Angeles Evening Herald and Examiner, 12 January 1934, sec. B-6;Los Angeles Times, 21 April 1935, sec. II, 2 65 Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In the Movies (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 70-72; Richard Meeker [Forman Brown] Better Angel second ed., Boston: Alyson Publications, 1995. Paramount packaged the sexuality of these actors in these photographs. The studio had been struggling to create the image for each of the actors. Grant had not done a motion picture recently, and Paramount was struggling to find roles that were appropriate for him. Scott had recently taken his first lead

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pool reminded viewers of the scantily-clad pool parties and posed the possibility of sex

occurring at their home.

Other photographs in the series challenged the traditional structure of the

domestic family and heightened the unusualness of their star home by illustrating that the

men valued privacy and intimacy in their home. Three photographs of the pair at the

dining room table demonstrated that each man found the space and the homey

atmosphere comfortable. Each man stared and smiled across the table at one another

displaying a degree of shared intimacy that people expected to find in a romantic

heterosexual couple. The photograph that depicted the end of this long day was the most

suggestive that the actors held these values and that their home contained a very

nontraditional coupling. Scott and Grant stood outside in the evening on their patio. They

appeared in silhouette, as Pacific Ocean waves crested. Scott touched his lit cigarette

against the cigarette dangling from Grant’s mouth. The presentation of two men smoking

together appeared frequently in fiction during the era. However, these scenes occurred in

bars, saloons, and other “masculine” spaces. The image of a male and female couple

lighting cigarettes within a beautiful night scene seemed to indicate romance. This image

appeared most frequently in cigarette advertising since the mid-1920s.66 The presentation

of a man and woman against a backdrop of the ocean allowed certain companies to

represent smoking as romantic. Scott and Grant revealed their own romance in this scene

in a motion picture that was not a western. This motion picture,So Red The Rose (193S), was a lavishly budgeted affair that needed a great deal of publicity. 66 Paramount Pictures Collection, Box 2 folder 11 and folder 12, AMPAS; Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex and Cigarettes: A Cultural History o f American Advertising (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co,

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surpassing the boundaries of sexual convention as Scott’s touching Grant’s cigarette

hinted at a shared intimacy. The photographs took the viewer into their private dwelling

and added to this thrill with information about how they used their house. The last scenes

illuminated a type of coupling within a home that few readers would have seen, making

this star home appear bohemian. Their living arrangement lasted until early 1942 when

they moved apart for the remainder of their lives.67

Publicity materials and newspaper articles that appeared during the late 1930s

focused on the living arrangements of another bachelor actor. Scholars of homosexuality

in motion pictures have observed that Edward Everett Horton’s filmic characters

exhibited nontraditional gender characteristics. The Brooklyn-bom actor moved from the

stage to comedy leads in many early 1920s' motion pictures. Later in the decade and

particularly in the 1930s and early 1940s, Horton played character roles as the dear friend

of the lead actor. These jittery, befuddled, fussbudget characters remained bachelors and

represented pansies (homosexual males) or sissy (effeminate) males.68

Much of the publicity about Edward Everett Horton’s off-screen life created a

figure more complex than his screen roles. Horton’s domestic living arrangement and

1998), 166-168; Jackson Lears, Fables o f Abundance: A Cultural History o f Advertising In America (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 181. 67 The publicity approach exemplified in the Grant-Scott photographs had little precedent among the major motion picture studios. Few male stars had representations of themselves made that displayed their bare torsos. One of the few examples of a fan magazine depicting a male star’s bare torso involved actor Reginald Denny. The Photoplay photographs from 1923 depicted Denny in a prize fighting pose and in his swimming clothes for his new The Leather Pusher series. The caption on the boxing image noted that Denny almost took up boxing as a profession, while the swimming photograph’s caption noted that he possessed a physique second to none and held a lot of swimming titles. The Grant-Scott photographs, their poses and settings, could not be directly linked to either actor's then current screen roles. “His name is “Reggie” But he packs a Wallop,” Photoplay (June, 1923), 28. 61 Katz, 578; Russo, 31-36.

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interest in interior decorating stretched both the sexual and gender conventions of his

time. Two studios issued releases that focused on these attributes to thrill readers and

make his star home appear fascinating and unique. An undated Twentieth Century Fox

biography o f the actor described his film characterizations as characteristically mousy,

bumbling, and redundant. The media piece then focused on the actor’s off-screen

personality and immediately discussed his sexual behavior. “In private life Horton is a

bachelor. ‘Not confirmed,’ he hastens to add, ‘but it’s the only thing I’ve known thus

far.’” A second undated Twentieth Century Fox biography and a Paramount publicity

piece both illuminated aspects of Horton’s family life while focusing on the actor’s house

in its biography. “He is unmarried. His mother shares his home in the San Fernando

Valley... He has spacious kennels for his eight dogs. A sunken garden, a swimming pool

and lily ponds are among other attractions of his ranch home. The comedian is an avid

collector...In furniture, he is more interested in antiques.”69

Paramount's publicity for the motion pictureParis Honeymoon (1939) tied

both strands of the Horton imagery together. They created a celebrity image of an

unmarried man who viewed his furnishings as others would their children. As the studios

did with many of their top performers under the star system, Horton’s personal interests

and activities became linked to providing readers with information about the celebrity’s

sexual and romantic life.

Edward Everett Horton sank into his chair and heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief. Such members of “Paris Honeymoon” who heard it gathered around expecting

69 Twentieth Century Fox undated Edward Everett Horton biography, and Paramount Edward Everett Horton biography of October, 1938, Edward Everett Horton biography file, AMPAS; Edward Everett Horton clipping file, Billy Rose Collection, New York Public Library (NYPL).

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something interesting to be said. “Well,” he said with a blissful expression on his face, “I’ve got my twins all set now,” “Butt-but Mr. Horton,” [one] listener stammered, “we didn’t know you were married,” “I’m not,” Horton snapped. There were gulps but no one said anything. “I’m talking about my Adams twins,” he explained. The faces were blank. “You know,” he said impatiently, “my twin fireplaces.” 70

Horton explained that Adams was an artist at fireplaces and that he had found

just the right space for the fireplaces in his home. Bing Crosby and others got a kick out

of the idea that Horton had new parts to his collection so he would have to expand on his

house.

Many readers could at least empathize with Horton if not share how he valued

his home to the same extent. For those who valued home as a commodity, Horton’s

fireplaces, and antiques in general, represented “good taste.” The presence of the

fireplaces would be an addition to the style of the room in a particular historical period.

Horton, with the time and money to travel and purchase particular antiques, had an

unusual opportunity to create accurate styles for his rooms and give his home a

significant amount of substance. These purchases enabled Horton to seem elegant and

stylish and his home to appear uniquely bedecked in unusual, important commodities and

elegance. Most intriguingly, Horton exhibited that he valued his home for domesticity.

The actor referred to his fireplaces as children, and saw them as additions to the family

within his house. Once they understood, none of the listeners on the set questioned his

vision. Indeed, as fireplaces left houses because they lost their role as primary heat source

in the late 1800s , many people felt the loss tantamount to doing away with a member of

the family. The value of domesticity in this case also carried the additional heft of a

70 Paramount Press Release, c. 1939. Edward Everett Horton biography file, AMPAS.

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degree of nostalgia for readers. For homosexual readers Horton’s image and his valuing

domesticity had greater resonance. According to architectural scholar Aaron Betsky, the

urge to collect and assemble objects mirrored an unseen self and was an important part of

homosexual culture in this era.71

Newspaper and magazine reporters focused on Horton’s life as a bachelor and

his interest in antiques. Horton’s combination of being unmarried yet owning a home

appeared highly strange to some critics. A caption from a fan magazine noted that the

actor was a bachelor who continued to maintain his solitude even after he built his home.

A reporter on the quest to explain Hollywood bachelorhood found her explanation for

Horton’s marital status related to his star home. “Eddie Horton’s system involves having

the comradely platonic friendship idea down to a nicety...He is fortified in this by owning

a peculiarly comfortable home which functions all too satisfactorily minus a female.”72

According to this observer, the star’s ability to maintain his home himself revealed that

he had a personality suited to being in a nontraditional domestic family.

Other newspaper representations of Horton extended this focus on Horton’s

personality and his home life. An article describing Horton’s taking a vacation from

acting noted that “he will conclude his domestic tour... in the kitchen, where he and his

mother will have a cup of tea and talk things over... Edward is a bachelor and his mother

is his confidante, his critic, and his pal.” Images of unmarried middle-aged men living

with their mothers appeared in slang and medical literature with connotations of same-

71 Handlin, 478-479; Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1997), 6. 72 Silver Screen, (August, 1935), 42; Los Angeles Times, 10 April 1932, sec. Ill, 15.

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gender sexual interest. In the American slang of the era, thiscircumstance received the

term “mama’s boy.” Originally, this term implied a coward or sissy. However, by the

early twentieth century, “mama’s boy” meant an effeminate and homosexual man. This

transition received support from the popularization of Sigmund Freud’s thought in the

1920s and Freudianism’s increasing domination of the country’s psychiatric community.

Medical writings observed that traits of the male homosexual included expressing

feminine concern for things in the house and possessing a fondness for all beautiful

things and the arts. By the 1940s, the film noir genre of motion pictures used these

images of homosexual males. “Waldo inLaura (1944) is the epitome of the homosexual

male in film noir. His room is full of neatly arranged, over-fussy objets d’art and he is

revealed to have obsessions with clothes, wines, gossip and the arts.”73

This focus on the star’s personality, his home, and the link to nontraditional

gender and sexuality created a distinction between the representation of Hollywood

bachelor star homes and those of bachelors in other communities. Very rarely a

representation in another community contained a heavily veiled reference to their lack of

interest in marriage. However, this representation provided very little description of the

men, their personalities, and their relationships with other people. The question of their

not pursuing marriage to women rarely appeared in the story. Under the Hollywood star

73 Boston Post, 19 May 1940, Horton Clipping File, NYPL; Lester V. Berry and Martin Van Den Bark’s, American Thesaurus o f Slang, (Thomas Y. Cromwell, Co., l953);Vem L. Bullough, Science In the bedroom: A History o f Sex Research (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 89; The Complete Psychological Works o f Sigmund Freud, ed. Anna Freud, trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1957), Vol. 11, 95-100; vol. 18, 106-110; Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology o f Sex, Sexual Inversion (New York: Random House, 1937), 94, 108, 111; George Henry, Sex Variant: A Study o f Homosexual Patterns (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1948), 147, 223; Richard Dyer, The Matter o f Images: Essays on Representations (London: Routledge, 1993), 62-63.

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system, descriptions of the star’s personality and his marital status constituted the central

facet of publicity.74 The images of their star homes allowed the studios to offer readers a

peek into the personalities of these Hollywood bachelors and reveal their nontraditional

gender and sexual behaviors within those domestic spaces.

The Hollywood studios and other insiders during the studio era benefited if

the elaborate and opulent star homes stood apart from the houses of society people and

the theatrical crowd. This resulted in increased press coverage and fostered the mystique

of Hollywood being a special community. As most of the homes among all these groups

were enormous and expensive, Hollywood publicity forged stories that focused on how

the celebrities’ personalities interacted with their homes. Images bound personality,

sexual behavior, and star home together, making Hollywood star homes appear more

interesting than representations of other homes because they offered inquiring audiences

and readers hints about a celebrity’s personality and sexuality. When this mix of

personality, sexuality, and home “revealed” a nontraditional living arrangement, the

representation offered audiences significant titillation and excitement as well as

“forbidden” knowledge. Whether expressive of the Hollywood stars’ personalities or

manufactured by publicity departments, the polymorphous stories in this chapter defined

the star home in opposition to the order and tranquillity in the homes o f society leaders

and the theatrical crowd’s colorful decors. These images illustrated a specific way in

which Hollywood made its star homes distinct and more interesting than the other homes

that received media attention.

74 Richard de Cordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America

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Representations of Hollywood star homes placed readers in a privileged

section of a city associated with the new century and its promises of a better life for US

citizens. Hollywood, a place associated with wish fulfillment, would be the dream

weaver. These representations made the Hollywood Hills seem full of “glass houses.”

However, these images of Hollywood homes exhibited celebrities who pursued

nontraditional gender and sexual behavior. What most viewers saw challenged their

perspectives on domesticity and gender sexual boundaries, yet the contestations over

conventions inherent in the star home stories appealed to a large section of Hollywood

audiences. Some subsections of this audience enjoyed the actual challenge of these

conventions. However, for the majority of the audiences, the presentations of Hollywood

star homes had to enhance their belief in Hollywood’s specialness without alienating

them from the industry. Images of Hollywood star bachelor chic and odd bedfellows

made the contestation of the boundaries appear more like stretching the conventions

rather than flagrantly violating them. The publicity tied the stretching of cultural

conventions in the Hollywood star home to a likable aspect of the celebrity’s personality,

such as Nazimova’s mischievous style, Garbo’s privacy, or the handsomeness of Grant

and Scott. If the identification and sense of shared intimacies with the celebrity were

strong enough, perhaps audience members might try behaving non-conventionally.

Hollywood star homes images brought audiences “inside” a highly private

space that celebrities occupied. Yet they left audience members without “insight” into the

activities of these celebrities during their workday. Hollywood studios were an even more

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 50-53.

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private location. Audiences purchased star maps to find and examine their favorite

Hollywood celebrity houses, but they usually only saw the huge iron gates at the front of

the studios. Guards at the gate enhanced the feeling that the studios were impenetrable.

Hollywood insiders understood that audience members had no access to the interior of the

studios and incorporated the revelation of mystery into the images they presented of

Hollywood behind the scenes. Insiders who let their audiences know about the presence

of nontraditional gender and sexual behavior behind the scenes associated it with

Hollywood glamour.

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HOLLYWOOD BEHIND THE SCENES:

GLAMOUR AND MYSTERY IN THE WORKPLACE

Tall, twittering Gilbert Adrian...inhabits an oyster-white office, works furiously chewing gum, deep in an overstuffed chair which is disconcertingly set on a dais to keep him from dripping paint on the oyster-white carpet...At parties Adrian keeps a keen eye peeled for signs of dowdiness, can be convulsing about it afterwards. Of Tullahuh Bankhead he once remarked: ‘She can wear one more silver fox than any other woman and still look underdressed.’...1

The description of the office and work of this most famous motion picture dress

designer offered readers a glimpse at the workplace “behind the scenes” of the motion

picture industry. While audiences experienced their own work environments, the cultural

power of the industry and the appeal of its products generated significant interest in the

activities on the studio lots. The presentation of images from behind the scenes brought to

the public information about activities that happened in a restricted, secret, and seemingly

mysterious zone. As noted in the earlier chapters, the presentation o f polymorphous

images linked traditionally private information with images that appeared in the public

realm in the mass media.

' “Cinema,” Time, 1 July 1940, 36.

212

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Images o f Hollywood behind the scenes made it appear to be a glamorous

workplace. Artisans like Adrian forged extravagant and flamboyant surroundings that

bespoke excitement and glamour. Coupled with his remarks, this made behind-the-scenes

appear as a creative workplace and a family where people affectionately teased one

another. Images of performers who engaged in dressing room romance with members of

their sex fueled the perception of behind-the-scenes as a place for nontraditional behavior.

The images of behind-the-scenes workers often revealed how a part of the magic that

movie audiences saw on the screen developed while they promoted and revealed the

pansexuality of the studio system. However, the publicity value that these images added

to the perspective of Hollywood behind-the-scenes as a magical working world reached

its height in the 1930s and declined precipitously by the early 1940s. With the demands

that World War Two placed upon the country’s use of raw materials, Hollywood needed

to curb its use of materials in costumes and sets. The industry used the image of the

glamour factory less frequently and lost some of its “magic.”

The motion picture industry used sets on its enormous lots to produce most of

its motion pictures. With the construction of Universal City in 1915, Hollywood became

the place where motion picture production occurred and the young, beautiful, and/or

talented went to seek work in the movies. The motion picture industry began a process of

building production facilities on expansive lots that replicated medieval fiefdoms and

early industrial revolution company towns. The eight major and minor studios based their

operations over the expanse of Los Angeles, from M-G-M’s southern fiefdom in Culver

City to Warner Brothers’ in the northern area of Burbank. The lots were enormous.

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United Artists had an 18.5-acre lot along Santa Monica Boulevard that contained huge

sound stages and numerous buildings. Paramount Pictures Corporation’s 35 acres

included more than 70 structures, including 20 stages. The lots contained buildings for all

the studio departments, facades of streets from all over the world, security forces, and

gated entrances on nearly every side. Long-time actor Rod LaRoque observed, “The

magnitude of the Los Angeles studios was a revelation to me. Some of the eastern studios

were toyhouses in comparison.” A cinematographer with years of experience working in

British and German studios and in New York found Universal City very large and quite

impressive. He soon discovered that he could shoot almost his entire movie on the lot.2

These enormous production facilities created their product like other factories.

The studios created around 700 motion pictures yearly to fill the thousands o f theaters

over the world. They required numerous workers with a variety of skills, and the eight

largest employed over 4,000 people in the late 1920s. During a single year in the late

1930s. these studios employed crafispersons who completed tens of thousands of work

hours. Editors, cameramen, musicians, and others negotiated salaries and fiinge benefits

that placed them among the best-paid artisans and technicians. Hundreds of employees fit

within a category the industry termed “the creative talents” (actors, directors, and

screenwriters). Their earnings, which averaged between $10,000 and $48,000 annually

during the midst of the Great Depression, aided in making film making appear as a dream

job within a dream factory. Many of the employees within both groupings enjoyed

2 Writers’s Program of the Work Projects Administration, Los Angeles: A Guide to the City and Its Environs (New York: Hastings House, 1941), 242-43; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 25 July 1921, sec. B-

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working in the studios. Actor Jimmy Stewart liked the studio system because he felt like

part of a family. Actor-dancer Fred Astaire observed that M-G-M was large and “...he

loved the whole thing....Dressing rooms are in a sort of garden and it was more like being

on a vacation.” Although the craftspeople engaged in battles with the studios and fellow

unions throughout the era, some members and leaders appreciated their positions in

Hollywood. Conference of Studio Unions President Herbert Sorrell, the most militant and

pro-worker of all studio unions, noted that, “I went back to the studios. I like studio

work.”3

Since Horace Greely’s famous editorial advice, “Go West, Young Man!”

California has been viewed as a land of opportunity and the movie studios drew on this

promise. Approximately 10,000 people a month invaded Hollywood to work in its movie

business during the 1920s. A significant number of these people included polymorphous

figures, establishing what one scholar dubbed “the great powder puff migration!”4

The size and even the products did not capture the entire appeal of

Hollywood’s studios. The studio publicity departments promoted the studio grounds as

microcosms of the world. “Warner Brothers studio has 39 miles of paved and lighted

3; Harold A. C. Sintzenich, “Diary for 1927,” January 7, and January 11, 1927 entries, Harold A. C. Sintzenich Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 3 Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System (London: MacMillian, 1986), 2-15; Motion Picture Almanac 1929 (New York: Quigley Publishing Co., 1929), 60-62; Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony—The Moviemakers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1941), 374, 382-383; Motion Picture Editors Local 776, “Historical Review of Basic Wages, 1928-1972,” IATSE Local 776 files, Los Angeles, CA; Donald Dewey,James Stewart: A Biography (Atlanta; Turner Publishing Inc., 1996), 138-142; Fred Astaire letter to Dolly, August 9, 1933, Box 1, Fred letters folder, Adele Astaire Collection, Mugar Library Special Collections Department, Boston University. 4 Testimony of Herbert SorTell, Jurisdictional Disputes In The Mot ion-Picture Industry, Vol. 3., 1844; James Parris Springer, “Hollywood Fictions: The Cultural Construction of Hollywood In American Literature, 1916-1939.” Ph.D. diss. University of Iowa, 1994, 53, 135. The quip belongs to historian Vanessa Schwartz.

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streets... takes 15 minutes to ‘visit’ England, Germany, Italy, Spain, India... Mexico and

where-are-you-from... San Francisco, New York, Havana, and Shanghai side by side on

an artificial lake on the Burbank lot.”5 This publicity claimed that a person on the studio

lot could see the world and find his or her neighborhood and would encounter both the

familiar and the exotic. Thus, the visitor to this world would have everything as if in a

dream. Yet, different from world expos, the Hollywood studio offered the combination of

the familiar with the fantastic.

The products and publicity of the studios generated widespread interest across

the country. Over 1,600,000 tourists visited the studios annually in the hopes of entering

them and seeing the work behind-the-scenes. “The studio gate has been regarded for

years as an impenetrable barrier to those who desire to tread the same ground on which

walk the dream children of the silver sheet.”6 Hollywood publicity materials played a

very significant role in maintaining interest in Hollywood. These items provided the

precious few glimpses of the variety of performers and artisans working on the stages to

create the movies and thus promoted the mystique. Indeed, this interest in the activities

behind the scenes of an exotic work environment occurred during an era when most

people toiled at routine jobs for fifty hours each week.

Hollywood behind the scenes had to distinguish itself from the series of

images that depicted Broadway and vaudeville’s backstages. The United States populace

5 Warner Brothers Press Release undated, Studios—Early Days file, AMPAS. 6 Los Angeles Times, 10 September 1939, sec. Ill, 3; New York Times, 22 March 1936, sec. IX, 4.

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held a long and deep interest in the theater. Historian Lawrence Levine observed popular

participation and interest in the theater’s innerworkings across the ante-bellum United

States. Audiences experienced close interactions with performers and the theater

generally because theatrical troupes performed in small cities and encampments, such as

mining sites.7

With the development of the star system in the 1880s, theater performers

became important celebrities and audience attention increasingly focused on particular

stars. Theater performers carried with them the earlier reputation for immorality;

actresses in particular had the reputation for being worldly-wise, self-sufficient, self­

determining and hard-working. Even after the dawn of the “golden age of American

theater” in the 1880s, perceptions that women “de-classed,” sexualized themselves by

acting reigned so powerfully that middle- and upper-class families did not approve of the

profession for their daughters.8 This reputation, coupled with the greater focus on stars,

heightened interest in certain performers’ behaviors behind the stage and helped form the

perception that amorous activities occurred in actors’ and actresses’ dressing rooms.

7 Lawrence J. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence o f Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 2-20. Since the early 1820s English actors had faced suspicions of aristocratic leanings among numerous Americans. Performers like Edmund Kean precipitated antagonism from audiences in the United States when they refused to perform for small audiences. In 1849, English actor William Charles Macready could not perform inMacbeth over audience members who protested his aristocratic demeanor and his identification with the wealthy gentry. He was persuaded to perform again and completed it under great duress. Protesters outside the Astor Place Opera House in New York City threw stones and attempted to storm the entrances but were stopped by the bullets from militia. At least twenty-two people were killed and over 150 wounded. 8 Benjamin McArthur, Actors and American Culture, 1880-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 3-10; Tracy C. Davis, Actresses As Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), 15-17, 70-74; Robert C. Toll, The Entertainment Machine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 6-11; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall o f Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 10-16. The explosion of touring productions during the “golden age”

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Several novels and theatrical columns in daily newspapers during the

nineteenth century presented information about the activities of the theatrical stars back

stage. In the novels, great actors and actresses were figures of bold and daring who acted

larger than life on stage. In the greenrooms they held court with royalty, statesmen, and

the very wealthy listening to every word. The less fortunate clamored outside the stage

door with the overhanging lamp wishing to get into the modem fairyland. These

stagedoor Johnnies waited in long rows, holding a bunch of orchids and a hansom cab for

the women they loved or desired.9 These stories provided readers with inside knowledge

of stage life and the sense that they knew these performers more intimately.

Presentations of back stage of the theater in the early twentieth century

contradicted this vision of performers and of a glamorous theatrical life. These magazine

articles did not provide information about particular celebrities, and they strove to

eradicate readers’ thoughts that the theater was a site for nontraditional sexual behavior.

These articles that depicted behind the stage as a workplace and made the behind-the-

scenes environment appear crowded and unattractive. The stage door entrance existed

within a dark, narrow alley that was nearly impossible to find. Inside, a surly, curt man,

the griffin, sat with an ugly dog. A visitor would summon up the courage to ask to see a

person or to hand him a note. The griffin returned each with a cold stare and the

command, “Stay where you are.”10

expanded the interest in behind the scenes of the theater. Touring productions rose from SO to over S00 between 1880 and 1900 and despite high ticket prices brought more people in contact with the theater. 9 Charles Belmont Davis, “Behind the Scenes,” Outing 49 (March 1907), 705-706. 10 Simultaneously, there appeared to be a decline in the interest in backstage. While nearly ten articles appeared on this subject during the first decade of the new century, the articles emerged at half that

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Most visitors traversed no farther into the behind-the-stage area. However, the

reporters aimed to reveal to their readers the secret and mysterious backstage life. They

proceeded along a long hall containing an old upholstered sofa and into a space cluttered

with props and other necessities of the theater. The dressing rooms appeared off to the

side and did not fill the area with the frivolity and intrigue of visiting dignitaries. The

dressing rooms proved small and cramped, and they usually had only enough furnishings

for the performers to dress and apply their make-up. One observer spied the area and

insisted that the transgression of sexual conventions could not occur in the dressing room.

“It’s quite positive ugliness, very evident discomfort, its narrow dimensions, its doubtful

cleanliness, seemed to shut away all romance from its purlieus, (sic)”11

The depictions of the theatrical life of chorus members provided little that

enabled readers to feel that they knew the performers any better. These articles referred to

the group of chorus members rather than individuals, describing cramped dressing rooms

and low positions in the theatrical hierarchy. Chorus girls did not have to fear the

approach of the manager or producer because they would not tempt her to transgress

sexual propriety. “They are like business men who employ women in their offices ... [for]

the far-off mother... the managerial bugbear need cause her no uneasiness.”12 These

references disrupted readers’ ideas that the theatrical world was glamorous and full of

rate for the next two decades before stopping in the late 1920s. Louise Closser Hale, “The Inside Life of the Stage,” Bookman 24 (March, 1907), 54-58. " Franklin Fyles, “Behind the Scenes,” Ladies Home Journal (March, 1900), 10; “The Spectator,” Outlook 107 (August 8, 1914), 875. 12 Davis, 712-714; Hall, 60; Hale, 559.

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romantic encounters. Instead, it made backstage appear more like a “regular” work

environment.

This held true for the backstage lives of stars. They did not pass the

boundaries in their backstage behavior, showing diplomacy and business sense,

exchanging pleasantries with all the cast members and not risking these associations by

not exhibiting propriety. Backstage they had small dressing rooms and did not hold

liaisons. Novels that included characters in the theatrical world reinforced the perception

that theater stars and chorines were not sexual libertines. The title character of Theodore

Dresier’s novel Sister Carrie (1900) experienced no attempt at behavior that crossed

sexual boundaries as a chorus member. As she advanced in the theatrical world, Carrie

received letters offering love, and fortune. Despite feeling lonely Carrie knew not to

answer these men.13

The majority of images behind the scenes in the motion picture industry

featured information on actors and actresses. The depictions forged the Hollywood

behind-the-scenes mystique through images of celebrities whose romantic and gender

activities crossed the line of culturally accepted behavior. The studios and entertainment-

reporting organizations knew celebrities were the figures audiences saw on the screen.

They presented images that revealed aspects of the star’s personality to thrill audiences

with the sense of increased intimacy. Most of these images ignored the difficulties, such

13 Hale, 556; “The Spectator,” 876; Theodore Dresier, Sister Carrie (1900 repr., ed. Donald Pizer, (New York: WW Norton & Co., 1970).

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as being bound to a single studio over a seven-year contract, and thus susceptible to the

executives’ whims. The daily grind rarely received coverage. Actress Myma Loy

complained about this grind. She noted that M-G-M worked her to death, moving her

from one picture to another without rehearsal, often without knowing what her part would

be from scene to scene. Character actors complained about being restricted in their ability

to be creative and act, noting that they consistently received the same roles, a condition

known as being typecast. Performers often waited hours under the hot lights filming

scenes. Occasionally they experienced brutal rehearsals before the director felt satisfied

enough to have the actors check their make-up and hair before the final take. Between

shots, performers waited endlessly. Actress Miriam Cooper noted that she had worked

from 9 am to midnight and drank coffee to try to stay awake. Damn those slave

drivers,’ Wally [Reid] said half under his breath. ‘They’ll get their money’s worth if they

have to kill you to do it.’ ‘They’re killing this set in the morning. We’ve got to keep

going.’” Cooper told her fellow actor before he suggested that she visit the doctor and he

would fix her up with something so that she would not feel tired.14 This drug use

appeared in images when Reid died in early 1923, but the scandal and subsequent drive to

move the industry from Hollywood subsided.

14 Ronald Davis, The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993), 103, 114-115,240-243; Thomas Cripps,Hollywood’s High Noon: Moviemaking and Society before Television (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 14- 147; Myma Loy and James Kotsilibas-David, Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 83-150; Elsa Lanchester, Herself (Hew York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 153-165; Michael B. Druxman, Basil Rathbone: His Life and Films (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1975), 11-13; Miriam Cooper Walsh, Letters & Writings: Drafts & Typescripts folder, Miriam Cooper Walsh Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Unfortunately, Reid used these narcotics too often and shortly thereafter died of a heart attack related to his drug use.

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Performers found a great deal to enjoy about Hollywood behind the scenes.

The status of being a star provided a sense of creativity and power associated with

realizing the pictures’ success rested on their shoulders. Actor/dancer Fred Astaire noted

that he “really liked the [Hollywood ‘racket’] because it’s important stuff nowadays and

the work has charm and variety.” Stars enjoyed enormous material support from the

studios. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Charlie Chaplin, and their actor friends enjoyed a ritual

steam bath at Fairbanks’ office most afternoons. Many stars had enormous dressing

rooms ranging from rambling villas to luxury apartments on wheels. Mary Pickford’s

five-room stucco Norman cottage on the United Artists’ lot came furnished with antiques

and servants, while Marion Davies’ 14-room villa parked at M-G-M and Warner Brothers

during the 1920s and 1930s. Stars had more than splendid work environments as many

developed deep personal relationships with some artisans. Marlene Dietrich noted that her

hairdresser Nelly Manley “...wept with me, hated my enemies, was my friend and

personal 'guard'. Robert Benchley enjoyed this feeling of closeness and noted that the

stage crew worked on all of Deanna Durbin’s pictures so it was a very homey little group,

one Big Family. Some performers enjoyed the opportunity to have shorter intimate

relations. As screenwriter Anita Loos noted, “every girl on the lot could have had her turn

with Doug [Fairbanks Sr.] and most of them did,” while Clark Gable had a large quotient

of love affairs.15

15 Astaire letter to Dolly, August 9, 1933, Mugar Library; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., The Salad Days (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1988), 105; Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1979), 88-89, 224; Marlene Dietrich, Marlene , trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 100-103; Robert Benchley letter of November 14, 1940, Box 11, Folder 7, Mugar Library. Durbin starred with Judy Garland in a musical short in 1936 and

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These activities influenced the perception of Hollywood behind the scenes.

The representations made behind the scenes a site of creative and important work, a

family environment, and a space for sexual liaisons. The Hollywood publicity materials

in the mass media spread this view to audiences across the country. Images constituted a

prominent feature in many of the earliest movie novels in the 1910s. However, they

emphasized the scientific and technological aspects of filmmaking and exotic adventure

and romance narratives, and limited their focus on the trials and tribulations of living and

working in the movie-making community of Hollywood.16 Newspaper articles in this era

rarely discussed behind the scenes because the industry executives reportedly feared that

the public would attend fewer movies if they knew the artificial nature of the things they

saw.

By the 1920s, glimpses of “behind the scenes" Hollywood offered readers

knowledge and titillation by providing private details about celebrities in a public forum.

The images focused on the activities of the performers and their glamorous living, the

stars' close relations with other studio personnel, and their romantic possibilities.

Magazine and newspaper articles constructed the understanding of the stars’ glamorous

working conditions with descriptions of dressing rooms filled with fabulous decorations

that illuminated the stars’ exquisite taste and their personalities. Other articles spurred the

Universal signed her after M-G-M chose to keep Garland over Durbin. Her wholesome sweetness and bubbling personality as well as her excellent singing voice enabled her to be a top box-office attraction from the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Ephraim Katz,The Film Encyclopedia (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), 367; Anita Loos, Box 1, Folder 12, 22; Box 1, Folder 18, Anita Loos Collection, Mugar Library. 16 Springer, 10. These novels included several series of stories. Victor Appleton had two large series, The Motion Picture Chums and The Moving Picture Boys. Laura Lee Hope wrote a series entitled. The Moving Picture Girls. A better known type of these novels was B. M. Bauer, The Phantom Herd.

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impression that a Hollywood star always met the star’s every need met. Every star had

personal hairdressers and make-up experts who knew every style, worked quickly, and

responded immediately to a star’s requests.17

Images of the behind-the-scenes “family” emerged from articles about actors

celebrating special days on the set or bringing friends to the studio and having them

quickly considered insiders. Stars and fellow studio personnel engaged in another family

pastime of teasing. Universal star Eddie Polo saw a member of the press department

waltz over and ask him if he had seen the story in print about the star’s generosity. “‘Did

you see that swell piece of publicity,’ the P. A. (press agent) queried. ‘Oh,’ Eddie replied,

‘That wasn’t publicity. That was the truth.’”18

The most prevalent images promoted the mystique of romance occurring

between actors behind the scenes in Hollywood. One of the most popular works in the

Hollywood novel genre, Henry Leon Wilson’s 1922 novelMerton o f the Movies,

chronicled the budding love between the serious title character and comedienne “Flip”

Montague on a silent movie set. Newspapers and magazines described budding real and

imagined studio romances, with gossipy items such as Ramon Novarro receiving roses

with a card signed Mata Hari from his co-star in that movie, Greta Garbo. Several of the

earliest motion picture depictions of “inside” the Hollywood studios perpetuated the

17 Woman's Home Companion, August, 1940, cited in Finch and Rosenkrantz, 91; Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1935, II, 1. 18 Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1941, IV, 7; 1 February 1931, 20; Los Angeles Evening Herald, 30 July 1918, sec. 11,3.

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belief that performers found love within the studios. The industry made a silent and early

talking version of the aforementioned novel Merton o f the Movies. Show People (M-G-M,

1928) was one of the most popular o f the silent film descriptions of inside Hollywood.

Starring Marion Davies and William Haines, this movie followed Peggy Pepper (Davies)

as a greenhorn who became a melodramatic star and then lost touch with her audience.

However, she rediscovered her creative self, the benefits of family, and her love for Billy

Boone (Haines).19

Polymorphous Performers Behind the Scenes

Behind-the-scenes images of actors and actresses who crossed gender and

sexual boundaries followed the patterns of providing private knowledge about celebrities.

The depictions -- which appeared in novels, newspapers, and a movie -- took readers

behind the scenes and revealed the presence of nontraditional behaviors to encourages

audiences to believe they shared greater intimacy with these well-known figures. These

images helped shape audiences’ perceptions about “behind the scenes” as a magical

world of glamour and sexual abandon. However, by the early 1940s few of these images

appeared because the coming of World War Two motivated Hollywood insiders to

present Hollywood as a place much like other cities in the country.

A few representations of performers depicted the intersection of crossing

gender boundaries and glamour behind the scenes of the movies. A magazine article

noted that Greta Garbo’s dressing room was a large place where the reclusive actress

19 Henry Leon Wilson,Merton o f the Movies (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1922); Los Angeles Times, 24 January 1932, sec. Ill, 16;Show People (M-G-M, 1928).

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frequently rested between takes. The reporter built upon this fact about Garbo’s behavior

behind the scenes, offering readers insight into how the star decorated this personal space

that few people ever saw. The article characterized Garbo’s three-room bungalow as

suffering from a masculine severity. The star’s definition of elegance, as noted in the

discussion of her residences in chapter three, included a minimum of material objects and

the maintenance of open space. The star presented a new style for elegance and defied

normative expectations for an actress’ dressing room.20

A year later, Reckless Hollywood (1932) presented an actor whose quotient of

elegance in his personality led to a questioning of his masculinity. Actor Andre Moreno’s

attire, running around with rather peculiar people, and refusal to backslap fellows led

many in the industry to question the 22-year-old. When the reporter stopped him from

making love to her, Andre protested, “I am a man.” Although the reporter later claimed

that she slept with Moreno, her friends did not believe her. Her boyfriend referred to

Moreno as “that nance.”21 Like the Garbo item, this depiction attached nontraditional

20 Modern Screen, March 1931, cited in Finch and Rosenkrantz, 91. 21 Haynes Loubou, (pseud.),Reckless Hollywood (New York: Amour Press, Inc., 1932), 106-120.

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gender behavior to the image of an actor readers could recognize as a notable celebrity,

providing them with the sense that they shared greater intimacy with these figures. Both

these images brought a freshness to the glamorous behind-the-scenes perspective.

These images also enlivened the mystique of performers behind the scenes in

Hollywood by including unpredictability. The publicity about Garbo fueled readers’

sense that they knew something different about the star. The image of Moreno appeared

to be more than just a fictional character. Authors Dorothy Loubou and Harmony Haynes

explained in a prefatory note that many of the “fictional” characters would be

recognizable to those knowledgeable about 1920s and early 1930s Hollywood. This note

titillated readers, offering them the thrill of playing a game and the reward o f

“discovering” knowledge about Hollywood celebrities.

While press articles and novels might present images promoting glamour, an

image from a motion picture debunked this myth. However, as scholar Christopher Ames

observed, Hollywood on Hollywood movies might disrupt one myth to convince

audiences they are learning about Hollywood while they simultaneously promoted

another myth.22 Warner Brothers’ Show Girl in Hollywood (1930) featured a movie

within the movie. The scene included an actor seated behind a desk in a skyscraper who

turned to the man in a white fedora at his right and began fighting. As the man in the

“ Christopher Ames, Movies About the Movies: Hollywood Reflected (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997), iii-vi.

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white fedora hung his enemy out the window and choked him, the director acted

enraptured and tapped the leg of his assistant director. The assistant cupped his hands in

front of him and continued to focus on watching the actors perform the scene. As the

directors looked back at the scene, a woman walked in from behind the window and

looked at the actors.

“Hey, hey, get away from that window. What’s the matter with you. Don’t you know you’re spoiling my scene. Here I am rehearsing this scene all day and you walk in on the set.” The director turned to his assistant. “Throw her out!” As the assistant escorted the woman off the set, the director turned to his actors. “Now Mr. Blanton and Mr. Harvey, don’t act so effeminately.” The director’s eyes flared wide and he pursed his lips and grabbed at the knot of his tie. One actor looked stoically then when the director’s back was turned both actors said, “Yes, Mr. Smith.”23

This depiction provided spectators with a laugh and knowledge of the

activities behind the scenes in Hollywood. The scene titillated its audiences with

information that film people discussed private personal topics, such as polymorphous

behaviors, behind the scenes and that suspicions led some industry people to question

male actors’ gender or sexual behavior. The scene linked the effeminacy of male actors

with the understanding that illusion was a necessity in motion pictures. As the woman

destroyed the illusion of being in the top floor of the skyscraper by walking in the

background of the supposed outside of the building, the director felt the actor’s

effeminacy was not allowing the actors to create the illusion of two tough guys fighting it

out. Behind the scenes might not appear glamorous, but it was a place where one would

find nontraditional sexuality.

23 Show Girl In Hollywood (Warner Brothers, 1930). The director symbolized homosexual males with enlarged eyes and touching his tie knot, expressing cultural thought gays had large Adam's apples.

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Other images from the early 1930s expanded upon this component o f the

behind-the-scenes mystique by promoting the place as rife with romantic encounters and

nontraditional sexuality. The aforementioned novel,Reckless Hollywood, placed readers

in a conversation amongst extras on a set. A former female star told another extra,

“People out here they’re Mr. and Mrs. God according to this sex, and you can’t even be

sure of that (emphasis mine) in this town.” This offered readers the thrill of “being

placed” on the inside behind the scenes and of getting knowledge that the big stars

engaged in sex with members of their own sex. InScreen Star (1932), author Jack

Preston, a pseudonym for figure about town John Preston Buschlen, depicted an actor

who crossed sexual boundaries with people he met on the studio lot. Tony Deveraux

appeared almost too handsome for a man, with hypnotic and insolent eyes, made love to

an actress girlfriend and with boyfriends as well.24 The image promoted the idea that on

the studio lot a suave male heartthrob met actresses and other men interested in engaging

in sex or romance with him. The presentation of this secret knowledge enabled readers to

believe they knew more about Hollywood stars and the activities in the studios. The

bisexuality in some of the encounters made them appear exotic and thus made behind the

scenes of Hollywood seem wilder and more decadent.

A newspaper article also from the early 1930s presented readers with

information that chorus boys engaged in nontraditional gender and sexual behavior

behind the scenes. The article noted that chorus girls developed their own “slanguage” to

24 Loubou, (pseud.), 9; Jack Preston, Screen Star (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1932), 8-12. The screenwriter/narrator’s “a” to modify the boyfriend instead of a “the” or “his,” suggested that Mr. Deveraux had more than one boyfriend.

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explain their portion of the Hollywood behind-the-scenes world. This glossary appeared

as secret insight that snooping officials of Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century

Pictures and the reporter acquired. Many terms described the general environment, such

as “factory” for studio, “blinker” for camera, and “draw a winner” for getting overtime

money. The reporter reprivatized this newly public information by presenting terms

related to the nontraditional behaviors of the people around them. The presence of

effeminate chorus boys warranted two terms: “camper” and, most often, “cream puff.”

These terms were slang for effeminate men, the first referring to the camp humor

associated with homosexual men and the latter suggesting a softness not associated with

“normative” masculinity.25 This representation reinforced the behind-the-scenes mystique

in several ways. The article incorporated the sense o f secret knowledge that made readers

believe they were receiving special information. The image confirmed the presence of

nontraditional romantic possibilities in the Hollywood off-screen and in a style filled with

salty phrases and elemental passion that provided readers with joy.

By early 1940, the rare depiction of the polymorphous behind the scenes

revealed the location as an emotional cauldron for them. Lotus, a female star of spectacles

and costume dramas in Ann Bell’s novel Lady’s Lady (1940), fell deeply in love with a

woman she picked from the hundreds of extras while filming a scene in a movie. The girl,

Bunny, seemed to have slept with her but now felt friendship and nothing more.

My heart is aching. Whenever I close my eyes, I can see you in my imagination with other girls. I had planned and hoped never to have any more heartaches, but the way I feel about you is pitiable. I would give my life to be with you this very

25 Philip Schueler, Los Angeles Times, March, 24, 1935, II, 1; Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van Den Bark, American Thesaurus o f Slang (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Co., 1953), 360.

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moment, just to feel you near me, to drift in the dreamland of heavenly bliss for only a few minutes. I would be happy if you would allow me to be with you once again,... but regardless of anything and everything, I wish and am longing to hear your voice again. Darling, may I?”26

This image offered readers the suggestion that certain actresses used the studio

lot as a place to experience her passion for romance. Lotus had free time to exchange

glances with hundreds of extras and had the chance to decipher their level of interest to

her and in her. The representation indicated that as a star expressed linle concern about

engaging in this activity and exhibited little fear that one of these extra women or other

studio workers might object to her polymorphous romances.

A few representations indicated that other performers enjoyed Hollywood

behind the scenes for the ability to pursue nontraditional gender and sexual activities. The

Lotus and Bunny story suggested that some extras appeared willing and able to engage in

a nontraditional romance with stars. While Bunny might not have wanted to pursue the

relationship beyond one night, her response to the star made it clear that Lotus could have

chosen a different girl and fulfilled her romantic desires. The image suggested that an

unheralded extra could find romance with a wealthy, popular star. The inclusion o f

private information about sex and power made behind the scenes appear very exciting.

This inclusion also added a Cinderella promise to romance behind the scenes in

Hollywood, making the studio lot seem more distinct and dreamy.

These images of performers who expressed nontraditional genders and

sexualities represented the visible figures with whom audiences identified on and off

screen. The images enabled audiences to “know” things about performers’ private lives.

36 Ann Bell, Lady’s Lady {New York: House of Field, Inc, 1940), 88.

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The perpetuation of this sense of secret knowledge and budding intimacy enticed

audiences to want to continue to follow Hollywood behind the scenes in order to learn

more. As images o f behind the scenes, they offered glimpses into the exciting world of

Hollywood off-screen and the glamorous world of Hollywood’s top performers. The

nontraditional gender and sexual behavior of these stars put on display attitudes that made

behind the scenes appear more exotic and decadent.

Temperamental Artistes Behind the Scenes

Information about the private activities behind the scenes in Hollywood

appeared in images of the workers who created the sets, fashions, and cosmetic styles

seen on movie screens. While often not as detailed or as frequent as depictions of

performers, these images offered audiences the titillation of knowing secrets and fostered

the public’s perception of Hollywood behind the scenes. The images highlighted

glamour, familial feeling, and sexual escapades to present behind the scenes as a magical

work environment.

Unlike with actors and actresses, little imagery of theatrical artisans appeared

in nineteenth century novels. Few artisan professions existed within the theater prior to

the late nineteenth century. Performers put on their own make-up and often purchased

their own costumes. Slowly, theaters, particularly in New York City, realized the cost

benefits to purchasing wardrobes themselves and they began hiring workers to tend to

them, store them, and eventually design them. Props evolved from a small jack-of-all-

tradesperson to a small group of carpenters and propmen who also served as stagehands.

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The numbers and importance of these crafts grew to the point that the majority of the

stagehands unionized with the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees

by the mid-1910s. The impact of realism grew in theatrical productions during the first

two decades of the twentieth century. With this growth, designers of stage scenery and

clothing became increasingly important. They received more credit in playbills and

within the pages of theatrical trade publications. General interest magazines began to

include articles that discussed their work and interviews with these men.27

General images of the theatrical backstage only occasionally provided

depictions of the theater artisans. The articles observed that most theaters had a scenic

artist and a crew of electricians, a boss carpenter and stage hands but did not personalize

this information by discussing or quoting individual workers. Readers learned highly

general details, such as scenic artists were usually well-dressed men of the world and

stagehands and carpenters usually had unfriendly dispositions and sat around arguing

about sports under a bunch-light during performances.28

A few articles in magazines during the late 1910s presented behind the theater

stage through the discussion of a backstage position. One set of these works informed

audiences about the techniques involved in performing particular theatrical effects.

27 Bobbi Owen, Costume Design on Broadway: Designers & Their Credits, 1915-1985 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), xiii-xv; Stage Design Throughout the World Since 1935 (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1957), 29-30; Louis B. Perry and Richard S. Perry,A History o f the Los Angeles Labor Movement, 1911-1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 318-321, Hollywood Strikes Collection, Southern California Studies for Social Research; Sheldon Cheney, The Theatre: Three Thousand Years o f Drama, Actions & Stagecraft (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1929), 490-527. 28 Davis, 706; Hale, 60-61.

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However, these representations rarely included information about individual stagehands

and their lives. The other set of articles focused on the evolution of the specific craft, such

as scenic art in American theater. They also provided a general description of the

activities involved with the position and how well these men performed. Occasionally,

these articles provided brief descriptions of the person’s looks and training for their

position.29 These two types of behind-the-scenes articles did not present the personalities

of these artisans of the stage. By not depicting in detail the environment in which the

artisans worked, these representations created the impression that behind the scenes

lacked color and elan as well as non-conventional gender and sexual behavior.

Many artisanal professions developed during the first years of the industry's

centralization in the Los Angeles area. In the early silent film days decisions about

furnishing sets usually involved the director, a carpenter, and a prop man. Increased

motion picture production and demand for realism made the need for specialists to

accomplish these and other tasks apparent to the studios. Several of these professions,

including interior designers and make-up artists, had reputations as appealing to men who

pursued nontraditional gender and sexual interests. During the early twentieth century,

interior design groups such as C.R. Ashbee’s Guild offered a queer and effeminate

community. During congressional testimony, the head of Columbia’s Scene Art

Department Thomas Cracraf! noted that “...his scenic artists were rather peculiar

creatures.” The committee counsel stated, “I think we can look at you and say that.”

29 Lionel Josaphare, “The Property Man,”Harper’s Weekly, Septem ber 12, 1912, 14; B. Matthews, “Evolution of scene-painting,” Scribner's Magazine, July, 1915, 82; “Groping toward a new

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Images, showing upper-class fops as hairdressers and homosexual fairies adorning

themselves with cosmetics, promoted the view that only effeminate men worked in

beauty professions and used cosmetics.30

Motion picture artisans engaged in their pre-production or production tasks

within specific locations on the enormous studio lots. Set decorators worked within the

art department and the stage sets to create the sets scenic decor, synchronize these sets

with the action, and make certain the colors of sets and costumes complemented each

other. Hairdressers and make-up artists toiled in one big room with three-double-mirrored

tables. They began work on the stars and hundreds of other performers very early in the

morning. Although certain performers cooperated in creating their best looks, the make­

up professionals insisted on their expertise in creating the glamorous styles. The

glamorous fashions emerged from the visions and activities occurring in places such as

the concrete mausoleum that housed ladies’ wardrobe at Paramount. This sat atop men’s

wardrobe, which had shoes, shirts, and uniforms, and fixing shops. Over 180 people

worked in wardrobe at M-G-M in the late 1930s, operating metal spray-dying machines

and the sewing and beading equipment. During and after production, stars went with

publicity people to the photography studios. The top photographers produced an average

of 300 negatives daily to capture the excitement and emotion in a motion picture scene

[or personality] with a single exposure. As Robert Sennett observed, photographers’ star

scenic art in the American theater,” Current Opinion, May, 1919, 301-302; C. Meltzer, “Stage decoration,” Arts and Decoration, April, 1920,408-409. 30 Kevin Brownlow, Hollywood: The Pioneers (Sew York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 80-100; Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture andSame-Sex Desire (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc, 1997), 86; Testimony of Thomas A. Cracraft, Jurisdictional Disputes In The Motion-Picture Industry, Vol.

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images graced the theater lobbies and fanzines, presenting the sex and earnestness that

together spelled glamour.31

A story about the head of Warner Brothers’ flower department explained that

the floral beauty and style notable in this studio’s Hollywood productions depended upon

the work of Joe Trusty and his staff. Trusty studied scripts and planned flowers to match

sequences (e.g. summer flowers for summer sequences), and his staff created vibrant

imitations of flowers for “long shots.” The beautiful towns and buildings that appeared on

the screen emerged because of the creativity of studio art directors and their departments.

An article noted that Columbia’s Lionel Banks and his staff created everything from

enormous skyscrapers to historical Tucson, Arizona, that had a significant impact on

making the movie.32

Images suggested that many artisans experienced the type of familial

closeness that certain performers noted. The wardrobe chief at Warner Brothers reaped

lavish praise on his clothing designer, Orry Kelly. He noted that Kelly and wardrobe

supervisor, Miss Twas McKenzie, worked together, then with the director and star, to

I 715-717; Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making o f America's Beauty Culture (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), 158-160. 31 Davis, 208-210; Mike Steen, Hollywood Speaks! An Oral History (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 269-280; Howard Greer, Designing Male (London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1952), 147-218; Aljean Harmetz, The Making o f The Wizard o f Oz (New York: Delta, 1977), 236-238; Clarence Sinclair Bull, The Faces o f Hollywood (South Brunswick, NJ: A S Barnes & Co., 1968), 70-80; Robert S. Sennett, Hollywood Hoopla: Creating Stars and Selling Movies in the Golden Age o f Hollywood (Watson-Guptill Publications, 1998), 159-160. 3- Los Angeles Times, 27 August 1939, sec. Ill, 3; 1 October 1939, sec. HI, 3.

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make the creations that appeared on screen. The head of the script department at

Twentieth Century-Fox, Kathleen Ridegway, “...is the boss and office mother of 150

girls-- secretaries, stenographers, mimeograph operators and script distributors....” Not

only did Ridgeway keep the women working in harmony, but she was “on call” 24 hours

a day to scores of executives, producers, writers, directors, and department heads. Despite

these pressures, the studio functioned like a big family so that “Kathleen knows

practically everybody on the lot, and they all call her by her first name— from janitors to

executives.” Mary Eicks served as the traffic dispatcher for the drivers of more than 150

units of rolling stock, including camera cars, buses, trucks, sound units, and limousines.

Her office handled from 500 to 1,000 calls daily. The men liked taking orders from this

woman because Eicks had a role in their close knit group, as she was “a regular guy” to

all of them.33

The depictions of artisans fueled the belief that romance regularly occurred

off-screen. Items in gossip columns occasionally noted dates between perfomers and

artisans. When romances blossomed into marriages, articles described their weddings,

such as the ceremony inside a mission of actress Dolores Del Rio and M-G-M Art

Department Director Cedric Gibbons. These images promoted behind the scenes as a

33 Herman Politz, Director of Wardrobe at Warner Brothers, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 21 May 1932, sec. A-6;Los Angeles Times, 20 August 1939, sec. Ill, 3; 3 September 1939, sec. Ill, 3

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potential romantic fairy tale. A Hollywood novel presented an image of artisans' romance

behind the scenes that made the figure appear as a creep. Karen De WolfsTake the

Laughter (1941) depicted the ailing wife of a cameraman deducing that her husband

conducted affairs on the set with women in the extra ranks. She knew the other

cameraman on the set admired the handsome leading men, not girls.34 Whether a fabulous

wedding or an unfiilfilling relationship, these images presented information about private

affairs while cementing the notion that romance regularly occurred behind Hollywood

scenes and that romance was never tedious.

As the general images discussed above, nontraditional gender and sexual

behavior images created impressions of behind the scenes in audiences’ minds. Beside

sparking thrills, these sneak glimpses fueled the sense that behind the scenes had mystery.

The glimpse they offered at the glamour, familial feeling, and sexual escapades forged the

impression of a magical work environment.

M-G-M suggested to exhibitors that they market their movie about

Hollywood, Going Hollywood (1933), with catchlines that promised audiences insight

about behind the scenes. The phrases included “It’s Hollywood Through A Keyhole— Its

Glamour, Its Loves, Its Melody!”35 When the audience looked through the keyhole,

Sylvia Bruce (Marion Davies) worked as an extra on the set in order to be near her

heartthrob, movie star Bill (Bing Crosby). An extra, Jill Baker (Patsy Kelly) befriended

34 “Dolores Del Rio of Films, Artist Wed On Mission,” Chicago Tribune Press Service, August 6, 1930, clipping in Dolores Del Rio scrapbook, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress; Karen DeWolf, Take the Laughter (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Co., 1941), 185-192. 35 Press Book, Going Hollywood, (M-G-M, 1933), Press Book Collection, AMPAS.

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Sylvia, and at the dinner break, told Sylvia to watch the three electricians ready to

perform in front of fake microphones.

The first man imitates a boxing announcer, then introduces “...the new heavyweight champion of the world...Kate Smith.” A tall, fey man in the middle of the trio exaggerates his eyes and purses his lips as he mouths “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.” Upon concluding he says, “Hello, this is little Katie, and I’m going to sing a song for all those people down at the nudist colony. You’re an old smoothie.” After the last man fakes more announcing, the first introduces the fey man as the tenor Morton Downey. He pretends to sing as the third Radio Rogue states, “And you’re still suffering, people. This is Tony Twice speaking and you know who’s singing, umm? Why that’s Morton Downey’s nephew, Up-side Down-ey.”36

Noted screen writer Donald Ogden Stewart wrote an early version of the script

devoid o f much of the styling. Stewart viewed the scene as a group of extras gathered

around a piano during the lunch break watching Sylvia imitate the star of the film within

the film, Lilly Yvonne, played by Fifi D’Orsay. A later script positioned electricians,

prop boys, and extras eating lunch around the piano. Jill asked Mike to do his “radio” act.

The script directed Mike to imitate Kate Smith perfectly naturally, without stepping

forward and staging a number. However, by late September, the scene simply stated that

the Radio Rouges go into their act.37

The performers embellished greatly upon the original idea, increasing the

female impersonation and the hint of homosexuality. The group, composed of Jimmy

Hollywood, Ed Bartell (the female impersonator in the movie), and Henry Taylor, had a

long vaudeville career, and also made several motion pictures during the 1930s. The

36 Going Hollywood, (M-G-M, 1933); Going Hollywood script in M-G-M script Collection, USC. Morton Downey had a popular radio show in the early 1930s that broadcasted from his supper club. 37 Going Hollywood script of 22 August 1933, in M-G-M script Collection, USC; 29 September 1933.

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group’s scene inGoing Hollywood was the vaudeville comedy section that offered a

break in the musical comedies within the Hollywood on Hollywood genre. As scholar

Mark Jenkins wrote, the vaudeville aesthetic cared more about a joke than narrative

consistency. Often, these comedy scenes included sexual ambiguity that fluctuated from

scene to scene depending upon the comic potentials of each situation. It was not unusual

for the humor to center on same-gender sexuality.38

The presentation of the Radio Rogue imitating Kate Smith offered spectators a

surprise and titillated them with information about a person’s gender and sexual

activities. The troupe passed on this information about the person’s sexuality in two

comedic ways. His female impersonation included exaggerating the rolling and batting of

his eyes and the pursing of his lips. These actions were considered signs of a homosexual

male in that era and motivated a motion picture censor on another movie to label the

actions too pansyish and request their removal. The troupe engaged in word play on the

identity of the singer the representation imitated, Morton Downey. The joke named the

representation “Upside Downey,” implying a reversal and inversion and the suggestion

that the movie’s female impersonator shared this inversion. Audiences and critics enjoyed

the humor. The picture, which cost nearly one million dollars to produce, earned its

producing studio, Cosmopolitan, a healthy profit. The reviews were fair, withVariety

noting that the Three Radio Rogues “are cleverly spotted in such a way that their number

is a break both for themselves and the picture.” The exposure of this electrician’s private

romantic activities met the audience’s expectations as they peered through the keyhole.

38 Variety , 26 December 1933, 10; Jenkins.

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The image titillated audiences and reinforced their understanding that some workers

shared familial bonds behind the scenes in Hollywood and suggested that plenty of

romance occurred within that environment.39

The scene resumed the movie’s commentary on radio. Earlier in the movie

Sylvia fell in love with Bill’s voice on the radio. The power of her emotional bond and

the revelation that the school where she taught banned radios because they supposedly

promoted destructive values, acknowledged the importance of radio as a cultural medium.

The attitude of the school linked the radio and motion picture industries as Hollywood

also faced arguments from cultural critics who claimed that its pictures corrupted the

values of citizens. The Radio Rouges section allowed the motion picture to draw a

distinction between these industries and put the Hollywood on top. As in the party at

Schnarzan’s scene from Hollywood Party discussed in Chapter III, the Radio Rogues

show revealed the illusions and dissimilitude of radio. After all, the image showed that

there was no boxing match and that a man imitated Kate Smith. At least with the movies

the audience member could see these lies. The scene allowed Hollywood to compare

favorably to the radio in a second way. The performance revealed the radio’s behind the

scenes was small, had few employees, and did not contain the number of spaces of

glamour and fantasy thatGoing Hollywood revealed existed behind the scenes on a studio

lot.

39 Gerald Gardner, The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934 to 1968 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987), 37-3, 137-138; American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures produced in the United States, 1931-1940, Patricia King Hanson, executive editor, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 790. The picture earned strong box office returns in Oregon, Kansas

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Other images from novels of the early 1930s titillated readers with images of

nontraditional sexuality and confirmed the idea of behind the scenes as a location for

varied romantic activities. This image from the novel Reckless Hollywood included the

first of several depictions of nontraditional artisans that suggested that their nontraditional

attitudes shaped the skills that they brought to the motion picture industry. The novel

offered readers “insight” and thrills by including a homosexually-active man employed as

a sketch artist. As noted earlier, this novel increased its insight and thrill quotient by

telling its readers that characters would be recognizable to those knowledgeable about

Hollywood. While not taking place behind the scenes, the image focused on a behind-the-

scenes worker and briefly described his work style.

Petty went over to Bob Bates' table [at Sebastian’s Cotton Club]. He had been on the make for the tall, lean and beautiful actor Perry at Faith Hope’s party. Bates was a kid who did clever sketches in Audrey Beardsley manner. They greeted each other happily. He teased her about being a foolish virgin. She said she wouldn’t introduce Dan to him “... because you’ll try to steal him from me. You’re dangerous.” When she returned to her table, Dan became jealous, then raged that she disgraced him by standing in the middle of the room talking to a fairy/0

This image indicated that some polymorphous Hollywood figures engaged in

their behaviors at more than one of the Hollywood locations examined in this study.

Bates, like a few of the figures in the previous chapter, found Hollywood private parties a

place conducive to the expression of his homosexual interests. The sketch artist also

City, St. Louis, New Orleans, Boston, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC and Chicago. Variety , 26 December 1933, 6 through 16 January 1934, 23. 40 Loubou, (pseud.), 139-141.

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discovered, as the female impersonators discussed in Chapter II did, that Hollywood’s

nightclubs offered a site where he could congregate with friends and express his interests.

Readers could imagine themselves inside this public place witnessing these conversations

and activities.

Readers learned that sketch artists in the Hollywood studios had homosexual

interests. Sketch artists prepared preliminary versions of the approximately thirty sets that

appeared in every picture. These settings created a sense of place and allowed spectators

to feel that they were within an environment and yet not have their attention distracted

from the characters and the story. The sketch artist’s reputation and style reminded the

author and others of designer Aubrey Beardsley, who enjoyed membership in a

homosexual circle in 1890s London. Beardsley’s drawings and scenic designs were

highly erotic and incorporated hints of homosexual love and theatricality, and his

allusions to sexuality granted viewers the freedom to supply their own interpretations. A

newspaper critic noted that two previously examined nontraditional gender and sexual

figures, producer and actress Alla Nazimova and set designer Natasha Rambova, used

Beardsley’s designs in their 1923 version ofSalome. He concluded that most of those

who accept the fanciful treatment of the production as a whole probably would not be

disturbed by any particular feature of it.41 Bates’ adoption of Beardsley’s style presented

this type of fanciful artifice to the sets he helped design. Their similarity to Beardsley’s

presumably occurred to observers because of this theatricality and the inclusion of hints

4' Robert Langenfeld, “Beardsley in Time,” and Brian Reade, “Beardsley Re-Mounted,” and Linda Zatlin, "Felicien Rops and Aubery Beardsley: The Naked and The Nude," ed. Robert Langenfeld,

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of homosexual love in his sketches. Bates found himself able to express his homosexual

interests at work and at play. His work also illustrated that these polymorphous artisans

helped forge the image of Hollywood as a glamorous place. Bates’ work captured the

sexuality and earnestness that Sennett observes was the very definition of Hollywood

glamour.

Another artisan who played a significant role in capturing that glamour was

the still photographer who created the portraits of the stars. Keane McGrath’sHollywood

Siren (1932) featured a still photographer named Leslie Beaumont. This representation

used the older medical model of sexual inversion to reveal the character’s sexual

interests.

A slightly built young man with golden hair and Greek-features, Carmen enjoyed Leslie Beaumont’s cultured ways and his taking her to museums and talk of books. Little by little she began to observe peculiarities of his nature, such as a high-pitched feminine laugh when excited, his love of jewelry and his choice of delicate pastel shades for his ties and socks. Slowly it dawned on her that he was one of the third sex. She enjoyed not having to keep her barriers up with him and her cursory studies of Freud and Krafft-Ebing gave her a more humanitarian view of his affliction. His splendid mind equipped with a first class education from Oxford furnished a mine of information for her. He’d found neither the business world nor the social life of England to his liking and had cultivated his artistic abilities. He drifted to America and after many hardships he had at length achieved his success in color photography.42

Still photographers who worked in the motion picture industry formed a select

guild, with approximately 90 working at the various studios solely responsible for the

Reconsidering Aubrey Beardsley (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilm Press, 1989), 5, 110, 184-187; New York Times, 1 January 1923, 18. A2 Keane McGrath, Hollywood Siren (New York: William Godwin, Inc., 1932), 82.

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production of still photographs in the industry. Insiders, such as Fred Astaire, observed

the nontraditional sexual interests and gender behavior of the industry’s photographers.

Astaire labeled Cecil Beaton an English “fagat” (sic) and quipping that Beaton disliked

Clare Booth Luce’s voice probably because it was the same as his. The representation

made Beaumont’s professional skills appear uniquely qualified to work in Hollywood.

These artistic abilities that he cultivated and the temperament that kept him out of the

business and social worlds of England appeared suited to Hollywood. Behind the scenes

these abilities enabled Beaumont to create glamour and elegance for the stars.

Beaumont’s artistic abilities helped illustrate the glamorous lifestyles that promoted

public worship of movie stars. His skills in color photography became increasingly

valuable as studios saw full-color advertisements as a major force in attracting attention

to their features. Indeed, the elegant portraits of the male movie stars that emerged from

the work of photographers such as George Hurrell helped establish the legitimacy of male

nude or seminude glamour in photographs, thereby expanding homoerotic possibilities in

all of photography.43

The image highlighted that Beaumont shared his elegance and culture around

the studio, particularly with the actress Carmen. This sharing resulted in the pair

developing a deep sharing relationship that resembled certain family relationships, such

as between an older brother and his sister or between two cousins. Actresses described

43 Los Angeles Times, 17 January 1937, sec. Ill, 4; Fred Astaire to Dolly, Monday, Adele Astaire Collection, Box 1, Fred Letters Folder, Mugar Library, BU; Fred E. Basten, The Lost Artwork of Hollywood (New York: Watson-Guptiil Publications, 1996), 46-47; Allen Ellenzweig, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images From Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe (New York: Columbia University Press. 1992), 92; May, 97, 130-145.

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their relationships with the still photographers very fondly. Myma Loy noted that George

Hurrell, Laszlo Willinger, and Ted Allan were great and spent a lot o f time working with

performers to create the best images. Clarence Bull, M-G-M’s portrait artist, thought

Garbo shy and quiet for their first three hours of shooting and believed that his diffidence

at their first meeting allowed her to think he was a kindred spirit. They developed a long­

time close friendship. Actresses had professional reasons to develop close relationships

with the still photographers. The industry, and particularly actresses, were aware that

“...glamour and publicity are tied to getting good pictures. This makes the still

photographer one of the most important people in town.”44

By the mid-1930s, motion pictures seemingly revealed more of the mystery of

Hollywood studios as they presented artisans responsible for creating glamorous looks of

the stars. Like the novels, they observed the role the nontraditional interests had in

helping these artisans perform their work roles. A representation from the motion picture

Something to Sing About (1937) provided audiences with thrills by placing its audience in

a producer’s office and a make-up room. The movie provided secret knowledge as it

“disclosed” that make-up artists were nontraditional gender and sexual figures. The

character of Mr. Easton, played by actor Dwight Frye, appeared on several occasions

throughout the movie and was a focal point in two major scenes. Studio executive B. O.

Regan, publicity man Hank Meyers, and their new star Terry Rooney (Jimmy Cagney)

awaited the arrival of a trio of department heads. Easton from make-up, the studio stylist,

Mr. Davianai, and drama coach Mr. Blaine entered and stood at the far end of Regan’s

44 Loy, 118; Los Angeles Times, 2 July 1939, sec. Ill; 16 December 1945, sec. Ill, I.

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enormous office. The producer introduced them to the man that he expected them to

make into a star.45

Easton takes out a monocle and stepped forward and examined the Cagney character. He reaches up to the forehead of Rooney and breathlessly says, “The hairline. Gracious.” His eyes bulge out and his voice rises. “It belongs on an entirely different face, Mr. Regan.” “Well, fix it,” Regan barks. Easton frowns and pouts. “Hmmph. So easily said.” His eyes again bulge out as he tosses his head back. With a slight wiggle to his torso he turns his back to Regan.46

The second scene also featured the Hollywood star-building focus. Rooney

recently spent time with the drama coach who tried to change his speech and the stylist

who wanted him to wear different clothes. Rooney seated himself in the barber shop chair

with Easton donned in white smock standing beside him and practiced his lines. Easton

whined that Rooney was annoying him, but the actor did not stop. “When I look at that

hairline I could almost cry,” Easton winced, prompting Rooney to smirk. Easton turned to

grab a toupee off a mannequin and tried to persuade Rooney to wear the widow’s peak,

but the actor refused. These highly effeminate mannerisms appeared quite appropriate to

Hollywood make-up artisans, according to studio figures. Director Vincent Sherman

45 American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures produced in the United States, 1931-1940, 1994-1995. Grand National signed Warner Brothers's star Jimmy Cagney to a multi-picture deal and brought in well-established songwriter and director Victor Schertzinger. The studio spent $750,000, a major studio’s budget for a respectable feature. Variety considered it a first-class comedy and good entertainment. Gregory William Mank, James T. Coughlin and Dwight D. Frye, Jr.,Dwight Frye's Last Laugh (Midnight Marquee Press, Inc., 1997). Dwight Frye came from the Broadway stage to Hollywood and established himself as a top character actor in the early 1930s in horror films. Biographer Gregory Mank notes that a refreshing change of pace was the role of a gay hairdresser inSomething to Sing About. 46 Something to Sing About (Grand National, 1937), reel 1.

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stated that there was a general feeling that the make-up artist was a homosexual

occupation. He and others could tell that these men would have homosexual interests

“...by their feminine delicacies and gracefulness in the way that they walked and the way

that they used their hands.”47

The movie, as noted earlier about Hollywood on Hollywood movies, disrupts

one myth while confirming others. The make-up department scene revealed to spectators

the mystery behind the make-up artists’ creation o f stars’ glamorous looks. The scene

suggested that the polymorphousness existed behind the scenes and had a role in the

creation of glamour. Artists and their studios believed in an ideal camera face. In the

representation, Easton wanted to place a toupee that would give Rooney a widow’s peak

on top of the future star’s forehead. This hairstyle had definite links to M-G-M romantic

star Robert Taylor, who was among the most popular stars of the period. The make-up

artist’s sensibilities motivated and shaped the style that he wanted for Rooney. However,

Easton’s persistent desire to shape Rooney’s looks to resemble Taylor's reflected the

make-up artist’s incorporation of artifice. As a homosexual in this pre-Stonewall era

United States, Easton probably knew and used camp, the argot that provided male

homosexuals with a measure of coherence, solidarity, humor, and the ability to engage in

double conversations. This camp style favored artifice, exaggeration, and life as theater.

The artist’s sense of camp presumably informed him of the ability to “play” with the look

47 Ibid, reel 2; Vincent Sherman, interviewed by author, Telephone interview, 26 January 1998. Sherman came to Hollywood in the early 1930s as an actor, but turned to screenwriting later in the decade. He began directing in 1939 and spent most of the rest of his three decade career with Warner Brothers. The testimony of many people alleged that the make-up artists had the reputation of being a highly temperamental group. Davis, 226-227.

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of someone well known. As scholar Sarah Elizabeth Berry argued, a number of movie

artisans could provide artifice in motion pictures by drawing attention to their costume as

a product itself. So both personally and professionally, Easton’s interest in incorporating

exaggeration would enable him to understand that a new romantic male star could find

success with a look similar to an exaggerated version of Robert Taylor, the vogue

romantic male. The critic for the New York Times found this aspect of the movie accurate

and humorous and he observed that “...the movie was an amusing, sardonic and

frolicsome piece.... The best of the film is the satirizing of the Hollywood star-building

methods.”48

The representation of the make-up artist suggested that he shared a type of

family with the other department heads. In the first scene, the three men waited together

before entering the producer’s office and sympathized with each other’s plights in having

to turn Rooney into a star. Following the individual scenes between Rooney and each of

the artisans, a third scene featured the three artisans watching Rooney perform. The

designer whispered to the men and each agreed that they wanted the new star to take a

punch. The men looked satisfied when a stunt man literally punched Rooney in the fight

4* Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film, ed. Edward Maeder (Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 49-52; New York Times, 21 September 1937, 29; 7 July 1940, sec. VII, 6; 16 February 1941, sec. VII, 10; Jack Babuscio, “Camp and the Gay Sensibility,” ed. David Bergman, Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 21-25; Sarah Elizabeth Berry, Screen Style: Consumer Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood Ph.D. diss. New York University, 1997, 11-14; Charles AfFron and Mirella Jona Affron, Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 36-37. The Affrons argued that designers influenced motion pictures in three ways. These ways included denotative, helping to define a character's status, punctuation, making a statement about the character, and embellishment, adding a cinematic element. Variety. 1 September 1937,22.

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scene.49 These scenes revealed these artisans shared a unity similar to a family group and

would become irritated when a person does not behave like a good member of the family

and follow their suggestions.

Another motion picture representation revealed the work of a different artisan

and reaffirmed the link of polymorphous nature with glamour. Screenwriters Jerry Wald

and Maurice Leo established that the stylist in Hollywood Hotel (1937) would have same-

gender sexual interest. Production Code Administration (PCA) reviewers noted the

homosexuality of this character and passed this information on to their boss, Joseph

Breen. In his letters to Warner Brothers’ studio chief, Jack Warner, Breen warned that

there must be no “pansy” flavor to any of the stylist’s actions or dialogue. By September,

the PCA found the revisions they requested for other scenes acceptable. However,

Breen’s letter again protested that there must be no suggestion of a “pansy” in the

characterization of the male dress designer. Two months later, Breen happily advised

Jack Warner that Hollywood Hotel seemed satisfactory from the standpoint of the

production code. Interestingly, there was little change in the characterization of the

designer between Wald and Leo’s first script of December 6, 1936, and the depiction in

the motion picture almost a year later.50

The motion picture received strong critical and spectator response. The critics

in both the trade magazines and newspapers, such as the New York Times, gave positive

49 Something to Sing About, reel 3. 50 Breen to Warner letters. These begin in June 29, 1937 and end in November 20, 1937. Production Code Administration Files, Hollywood Hotel, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Hollywood Hotel (Warner Brothers, 1937), Warner Brothers Script Collection, Cinema and Television Library, University of Southern California.

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reviews. The film earned good returns at the box office, although they did not reach the

success that Film Daily had predicted. In its review, Film Daily noted, “Marshall, Fuzzy,

Callaghan, and dress designer score with their comedy.” Despite the singling out of

characters for praise, none of these critics mentioned the dress designer. The dress

designer, played by Curt Bois, appeared in one scene in the motion picture.51

The movie took viewers into a place where the female star received a fitting.

The image suggested that a circus atmosphere prevailed in the area with the effeminate

stylist constituting one portion of the zaniness. Early in the movie, the star actress, Mona

Marshall, was in her suite being fitted for a dress as Louella Parsons began to interview

her. A man in a pinstriped suit, carnation in the lapel and cigarette holder dangling from

his mouth, walked about Mona as she stood on a podium.

“Please everybody. Quiet, my nerves, I’m going mad.” Mona says, unintentionally sounding hammy. “Mona darling, the dress is so gorgeous, I can’t stand it.” The dress designer swoons over the dress. He leans back, hand on his chest. “Oh, do you really think so butch?” “Really....If your fans don’t collapse on the sidewalk when you walk into that theater tonight,” his voice rises, “I’ll tear it to pieces.” He flutters around and fusses over the dress while Mona answers one of Louella’s questions.

A shoe salesman holds up a pair. “I can have these dyed any color you wish, Miss Marshall.” She tries to answer but the designer flits over to the shoeman. “No, no, no, no. Am I the designer, or am I the designer!” Mona concedes. The designer opens his coat and runs a hand down his torso. “I want her feet practically on the ground-nothing but jewels.” His eyes grew large and he stares down at the man. The man gives him a confused gaze.

51 Film Daily, 27 December 1937, 8; Variety, 22 December 1937, 16; New York Times, 13 January 1938, 17. Curt Bois started on the stage in his native Germany as a young child. He matured into a cabaret star, but with the rise of National Socialism in 1933, he emigrated. After a brief stop on Broadway, he joined many fellow compatriots in Hollywood. He established a reputation as a fine character actor. Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), 136.

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While a man requests that Mona sign a radio contract, Mona’s personal secretary, Miss Jones, walks in. After a subtle insult at Mona, Jones picks up a pair of shoes and tells the shoeman, “You better dye these and send a pair of black ones too.” The designer stands at Jones’ side. “You mean you want black ones too. Why don’t you get her a pair of skates while you’re at it? I want a pair of very high- heeled shoes,” he points his cigarette holder in a highly animated fashion. Jones drops the shoes and says to the designer, “What are you going to wear them with?”52

The dress designer interpreted his job as creating the look that made the

female star elegant and glamorous on and off screen. The secretary’s joke toward the

designer suggested that Butch’s gender inversion provided him with the personal

experience of wearing women’s clothes and that influenced his choice of attire for the

star.

The image of the costume designer emphasized his role in creating glamour,

his polymorphous behaviors, and the link of the two. The designer in Hollywood Hotel

wanted the female star to wear a gown in her public/private life that he exaggerated in

order to elicit envy and adoration from her fans. This would keep her name associated

with this type of fashion. The designer inHollywood Hotel promoted camp through

assisting the female star portray her life as theater and as an overwrought gender role. He

also used artifice by adding to the female star’s cumulative fashion style. Hollywood

studio stylists, such as Howard Greer, expressed this artifice, noting that they enjoyed

Hollywood’s over-emphasis on clothes and its precociousness and juvenile manners with

every curve and muscle proudly emphasized.53

53 Hollywood Hotel (Warner Brothers, 1937); Hollywood Hotel script. 53 Greer, 147-156.

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A novel from a Hollywood insider incorporated a similar approach, giving its

readers seeming insight and titillation. Jane Allen’s Hollywood novel, I Lost My Girlish

Laughter, brought her readers into a successful studio. Along with a jaded publicity

director and a naive secretary/narrator, the author made things exciting by introducing a

lecherous studio executive and a studio stylist who exhibited nontraditional behaviors.

Allen was the pseudonym of Silvia Schulman who served as producer David O.

Selznick’s personal secretary during the mid-1930s. The novel contained many of

Schulman’s experiences with the producer and his company and earned Selznick’s

unsuccessful attempt to prevent Orson Welles from broadcasting the novel on CBS radio.

The executive did stop M-G-M from using its screenrights. While several reviewers

praised the novel as humorous and filled with highly provocative details, none of these

reviews mentioned the stylist.54

Producer Sidney Brand lay in his own hospital room waiting for his wife to

give birth. Members of the studio staff crowded around Brand’s bed as they planned how

to shape the filming of their new production. Eric of wardrobe entered the hospital and

you-hoos to Madge (the personal secretary). The pair entered Brand’s room.

“Mr Brand...Mr.Brand.” It is Eric waving frantically. “I’ve simply got to get an okay on these sketches and get back to the studio.” “Alright Eric. Let’s see them.” Eric flits over to the bed and spreads out his portfolio. Sidney Brand turned pages carelessly and looked out the door at nurses strutting past. He says he doesn’t like them. “You can’t tell me that a dame in the jungle’s going to wear a Chanel creation...” “But Mr. Brand, this is exotic...This is exciting. You know perfectly well that illusion can be preserved only by covering the form.” Here Eric makes a few passes down his own divine form. “...I want every woman in the audience to itch to be in the jungle with nothing on like Tam and I want every man to get

54 Anthony Slide, The Hollywood Novel (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1995), 22; Saturday Review of Literature, 14 May 1938, 6; New York Times, 22 May 1938, sec. VI, 7.

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hot.” Jim (the publicist) broke in. “Mr. Brand wants you to raise a wholesale libido!” “Swell word Jim, that’s just what I mean... You’ll have plenty of time in the American sequence to do a Schraparelli.” “But there are fashions even in the jungle, Mr. Brand. A woman is a woman no matter what or where...” “Okay true, just so long as you keep conscious of the fact that she is a woman I’ll be satisfied. But to hell with illusions.” Eric appears injured. “But Mr. B...” “Good-bye Eric.” Eric shrugs his shoulders eloquently but gathers up his sketches and departs.55

The designer’s emphasis on glamour and how his nontraditional sexuality

shaped his perspective appeared in this conversation with studio boss Brand. Eric’s

approach to his work, influenced by his lack of sexual interest in women, prompted him

to want to dress the female star in the latest fashions regardless of the location of the

scene. Brand, who exhibited such frequent lust for women that he kept ogling the nurses,

placed this jungle scene in the motion picture because the location would allow him to

justify to the censors placing a woman in skimpy clothes. As a temperamental artiste,

Eric wanted to use every scene to heighten the motion picture’s sense of glamour. He

intended to preserve the illusion of the form of the female star because that would help

her be alluring, distant, a glamorous figure on which to display clothes. The stylist

thought that this was exotic and exciting for the audience. In his thought, a woman was a

woman and always had to wear the best clothes. Brand agreed that a woman was a

woman. Yet in his interpretation, a woman was a sexual being for males. It was clear to at

least some of the department heads that the stylist could not understand Brand’s

perspective on this issue. The publicist tried to help him understand through making the

producer’s view very obvious so the stylist, despite his nontraditional sexual interests,

could understand Brand.

55 Jane Allen, (pseud.) I Lost My Girlish Laughter (Sew York: Random House, 1938), 98-101.

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Like the designer in Hollywood Hotel, Eric incorporated his nontraditional

interests into his motion picture work. Both men’s nontraditional sexual interest enabled

them to emphasize a female star’s glamour rather than simply unveiling her body. Each

designer thought that the fan’s idolization of the female star resulted from the allure her

gowns help bring out of her rather than a sexual interest in her bodice. Eric also created a

camp style through his use of artifice. Eric’s intention to place the female star in a

glamorous evening gown within the middle of the jungle forged an incongruity between

the female star, “the object,” and the jungle, “the context.”

Newspaper and magazine articles between the early 1930s and early 1940s

also titillated readers with hints about the private behaviors of a studio designer. These

images of Warner Brothers’ irascible chief designer John Orry-Kelly reinforced the

glamour and family components of the mystique. A native of Kiama, Australia, Kelly

was bom in December 1897 to middle-class Irish emigrants. He arrived in Manhattan

with hopes of becoming an actor, but performing positions came rarely and he received

commissions to paint murals for restaurants, department stores, and wealthy socialites.

These displays led to work designing costumes and sets in vaudeville and on Broadway.

His friend Archie Leach adopted the name Cary Grant and showed Kelly’s sketches to

Warner Brothers’ executives.56

56 W. Robert La Vine, In a Glamorous Fashion: The Fabulous Years o f Hollywood Costume Design (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), 219-221; Vincent Sherman, Studio Affairs: My Life as a Film Director (Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), 76. Kelly took on the name Orry-Kelly and formed one of the notable actress-designer combinations with Bette Davis. Each acted as a catalyst upon the other. He enjoyed combustible relations with actresses throughout his years and used his temperament to win battles over budgets with studio executives. His wit and good humor made him a regular at many parties. At Shelley Winter’s bash, Orry-Kelly donned a babushka. He ended up being tossed out with the other guests when Shelley’s husband bellowed that “...he didn’t do eighty bombing

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A few images of Orry-Kelly revealed his contribution to the glamour and

elegance of Hollywood and its stars. “Kelly likes long evening dresses because they are

becoming and dignified.” The designer summarized his view of Hollywood when he

arrived in the early 1930s. “In Hollywood there was ... a great deal of very bad taste...

Ladies hats looked like something caught in a revolving door;... And everything in sight

-- from clothing to upholstery — simply dripped with beads!” Kelly took an active role in

shaping Hollywood taste in clothes and design so that they brought elegance and glamour

to Hollywood and started upon that task immediately with flattering sketches of

miniatures of actresses Kay Francis and Ruth Chatterton wearing his creations. Kelly

spent most of his boyhood years drawing and designing and following an absorbing

interest in everything connected with the stage.57 These years of defying the gender norms

for a boy forged both Orry-Kelly’s abilities and his sensibilities, but enabled him to

succeed in Hollywood.

Depictions of Orry-Kelly illuminated the stylist’s activities behind the scenes

and showed their similarity to family relations. Orry-Kelly observed that the entire design

department needed to function like a dependable group on numerous occasions. “One

fitting is about all any star has time to take. Sometimes a costume must be designed,

fitted and sewn in one day. They work on it in shifts, people sewing all night.” He

missions in order to have a bunch of fairies in my house!” Warner Brother’s director Vincent Sherman developed a friendship with Kelly and listen to his many stories. Shelley Winters,Shelley: Also Known as Shirley (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980), 128, 221-227; Los Angeles Times, 8 December 1935, sec. Ill, 11; 8, June 1941, sec. IV, 7; New York American, 2 August 1936 in Cinema: Hollywood Entertaining folder at NYPL. 57 New York Sun, 4 January 1938, Orry-Kelly Clippings folder, NYPL; Ony-Kelly, “Star dressing,” New York Journal American, 8 December 1945, Orry Kelly Clippings folder; Winters, 221-227;

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proudly noted that he worked at Warners’ studio twelve years without ever having trouble

with any of his principals and retained a close relationship with the studio family head.

“Jack Warner still invites me home to Sunday dinner; a gesture rare, indeed, in this

town.”58 A newspaper article observed that these close relations extended beyond the

studio walls to the designer’s home.

In a lovely Colonial house, set in a high-walled garden in the Los Feliz Hills, Orry-Kelly... lives alone among the paintings achieved by his own clever hands-- and the priceless collection of porcelain cats which have come to him from friends, including Marion Davies, Lady Mendl, Perc Westmore, Cary Grant, Barbara Hutton, and Norma Talmadge.59

This representation indicated that the stylist counted several stars and top

Hollywood socialites as close friends. These people gave him gifts and visited his house

frequently. The closeness developed at work. Orry-Kelly noted that he always got along

well with the biggest stars at work, receiving thanks from actresses like Bette Davis and

Betty Grable because of the honest appraisals they exchanged over styles and looks. This

closeness between costumers and others in the studios was not unusual as designers

Howard Greer and Travis Banton became friends and enjoyed close relationships with

many actresses, including Marie Dressier and Katharine Hepburn.60

Laura Benham, “A Scout on the Fashion Trail,” undated clipping, Orry Kelly Clippings folder; “Gowns by Orry Kelly,” undated clipping, Orry Kelly Clippings folder, NYPL. 58 New York Sun, 10 April 1935, Orry-Kelly Clipping folder. 59 New York Journal American, 8 December 1945, Orry Kelly Clippings folder, NYPL. 60 Ibid, 29 December 1945, Orry Kelly Clippings folder; Greer, 184-214.

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The representations of this noted stylist provided readers with knowledge

about his personality. These images added greater intimacy and excitement by featuring

secrets regarding Orry-Kelly’s private activities. This focus on his personality revealed

that he spent years fine-tuning his artistic skills and sense of taste and found expression

for these skills in Hollywood. However, these images also suggested that Hollywood

behind the scenes provided a “home” for a man who had long since transgressed gender

boundaries. Under the studio he felt comfortable enough to openly discuss his

transgression of societal sexual boundaries as well.

Hollywood novels, newspapers, and movies took audiences behind the scenes

in Hollywood and provided the thrill of placing them inside this closed world. Images of

artisans and performers who transgressed traditional gender and sexual boundaries

enhanced this sense of getting inside this special world by offering audience members

information about these figures’ private activities. Along with titillation and a sense of

intimate knowledge about celebrities, these images contributed to the public’s perception

of Hollywood behind the scenes. Whether embodying glamour and elegance with the

clothes they wore or the styles that they helped create, these images reinforced the belief

that Hollywood behind the scenes teemed with elegance and style. The relations they

forged amongst themselves and with other members of the studio on stage sets, within

departments, and at homes during parties convinced audiences that the Hollywood off­

screen world functioned both like a family and as a hot bed of romance. These images

revealed to audiences a vision of the Hollywood work environment as a place that

included familiar and fantastic elements.

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This vision of Hollywood behind the scenes offered audiences an environment

that contained items that knew and facets that they enjoyed discovering. Images of actors

and actresses in dressing rooms, designers in offices, and make-up artists in studios made

Hollywood appear to be a location that had the appropriate mixture of professions,

attitudes, and license to allow these polymorphous figures to feel at home. Presumably

this spurred a migration of people like Leslie Beaumont, Orry-Kelly, and the scenic

artists discussed in the jurisdictional hearings to Hollywood. There, behind the scenes,

they could take advantage of a place where they could put their special skills to use. As

Thomas Cracraft observed, “[the scenic artist] is truly an artist. I wouldn’t want him to

paint my house.” Hollywood offered these men and women a place where they did not

receive labels such as “look peculiar.”61 These images of artisans illuminated that the

nontraditional gender and sexual experiences prepared them to bring particular skills to

the motion picture industry. Through their incorporation of artifice and its camp and

theatrical aspects, these polymorphous artisans contributed to what audiences saw on the

screen and the mystique of Hollywood behind the scenes.

Images of behind the scenes, in conjunction with those of Hollywood

nightlife, parties, and houses promoted the perception that a pansexual community

existed within Hollywood. This study demonstrates how Hollywood insiders used the

public/private dynamic in celebrity, sexuality, and Hollywood locations to enable these

polymorphous images to play an important role in constructing the Hollywood mystique.

61 Testimony of Thomas A. Cracraft, 718-720.

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The concluding chapter takes these images from the margins and examines their position

in mass media and celebrity culture.

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RECALLING POLYMORPHOUS IMAGERY

FROM THE MARGINS

Hollywood insiders created publicity, literature, and motion pictures between

1917 and 1941 that depicted specific Hollywood leisure and work locations as both

familiar and fantastic. The familiar helped audiences feel comfortable while the fantastic

helped intrigue, attract, and entertain audiences. The quantity, repetition, and style of

these depictions forged a mystique about Hollywood nightlife, celebrity homes, parties,

and on the studio lots.

Many of these depictions included images of nontraditional gender and sexual

behaviors among Hollywood figures. These out-of-the-ordinary representations caused a

discussion of private activities to materialize in the public domain. This information

offered audience members the thrill of titillation and a sense of intimacy with the

glamorous Hollywood figures and motion picture scene. The images created and

reinforced the mystique associated with each of these Hollywood locations and played a

valuable role in creating this sense of Hollywood’s distinctiveness. Limitations on

resources kept me from being able to include more audience opinions about the

261

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polymorphous imagery would have enriched the dissertation. Because a tension between

living folk and images existed within this study, the project would have benefited from

the addition of more social history about Hollywood people. The social history of people

who exhibited nontraditional gender and sexual behavior remains to be written. The

limited amount of police and judicial records, living subjects to interview, and other

materials that social historians use make producing a social history of this segment of

Hollywood a arduous undertaking.

This dissertation ends in 1941. During World War Two, industry publicity

diminished its focus upon the Hollywood mystique and promoted Hollywood’s similarity

to other American locales in fighting the good fight. The federal government created the

Office of War Information and located it in the center of Hollywood. They wanted the

motion picture industry to align itself with the rest of the nation and present material

promoting conventional cultural values.

After the war, representations of nontraditional gender and sexual behavior

appeared much less frequently in Hollywood materials. Three of the handful of novels

featuring polymorphous characters published during the 1950s used their non-conformist

behavior as an illustration of Hollywood’s corrosive influence upon individuals. These

characters were most often either punished or killed for their behavior.1

1 The three novels are Katherine Everard, A Star's Progress (New York: E P Dutton, 1950), Frances Clippinger,The Satellite (New York: Random House, 1951), and Mary MacLaren, The Twisted Heart (Exposition Press, 1952). These works are cited in Anthony Slide,The Hollywood Novel (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1995), 91-92, 170, and Nancy Brooker-Bowers, The Hollywood Novel and Other Novels About Film, 1912-1982 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), 109.

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Other media outlets presented increased depictions of these behaviors. Daily

newspapers carried more stories about same-gender sexuality; they often appeared,

however, within articles reporting the suppression of a criminal activity. Homophile

organization’s newsletters, high-brow literature, and European movies increasingly

presented images of nontraditional gender and sexual behaviors, but they did so to small

and highly specific audiences. The addition of these new locations overwhelmed

Hollywood’s mainstreaming of nontraditional gender and sexual imagery and placed the

images on the margins of the media for the period of almost two decades. My future

study will examine how Hollywood’s presentation of polymorphus images during an era

that most scholars describe as repressive toward non-confromist gender and sexual

behavior. A period when Hollywood engaged in two different cultural battles with New

York. The first centered on the production for the important new medium: television. The

second occurred over the definition of the artist and engaged New York’s art and beat

worlds, which projected the hypermasculine male art hero as their ideal.

The nontraditional gender and sexual images described in this dissertation

appeared within the context of the emergence of celebrity culture and the expansion of

consumer capitalism in U.S. culture. P. David Marshall, in his important analysis of the

role of celebrity in culture, observed that celebrity is a locus of formative social power in

consumer culture. The celebrity system is a way in which the sphere of the irrational,

emotional, personal, and affective is contained and negotiated in modem society. This

system constitutes a technique for the organization of cultural investment into the

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attributes of personality and sentiment, individual subjectivity, and private experience.2

Scholars have noted that celebrity mass media imagery established the boundaries for

socially accepted behaviors. They also believed that this imagery served as a location

where audiences' could shape their personalities and their emotions.

Much of the work on the role of nontraditional images of celebrities within

capitalism have illustrated the controlling component of mass media images. Most studies

have argued that representations in the mass media delimit and enable what people can be

in any given society and influence how social groups are treated. Many of these works

have arguecl that the images of gays and lesbians featured negative events and

assessments that helped the dominant culture establish the boundaries for acceptable

behaviors. These writers observe that the dominant culture established these boundaries

by making figures who exhibited interest in nontraditional gender and sexual behavior

experience misery. Often these figures appeared as pathetic and sad characters who

reached tragic ends. Other images made characters with these interests appear as nasty

and ridiculous figures who served as the butt of jokes. A few studies observe the

reinforcement of negative views toward homosexuality and the links of queemess to

attitudes and groups that the dominant culture degrades, such as decadence, anarchism,

ethnic groups, and political minorities. However, they noted that women and men

reworked these images as forms of address and ways of defining their desires. They argue

: P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame In Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 50-57.

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that these images provided audience members who pursued or desired nontraditional

behaviors a small space for expressing their own fantasies and needs.3

This examination of Hollywood and celebrity imagery reveals that a few

member organizations of the dominant culture produced celebrity images that appeared

highly complex with positive as well as negative attributes. Representations of

Hollywood’s nontraditional figures occasionally placed these figures in tragic plot

structures. However, representations showed figures in romantic, comic, and satiric

modes as well. In Liam O’Flaherty’s satiric novel, the “queer” figures of Larry Dafoe and

“Angela Devlin” emerged triumphant. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were romantic

figures in their shared home. The images involving Greta Garbo and Mercedes de Acosta,

particularly in relation to the Joan of Arc script, carried comedy’s drama of reconciliation.

The images of Dorothy Arzner, Patsy Kelly, and several of the artisans made union with

the best occupations and workplaces for themselves, and thus, followed Hayden White’s

definition of romantic figures.4 The complexity of many of these images, coupled with

the varied stories in which they appeared, made it challenging for audience members to

arrive at a reductivist view toward Hollywood figures who pursued nontraditional

behaviors. Hollywood images established “typical” behaviors and boundaries for people

who pursued nontraditional gender and sexual behaviors. However, the success many of

3 As noted in the introduction there are many books that discuss images in every form of mass media. 4 Certain celebrity images contained transgressions that became so difficult for the industry and audiences to negotiate, such as Fatty Arbuckle and his Hollywood party that led to the death of Virginia Rappe, that they had to be removed. Hayden White,Tropics o f Discourse: Essays In Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), ch. 2; I use White’s definitions for these modes of emplotment. Comic is the drama of reconciliation; romance is the union between two figures; satiric is the attempt to frustrate conventional expectations; and tragedy is the downfall of something that existed.

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these figures experienced at work, in leisure, and in community with others suggests that

variations in gender and sexual behavior have their place in the culture and can be

expressed successfully in Hollywood and perhaps other entertainment and service fields.

These representations widened the possibilities for what people could incorporate into

their daily lives while offering the audience nontraditional images they may not have

encountered elsewhere.

Nontraditional Hollywood images represent a genealogy of the depictions of

the private lives of celebrities that appear as products of today’s mass media. All of these

polymorphous images revealed an interplay between the public and the private within

sexuality, celebrity, and Hollywood locations. This interaction between the public and

private titillated the public and enabled them to develop a false sense of intimacy with the

celebrity. Celebrities today, ranging from politicians and sports stars to private citizens,

live their lives in front of mass media. Entertainment-reporting organizations supply

audiences with information about the personal lives of these celebrities, particularly their

highly private romantic and sexual interests. Many can pursue nontraditional interests and

behavior and remain popular. This celebrity group continues to include Hollywood stars

who have children out-of-wedlock and adulterous affairs, unmarried singers having

babies, lesbian tennis players and adulterous politicians retaining their office.s

The homosexual images of fictional characters among the representations of

nontraditional sexuality in these Hollywood materials represent a tradition of using

5 The Hollywood figures include actress Catherine Zeta Jones and actor Michael Douglas. Other figures include Madonna, Martina Navratilova, Bill Clinton and Jerry Springer.

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minority groups as objects of humor that continues today. At the beginning of this new

century, television programs have more than two dozen lesbian and gay male characters

in recurring roles. Like several of the fictional characters in Hollywood images during the

Interwar years, this record inclusion of same-gender sexuality offers audiences peeks at

the “exotic” in sexual and gender behavior, as well as, characters that amuse and

sometimes edify them. Just as the images made Interwar Hollywood appear unique from

other locations in audiences’ perceptions, the scholar Ron Becker has argued that

inclusion of gay and lesbian characters on recent television programs offered those

programs a way of distinguishing themselves from other programming.6

This examination of the variety of mass media materials created by Hollywood

insiders illustrates how the predominant views toward Hollywood of this era are each

accurate. Scholars have argued that the industry portrayed itself as a location for success

and personal fulfillment where one could accumulate wealth and be surrounded by beauty

as he/she enjoyed leisure time in a consumer culture.7 They have noted that Hollywood

insiders have occasionally described Hollywood as an artificial environment that put up

facades. Scholars have also argued that audiences and cultural observers, particularly

religious groups and people concerned with popular culture, described Hollywood as a

sinful city, promoting images that defied and eroded traditional values.8 This examination

6 Ron Becker, “Prime-Time Television in the Gay Nineties: Network Television, Quality Audiences and Gay Politics,” The Velvet Light Trap (Fall 1998), 36. 7 Lary May,Screening Out the Past: The Birth o f Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 8 Springer; Gregory Poe, “Disinfecting Hollywood: ‘Dirt’ and the Cultural Logics of American Film Censorship, 1900-1935.” Ph.D. diss, University of Kansas, 1995; Francis Walsh,Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven: Yale, 1996); Gregory Black, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics and the Movies (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge U., 1994).

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of nontraditional gender and sexual images building the Hollywood mystique illuminates

how the aforementioned groups could imagine their view of Hollywood. The images

revealed wealth in their elaborate star homes and leisure at Hollywood nightclubs and

parties. The contrast between reel and real images of these Hollywood figures illustrated

in the polymorphous images from behind the scenes demonstrated Hollywood’s

artificiality and its performers’ facades. The defiance of traditional values within many of

the polymorphous images enhanced the view of Hollywood as a sinful city. The gender

and sexual non-conformity of these images associated with four Hollywood spaces

enhanced each of these prominent perspectives on Hollywood and fostered a sense that

Hollywood was unique in the United States’ culture and society.

The relationships between celebrity imagery and audience reactions could

influence scholarship in gender and sexuality, as well as gay and lesbian studies.

Reexamining specific issues, such as, the lesbian and gay urban migration during and

after World War Two in tandem to representations in the prior decade depicting certain

urban areas as nontraditional, could prove beneficial. Perhaps images of Hollywood

nightlife’s “queer” bars and eateries along “The Sunset Strip” played a significant role in

enabling The Strip to become one of the first of many places in the country to earn the

nickname “Boy’s Town.”9 Investigating nontraditional behaviors in representations of

celebrities in other industries, geographic locations, and eras might provide valuable

insight into celebrity culture and particular societies.

9 Juan Morales, “Hollywood— where Men are Men, and women too!”Confidential, January 1954, 28 in Cinema: Hollywood folder at NYPL.

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The presence of nontraditional representations of Hollywood figures who

pursued nontraditional gender and sexual interests raises questions for other areas of

historical scholarship. The discovery of popular celebrities and others befriending “exotic

other” performers in nightclubs suggests that this important and highly visible audience

did not engage in slumming. Did other entertainers and groups that enjoyed nightlife

appreciate the exotic other performers in a manner significantly different from slumming?

Depictions of celebrity women who enjoyed extensive freedom of association and

freedom to communicate their ideas while facing little suppression raises issues for

scholars regarding the depiction of women in the mass media during the 1920s and 1930s

and depictions of the New Woman, in particular. The presentation of romantic idols who

evaded and defied the culture’s new romantic standards might suggest to scholars of

romance both the question of the applicability of these standards to celebrities and the

opportunities available to people during eras of transitions in standards. The

representations of homosexual males using aspects of their culture in their work product

suggests that an expansion of investigations into the influence of subcultures within

workplaces could prove very fruitful.

This study detailed the positioning of polymorphous imagery in media that

described Hollywood from 1917 through the 1930s. The images had great and wide

appeal to Hollywood’s mass audience. The imagery contained a public/private dynamic

which coupled with the dynamic of celebrity and Hollywood locations and influenced

attitudes about the motion picture industry as an important cultural producer at the zenith

of its power.

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Hepburn, Katharine. Me: Stories o f My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

Hopper, Hedda and James Brough.The Whole Truth and Nothing But. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1962.

Lanchester, Elsa. Herself. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.

Loy Myma and James Kotsilibas-David. Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

McCambridge, Mercedes. The Quality o f Mercy: An Autobiography. New York: Times Books, 1981.

Milland, Ray. Wide-Eyed In Babylon: An Autobiography. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1974.

Minnelli, Vincente. I Remember It Well. Hollywood, CA: Samuel French, 1974.

Oppenheimer, George.The View from the Sixties: Memories o f a Spent Life. New York: David McKay, Co, Inc., 1966.

Parrish, Robert. Growing Up In Hollywood. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Parsons, Louella. The Gay Illiterate. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1944.

Robinson, Edward G. with Leonard Spigelgass. All My Yesterdays: An Autobiography. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973.

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Rosenstein, Jaik. Hollywood Leg Man. Los Angeles: The Madison Press, 1950.

Selznick, Irene Mayer. A Private View. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.

Sherman, Vincent. Studio Affairs: My Life as a Film Director. Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, 1996.

Stewart, Donald Ogden. By A Stroke o f Luck. New York: Paddington Press, 1975.

Sternberg, Josef von. Fun In a Chinese Laundry: New York: Collier, 1965.

Vietel, Salka. The Kindness o f Strangers. New Yokr: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969.

Winters, Shelley. Shelley: Also Known As Shirley. New York: Ballentine Books, 1980.

Wynn, Ned. We Will Always Live In Beverly Hills: Growing Up Crazy in Hollywood. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc, 1990.

Gay and Lesbian and Gender Studies

Austen, Roger. Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1977.

Bell-Metereau, Rebecca. Hollywood Androgyny. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Berger, Maurice, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson, eds. Constructing Masculinity. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Bergman, David, ed. Camp Grounds: style and Homosexuality. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

Berube, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History o f Gay Men and Women In World War II. New York: Plume, 1990.

Betsky, Aaron. Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1997.

Bolze, Thomas A . “Female Impersonation In the United States, 1900-1970.” Ph. D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1994.

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Brett, Philip and Elizabeth Wood and Gary C. Thomas, eds. Queering the Pitch: The New Gay & Lesbian Musicology. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Bronski, Michael. Culture Clash: The Making o f Gay Sensibility. Boston: South End Press, 1984.

Bullough, Vem L. Science In the bedroom: A History o f Sex Research. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Castle, Terry. The Apparational Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Cavin, Susan. Lesbian Origins. San Francisco: Ism Press, 1985.

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making o f the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Cowan, Tom. Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications, 1986.

Crawford, Patricia and Sara Mendelson. “Sexual Identitites in Early Modem England: The Marriage o f Two Women in 1680,” Gender & History, 7 (1995): 362-377.

Curtin, Kaier. We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians: the emergence o f gays and lesbians on the American stage. Boston: Alyson Press, 1987.

D’Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making o f the Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

D’Emilio, John and Estelle Friedman. Intimate Matters: A History o f Sexuality in America. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988.

De Cecco, John P. and Michael J. Shively. “From Sexual Identity to Sexual Relationships: A Contextual Shift,”Journal o f Homosexuality 9 (1984): 1-25.

de Jongh, Nicholas. Not in Front o f the Audience: Homosexuality on Stage. London: Routledge, 1992.

De River, Joseph Paul. The Sexual Criminal- A Psychoanalytical Study. Oxford, Eng: Blackwell scientific Publications, 1949.

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Duggan, Lisa. “From Instincts to Politics: Writing the History of Sexuality in the U.S.*’ The Journal o f Sex Research 27 (February 1990): 95-109.

“Making It Perfectly Queer.” Socialist Review (January 1992): 11-31.

“The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Tum-of-the-Century America.”Signs (Summer 1993): 791-814

Ellis, Havelock. Sexual Inversion. London: MacMillian, 1897.

Ellis, Leonard Harry. “Men Among Men: An Exploration of All-Male Relationships In Victorian America.” Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1982.

Faderman, Lillian. Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology o f Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. New York: Viking, 1994.

. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History o f Lesbian Life In Twentieth-Century America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Ferguson, Ann. “Is There a Lesbian Culture.” In Lesbian Philosophies and Culture. Albany, ed. Jeffner Allen. NY.: State University of New York, 1990.

Ferris, Lesley., ed. Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross Dressing. London: Routledge, 1993.

Fine, Gary Alan and Sherryl Kleinman. “Rethinking Subcultue: An Interactionist Analysis.”American Journal o f Sociology 85(1979):1-21.

Franzen, Patricia. “Spinsters and lesbians: Autonomous Women and the Institution of Heterosexuality, 1890-1920 & 1940-1980.” Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1990.

Friskopp, Annette and Sharon Silverstein. Straight Jobs, Gay Lives: Gay and Lesbian Professionals, The Harvard Business School and the American Workplace. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Gifford, James. Dayneford ’s Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900-1913. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

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Gilman, Sander L. Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes o f Sexuality, Race, And Madness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Greenberg, David F. The Construction o f Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Hamilton, Marybeth. “When I ’m Bad, I ’m Better, ” Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.

Henry, George W.Sex Variants: A Study o f Homosexual Patterns. New York: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1948.

Hoffman, Richard J. “Clio, Fallacies and Homosexuality.”Journal o f Homosexuality 10. (1984): 45-53.

Hyde, H. Montgomery.The Trials o f Oscar Wilde. New York: Dover Publishers, Inc, 1962.

Kaiser, Charles. The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Kennedy, Elisabeth Lapovsky and Madeline D. Davis. Boots o f Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History o f a Lesbian Community. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press, 1996.

Lewin, Ellen, ed. Inventing Lesbian Cultures In America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Little, Elizabeth A. “The Female Sailor on the Christopher Mitchell: Face and Fantasy.” American Neptune 54 (4) 1994: 252-258.

Lugowski, David. “Queering the (New) Deal: Lesbian and Gay Representation and the Depression-Era Cultural Politics of Hollywood’s Production Code,”Cinema Journal 38, No. 2 Winter, 1999: 3-35.

Marcus, Eric. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights 1945- 1990. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.

Maschio, Geraldine. “Effeminacy or Art? The Performativity of Julian Eltinge.”Journal o f American Drama and Theatre 10 (Winter 1998).

Meyer, Richard. “Rock Hudson’s Body,” Diana Fuss, ed.Inside/Out Lesbian Theories/Gay Theories. New York: Routledge, 1991.

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Moore, F. Michael. DRAG! Male and Female Impersonators on Stage, Screen and Television: An Illustrated World History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 1994.

Mumford, Kevin J. “Homosexual Changes: Race, Cultural Geography and the Emergence of the Gay.”American Quarterly 48 (September, 1996): 395-414.

Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in New York and Chicago in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

National Museum & Archive of Lesbian and Gay History, ed. The Gay Almanac. New York: Berkley Books, 1996.

The Lesbian Almanac. New York: Berkley Books, 1996.

Newton, Esther. Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years In America's First Gay and Lesbian Town. Boston: Beacon Press. 1993.

Peiss, Kathy, Christina Simmons and Robert A. Padgug, eds. Passion & Power: Sexuality In History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.

Richardson, Diane. “The Dilemma of Essentiality in Homosexual Theory.”Journal o f Homosexuality 9(1984): 79-90.

Rule, Jane. Lesbian Images. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1975.

Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

Scharf, Lois, and Joan M. Jensen, eds. Decades o f Discontent: The Women ’s Movement, 1920-1940. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983.

Seidman, Steven, ed. Queer Theory/Sociology. New York: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996.

Shand-Tucchi, Douglass. Boston Bohemia: Ralph Adams Cram, Life and Architecture, 1881-1900. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions o f Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

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Sprague, Gregory A. “Male Homosexuality in Western Culture: The Dilemna of Identity and Subculture in Historical Research.” Journal o f Homosexuality 10 (1984): 29- 44.

Steam, Jess. The Grapevine. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964.

The Sixth Man.Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961.

Strachey, James, ed. The Complete Psychological Works o f Sigmund Freud. London: The Hogarth Press, 1957. v. 11, v. 18.

Timmons, Stuart. The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder o f the Modem Gay Movement. Boston: Allyson Publications, 1990.

Witt, Lynn, Sherry Thomas and Eric Marcus, eds.Out in All Directins: The Almanac o f Gay and Lesbian America. New York: Warner Books, 1995.

Woods, James D. The Corporate Closet: The Professional Lives o f Gay Men in America. NY: The Free Press, 1993.

Media and Censorship

Alwood, Edward. Straight News:Gays, Lesbians and the News Media. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Bessie, Simon Michael. Jazz Journalism: The Story o f the Tabloid Newspaper. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1938.

Black, Gregory. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics and the Movies. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University., 1994.

Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy o f Renown: Fame and Its History. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.

Couvares, Francis. “Introduction: Hollywood, Censorship and American Culture.” American Quarterly 44 (December 1992): 509-524.

“Hollywood, Main Street and the Church: Trying to Censor the Movies Before the Production Code.” American Quarterly 44 (December 1992): 584-616.

Czitrom, Daniel J. Media and The American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

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“The Politics of Performance: From Theater Licensing to Movie Censorship In Tum-Of-The-Century New York,” American Quarterly 44 (December 1992): 525-553.

Daily, Jay E.The Anatomy o f Censorship. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1973.

de Grazia, Edward. Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law o f Obscenity and the Assault on Genius. New York: Randon House, 1992.

de Grazia, Edward and Roger K. Newman. Banned Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment. New York: R R Bowker Co., 1982.

Ernst, Morris and Pare Lometz. Censored: The Private Life o f the Movie. New York: Cape and Smith, 1930.

Friedman, Andrea. “Prurient interests: Anti-obscenity campaigns in NYC, 1904-1945.” Ph. D. diss., University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1995.

Gardner, Gerald. The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934-1968. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1987.

Haney, Robert, W. Comstockery In America: Patterns of Censorship and Control. New York: Da Capo Press, 1974.

Heins, Maijorie. Sex, Sin and Blasphemy. New York: The New Press, 1993.

Horrocks, Roger. Male Myths & Icons: Masclinity in Popular Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Hughes, Helen MacGill. News and the Human Interest Story. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1940.

Jacobs, Lea. The Wages o f Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

Kitch, Caroline. “Changing Theoretical Perspectives on Women’s Media Images: The Emergence of Patterns In a New Area of Historical Scholarship.”Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly v.74, (Autumn 1997).

Kuhn, Annette. Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality, 1909-1925. London: Routledge, 1988.

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Leff, Leonard J. and Jerold Simmons. The Dame In The Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.

Levin, Jack and Arnold Arluke. Gossip: The Inside Scoop. New York: Plenum Press, 1987.

Lewis, Felice Flanery. Literature, Obscenity and Law. Carbondale: South Illinois University Press, 1976.

Maltby, Richard. ‘“To Prevent the Prevalent Type of Book:’ Censorship and Adaptation in Hollywood, 1924-1934.”American Quarterly 44 (December 1992): 554-583.

Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame In Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota Press, 1997.

McFadden, Margaret T. “America’s Boy Friend Who Can’t Get a Date”: Gender, Race and the Cultural Work of the Jack Benny Program, 1932-1946,” Journal o f American History (June, 1993): 110-135.

McQuail, Dennis. Audience Analysis. Thousands Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 1997.

Mukeiji, Chandra and Michael Schudson, eds. Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives In Cultural Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Rosenbloom, Nancy. “Between Reform and Regulation: The Struggle Over Film Censorship in Progressive America, 1909-1922,”Film History, 1987 1(4).

“In Defense of the Moving Pictures: The People’s Institute, The National Board of Censorship and the Problem of Leisure in Urban America,” American Studies, 1992.

Sandman, Peter M., David M. Rubin and David B. Sachsman. Media: An Introductory Analysis o f American Mass Communications, 3 ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981.

Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History o f American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1978.

Short, William H. A Generation o f Motion Pictures: A Review o f Social Values in Recreational Films. New York: National Committee for the Study of Social Values in Motion Pictures, 1928.

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Slide, Anthony. The Best o f Rob Wagner’s Script. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1985.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Gossip. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

Streitmatter, Rodger. Unspeakable: The Rise o f the Gay and Lesbian Press in America. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995.

Webster, James G. and Patricia F. Phalen. The Mass Audience: Rediscovering the Dominant Model. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997.

Wolselen, Roland E. The Magazine World: an Introduction to Magazine Journalism. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1951.

Hollywood Biographies

Bach, Steven. Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1992.

Behlmer, Rudy, ed. Memo From: David O. Selznick. New York: Avon Books, 1972.

Bernstein, Matthew. Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent. Bereley: University of California Press, 1994.

Bogle, Donald. Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography. New York: Armistad Press, 1997.

Brian, Denis. Tallulah, Darling: A Biography o f Tallulah Bankhead. New York: MacMillian Publishing Co., Inc., 1972.

Buehrer, Beverly Bare. Cary Grant: A Bio-Bibliography. New York; Greenwood Press, 1990.

Burton, Humphrey.Leonard Bernstein. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1994.

Chierichetti, David. Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director. 1973; reprint, Los Angeles: Photo ventures Press, 1995.

Cook, Bruce. Dalton Trumbo. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977.

Curtis, James. James Whale. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1982.

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Dewey, Donald.James Stewart: A Biography. Atlanta: Turner Publishing Inc., 1996.

Donati, William. Ida Lupino: A Biography. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Druxman, Michael B.Basil Rathbone: His Life and Films. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1975.

Dunaway, David King. Huxley In Hollywood. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989.

Edelman, Robert and Audrey E. Kupferberg. Angela Lansbury: A Life On Stage & Screen. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1996.

Edmonds, Andy. Hot Toddy: The True Story o f Hollywood’s Most Sensational Murder. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1989.

Eels, George. Hedda and Louella. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972.

Eisner, Lotte H. Murnau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Eyman, Scott. Mary Pickford: American’s Sweetheart. New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1991.

Gatiss, Mark. James Whale: A Biography or the Would-be Gentleman. London: Cassell. 1995.

Hadleigh, Boze, Hollywood Gays. New York: Barricade Books, 1996.

. Bette Davis Speaks. New York: Barricade Books, 1996.

Harris, Warren G. Cary Grant: A Touch o f Elegance. New York: Doubleday, 1987.

Higham, Charles and Roy Moseley.Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.

Higham, Charles. Sisters: The Story o f Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1984.

Jablonski, Edward. Harold Arlen: Happy With the Blues. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1961.

Kirkpatrick, Stanley D. A Cast o f Killers. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1986.

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Lambert, Gavin. Nazimova: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Latham, Aaron. Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood. New York: Viking Press, 1970.

Lee, Betty. Marie Dressier: The Unlikeliest Star. University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

Levy, Emmanuel. George Cukor, Master o f Elegence. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1994.

McGilligan, Patrick. George Cukor: A Double Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

Madsen, Axel. Forbidden Lovers: Hollywood's Greatest Secret- Women Who Loved Other Women. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1996.

Stanwyck. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1994.

Mank, Gregory William, James T. Coughlin and Dwight D. Frye, Jr.Dwight Frye's Last Laugh. Midnight Marquee Press, Inc., 1997.

Mann, William J. Wisecracker: The Life and Times o f William Haines Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Star. New York: Viking, 1998.

Marx, Arthur. Goldwyn: A Biography o f the Man Behind the Myth. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1976.

Matzen, Robert D. Carole Lombard: A Bio Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. 1988.

Mayne, Judith.Directed by Dorothy Arzner. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Nollen, Scott Allen. Boris Karloff: A Critical Account o f His Screen, Stage, Radio, Television and Recording Work. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1991.

Oiler, John. Jean Arthur: The Acress Nobody Knew. New York: Limelight Editions, 1997.

Parris, Barry. Garbo: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Louise Brooks. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.

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Rhodes, Gary Don. Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts o f Horror Lovers. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Riva, Maria. Marlene Dietrich. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Schanke, Robert A. Shattered Applause: The Lives o f Eva Le Gallienne. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1992.

Sheehy, Helen. Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1997.

Sperber, Ann and Eric Lax. Bogart. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1997.

Spoto, Donald. The Blue Angel: The Life o f Marlene Dietrich. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

. The Dark Side o f Genius: The Life o f Alfred Hitchcock. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1983.

Thomas, Bob. King Cohn: The Life & Times o f Harry Cohn. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967.

Tomabene, Lyn. Long Live the King: A Biography o f Clark Gable. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons., 1976.

Valenti, Peter. Errol Flynn: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Vickers, Hugo. Loving Garbo The Story o f Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta. New York: Random House, 1994.

Zolotow, Maurice. Billy Wilder in Hollywood. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977.

Hollywood Industry and Criticism

Altman, Diana. Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins o f the Studio System. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992.

American Film Institute Catalog o f Motion Pictures produced in the United States, 1931- 1940. Patricia King Hanson, exec. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Anderson, Christopher. Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 289

Anger, Kenneth. Hollywood Babylon. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1975.

Hollywood Babylon II. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1975.

Ankerich, Michael G. Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 1993.

Balio, Tino, ed. The American Film Industry. (Revised Edition). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

The Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 Vol. 5, History o f the American Cinema, Charles Harpole, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993).

United Artists: The Company Built By The S/ars.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.

Basten, Fred E. with Robert Salvatore and Paul A. Kaufman, Max Factor’s Hollywood: Glamour, Movies, and Makeup. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1995.

Baxter, John. Hollywood In The Thirties. London: A. Zwemmer Ltd., 1968.

Bingham, Dennis. Acting Male: Masculinities In the Films o f James Stewart, Jack Nicholson, And Clint Eastwood. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.

Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode o f Production, 1917-1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Bradley, Edwin M. The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography o f 171 Features 1927 through 1932. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc, Publishers, 1996.

Brownlow, Kevin. Hollywood: The Pioneers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

. The Parade's Gone By. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.

Burk, Margaret Tante. Are The Stars Out Tonight: the Story o f the famous Ambassador and Cocoanut Grove. Los Angeles: Round Table West, 1980.

Carey, Gary.All The Stars In Heavan: L B Mayer’s M-G-M. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981.

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Ceplair, Larry and Steven Englund.The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Chamey, Leo and Vanessa Schwartz, Cinema and the Invention o f Modern Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Chierichetti, David. Hollywood Costume Design. New York: Harmony Books, 1976.

Cohan, Steven and Ina Rae Hark, eds. Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. New York: Routledge Press, 1993.

Cripps, Thomas.Hollywood's High Noon: Moviemaking and Society before Television. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Crowther, Bosley. The Lion's share: the story o f an entertainment empire. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957.

Davis, Roland L. The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993.

Davis, Tracy C. Actresses As Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture. London: Routledge, 1991.

de Cordova, Richard. Picture Personalities: The Emergence o f the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

DelGaudio, Sybil. Dressing the Part: Sternberg, Dietrich, and Costume. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993.

Dyer, Richard. The Matter o f Images: Essays on Representations. London: Routledge, 1993.

Ehrenstein, David. Open Secret: Homosexuality in Hollywood, 1928-1998. New York: Wiliam Morrow & Co., Inc, 1998.

The Film Daily Year Book o f Motion Pictures, 1930-1949. New York: Film Daily, annual.

Finch, Christopher and Linda Rosenkrantz. Gone Hollywood. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1979.

Finler, Joel W. The Hollywood Story. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1988.

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Fordin, Hugh. The World o f Entertainment: Hollywood’s Greatest Musicals. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1975.

Fox, Patty.Star Style: Hollywood legends as fashion icons. Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 1995.

French, Philip. The Movie Moguls: An Informal History o f the Hollywood Tycoons. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1969.

Friedrich, Otto. City o f Nets: A Portrait o f Hollywood in the 1940s. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986.

Gabler, Neal. An Empire O f Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown Books, 1988.

Gamson, Joshua. Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Gomery, Douglas. Shared Pleasures: A History o f Movie Presentations in the United States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.

The Hollywood Studio System. London: MacMillian, 1986.

Grant, Barry Keith, ed. Film Genre Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.

Griffith, Richard. The Talkies: Articles and Illustrations From A Great Fan Magazine, 1928-1940. New York: Dover Publishing Inc., 1971.

Hadleigh, Boze. The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music Industry. San Diego, CA: Los Hombres Press, 1991.

Handel, Leo A. Hollywood looks at its audience: a Report o f film audience research. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1950.

Haralovich, Mary Beth. “Motion Picture Advertising: Industrial and Social Forces and Effects.” Ph.D. diss.University of Wisconsin, 1984.

Harmetz, Aljean. The Making o f The Wizard o f Oz. New York: Delta, 1977.

Hay, Peter. MGM- When The Lion Roars. Atlanta: Turner Publishing Inc., 1991.

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Hermann, Jim. Out with the Stars: Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985.

Heisner, Beverly. Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days o f the Great Studios. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1991.

Hoffman, Judy. “The Discourse o f‘Special Effects’ Cinematography In The Silent American Cinema,” Post Script Vol. 10, No. 1.

Holden, Anthony. Behind The Oscar: The Secret History o f the Academy Awards. New York: Plume Books, 1994.

Jenkins, Henry. What Made Pistachio Nuts: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Jowett, Garth. Film: The Democratic Art. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976.

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.

Kerr, Paul, ed. The Hollywood Film Industry. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1986.

Koszarski, Richard. An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age o f the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. Vol. 3, History o f the American Cinema, Charles Harpole, ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990.

Laurie Jr., Joe. Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks To the Palace. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1953.

Lavine, W. Robert. In a Glamorous Fashion: The Fabulous Years o f Hollywood Costume Design. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980.

Leiter, Samuel L. ed. The Encyclopedia o f the New York Stage, 1920-1930. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.

The Encyclopedia o f the New York Stage, 1930-1940. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989.

Levy, Emmanuel. And the Winner Is... The History and Politics o f the Oscar Awards. New York: Ungar, 1987.

Leyda, Jay, ed.Voices o f Film Experience, 1894-Present. New York: MacMillian Publishing Co., 1977.

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Lichter, S. Robert Linda Lichter, and Stanley Rothman. Watching America. New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991.

LoBrutto, Vincent. By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992.

Lord Jack and Lloyed Hoff. How to Sin in Hollywood. Hollywood? CA, c.1940.

Maeder, Edward, ed. Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film. Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, 1987.

Maltby, Richard and Ian Craven. Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1995.

Marc, David and Robert J. Thompson. Prime Time, Prime Movers: from I Love Lucy to L A Law: America’s Greatest TV Shows and the People Who Created Them. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

May, Lary.Screening Out the Past: The Birth o f Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

McArthur, Benjamin. Actors and American Culture, 1880-1920. Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1984.

Mellencamp, Patricia. High Anxiety: Castastrophe, Scnadal, Age and Comedy. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1992.

Meyers, Warren. Who Is That? The Late Late Viewers Guide To The Old Old Movie Players. New York: Personality Posters, Inc., 1967.

The Motion Picture Almanac, 1930-1949. New York: Quigley Publication Co., annual.

Mungo, Ray. Palm Springs Babylon: Sizzling Stories from the Desert Playground o f the Stars. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Parish, James R. Hollywood Character Actors. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1978.

Ponce de Leon, Charles Leonard. “Idols and icons: Representations of Celebrity in American culture, 1850-1940.” Ph.D. diss. Rutgers University, 1992.

Prindle, David F. The Politics o f Glamour: Ideology and Democracy in the Screen Actors Guild. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

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Ragan. David. Who’s Who In Hollywood 1900-1976. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1976.

Rapping, Elayne.The Looking Glass World o f Nonfiction TV. Boston: South End Press. 1987.

Robinson, David. Hollywood In The Twenties. London: A Zwemmer Ltd., 1968.

Rosenberg, Bernard and Harry Silverstein. The Real Tinsel. London: The MacMillan Co., 1970.

Rosten, Leo. Hollywood: The Movie Colony—The Moviemakers. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1941.

Sands, Pierre Norman. A Historical Study o f The Academy o f Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1927-1947). New York: Amo Press, 1973.

Schatz, Thomas. The Genius o f the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Schickel, Richard. Intimate Strangers: The culture o f celebrity. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1985.

Schwartz, Nancy L., and Sheila Schwartz. The Hollywood Writers ’ Wars. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

Sennett, Robert S. Hollywood Hoopla: Creating Stars and Selling Movies in the Golden Age o f Hollywood. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1998.

Sennett, Ted. Warner Brothers Presents. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1971.

Sklar, Robert, Movies-Made America: A Cultural History o f American Movies. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.

Slide, Anthony. The Vaudevillians: A Dictonary o f Vaudeville Performers. Westport. CT: Arlington House, 1982.

Stacey, Jackie. Star Gazing: Hollywood cinema andfemale spectator ship. London: Routledge, 1994.

Steen, Mike. Hollywood Speaks! An Oral History. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974.

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Studlar, Gaylyn.This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Toll, Robert C. The Entertainment Machine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

. On With the Show: The First Century o f Show Biz in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Tyler, Bruce M. From Harlem to Hollywood: The Struggle for Racial and Cultural Democracy 1920-1943. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992.

Vale, Joan M. “Tintype Ambitions-Three Vaudevillians in Search of Hollywood Fame,” M.A. thesis., University of San Diego, 1985.

Weiss, Andrea. Vampires and Violets: Lesbians In Film. New York: Penguin, 1993.

Wexman, Virginia Wright. Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage and Hollywood Performance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Wilkerson, Tichi and Marcia Borif, The Hollywood Reporter: The Golden Years. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1984.

Hollywood Novels Scholarship

Bonora, Diane C. “The Hollywood Novel of the 1930’s and 1940’s.” Ph. D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1983.

Brooker-Bowars, Nancy. “The Hollywood Novel: An American Literary Genre.” Ph. D. diss., Drake University, 1983.

Slide, Anthony, The Hollywood Novel. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1995.

Spatz, Jonas. Hollywood in Fiction: Some Versions o f the American Myth. Paris: Mouton, 1969.

Springer, John Parris. “Hollywood Fictions: The Cultural Construction of Hollywood in American Literature, 1916-1939.” Ph. D. diss., University o f Iowa, 1994.

Wells, Walter. Tycoons and locusts: a regional look at Hollywoodfiction o f the 1930s. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1973.

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Hollywood On HoHywood Scholarship

Ames, Christopher. Movies About the Movies: Hollywood Reflected. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997.

Behlmer, Rudy and Tony Thomas.Hollywood’s Hollywood. Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, Inc. 1978.

Dardis, Tom. The Mem Who WouUbi 7 Lie Down. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979.

Meade, Marion. Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.

Moews, Daniel. Keaton: The Silent Features Close Up. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

Rapf, Joanna E. and Gary L. Green.Buster Keaton: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport CT. Greenwood Press, 1995.

Parish, James R. and Michael R. Pitts. Hollywood On Hollywood. Metcheun, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1978.

Houses and Housing

Famous American Homes. New York: The Home Insurance Co., 1939.

Groth, Paul. Living Downtown: The History o f Residential Hotels in the United States. Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1994.

Handlin, David P. The American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815-1915. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1979.

Hubbard, Elbert. Little Journeys to the hmes o f the Great: Famous Women. New York: World Publishing Co., 1928.

Plunz, Richard. A History o f Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metrolpolis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

Rybczynski, Witold. Home: A Short History o f an Idea. New York: Viking Books, 1986.

Sherwood, Roger. Modem Housing Prototypes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College, 1978.

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Unwin, Raymond. “Discussion,”Proceedings o f the National Conference on City Planning 3 (1911): 110-111.

Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History o f Housing inAmerica. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981.

Literary Criticism

Beaty, Frederick L. Ironic World o f Evelyn Waugh: A Study o f Eight N o velsNothem Illinois University Press, 1992.

Donaldson, Frances. P. G. Wodehouse: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1982.

Gale Research Company.Dictionary o f Literary Biography, Volume 9, Part II. Detroit: Gale Research Company, irregular.

Green, Benny. P.G. Wodehouse: A Literary Biography. New York: Rutledge Press, 1981.

Hastings, Selina. Evelyn Waugh: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994.

Jansen, David A. P. G. Wodehouse: A Portrait o f A Master. New York: Continuum, 1981.

Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthethic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Translated by Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

Kelly, A. A. Liam O ’Flaherty: The Storyteller. London: The MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1976.

Madden, David. James M. Cain. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1987.

Pizer, Donald. Dos Passos ’ U.S.A.: A Critical Study. Charlotte: University Press of Virginia, 1988.

Schwerdt, Lisa M. Isherwood's Fiction: The Self and Teaching. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Townsend, Kim. Sherwood Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

White, Hayden. Tropics o f Discourse: Essays In Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

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Zneimer, John. The Literary Vision o f Liam O ’Flaherty. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1970.

Consumer Culture and Fashion

Berry, Sarah Elizabeth. ‘“Screen Style: Consumer Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood.” Ph. D. diss., New York University, 1997.

Bowlby, Rachel. Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola. New York: Methuen, 1985.

Breward, Christopher. The Culture o f Fashion: A New History o f Fashionable Dress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Davis, Fred. Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Ewing, Elizabeth. History o f Twentieth Century Fashion. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1974.

Gamber, Wendy. The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860- 1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Gunn, Fenja. The Artifical Face: A History o f Cosmetics. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1973.

Hall-Duncan, Nancy. The History o f Fashion Photography. New York: Alpine Book Co., 1974.

Lipovetsky, Gilles. The Empire o f Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy trans. Catherine Porter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America s Beauty Culture. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.

Ross, Ishbel. Taste In America: Illustrated history o f the evolution o f architecture, furnishings, fashions, and customs of the American people. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Co., 1967. Studies of the Era

Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal Account o f the Nineteen-twenties. New York: Harper & Row, 1931.

Amory, Cleveland. Who Killed Society? New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960.

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Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to BackSeat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Benson, Susan Porter. Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Brandt, Allan M. No Magic Bullet: A Social History o f Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Cable, Mary. Top Drawer: American High Society from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties. New York: Atheneum, 1984.

Carnes, Marc C. and Clyde Griffen, eds. Meanings for Manhood: The Construction of Masculinity in Victorian America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Clarke, Graham, ed. The Portrait in Photography. London: Reaktion Books, Ltd., 1992.

Coben, Stanley. Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Cott, Nancy. The Grounding o f Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

Cressey, Paul G. The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932.

Dowd, Douglas E. Thorstein Veblen. New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1966.

Dubbert, Joe. A M an’s Place: Masculinity in Transition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall, Inc., 1979.

Dulles, Foster Rhea. A History o f Recreation: America Learns to Play. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965.

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.

Ellenzweig, Allen. The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images From Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

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Erenberg, Lewis. Sieppin ’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation o f American Culture, 1890-1930. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Fass. Paula S. The Beautiful and the Damned: American Youth in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Gorman, Paul R. Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century America. University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Hayes, Michael Thurgood. Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas. New York: Berg, 1998.

Henstell, Bruce. Sunshine & Wealth: Los Angeles in the Twenties and Thirties. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1984.

Higgenbotham, Evelyn B. Rightous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. Cambridge, Havard University Press, 1993.

Kwolek-Folland, Angel. Engendering Business: Men and Women in Corporate Office, 1870-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Langenfeld, Robert. Reconsidering Aubery Beardsley. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilm Press, 1989.

Lasch, Christopher. Haven In a Heartless World: The Family Besieged. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1977.

Lears, Jackson. Fables o f Abundance: A Cultural History o f Advertising In America. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: 1982.

Light, Ivan. “From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940,” Pacific Historical Review 43 (1974): 367-394.

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Maddow, Ben. Face: A Narrative History o f the Portrait in Photography. New York: New York Graphic Society, 1977.

May, Henry F.The End o f American Innocence: A Study o f The First Years o f Our Own Times, 1912-1917. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.

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Melosh, Barbara. Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.

Nassaw, David. Going Out: The Rise and Fall o f Public Amusements. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

Pascoe, Peggy. Relations o f Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women & Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.

Powers, Madelon. Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman's Saloon, 1870-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Rothman, Ellen K. Hands & Hearts: A History o f Courtship in America. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

Rothman, Sheila. Woman's Proper Place: A History o f Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870-to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

Scharf, Lois. To Work and To Wed: Female Employment, Feminism and the Great Depression. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Schwarz, Judith. The Radical Feminist o f Heterodoxy: Greenwich Village, 1912-1940. Norwich Vt: New Victoria Publishers, 1986.

Scott, Anne Frior. Natural Allies: Women’s Associations In American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Sivulka, Juliann. Soap, Sex and Cigarettes: A Cultural History o f American Advertising. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co, 1998.

Snyder, Robert W. The Voice o f the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Stansell, Christine. City o f Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982.

Starr, Kevin. Inventing The Dream: California Through the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University' Press, 1985.

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Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Steams, Peter N. Be A Man: Males in Modern Society. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979.

Susman, Warren I. Culture as History: The Transformation o f American Society in the Twentieth Century. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Taylor, William R. ed. Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture At the Crossroads o f the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Van Rensselaer, May King. The Social Ladder. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1924.

Theoharis, Athan. J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime: A Historical Antidote. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995.

Ware, Caroline F. Greenwich Village, 1920-1930. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.

Wiebe, Robert. The Search fo r Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.

Wilson, Elizabeth. The Sphinx In the City: Urban Life, the Control o f Disorder and Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.