Lesbian Broadway: American Theatre and Culture, 1920-1945 by Meghan Brodie Gualtieri This thesis/dissertation document has been electronically approved by the following individuals: Gainor,J Ellen (Chairperson) Bathrick,David (Minor Member) Villarejo,Amy (Minor Member) LESBIAN BROADWAY: AMERICAN THEATRE AND CULTURE, 1920-1945 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Meghan Brodie Gualtieri August 2010 © 2010 Meghan Brodie Gualtieri LESBIAN BROADWAY: AMERICAN THEATRE AND CULTURE, 1920-1945 Meghan Brodie Gualtieri, Ph.D. Cornell University 2010 Lesbian Broadway: American Theatre and Culture, 1920-1945 is a project of reclamation that begins to document a history of lesbianism on Broadway. Using drama about lesbianism as its vehicle, this study investigates white, middle-class, female homosexuality in the United States from 1920 to 1945 and explores the convergence of Broadway drama, lesbianism, feminism, sexology, eugenics, and American popular culture. While the methodologies employed here vary by chapter, the project as a whole reflects a cultural excavation and analysis of lesbian dramas in their appropriate socio-historical contexts and suggests new critical approaches for studying this neglected collection of plays. Chapter One re-visits the feminist possibilities of realism, specifically lesbian realist drama of the 1920s and 30s, in order to reconsider how genre, feminist criticism, and historical context can inform socio-sexual readings of lesbian drama. Building on this foundation, Chapter Two explores a series of lesbian characters on Broadway that undermines and frequently reverses dominant sexological assumptions about the nature of and threats posed by lesbianism. These plays, when read comparatively, reveal a hierarchy of threatening lesbian types built on theoretical and historical constructions of masculinity. Chapter Three highlights how sexological and eugenic readings of lesbian antagonists dovetail to reveal a shared cultural perception of lesbians as abnormal, base, and immoral females and, consequently, as a threat to social order. A dramaturgical reading suggests how one might complicate understandings of these threats to the social order to view them as progressive depictions of lesbian power and departures from traditional love-triangle tropes. Chapter Four offers a literary and historical reading of Christa Winsloe’s Girls in Uniform (1932) that reveals how Winsloe draws parallels between authoritarianism and heteronormativty in a multivalent critique of repressive social structures that were, in 1931, on the rise in Germany. The conclusion explores the contested terrain of feminism and realism and the potential ramifications of grouping these plays together to write a lesbian theatre history. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Meghan Brodie Gualtieri earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2010. Her work addresses intersections of theatre and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. iii For my parents, sister, and Shannon iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful for the support of my family, friends, colleagues, and mentors. I would like to thank J. Ellen Gainor for her invaluable feedback and unswerving support of my work as well as Amy Villarejo and David Bathrick for their guidance. My work with Aimee and Philip Stuart’s Love of Women would not have been possible without the archival assistance of Maryann Chach, the Director of the Shubert Archive. Susan Klein of Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a great help to me in my effort to find resources related to Sholom Asch’s The God of Vengeance. The love and encouragement of my parents and sister have been a gift to me during the writing of this book. And I cannot find words to express my love and appreciation for Shannon who has patiently lived with this project for as many years as I have. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v Table of Contents vi Introduction 1 Chapter One 18 Strange Bedfellows?: Feminism & Lesbian Realist Drama of the 1920s & 1930s Chapter Two 80 The Masculine Menace: Lesbian Masculinity in Broadway Plays of the 1920s & 1930s Chapter Three 135 Sapphic Scheming: Lesbian Antagonists on Broadway, 1920-1945 Chapter Four 190 Girls in Uniform: A Reclamation & Reinvestigation of the First Lesbian Boarding School Drama Conclusion 234 Additional References 241 vi INTRODUCTION “Sappho dives, arms spread as if to grasp half of infinity; she leaves behind her only the swinging of a rope as proof of having left the sky.”1 Marguerite Yourcenar, “Sappho or Suicide” Lesbian Broadway: American Theatre and Culture, 1920-1945 is a project of reclamation that begins to write a history of lesbianism2 on Broadway and uses drama about lesbianism as a vehicle for investigating white, middle-class, female homosexuality in the United States from 1920 to 1945. This project explores the intersections of Broadway drama, lesbianism, feminism, sexology, eugenics, and American popular culture and suggests new critical approaches for studying neglected lesbian drama. While the methodologies employed here vary by chapter, the project as a whole might best be described as a cultural excavation and analysis of the following plays in their appropriate socio-historical contexts: Sholom Asch’s The God of Vengeance (1922)3, Edouard Bourdet’s The Captive (1926), Thomas Dickinson’s Winter Bound (1929), Christa Winsloe’s Girls in Uniform (1932), Stephen Powys’ Wise Tomorrow (1937), Aimee and Philip Stuart’s Love of Women (1937), and 1 Yourcenar, Marguerite. Fires. Trans. Dori Katz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 129. Print. 2 I employ the term “lesbianism” because of the terms used to express female homosexuality in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, “lesbianism” is perhaps the most neutral term. Words like “inversion,” “perversion,” and “degeneration” had specific socio-sexual and moral connotations during this period (please see Chapter Two for a thorough analysis of these terms). Newspaper articles and reviews covering Broadway productions addressing lesbian themes in the 1920s and 30s and 40s employ terms “sex perversion,” “sex degeneracy,” “sex-eccentricity,” “unnatural affection,” and “Lesbianism,” among others, to describe female homosexuality. These terms are used in the following articles, respectively: “Padlocks For Stage Voted By Senate.” New York Times 24 Mar. 1927. Print. “Padlocks For Stage Voted By Senate.” New York Times 24 Mar. 1927. Print. Hammond, Percy. “The Theaters: ‘The Captive,’ an Expert Play, Dealing With a Subject Too Odd for a Polite Reviewer.” New York Herald Tribune 30 Sept. 1926: 14. Print. Atkinson, Brooks. “The Play: ‘The Children’s Hour,’ Being a Tragedy of Life in a Girls’ Boarding House.” New York Times 21 Nov. 1934. Print. Waldorf, Wilella. ”Forecasts and Postscripts: Edith Barrett to Play a Role in ‘Wise Tomorrow.’” New York Post 17 Sept. 1937. Print. 3 The dates included in parentheses indicate the years of these plays’ Broadway premieres throughout the text. All other parenthetical dates indicate years of publication. 1 Dorothy and Howard Baker’s Trio (1944).4 A brief review of literature on the topic of lesbian drama reveals the extent to which Broadway productions of these plays have remained largely untouched by scholars and the need not only for fuller recognition of these works, but also an interdisciplinary approach for constructing a history of lesbianism on Broadway. Although Kaier Curtin surveys early twentieth-century queer American drama in his book “We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians”: The emergence of lesbians and gay men on the American stage (1987), his focus is not Broadway-specific and does not include close readings of the plays or examinations of the manner in which these plays embody cultural discourse about homosexuality. Exhaustive books on the history of Broadway are surprisingly scarce and usually oriented toward the history of Broadway musicals (e.g. the work of Ethan Mordden). Broadway (1970) by Brooks Atkinson, Broadway Theatre (1994) by Andrew B. Harris, and Showtime: A Chronology of Broadway and the Theatre from Its Beginnings to the Present (1998) offer varying perspectives on the history of Broadway, but do not provide more than passing references to the titles of some of the more well known lesbian plays on Broadway (e.g. The Captive and The Children’s Hour). Perhaps the most comprehensive history of Broadway drama is Burns Mantle’s Best Plays series. This collection of books, published annually, chronicles the theatrical seasons of select major American cities, the most popular plays of each season, run-related statistics, and Pulitzer Prize- winning play information. Social history texts like Lillian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (1991) and George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the 4 Sholom Asch’s The God of Vengeance (1922) was directed by Rudolph Schildkraut, Edouard Bourdet’s The Captive (1926) by Gilbert Miller, Thomas Dickinson’s Winter Bound (1929) by James Light, Christa Winsloe’s Girls in Uniform (1932) by Frank Gregory, Stephen Powys’ Wise Tomorrow (1937) by Hugh MacMullen, Aimee and Philip Stuart’s Love of Women (1937) by Leo G. Carroll, and Dorothy and Howard Baker’s Trio (1944) by Bretaigne Windust. 2 Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (1994) touch upon queer theatre and map out ways of understanding homosexuality