The sewing circle

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As a sewing circle (The Sewing Circle) , a private association was homosexual and bisexual women in Hollywood called. It existed during the so-called golden era in the 1920s to 1950s. It included film idols such as Greta Garbo , Marlene Dietrich , Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck, as well as the poet and screenwriter Mercedes de Acosta . The circle existed in secret, because the code of ethics in Hollywood at that time did not allow the filmic representation of homosexuality (Production or Hays Code ) nor the public expression of homosexual orientation. The main actors in particular were forbidden from doing so by corresponding contractual clauses. The sewing circle was similar to the Bloomsbury Group , which also included Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West .

Hollywood

Hollywood, with its large film studios such as MGM , Paramount Pictures , 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers, was a synonym for success, glitz and glamor in the film industry at the time. However, the studios and their actors were subject to strict rules that were either contractually stipulated and / or socially prescribed with a view to commercial success and which became even stricter over the decades.

The wild 1920s

The Arbuckle case and other, in the eyes of the public, scandalous incidents among the ranks of film stars of the time alarmed the film studios. The studios included moral clauses in the contracts that provided for contract cancellations if their private life had become publicly known in any form. In order to avert further damage to the company's image, Will H. Hays was appointed managing director of the Association of Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America in 1922 and was given general authority to control morality in the film industry. The Motion Picture Production Code introduced by Hays - the industry-internal self-censorship code - was radical and very specific. A direct reference in the film plot to homosexuality was forbidden, for example. The advent of sound posed an additional perceived threat to the morale of the American public, because what had previously only been expressed in the silent films by a pantomime of gestures, nods and hints, now became audible.

The 1930s

In those years Emma Goldmann and Edith Ellis were loud and rebellious in advocating women's rights and women's suffrage , but Sapphic love was only mentioned in private. In the non-denominational National League of Decency , women made up the majority and enforced the tightening of the 1932 and 1934 tightening of the Production Code , which forbade any form of filmic representation of homosexuality.

Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford were the femmes fatales in the film , who knew how to cultivate the wide range of sexual personalities perfectly and underlined their androgynous traits with men's clothing; However, open sex scenes or non-conforming feelings were undesirable among the general public. Whether lesbian or gay: It was common - whether in film or in private - to get married. Hollywood lesbians sought protection and social acceptance in so-called lavender marriages with actors who were often homosexual themselves. A classic example of a different kind is Marlene Dietrich's unorthodox marriage to Rudolf Sieber , who lived with another woman for 37 years.

In both the fiction and medical literature of the 1930s, lesbians are portrayed as neurotic, tragic and absurd figures. This image was incompatible with the image of the sex goddess propagated subliminally in the films. In contrast to current literature, homosexuality has been withheld or denied; However, even today homosexuality is not seen as a figurehead in the film industry, but is often presented as a possibility. Part of the irony of the film world is that by having to hide her inclinations, Greta Garbo only increased her nimbus of the mysterious and charming.

McCarthy era

From 1938 the situation became even more difficult for homosexuals who, because of their lifestyle and sexual orientation, did not correspond to the normal way of life . The Un-American Activities Committee was a body established in the US House of Representatives in 1938 . It originally pursued the goal of expelling people from public administration offices who were engaged in subversive activities for foreign powers. It was only dissolved in 1975; until then, homosexuality was seen as a potential source of danger for infiltration and as a way of removing uncomfortable people. The Hollywood film scene was just as afraid of ending up on McCarthy's blacklist as all other public figures who were under special observation by the HUAC .

The circle

Hollywood is a suburb of Los Angeles with a population of around 300,000 today. The American film productions at that time and also the outdoor recordings took place in and in the immediate vicinity of the large studios. The majority of movie stars and film authors therefore lived in and around Hollywood during the Golden Era . Private matters were kept private from the public, but there were no secrets between themselves. The origin of the term sewing circle or sewing club is controversial. What is certain, however, is that Alla Nazimova ( Nancy Reagan's godmother ) used the term in the mid-twenties to denote a Sapphic circle to which her lover, Wilde's niece Dorothy, various actresses and authors belonged. Ten years later, the term The Sewing Circle alluded to the group of women who had come together around Marlene Dietrich , and then increasingly became a synonym for a loose network of lesbian or bisexual women in the performing arts . Its members valued discretion. That is why people usually lost themselves among themselves in private and less often in relevant bars such as the Big House on Hollywood Boulevard or the Lakeshore Bar near what is now MacArthur Park, where the common lesbian frequented. Terms such as “lesbian” or “lesbian” (terms that were still on the index well into the 1960s according to the censorship regulations of the American film industry) were largely frowned upon here too. Women who loved women preferred more vague terminology or tried not to even call the matter its name. For many, their relationships were special, isolated phenomena, which they inevitably liked to give the appearance of purely platonic friendships. Only a few from the “milieu” were invited to open house parties.

In 1932, Vanity Fair published photos of Garbo and Dietrich under the heading Both Members of the Same Club . Other magazines called MGM star Garbo and her Paramount colleague Dietrich a gentleman of hearts . These remained exceptions, however, because the studios' heads of publicity such as Howard Strickling at MGM, Perry Lieber at Paramount and Harry Brand at Fox created the image of their protégés with targeted reports in the press. The legendary Garbo phrase “I want to be alone”, for example, did not come from herself, but was an invention of MGM advertising agent Pete Smith. Any rumors of possible homosexuality were also neutralized with information about affairs and relationships with male actors (usually from the same studio).

Known couples

  • Greta Garbo and Mercedes de Acosta
    The actress and the screenwriter met in Hollywood in 1929. The relationship ultimately failed because Greta Garbo purposefully avoided any appearance of being with someone. She was MGM's highest-paid star at the time and is still considered the aloof divine today .
  • Marlene Dietrich and Mercedes de Acosta
  • Joan Crawford and Katharine Cornell
    Crawford was three years younger than Garbo and married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., sexually offensive towards both sexes and had numerous female lovers in addition to many men. Katharine Cornell was married to Broadway producer Guthrie McClintic.
  • Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford
    Married to Frank Fay, she began an affair with Joan Crawford and is said to have tried to seduce Bette Davis while they were filming "A Star Is Born".

literature

  • Axel Madsen: The Sewing Circle (OT: The Hollywood Sewing Circle ). Heyne, 1995. ISBN 3453136659
  • Maria Riva: My mother Marlene . Goldmann, 1992. ISBN 3442426162
  • Nigel Cawthorne: The Sex Life of the Hollywood Goddesses . Taschen Verlag, 2002. ISBN 3822869597
  • Christina Crawford: My dear raven mother , Goldmann, Munich 1982. ISBN 3442124093
  • Joyce Carol Oates: Blonde . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000. ISBN 310054000X

See also