THE SEWING CIRCLE

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Axel Madsen: The Sewing Circle

Female Stars Who Loved Other Women

Film stars in the golden age of Hollywood were the epitome of glamour, sophistication and objects of hetrosexual identification and desire. To be outed as a homosexual would immediately kill any Hollywood career. As a consequence such sexual liaisons were hidden from the public by the studio publicity machines, which controlled every aspect of a star's image and behaviour. Howard Strickling, the head of MGM's publicity department admitted; "We told stars what they could say, and they did what we said because they knew we knew best." To this end the studio publicists covered-up everything from romances, pregnancies to murder. Lavender marriages became common so that to the public the couple were happily married, but in reality it was just a smoke- screen for their homosexuality.
Axel Madsen chronicles the pivotal role of scenarist Mercedes de Acosta who had affairs with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Isadora Duncan, Tallulah Bankhead, Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford's lesbian activities are also described in detail. The secret, informal networking of lesbians in Hollywood became known as the sewing circle, and it became an essential support mechanism for their double-lives.
The activities of the sewing circle members contrasts starkly with their on and off-screen images that were so carefully cultivated at the time. Today such revelations give a new image and aura for the stars of the late 1920s to the 1950s, and make us consider the impact of prejudice and hypocrisy that warped their lives.