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stickygirl said:
Just pre-ordered Portait of a Lady on Fire because I'm not on cable and I haven't been out to a bar for months. It's due to arrive on the 8th and I've very excited: bottle of wine and ... pizza or something posh? :):)
Click to expand...

Pizza is perfectly acceptable :) I hope you like it!
 
Jerseyshore said:
Ms. Baker was an amazing woman. One of the hottest dancers and singers of her time, She left the US due to segregation and became a French citizen. She married four times (two children), had affairs with men and wome, and was much honored for her work with the French Resistance in WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker
Click to expand...

I read some about her a few weeks back. I love discovering people that I think I would have never heard of otherwise. She was an amazing lady.
 
Tallulah Bankhead

https://66.media.tumblr.com/a7d1078cd167fa07d3fe39a9ae8046bf/tumblr_oxf1k6nxdL1vw9qr8o1_540.jpg

She was outspoken, uninhibited, and it's said that any who met her never forgot her. By the standards of the interwar years, Tallulah was quite openly bisexual, but she successfully avoided scandal related to her affairs, regardless of the gender of her lovers. She was known to have stripped off her clothes on several occasions while attending parties, which shocked people in attendance, but nonetheless she remained magnetic to those who knew her well.
https://lgbt.wikia.org/wiki/Tallulah_Bankhead
 
Brilliant thread

Absolutely loving this thread.
I love the glamour and seductiveness of these old films.
Thank you ❤️
 
The Harlem Renaissance

Since I retired I have been doing quite a bot of research on LGBQT history, and I was surprised to find that, as per one quote, "The Harlem Renaissance was as much gay as it was black,"and this appears to be true. There are a number of ongoung history projects on the subject. Here is ine example:
https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/theme/the-harlem-renaissance/
The Harlem Renaissance was the flowering of African-American music, poetry, dance and other genres in the early 20th century. It was so named because much of it took place in Harlem in New York City. The movie ":The Cotton Club" is one depiction of the movement.
Here is an overview:
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance
A surprisingly large number of those that led the movement were LGBQT. This included a number of women. Josephine Baker was one of them, and here are some others:

Gladys Bently was a well-known croiss-dresser who perfomrd in her signature white tuxedo and top hat. She was well known fir her sexually explicit lyrics and her habit of flirting with women in attendance. Bentley is a significant and inspiring figure for the LGBT community and African Americans, and she was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Bentley

Ethel Waters
A lavishly honored performer. Although Waters had several other husbands throughout her life, she fell into the crowd of Blues singers along with Gladys Bentley, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lucille Bogan who had female lovers.
https://cassiuslife.com/51405/ethel-waters-lesbian-black-history/

Bessie Smith
"The Empress if the Blues" had a number of lesbian affairs in her all-too-short life.
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Smith#Personal_life

Ma Rainey
The woman who showed Bessie the way was another giant in her field. She’s less remembered than Bessie these days, but she opened the door for Bessie and many others to walk through. Her name was Ma Rainey, and during her lifetime, she was known as “The Mother of the Blues.” She was also flexible sexually and in her music:
They said I do it, ain't nobody caught me.
Sure got to prove it on me.
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends.
They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men
https://www.biography.com/news/bessie-smith-ma-rainey-biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Rainey

More on lesnians in that historic oeriod:
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/singing-the-lesbian-blues-in-1920s-harlem/https:
 
Jerseyshore said:
The Harlem Renaissance

Since I retired I have been doing quite a bot of research on LGBQT history, and I was surprised to find that, as per one quote, "The Harlem Renaissance was as much gay as it was black,"and this appears to be true. There are a number of ongoung history projects on the subject. Here is ine example:
https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/theme/the-harlem-renaissance/
The Harlem Renaissance was the flowering of African-American music, poetry, dance and other genres in the early 20th century. It was so named because much of it took place in Harlem in New York City. The movie ":The Cotton Club" is one depiction of the movement.
Here is an overview:
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance
A surprisingly large number of those that led the movement were LGBQT. This included a number of women. Josephine Baker was one of them, and here are some others:

Gladys Bently was a well-known croiss-dresser who perfomrd in her signature white tuxedo and top hat. She was well known fir her sexually explicit lyrics and her habit of flirting with women in attendance. Bentley is a significant and inspiring figure for the LGBT community and African Americans, and she was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Bentley

Ethel Waters
A lavishly honored performer. Although Waters had several other husbands throughout her life, she fell into the crowd of Blues singers along with Gladys Bentley, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lucille Bogan who had female lovers.
https://cassiuslife.com/51405/ethel-waters-lesbian-black-history/

Bessie Smith
"The Empress if the Blues" had a number of lesbian affairs in her all-too-short life.
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Smith#Personal_life

Ma Rainey
The woman who showed Bessie the way was another giant in her field. She’s less remembered than Bessie these days, but she opened the door for Bessie and many others to walk through. Her name was Ma Rainey, and during her lifetime, she was known as “The Mother of the Blues.” She was also flexible sexually and in her music:
They said I do it, ain't nobody caught me.
Sure got to prove it on me.
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends.
They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men
https://www.biography.com/news/bessie-smith-ma-rainey-biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Rainey

More on lesnians in that historic oeriod:
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/singing-the-lesbian-blues-in-1920s-harlem/https:
Click to expand...

This is wonderful, thank you. I have read some on the Harlem Renaissance, but never put that and sexuality issues together. Thank you for this excellent representation of both. Many of these names I don't recognize, however, I have read some on Gladys Bentley. She reminds me for some reason of another version of Marlene Dietrich. I think it's the suit :)
 
sally_sparrow said:
This is wonderful, thank you. I have read some on the Harlem Renaissance, but never put that and sexuality issues together. Thank you for this excellent representation of both. Many of these names I don't recognize, however, I have read some on Gladys Bentley. She reminds me for some reason of another version of Marlene Dietrich. I think it's the suit :)
Click to expand...

Ms. Bentley was apparently butch in appearance onstage, with a deep, bluesy voice.
 
Le Monocle: a lesbian bar in 1920s Paris

“During the 1920s Paris had gained a reputation for the variety of its nighttime pleasures and for its free and easy attitude toward life in general. Within this climate of relative tolerance many gay and lesbian nightclubs opened and flourished. Among these was Le Monocle, which is credited with being one of the first, and certainly the most famous of lesbian nightclubs. It was opened by Lulu de Montparnasse in the Montmartre area, which at that time was the main gathering place for Parisian lesbians. As historian Florence Tamagne explains, lesbians during that time were often found sitting together at Montmartre’s “outdoor cafes or dancing at the Moulin Rouge”. As for Le Monocle, “All the women there dressed as men, in Tuxedos, and wore their hair in a bob”. The name Le Monocle derived from a fad at the time where women who identified as lesbian would sport a monocle to indicate sexual preference."
https://66.media.tumblr.com/b9a642aa552e61dee7e16ad8102c1c92/a466d5a955847e6f-a5/s640x960/243d925714cfa9a8e8f65ea820288f8132d04022.jpg
https://66.media.tumblr.com/d0a0501def63dedea092d368504da30f/a466d5a955847e6f-76/s640x960/53dcd82ecc30a407f3a32de798739a42f9b9e50e.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/3443/3729657024_99d2942581_m.jpg
 
Celine Sciamma

I was recently smitten with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, as much by the directing as the acting. So I've been doing a little more background reading into the people involved, which so often brings more weight to understanding the film. So, quite apart from recommending that film ( it's a love story with an almost exclusively female cast) I want to shine a light on its director Celine Sciamma.

I've since ordered a couple of her other films: Tomboy and Girlhood, but sadly another from her coming of age trilogy, Water Lillies, is only available from second hand stores and too expensive. Investing in French DVDs is a thing - who knew?!

Perhaps in idle moments, we all feel we have a book or song or film in us, but instead we rely on rare and extraordinarily talented individuals to do it for us? Celinne is one of those: she's one of us. We learn to give trust carefully, but not in her case. Order pizza, chill the wine and let you guard down - you won't be disappointed by her films.
 
MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (’31): The First Lesbian Feature Film By Raquel Stecher

stickygirl, thanks so much for your take on her films. I am going to look a few of them up and see if I can access them somehow. I know I've talked about this particular film before, but I think it needs to be talked about again because it is truly a cornerstone of lesbians in film.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/c74e3c0d8b2059098fc0943da20a67ff/660674b14b6d55fe-46/s540x810/8f178fe88db5cf3fb4db5ab55359ed60b7b67a28.jpg

Director Leontine Sagan’s MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (’31) wasn’t the first movie that featured lesbian characters but it was certainly a notable one. This German film came during a time between WWI and WWII when there was a thriving gay subculture in parts of Europe. Movies like DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS (’19) and MICHAEL (’24) were born out of that era and candidly depicted gay relationships. Marlene Dietrich gave the world the first cinematic lesbian kiss in MOROCCO (’30). PANDORA’S BOX (’29), starring Louise Brooks, featured a lesbian subplot. This was a flourishing time for queer representation and it ended abruptly with the emergence of the Nazi regime.

MADCHEN IN UNIFORM was special in many regards. It’s the first feature film with a solely lesbian theme. It was based on a play written by a woman. It was directed by a woman, with an artistic director credit going to Carl Froelich. And, the cast was completely made up of women. Not a single man can be spotted throughout the whole movie.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/27ec5e27d56ef4cc9550385418c0c671/660674b14b6d55fe-24/s540x810/4745bc4e2f25b9b2914d8b513a28e1cc3de35d0f.jpg

Playwright Christa Winsloe based the story on her own experience at a Prussian boarding school. Writing the play was her way of processing the trauma of her youth. Upon the success of her play, Winsloe moved to Berlin and lived openly as a lesbian. She was once married to a Baron then later became romantically involved with two other women writers, newspaper reporter Dorothy Thompson and Swiss author Simone Gentet.

Winsloe’s play caught the eye of theater producer and actress Leontine Sagan. In her memoir, Sagan recalls MADCHEN IN UNIFORM “was an original play and true to life, but it was technically rough and amateurish in its dramaturgical structure. Nonetheless, I liked this unusual play about girls in a Prussian boarding school and made the author’s acquaintance.” MADCHEN IN UNIFORM would be Sagan’s directorial debut and she would later produce the play for the Duchess Theatre in London.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/3113320c1b34cd8d5f830ba6b69fdd6b/660674b14b6d55fe-94/s540x810/609f0390c682fee660a39b50a989cfd6e9bd5096.jpg

After this film was made, Dorothy Wieck was recruited to Hollywood when Hollywood execs realized her striking resemblence to Norma Shearer. She starred in two films, both were flops. She was booted out of tinseltown and unfairly labeled a Nazi spy. The irony was that Wieck was an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime and refused to act in Nazi propaganda films.

In fact most of the women involved with MADCHEN IN UNIFORM were courted by the Nazis. Although the film was banned in Nazi Germany and many copies were destroyed, Joseph Goebbels himself was a fan and called it a “magnificently directed, exceptionally natural and exciting film art”. Leontine Sagan, actresses Hertha Thiele and Erika Mann all refused offers by the Nazi government to use their talents for propaganda.

After the war, the film languished under censorship but never lost its appeal. It was remade several times including a 1958 film adaptation starring Lilli Palmer and Romy Schneider. It was in a long line of lesbian-themed stories set in all-girl schools, including Colette’s Claudine novels (she wrote the French subtitles for the film), Jacqueline Audry’s OLIVIA (’51) and William Wyler’s THE CHILDREN’S HOUR (’61). MADCHEN IN UNIFORM enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the 1970s finding fans among a growing community of feminists and lesbians with an interest in women directed films. Today it still stands as a seminal lesbian drama that deserves to be studied and appreciated.
 
Weimar Germany

LGBQT culture flourished in Weimar Germany between the world wars. The gay rights movement began as early as 1897. On May 14th 1897, German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, the world's first official organization advocating homosexual and transgender rights.
This level of tolerance took time to develop and dates back to Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, considered the world's first ever LGBT activist.
The liberal atmosphere of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s was crucial for the movement, which collaborated with the growing feminist movement in the capital.
In Weimar Berlin, 30 different newspapers were published for a homosexual readership. Worldwide there were only two others, one in Chicago and the other in Paris. In 1929 a parliamentary committee decided to repeal Paragraph 175 (which criminalized homosexuality), but the rise of the Nazi party prevented this change being implemented.

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/17/371424790/between-world-wars-gay-culture-flourished-in-berlin
https://www.thelocal.de/20150515/germanys-lgbt-rights-pioneers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Germany
https://www.google.com/search?q=lgb...hWBY98KHSVeDAgQ_AUoAnoECAsQBA&biw=869&bih=444

Lesbians had their own publications, with Die Freundin (English: The Girlfriend: The Ideal Friendship Journal) being among the most popular. The magazine was published from Berlin, the capital of Germany, by the Bund für Menschenrecht (translated variously as League for Human Rights or Federation for Human Rights and abbreviated as BfM), run by gay activist and publisher Friedrich Radszuweit
Die Freundin published short stories and novellas. Renowned contributors were pioneers of the lesbian movement like Selli Engler or Lotte Hahm. The magazine also published advertisements of lesbian nightspots, and women could place their personal advertisements for meeting other lesbians.Women's groups related to the Bund für Menschenrecht and Die Freundin offered a culture of readings, performances, and discussions, which was an alternative to the culture of bars. This magazine was usually critical of women for what they viewed as "attending only to pleasure", with a 1929 article urging women "Don't go to your entertainments while thousands of our sisters mourn their lives in gloomy despair."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Freundin
 
Last edited:
Jerseyshore said:
Weimar Germany

LGBQT culture flourished in Weimar Germany between the world wars. The gay rights movement began as early as 1897. On May 14th 1897, German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, the world's first official organization advocating homosexual and transgender rights.
This level of tolerance took time to develop and dates back to Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, considered the world's first ever LGBT activist.
The liberal atmosphere of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s was crucial for the movement, which collaborated with the growing feminist movement in the capital.
In Weimar Berlin, 30 different newspapers were published for a homosexual readership. Worldwide there were only two others, one in Chicago and the other in Paris. In 1929 a parliamentary committee decided to repeal Paragraph 175 (which criminalized homosexuality), but the rise of the Nazi party prevented this change being implemented.

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/17/371424790/between-world-wars-gay-culture-flourished-in-berlin
https://www.thelocal.de/20150515/germanys-lgbt-rights-pioneers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Germany
https://www.google.com/search?q=lgb...hWBY98KHSVeDAgQ_AUoAnoECAsQBA&biw=869&bih=444

Lesbians had their own publications, with Die Freundin (English: The Girlfriend: The Ideal Friendship Journal) being among the most popular. The magazine was published from Berlin, the capital of Germany, by the Bund für Menschenrecht (translated variously as League for Human Rights or Federation for Human Rights and abbreviated as BfM), run by gay activist and publisher Friedrich Radszuweit
Die Freundin published short stories and novellas. Renowned contributors were pioneers of the lesbian movement like Selli Engler or Lotte Hahm. The magazine also published advertisements of lesbian nightspots, and women could place their personal advertisements for meeting other lesbians.Women's groups related to the Bund für Menschenrecht and Die Freundin offered a culture of readings, performances, and discussions, which was an alternative to the culture of bars. This magazine was usually critical of women for what they viewed as "attending only to pleasure", with a 1929 article urging women "Don't go to your entertainments while thousands of our sisters mourn their lives in gloomy despair."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Freundin
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for sharing this info. I love your contributions of history!
 
Stage Door (1937) dir. Gregory La Cava

You speak of love when it’s too late. Help should come to people when they need it. Why are we always so helpful to each other when it’s no longer any use?​

https://66.media.tumblr.com/a4377957e3591c1b62324ea4a3d49d3e/49d65e3713ada354-8d/s540x810/a38d3606a0379b46e322c6fd14e0db18747defa6.gifv
https://66.media.tumblr.com/78f13c232b0e819c0c3b07f6d95b8937/49d65e3713ada354-d4/s540x810/4cfdc4c91d849a6bd2787da15eac733f952b7392.gifv
https://66.media.tumblr.com/33a324e2f73e04519ac7be49ddbae5a3/49d65e3713ada354-7d/s540x810/5130e7e2c6e0f1841d85f2a22cd236058a55a6d7.gifv
https://66.media.tumblr.com/b5add34b309530b4fd2ecb3bb0b4c905/49d65e3713ada354-68/s540x810/34fb6559af38daa2e517f75bf93dc89f7445be1a.gifv
https://66.media.tumblr.com/6d12362e548ff0764ab6de818fa2a177/49d65e3713ada354-29/s540x810/4dd9d86092278c24f808393a4e94cd219f64c17b.gifv
https://66.media.tumblr.com/ee2fe3bfc48f6ef0951ad5b61c3ee20a/49d65e3713ada354-22/s540x810/c2d08e48c35ab6e49354c48f325c29064bfeda8e.gifv
https://66.media.tumblr.com/9c7782ab5bacb2ccd806801c232fbcca/49d65e3713ada354-16/s540x810/7ff6c541e4bb0331f31757366fce5c4547d30114.gifv
 
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