In article <XnsA7E3B7EF59832RobinHood@216.151.153.39>, Robin Hood says...
>
>Miloch <Miloch_member@newsguy.com> wrote in
>news:ooarqs02f9s@drn.newsguy.com:
>
>> Married a couple of times but a closeted lesbian...
>>
>
>I didn't know that!
>
>
https://www.out.com/entertainment/today-gay-history/2013/07/16/today-gay-history-inimitable-barbara-stanwyck
So, for today's Today in Gay History, we celebrate Stanwyck's July 16, 1907
birth with seven bits of trivia that, when taken together, paint a pretty good
picture of Stanwyck's life, career, and legacy.
1. During the late-1920s, Brooklyn-native Stanwyck taught dance at a gay and
lesbian speakeasy owned by Texas Guinan, a butch impresario described as a
lesbian. Texas very may well have been the inspiration for the "wicked" saloon
girl deep-voiced and often hoydenish Stanwyck played in 1947's California.
2. Lesbian singer Tallulah Bankhead once said she slept with Stanwyck, whose
roles in Double Indemnity, The Lady Eve, and Night Nurse helped make her into
one of Hollywood's first mega-stars. Though nominated for four Oscars between
1938 and 1949, it wasn't until 1981 that Stanwyck would get an Academy Award: a
special statue honoring her contribution to film.
3. Biographer Axel Madsen says "unearthing the truth about [Stanwyck's]
sexuality would remain impossible," but also notes "people would swear she
there's something to rumors that Stanwyck's marriages to Frank Fay and Robert
Taylor were studio-backed "lavender marriages" created to keep the closet sealed
tight.
4. Though she played lesbian Jo Courtney in 1962's Walk on the Wild Side (one of
the first portrayals of lesbians in Hollywood, and not a very good one),
Stanwyck refused to discuss her own sexuality. In one of the more infamous
examples of her reticence, Stanwyck reportedly threw journalist Boze Hadleigh
out of her house after he asked whether she had ever partaken in lesbian sex, as
Greta Garbo and Marlene Deitrich had done.
5. Of all the people Stanwyck was close to, her most consistent relationship was
is with her very loyal, sometimes live-in girl Friday, the prototypical
actress-turned-publicist Helen Ferguson. The women never defined their
relationship, but if Stanwyck's marriages to men were described as lavender,
Stanwyck and Ferguson's union may very well have been of the Boston variety.
Ferguson was by Stanwyck's side for the bulk of her career, from the Hollywood
heyday to the 1960s, when Stanwyck began portraying a series of pioneering women
on television shows like Wagon Train and The Big Valley.
*
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