One day, in 1918, Eleanor Roosevelt was unpacking her husband’s suitcase and found some saucy love letters hidden under a washcloth. The letters probably looked something like this:
Dear Franklin,
You’re well sexy. I’ve never Roosefelt this way before.
Love,
Lucy Mercer (your social secretary).
Eleanor and Franklin had never really been passionate. In fact, Eleanor hated having sex with Franklin, and once told her daughter it was ‘an ordeal to be borne’ – an odd thing to tell your daughter, but who am I to judge?
The discovery resulted in Eleanor offering Franklin a divorce. However, a divorce would mark the end of Franklin’s political career, so the pair remained married, although Eleanor most definitely had leverage. In front of the cameras, she was the supportive and loyal wife to a future president. Behind closed doors, she had her own interests, such as field hockey, flying with Amelia Earhart, working for the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, and joining the Women’s Trade Union League. You see where I’m going with this…
Although Eleanor had been born into wealth and privilege, she had an unhappy childhood. By the time she was ten years old, both Eleanor’s parents had died, and she had to be protected from some dodgy and perverted uncles. At the age of fifteen she was then sent to the Allenswood Boarding Academy in London, which had an enormously positive effect on her life, mainly because it was run by the lesbian Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre.
Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre was that teacher that all the closeted lesbo kids wanted to bang. She was beautiful, captivating, intelligent and a feminist. She also encouraged her students to think for themselves, something that Eleanor immediately took on board.
Sadly, after a couple of years at Allenswood, Eleanor was summoned back home to New York so she could make her social debut. Not long after, she ran into her fifth cousin (once removed), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on a train. The rest, as they say, is heteronormative history.
New York was a thrilling place at the time, with a melange of socialites, theatre darlings and political figures all rubbing… shoulders. The city’s population had also exploded, with Black people migrating from the segregated South, and the newly opened Grand Central Terminal allowing folk to move between cities much more easily. To be more specific, lesbians could move between cities much more easily.
In the 1920s, the term ‘the sewing circle’ was used to describe the ever-expanding, underground lesbian scene in the United States. The New York sewing circle was hijacked by the writer and serial womaniser Mercedes de Acosta, who probably slept with every single woman, straight or otherwise, on the east coast. Mercedes made her way to Hollywood to start a career in the movie industry, and of course, meet some ladies. Once there, Mercedes ended up bedding almost half the women in Hollywood and often boasted, ‘I can get any woman away from any man.’ Fighting words, of course, but Mercedes was Anne Lister on steroids.
It didn’t take long for Mercedes to infiltrate the Hollywood sewing circle, which included the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Hattie McDaniel, Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead and the stunning Swedish recluse Greta Garbo.
Mercedes was immediately taken with Greta, and quickly disintegrated into a fumbling mess. Astonishingly, Mercedes somehow managed to bag the elusive actress, and the pair embarked on a volatile relationship that Greta undoubtedly controlled.
Mercedes was all, ‘I love you.’
Greta was like, ‘I want to be alone.’
Greta eventually broke Mercedes’s heart. It was OK, though, because around the same time, German actress and bisexual bombshell Marlene Dietrich was waiting in the wings. Marlene was a renowned lady-killer. Before making a move on Mercedes, Marlene had been involved with Greta. Greta was so screwed up after the relationship that she pretended never to have even met Marlene.
Marlene liked Mercedes and Mercedes liked Marlene. The pair became serious and even walked their dogs together. Despite such commitment, Marlene and Mercedes never made it official. Mercedes was still in love with Greta, and remained so for the rest of her life. Marlene was also busy shagging the actress Tallulah Bankhead.
Tallulah Bankhead, who once introduced herself by saying, ‘Hello, I’m a lesbian, what do you do?’, was not afraid to showcase her sexuality. She once claimed she had bedded over five thousand people, with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Hattie McDaniel among them. She was also friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, although they weren’t romantically involved, and besides, Eleanor Roosevelt had her hands full with the whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking, flannel-shirt-wearing Lorena ‘Hick’ Hickok.
Hick was the kind of lesbian who probably rolled her own tampons. She was that kind of lesbian. You know, the kind of lesbian who isn’t objectified by the patriarchy and lives for herself. She was also a reporter, a job deemed unsuitable for women at the time. She even wrote about sport. The cheek!
In 1928, Hick was given the opportunity to interview Eleanor Roosevelt. She obviously enjoyed her time with Eleanor, because not long after the interview she convinced her editor to let her cover Eleanor (wink wink) during Franklin’s first presidential campaign. The two quickly struck up a friendship which eventually turned into a romance, and by 1932, they were spending almost every day together. Eleanor even wore a sapphire ring given to her by Hick during Franklin’s presidential inauguration. The gall!
Eleanor and Hick sent thousands of ridiculously passionate letters to each other throughout their lives. True to form, historians prefer to straightwash the relationship, despite irrefutable evidence of their blazing love. Like their letters…
Hick, my dearest,
I cannot go to bed to-night without a word to you. I felt a little as though a part of me was leaving to-night, you have grown so much to be a part of my life that it is empty without you even though I’m busy every minute.
Hick darling,
Oh! how good it was to hear your voice, it was so inadequate to try & tell you what it meant, Jimmy was near & I couldn’t say ‘je t’aime et je t’adore’ as I longed to do but always remember that I am saying it & that I go to sleep thinking of you.
Hick darling,
All day I’ve thought of you… oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort, I look at it & think she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it!
Only eight more days. Twenty-four hours from now it will be only seven more – just a week! I’ve been trying today to bring back your face – to remember just how you look. Funny how even the dearest face will fade away in time. Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth against my lips. I wonder what we’ll do when we meet – what we’ll say. Well – I’m rather proud of us, aren’t you? I think we’ve done rather well.
I dread the western trip & yet I’ll be glad when Ellie can be with you, tho’ I’ll dread that too just a little, but I know I’ve got to fit in gradually to your past & with your friends so there won’t be closed doors between us later on & some of this we’ll do this summer perhaps. I shall feel you are terribly far away & that makes me lonely but if you are happy I can bear that & be happy too. Love is a queer thing, it hurts but it gives one so much more in return!
Thanks again, you dear, for all the sweet things you think of and do. And I love you more than I love anyone else in the world except Prinz – who, by the way, discovered your present to him on the window seat in the library Sunday.
Sadly, in a panic, Hick burned many of the more explicit letters. Gah! Why does someone always burn the letters?! Ah yes, not being allowed to live as your true self because of the constant fear of shame and reputational ruin. That’ll be it.
Meanwhile, Eleanor’s pal Tallulah had struck up a friendship with the singer Billie Holiday. The pair first met at one of Tallulah’s notorious drug-fuelled, booze-filled Hollywood parties. By then, Tallulah was already famous, but Billie had yet to become a star. A decade later, Tallulah dropped in to see Billie (now one of the most famous jazz singers in the world) performing on Broadway. Tallulah’s visits became a regular occurrence, and she was eventually awarded with her very own special seat. The friendship turned into a relationship made all the more intense by an abundance of drugs.
In 1956, Billie decided to write about the relationship with Tallulah in her autobiography. Out of courtesy, she asked her publisher, Doubleday, to send Tallulah a copy of the manuscript to make sure that she was fine with what had been written. Tallulah was not fine, and wrote back saying, ‘Dahlings, if you publish that stuff about me in the Billie Holiday book, I’ll sue you for every goddamned cent that Doubleday can make.’
Billie was not impressed, and responded with one of the best letters in epistolary history.
Dear Miss Bankhead:
I thought I was a friend of yours. That’s why there’s nothing in my book that was unfriendly to you, unkind or libelous. Because I didn’t want to drag you. I tried six times last month to talk to you on the damn phone, and tell you about the book just as a matter of courtesy. That bitch you have who impersonates you kept telling me to call back and when I did it was the same deal until I gave up.
But while I was working out of town, you didn’t mind talking to Doubleday and suggesting behind my damn back that I had flipped and/or made up those little mentions of you in my book.
Baby, Cliff Allan and Billy Heywood are still around. My maid who was with me at the Strand isn’t dead either. There are plenty of others around who remember how you carried on so you almost got me fired out of the place. And if you want to get shitty, we can make it a big shitty party. We can all get funky together.
I don’t know whether you’ve got one of those damn lawyers telling you what to do or not. But I’m writing this to give you a chance to answer back quick and apologize to me and to Doubleday. Read my book over again. I understand they sent you a duplicate manuscript. There’s nothing in it to hurt you. If you think so, let’s talk about it like I wanted to last month. It’s going to press right now so there is no time for monkeying around.
Straighten up and fly right, Banky. Nobody’s trying to drag you.
Billie Holiday.
In the end, Tallulah was only mentioned once as a friend who would sometimes come over to the house to eat spaghetti. Spaghetti?! That’s a new one.