The Girls – Sappho goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan

I’ve just finished an amusing book about old Hollywood written by Diana McLellan. Called “The Girls” with the subtitle of Sappho goes to Hollywood, the book concerns itself with the lesbian and bisexual activities of famous actresses of Hollywood during the thirties, namely Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead.

The book’s a good read, with plenty of gossip and backstage anecdotes. But that’s part of the problem also as the writer often resorts to assumptions and guesswork while presenting them as facts. For example, there’s an awful lot of (and I’m paraphrasing here) Garbo went to New York and must have seen so and so in this play and certainly must have gone backstage to meet her and no doubt they had a affair etc.

Things are much more interesting when McLellan actually quotes the actresses directly. Such as these amusing stories about Tallulah and Dietrich:

At a Hollywood nightclub one evening, Tallulah, seated with Gary Cooper, sent a note to Marlene, who was tête-à-tête nearby with Maurice Chevalier. Why was Marlene wearing gloves to dine? Marlene sent her the gloves on the waiter’s salver. “I’d send you my drawers,” Tallulah responded, via the salver, “but I’m not wearing any right now.”

Here’s another one about Tallulah, during the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat:

She wore no underpants during shooting. As she had to mount a little ladder each day to board the boat, she ensured that her sans culottes state was public knowledge.

Not everyone was charmed. The unit manager reported some churlish complaints on the set. Hitchcock told him to ask Darryl Zanuck, the production chief, what to do. The man returned to report that Zanuck had told him to tell Tallulah to wear undies.

“Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Hitchcock gravely, “It’s not your department”

“Whose department is it?”

“Wardrobe,” said Hitchcock thoughtfully. “Or perhaps hairdressing.”

Tallulah and Dietrich come across best in the book. They’re funny, ambitious, passionate and glamorous. McLellan seems to have a lot more warmth and admiration for them. Garbo, however, comes across rather poorly. She is written about as a cold, passive and aloof character, with little to say and a cranky personality. She was the most beautiful though. Kenneth Tynan said of Garbo:

“What a man sees in other women drunk, he sees in Garbo sober.”