Butch in Progress

[K] It would be a shame to let LGBT History Month pass without an edition of our Favorite Vintage Butch, wouldn’t it? Especially it the vintage butch in question has a formidably androgynous fashion sense like British painter Gluck (nee Hannah Gluckstein, 1895 - 1978)

^{Gluck, 1924, photographed by E.O. Hoppe (to whom a exhibition is dedicated right now at the National Portrait Gallery)}

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[K] For a long time I have been convinced that no Vintage Butch would ever be able to compete with Mercedes de Acosta’s impressive combination of luck, timing, and lady-lovin’-talent. (Affairs with both Marlene and Greta - Not bad, right?) Then, however, this handsome being entered the picture: 

Betty “Joe” Carstairs (1900-1993): filthy-rich heiress, owner of a tropical island, ambulance driver in WWI, champion speed boat racer, infamous womanizer, tattooed biker, and - last but not least - lover of Marlene Dietrich, as well as the only person daring to call the Dietrich ‘babe’.

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I guess “Vintage Butch of the Month” would be more acurate…

[K] Sometimes you find the best of Vintage Butch representations in the places to least expected them like, let’s say, a 30s Hollywood gangster movie. Better yet: it’s opening scene.

_{Sandra Shaw in Blood Money (1933)}

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[K] It’s been 3 days since the state of New York finally entered the 21st century and legalized gay marriage, and exactly 42 years since the event that started it all took place in New York City: The Stonewall Riots.

On a not-so-completely different note, it has also been quite a while since our last Vintage Butch of the Week - which is wrong on many levels, especially given that besides drag-queens, it was mainly butches we have to thank for the ‘Gay Revolution’.

“Certainly the drag queens were among the first and most fierce resisters. But the people who resisted most were gay street youth, non-gender-conforming butch lesbians and effeminate young men.” (Historian David Carter)

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[K] As an avid reader of our blog (which I will arrogantly assume you all are), you are both familiar with the Vintage Butch of the Week as well as the cultural phenomenon of lesbian pulp novels. Therefore I wil skip any introductionary workds and get right to the good, not let me rephrase that, the best part:

Beebo Brinker in all her bright pulp cover-glory

And yes, ‘the best part’ without any further further specification, just because Beebo is simply the best part of everything she could possibly be related to: you read Ann Bannon in the afternoon? Beebo is the best part of your day. You talk about LGBT cultural history in class? Beebo is the best part of your schedule. You look for a literary figure to turn to for advice? Beebo is … well, you get the idea.

Ann Bannon describes the inspiration for her timeless creation in the introduction to I am a Woman’s Cleis Press Edition, 2002 :

Beebo was my own unrealized romantic phantom. There was another college friend, it is only fair to concede, who gave me the physical prototype. She was taller than the rest of us and strikingly handsome, with a crop of wavy, dark-blond hair and an irresistible smile. Her nickname was one of those too-cute tomboy variations on a boy’s name. She hated it and made us promise never to use it, but her formal name didn’t seem to suit her. I remember running into her in the dorm bathroom — one of those gray marble affairs with rows of icy washbowls and green toilet stalls — in her skivvies, and trying not to admire her unduly.

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[K] If you are looking for positive representation of well-adjusted butch identity and healthy lesbian relationships on the silver screen, The Killing of Sister George is most definitely NOT the film for you.

If you are, however, looking for an unapologetic dyke with a talent for one-liners and confidence to spare… Congrats, you have just found your new guilty pleasure!

The Killing of Sister George (1968) was directed by Robert Aldrich and starred Beryl Reid in the role of June Buckridge, this week’s vintage butch. Her character is also known (and in the film almost exclusievly referred to) as “Sister George”, the name of the role June is playing in a well-loved soap opera. As every review will tell you, George is the polar opposite of her soap-opera do-gooder: a loud, drunken dyke, whose frequent and public misbehavior forces her producers to have her character killed off - hence the title of the movie.

Robert Aldrich’s adaptation of a stage drama of the same name is among the first to portray a lesbian relationship not through codes, hints and euphemisms (Yeah!), which unfortunately led to some serious struggles at the box office (Booh!), since the film received the newly established X-rating due to a hinterto unthinkably graphic sapphic sex scene between George’s femme girlfriend and her nemesis/boss (which also causes the film’s composer to quit our of moral outrage).

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[K] It’s kind of a last minute thing, but still, I couldn’t let this week end without introducing you to a new Vintage Butch of the Week, could I?

To make up for the rather late posting, I chose an actual historic person instead of a fictional characater, and a true heroine of mine: Mercedes de Acosta (born 1893).

Leaving a trail of broken hearts … without an alternative lifestyle haircut

I have no clue whatsoever, whether she identified as butch (probably not) or even a lesbian. I couldn’t care less, however, because no movie script or pulp novel could have come up with more spectactular sexual conquests than she had to show for herself in real life.

She is, so to speak, the original dyke-playboy: an aristocrat of European descent, who came to Hollywood to become a writer and instead became the lover of nearly every single desirable queer-inclined woman of the time. She was in no way a perfect rolemodel for baby dykes today: she was married to a guy (on paper at least), she talked too much about things supposed to be private (as her memoires prove) and she really just lived off the fortune of her family, because her scripts didn’t sell that well (who could blame her).

But, and this is actually more of a BUT!!!!, she is the one woman, heck, human being, on the face of this planet in this or any other time, who can claim to have to her lover Marlene Dietrich console her about losing her ex-lover Greta Garbo.

You read that right: Mercedes de Acosta had affairs with both Greta ‘The Divine’ Garbo and eternal icon Marlene Dietrich. Do you need a second to let that sink? Here are some pictures to help you:

I would brag as well, woulnd’t you?

As if this wasn’t accomplishment enough, de Acosta was additionally tied to famous diva and dancer Isodora Duncan (who died one of the most movie-worthy deaths of all time) and infamous actress Alla Nazimova (who happend to be married to - now that we already are on the topic of Hollywood gossip anyway - Rudulp Valentino, who was professionally linked to another dream factory gay lady) among others …

And since the world of the gay and famous, has always been a small one, Getrude Stein’s lover, writer Alice B.Toklas, had an opinion about de Acosta as well. It sums up my fascination with her pretty neatly:

“…you can’t dispose of Mercedes lightly—she has had the two most important women in the US—Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.”

Next time you are invited to a ‘Your hero’-costume party, forget about your Gaga-Wig, Shane-pants or Belle-dress (that might be just me), and consider this instead:

Not quite like wearing motorcycle boots, but hey, it was the twenties!

Have fun googling her and enjoy your Sunday!

[K] For this week’s vintage butch, we turn away from the big screen to small books - books so small and cheap, you could leave them on a train or a bus, when you were through with them, either because you didn’t care to take them home … or you didn’t dare.

I am, of course, talking about the infamous pulp novels of the 1950’s. At the time book publishers tried to circumvent restrictions and censorship by producing books as cheaply as possible (hence the low-quality paper with pulp), so they could be sold on magazine stands at drug stores rather than book shops. During World War II the demand for such ‘throw-away books’ for soldiers and other serving abroad and under severe conditions had increased and after the war, publishers realized that they still could make a whole lot of money with these publications.

Pulp novels catered to a newer, faster living generation AND they could be as gruesome, scandalous and sex-obsessed as no ‘real’ book could ever even dream of. Consequently, pulp novels were concerned with the ‘shadowy’ and ‘forbidden’ (two very convenient words to indicate gay/lesbian content) parts of human existence, stories that could hitherto only be ‘whispered’ about, loves that had to be denied, deeds that had to be hidden (shame, devil, queer were also cherished key words)

Almost totally unrelated, but definitely totally awesome

Soon it became obvious that sex sells, but lesbian sex sells even better. With this epiphany the genre of lesbian pulp (and later sweeps week’s girl-on-girl action) was born thanks to the publication and record-breaking success of Vin Packer’s Spring Fire.

College Girls touching each other’s knees - hide you children!

Most of the era’s the lesbian pulp novels written by straight men for straight men (sound familiar?), but some female/lesbian authors managed to sneak in their version of lesbian life and desire before Stonewall and thus, before any idea about gay rights or even a positive gay identity.

Consequently, the reason, why lesbian pulp novels should be on every queer grrl’s reading list, isn’t so much their juicy parts (even though they do exist and are a delicious mix of sexy and campy), but their stories of inner turmoil, denial and recognition, which are so much clearer in retrospect, but still resonate with today’s experiences. Oh, and on top of being an easy and highly entertaining read: due to being ‘ground-breaking’ lesbian pulp is as much a part of US lesbian cultural history and identity today as The L Word will be 20 years from now. And you wouldn’t have missed The L Word, would you?

The most famous of all pulp butches is without the shadow of a doubt Ann Bannon’s fabulous Beebo Brinker (more about her in the future, I guess promise), heroine of the chronicles of the same name (and yes, that means, there were ‘chronicles’ of interest even before Lena Headey graced the screen as Sarah Connor):

Today’s vintage butch, however, is taken from Tereska Torres’ Women’s Barracks - The Frank Autobiography of a French Girl Soldier. That subtitle, by the way, is more or less all you need to know about the plot.

I can see bras! Do you see bras? I think we both see bras! Must be a great story.

And here’s what you need to know about that “(straight) french girl soldier’s” point of view, when she witnesses the meeting of the two butches (which reminds me that I should write about Meeting of Two Queens at some point) Ann and Petit at her barracks:

While the Captain talked, I could see Ann studying the warrant officer, Petit. Yes, Petit had the air of an elderly man, and I suppose Ann knew that it was inevitable that Petit should notice her. She touched her tie to make sure the knot was in place; she passed her hand over hr hair.

Petit was studying all the girls, smilingly, looking from one to the other of us, until her eyes met Ann’s, and then her eyes remained immobile for an instant. Petit had small grey clever eyes. It seemed to me, watching her, that her little pupils were suddenly drowned in Ann’s large somber blue eyes, and even I, only a bystander at this silent exchange, could sense a current passing between the two women.

They looked at each other over the heads of the rest of us, and I thought, They’ve never met before, but they recognize each other; they know they’re the same kind. I was plain that there was no need of words or of explanations between them. It was quite simple, quite clear, and even if nothing came of it, they could count on each other in the eternal battle between themselves and other women – those of us who were subject to the needs, the fears, the weaknesses that neither Ann nor Petit felt. (23)

Soooo cheesy —- I’m smitten.

Spoiler alert and extra bonus of unique awesomeness: completely against type and pulp’s fondness for butch-femme constellations, Ann and Petit will later in the novel start a relationship (yes, you read that correctly: the two butches will fall in love. Who’s ground-breaking now?!), which, you guessed it, is doomed to fail due to mutual jealousy and lack of understanding by society, but until then …

[K] In my effort to bring back glorious butches from the pop cultural past, let me introduce you today to Private J. Vasquez, played by Jenette Goldstein, in Aliens - the sequel to the horror-sci/fi-film that made us all fall in love with Ellen Ripley/Sigourney Weaver.

Snow White, this is Private J. Vasquez. -

Private J. Vasquez, this is Snow White.

I know generalizations are tricky, but let me generalize nonetheless: compared to Private J. Vasquez everyone is Snow White. You’ll see, what I mean.

Nice gun(s).

Private J. Vasquez also taught baby dykes everywere the definitively coolest (and maybe even only proper) answer to one of my favorite dumb questions: Have you ever been mistaken for a man?

My favorite part about this clip, however, is Sigourney Weaver in her undies when the male soldies tells her ‘too bad’, in a friendly teasing way, acknowledging both her attractiveness AND her gayness in one simple comment. That’s what lesbros are for …

By the way: Vasquez turns out to be not only exceedingly cool, but also a true hero (in case anyone was in doubt). So if you wanna work on your badass awesomeness, Private J. Vasquez comes as an action figure you might wanna train with:

I don’t wanna get your hopes up though: Vasquez doesn’t make out with any of the other rather suspicious looking female marines or Ripley and, of course, has to die before the end of the film (somehow she doesn’t quite fit into the nuclear family the film likes to send off into the sunset universe together in the end. Consequently, we all had to wait for Alien:Resurrection to bring back the lesbian subtext and have Ellen Ripley mature into someone leather-clad and gun-wielding, young short-haired Winona Ryder wants to stare at the EifFel-Tower with).

But there is still something to be hopeful about: this blog is now one step closer to having the Vintage Butch of the Week as a regular feature. Hurray!

ps.: Another tidbit for the gender/queer studies nerds among us - Judith Halberstam briefly discusses the role of Private Vasquez in her book Female Masculinity.

[K] I’m back (sorry for the longish hiatus) - back with a vengeance and/in the form of a vintage butch. This is something my ambitious self would like to turn into a regular segment, but for now I’m perfectly happy with just providung you with this photographic proof of a very short appearance in Marlene Dietrich’s Blonde Venus, which nonetheless left a lasting impression.

The “exceedingly butch” Cecil Cunningham in Blonde Venus

The main reason, why this butch’s image stayed with me and puzzled me long after the film, is that there is no good (standard) explanation for her inclusion into the story: she isn’t portrayed as the evil version of what happens to a woman who dares to take on male roles/clothes (as Marlene does in the film), she isn’t the predatory lesbian Marlene has to be rescued from by a guy and she isn’t performing on stage. Basically, she just is there - as if we didn’t need anymore justification to see a woman in a tux than we need for a woman in a dress. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Her only function in Blonde Venus is to warn and comfort Marlene’s character (add to things lesbians are good at)… and maybe to serve von Sternberg’s fondness for women in tuxedos:

Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus

Looks like the guy and me had some things in common … or maybe he just understood how to keep Marlene’s lesbian fanbase entertained - and paying.

(What can I say? It still works today as proven by this movie poster- bought, paid for and now part of my collection, 70 years after its realease)

ps.: for the academically inclined among you, here’s a film studies article that references Cunningham’s appearance as lesbian: “Queering the (New) Deal”