Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991)
was a well-known
actress,
producer, and
director, during the first half of the
20th century.
Early life and early career
Eva Le
Gallienne was born in London
to English
poet of French
descent,
Richard Le Gallienne, and
Danish
journalist, Julie Norregard. After Eva's parents
separated when she was three years old, she spent her childhood
shuttling back and forth between Paris
and England
. She
made her stage debut at the age of 15 in a 1914 production of
Maurice Maeterlinck's
Monna Vanna.
Fame and relationships
The next
year Eva sailed for New
York
, and then on to Arizona and California where she
performed in several theater productions. After traveling in
Europe for a period of time, she returned to
New York and became a Broadway
star in
several plays including Arthur Richman's Not So Long Ago
(1920) and Ferenc Molnár's
Liliom (1921).
Disillusioned by the state of commercial
theatre in the 1920s, Eva founded the Civic Repertory
Theatre in New
York, with the financial support of one of her lovers,
Alice DeLamar, a wealthy Colorado
gold mine
heiress, whose support was instrumental in the success of the
repertory theatre movement in the
U.S. In 1928 she earned a great success with her performance
in
Ibsen's
Hedda Gabler. The Civic Rep disbanded at
the height of the
Depression in
1935.
Open lesbianism, close friends
Eva never hid her
lesbianism inside the
acting community, but reportedly was never
comfortable
with her sexuality, struggling privately with it.
Le
Gallienne, Eva (1899-1991), QLBTQ.com
In early Hollywood
and acting circles, lesbianism was fairly common,
and although generally not divulged to the public, it was accepted
behind the scenes. Le Gallienne was very protective of her
private life, and although she had no problems with people inside
the acting community knowing her sexuality, she was very opposed to
anything going public.
During those early days of her career she often was in the company
of outspoken and bisexual actress
Tallulah Bankhead, and actresses
Estelle Winwood and
Blyth Daly, with the four of them being dubbed
"The Four Horsemen of the Algonquin", referring to the
Algonquin Round Table.
Alla Nazimova
In 1918, while in Hollywood, she began an affair with the great
actress
Alla Nazimova, who was at her
height of fame, and who at that time wielded much power in the
acting community. The affair ended reportedly due to Nazimova's
jealousy. Nonetheless, Nazimova liked Le Gallienne greatly, and
assisted in her being introduced to many influential people of the
day. It was Nazimova who coined the phrase "
Sewing circles", to describe the intricate
and secret lesbian relationships lived by many actresses of the
day. Le Gallienne was also involved for some time with actresses
Tallulah Bankhead,
Beatrice Lillie and
Laurette Taylor during that time. Her only
known heterosexual affair was with actor
Basil Rathbone.
Mercedes de Acosta
Later, around 1920, she became involved with writer
Mercedes de Acosta, with the latter
making quite a nuisance of herself over the next several years. She
and de Acosta began their five year affair shortly after de
Acosta's marriage to Abram Poole, also a homosexual. They
vacationed and traveled together often, at times visiting the
salon of famed writer and
socialite
Natalie Barney. De Acosta
wrote two plays for Eva during that time,
Sandro
Botticelli and
Jehanne de Arc. Neither were
successful, and the combined financial failures of both plays and
de Acosta's possessive and jealous nature brought the affair to an
end. De Acosta would go on to become involved in a long affair with
actress
Greta Garbo, with whom she would
become completely obsessed.
Josephine Hutchinson
By early 1927, Eva was involved with married actress
Josephine Hutchinson. Hutchinson's
husband started divorce proceedings and named Le Gallienne in the
divorce proceedings as "co-respondent". The press began accusations
that named
Josephine Hutchinson
as a "shadow actress", which at the time meant lesbian. Five months
later, Le Gallienne performed in the daring play about
Emily Dickinson, entitled
Alisons
House. The play won a
Pulitzer
Prize.
For a time after the Hutchinson scandal, Le Gallienne drank
heavily. According to biographer Richard Schanke, Le Gallienne's
anxiety over being lesbian haunted her terribly during this time.
One cold winter's night, drunk, she wandered over to a female
neighbor's house. During the conversation that followed, she told
her neighbor "If you have any thoughts about being a lesbian, don't
do it. Your life will be nothing but tragedy."
Another biographer, Helen Sheehy, has rejected Shanke's portrait of
the actress as a self-hating lesbian. Sheehy quotes Le Gallienne's
words of advice to her close friend May Sarton, who was also a
lesbian: "People hate what they don't understand and try to destroy
it. Only try to keep yourself clear and don't allow that
destructive force to spoil something that to you is simple,
natural, and beautiful." Similarly, Le Gallienne told her
heterosexual friend, Eloise Armen, that love between women was "the
most beautiful thing in the world."
Eva Le Gallienne starred as
Peter Pan in a
revival that opened on
November 6,
1928, and presented the lead character full of
elan and boyish charm. The flying effects were superbly designed,
and for the first time Peter flew out over the heads of the
audience. The critics loved 'LeG' as she became known, and more
than a few compared her favorably with the great actress
Maude Adams, who had originated the role. The
Civic Repertory Theatre presented
Peter Pan a total of 129
times.
In late 1929, just after the great stock market crash, Eva was on
the cover of
TIME. During the
Great Depression that followed, she
was offered directorship of the National Theater Division of the
Works Progress
Administration by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. She declined on the grounds
that she preferred working with "true talent" rather than nurturing
jobs for struggling actors and actresses. She was instrumental in
the early career of
Uta Hagen, whom she
cast as Ophelia opposite her own portrayal of
Shakespeare's Prince
Hamlet.
American Repertory Theater
In the late 1930s Le Gallienne became involved in a relationship
with theater director
Margaret
Webster. She, Webster, and
producer Cheryl Crawford later co-founded the
American Repertory Theater, which operated from 1946 to 1948. In
the following years she lived with her companion Marion Evensen. In
the late 1950s she enjoyed great success playing the role of
Queen Elizabeth in
Mary
Stuart, an
off-Broadway
production.
Here Lies The Heart controversy
In 1960,
writer and former lover to many female Hollywood celebrities, Mercedes
de Acosta, released her controversial book, Here Lies the
Heart, documenting and releasing to the public the details of
her numerous affairs with many of Hollywood's leading actresses and female
personalities. This resulted in de Acosta being outcast by
most of her former lovers and friends.
Eva Le Gallienne, in particular, was furious, and discarded
anything reminding her of de Acosta. Many denounced de Acosta as a
liar, although most of her claims have since been substantiated
through personal correspondence and Hollywood insiders. Among those
"outed" by de Acosta as having once been her lovers were, of
course,
Greta Garbo, Le Gallienne,
dancers
Tamara Karsavina and
Isadora Duncan, actresses
Alla Nazimova,
Ona
Munson, and
Marlene Dietrich,
among others.
Later life
In 1964 Le Gallienne was presented with a special
Tony Award in recognition of her 50th year as an
actress and in honor of her work with the National Repertory
Theatre.
Although known primarily for her theatre work, she has also
appeared in films and television productions.
She earned an Oscar nomination for her work in Resurrection, for which she
gained the honor of being the oldest Oscar nominee up to that time
(1980) until Gloria Stuart in 1997;
and won an Emmy Award for a televised
version of The Royal
Family after having starred in a Broadway
theatre revival of that play
in 1976.
She made a rare guest appearance in a 1984 episode of
St. Elsewhere, appearing with
Brenda Vaccaro and
Blythe Danner as three women sharing a
hospital room.
Eva was a naturalized United States citizen. The
National Endowment for the
Arts recognized her with the
National Medal of Arts in
1986.
She died
at her home in Connecticut
of natural causes at
the age of 92.
References
- The Legacy of Eva Le Gallienne Helen Sheehy, 28
Dec 1998, playbill
- Peter Pan in America
- Stage Actors and Actresses, GLBTQ.com
- Page 2 of Maude Adams Photos
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