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"THAT FURIOUS LESBIAN": THE STORY OF MERCEDES DE ACOSTA. By Robert A. Schanke. Theater in the Americas Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003; pp. xxv + 213. $45.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.
WOMEN IN TURMOIL: SIX PLAYS BY MERCEDES DE ACOSTA. Edited with an introduction by Robert A. Schanke. Theater in the Americas Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003; pp. xxviii + 235. $45.00 cloth.
Robert A. Schanke's two-book offering in the Theater in the Americas Scries is a tribute to the life and work of Mercedes de Acosta (1893-1968), an avowed lesbian playwright, novelist, and poet who during her lifetime was vilified as a calculating seductress and who died penniless and forgotten. "To the manner born," with family connections to New York City's high society and the theatrical world, de Acosta grew up surrounded by neighbors like the Astors and Vanderbilts; her early childhood experiences included weekly excursions with Augustin Daly to rehearsals and theatrical productions. Through her socially prominent sister Rita, she met Bessie Marbury, a theatrical agent and producer who introduced the writer to several of her future lovers and until her death in 1933 served as a friend and mentor. Schanke's biography, which won ForeWord magazine's 2003 book of the year award in the category of gay and lesbian nonfiction, concentrates on these associations as well as on de Acosta's family background and makes it apparent that her personal life rather than her plays makes her a particularly interesting subject.
The author illustrates that Mercedes de Acosta was a devotee of the theatre throughout her lifetime and that she developed relationships with some of the most important performers of her day: dancers Tamara Karsavina and Isadora Duncan, whose autobiography she helped edit and helped ensure its publication in 1927; and actresses Alla Nazimova, Hope Williams, and Eva Le Gallienne, for whom she wrote two of her produced plays, Jehanne D'Arc and Sandro Botticelli. While attempting to fulfill a Hollywood contract in the 1930s, de Acosta struck up a number of romantic liaisons with some of the silver screen's most important actresses: Pola Negri, Ona Munson, Marlene Dietrich, and the love of her life, Greta Garbo, for whom she hoped to write screenplays in which they would star....