The sewing circle : Hollywood's greatest secret : female stars who loved other women / by Axel Madsen.

"A Birch Lane Press book."

Includes index

Cont.: The odd couple : Mercedes and Thalberg -- Tangled lives : women who loved women -- In love : Garbo and Mercedes -- "In America, men don't like fat women" -- Lover to the stars -- The perfect sapphic liaison -- Enter Joan Crawford and Katharine Cornell -- Dietrich on the rebound -- Queen Christina -- The flaming twenties -- Stanwyck : the best-kept secret -- Hollywood and Broadway : transcontinentals -- Sodom-on-the-Pacific -- Talking pictures -- Hepburn and the lady director -- Odd girls abroad -- Camille : the all-gay production -- Screen style -- Judy Garland in the land of Oz -- Fresh faces -- The sisterhood and the war -- The dark age -- Seeking to belong -- Fifty years later : today's showbiz lesbians.

This is the documented story of some of the most glamorous women in the world who lived two lives--in public as larger-than-life romantic heroines of the screen, and in private as lesbians or bisexuals. From the early years of the "talkies" through the beginning of the 1950s, they were secretly known as the Sewing Circle, and this is their story. Among them were Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Tallulah Bankhead, Katherine Cornell, Barbara Stanwyck, and Joan Crawford. Others whose secret lives are divulged for the first time: Maude Adams, Lynn Fontanne, Myrna Loy, Edith Head, Janet Gaynor, Jill Esmond, Elsa Lanchester, Isadora Duncan, Laurette Taylor, Libby Holman, Marjorie Main, Agnes Moorehead, and Dame Judith Anderson.--Publisher description.