Latitude in Mass-Produced Culture's Capital: New Women and Other Players in Hollywood, 1920-1941

Frontiers, 2004 by Abrams, Brett L

Nazimova used interviews at her home to publicly attack gender conventions. The movie star emphasized that a woman must live her own life: "A woman living a creative life is bound, necessarily, to do things sometimes defiant to convention. In order to fulfill herself, she should live freely." Nazimova's position regarding women's domestic role was unique even among women who identified themselves as feminists during the 1920s.38 Scholars have observed that a few second-generation New Woman writers used their feminist language to attack conventions. However, their efforts sparked representations that depicted them as unnatural followed by criticism and the full brunt of social ostracism and legal censorship. Nazimova and other Hollywood players issued stinging attacks on gender and romantic conventions of the era and received little criticism from the media, politicians, or other industry people.39

Nazimova was not the only woman in Hollywood to use her house as a location for the expression of Hollywood player behaviors. Women dominated the industry's screenwriting departments throughout the 1920s. As career women who earned significant incomes, screenwriters faced questions about their attitudes toward their careers, motherhood, and family. Indeed, the sexual and gender behavior of these women was questionable enough that twenty years later F. Scott Fitzgerald noted in his last novel, The Last Tycoon, that successful screenwriter Jane Meloney received numerous labels, many focused on the private world of her sexuality. "The little blonde of fifty," he wrote, "could hear the fifty assorted opinions of Hollywood . . . a sentimental dope, the smartest woman on the lot, and of course, nymphomaniac, virgin, pushover, a Lesbian."40 Most labels were generally not used by studio employees to attack but to understand the wealthy writer.

The extensive newspaper coverage of a bizarre love triangle in the late 1920s thrilled readers with revelations that some screenwriters pursued their Hollywood player interests in their homes. After the disclosure of her husband's death and his female biological sex, screenwriter Beth Rowland explained in the press that her marriage to Peter Stratford resulted from the love and respect that emerged during a two-year correspondence before Stratford declared "his" love for Rowland. The widow described her role as a platonic wife, nurse, and homemaker to a fastidious gentleman. However, the testimony of others, including Rowland's son, depicted Stratford as a healthy and active person, raising the suggestion that the pair shared a same-sex marriage. This appears more likely when one considers that Rowland used the term "infidelity" when she discovered Stratford wrote endearing letters to Rowland's screenwriter friend Alma Thompson.41

Alma Thompson appeared to live a player's existence in a ranch house in Hollywood. Thompson studied mysticism and claimed she wrote to Stratford out of sympathy for his affliction, but their letters contained appeals for a deeper love and carried the salutations "Dearest Lamb" and "Dear Pedar." Thompson sent Stratford secret rose petals and Stratford referred to Thompson as "my soul." The exchange of deeply emotional letters with a person she knew as the husband of her friend made Thompson the "other" woman. Whether Thompson knew herself to be part of a triangle of three females, the screenwriter actively engaged in an adulterous emotional affair with a person she believed to be a married man, or knew to be a woman living as a man. Fittingly, Alma Thompson's one screen credit came a few years later for the 1933 feature I Loved A Woman.42