Part 7

_The Outcast._ Greenberg 1933, Willey Book Co 1948. The sequel to the above, this finds the heroine of _The Scorpion_ living quietly in the country. She undergoes a painful and unsatisfactory affair with Fiametta, a dancer, but when this proves unsatisfactory settles down sadly but peacefully with a couple of sexless men friends.

WEISS, JOE, and Ralph Dean. _Anything Goes._ Bedside Books pbo, 1959. Fast-moving evening waster with a minor lesbian angle.

WELCH, DENTON. _Maiden Voyage._ L. B. Fischer 1945, (m) minor.

_In Youth is Pleasure._ L. B. Fischer 1946, (m) minor.

+ WELLS, CATHERINE. "The Beautiful House" Harpers, March 1912. An idyll of two women ends tragically with the marriage of the younger.

WELLS, KERMIT. _Reformatory Women._ Bedside Books pbo 1959. Surprisingly good for this publisher of rubbish. After escaping from a sadistic lesbian matron in the reformatory, Noreen works as a fake butch in a Greenwich Village Gay bar and tourist trap; later goes to work for gangsters in a roadhouse, falls for a nice boy and goes back to serve her reformatory sentence and marry him when she gets out. Pleasant evening waster.

WETHERELL, ELIZABETH (pseud of Susan Warner). _The Wide Wide World._ Many editions, very easily obtained, a well-known girls story of the 1880s or thereabout, dealing with Ellen, an orphan of twelve. Much of the first half of the novel is devoted to a very innocent, but exceptionally intense, close relationship between Ellen and her beloved "Miss Alice", daughter of the local minister. Good of kind, and distinctly relevant on an adolescent level.

WHEELER, HUGH. _The Crippled Muse._ Rinehart, 1952. A "sparkling comedy" of Capri contains the story of two women who have lived together for ten years; the younger girl is tired of the arrangement, and the older uses her feelings of guilt and shame to hold her captive. In the course of the novel she manages to free herself.

WHITE, PATRICK. _The Aunt's Story._ Viking Press 1948. fco.

WIMBERLEY, GWYNNE. _One Touch of Ecstasy._ Frederick Fell, 1959. A lesbian affair gives "one touch of ecstasy" to a woman's inhibited, unhappy life, allowing her to return to her husband with wakened perceptions.

WILDER, ROBERT. _Wait for Tomorrow._ Putnam 1950, Bantam 1953. A girl's unwilling entanglement with a predatory lesbian, in a romance of an imaginary Balkan country, leads to all sorts of violence and cloak-and-dagger stuff. Good.

+ WILHELM, GALE. _Torchlight to Valhalla._ Random, 1938, pbr tct

_The Strange Path_, Lion 1953, Berkley 1958, 1959. Morgen, rootless and drifting after the death of her artist father, to whom she had been childishly close, is loved by two fine young men, but finds her happiness with a strange young girl, Toni. Major, well known.

_We Too Are Drifting._ Triangle Books 1938-39; Modern Library 1935. pbr Lion Books 1951, Berkley 1957, 58, 59, 60. Probably the major novel of the thirties to deal with lesbians; perhaps the best of all time. In substance it deals with the boyish, but feminine Jan Morale; her struggle to escape a slightly sordid affair with Madelaine, a married woman, and to find happiness, despite family complications, with a young girl, Victoria. Told with fairness, restraint, and skill--not to mention that this is one of the dozen or so books on this entire list to display not only _some_, but _exceptional_ literary merit.

WILLIAMS, TENNESSEE. "Something Unspoken" in _27 Wagons Full of Cotton._ New Directions, 1953. Also in Best Short Plays of 1955-56, Dodd, Mead, 1956. A play; I marked this for fco, received a protest: "Everybody will enjoy this." Compromise; everybody will enjoy this who likes Tennessee Williams.

WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS. _The Knife of the Times._ Dragon Press, 1932, hcr tct _Make Light of It_, Random House 1950, (m). The title story is in DWCory, _21 Variations_.

WILLIAMS, ISABEL. _Hellcat._ Greenberg 1934, pbr Dell 1952. Unpleasant girl who uses everyone for her own purposes includes a lesbian among her victims.

WILLINGHAM, CALDER. (pseud). _End as a Man._ Vanguard 1947, pbr Signet co. 1957, (m).

WILLIS, GEORGE. _Little Boy Blues._ Dutton, 1947. Concerns the machinations of a lesbian to achieve marriage and motherhood as a "front".

WILSON, ETHEL D. _Hetty Dorval._ Macmillan 1948, fco.

WINDHAM, DONALD. _The Hitchhiker._ Florence, Italy, priv. print. (m).

_Servants with Torches._ N. Y. 1955 priv. print. (m).

_Dog Star._ Doubleday, 1950, (m).

WINSLOE, CHRISTA. _The Child Manuela._ (Trans. Agnes Scott Farrar, 1933.) Motherless Manuela, sent to a strict boarding-school because of supposed misconduct with a boy (actually she was only fascinated with his mother) falls in love with Elizabeth von Bernberg, one of the teachers. The woman's behavior is strictly correct, but her warmth of personality attracts all the love-starved, inhibited children; Manuela, exhilarated and slightly drunk at a school party, babbles of her love for the Fraulein, and is punished so severely that she throws herself from a top-floor window.

_Girl Alone._ (Trans. Agnes Scott). Farrar 1936. A girl in difficulties finds temporary refuge with a lesbian friend.

WINSTON, DAOMA. _The Golden Tramp._ pbo Beacon Books 1959. Evening waster about a woman writer trying it both ways.

WOLLER, OLGA. _Strange Conflict._ Pageant, 1955. Purple-passaged and would-be-horrifying story about a Eurasian hermaphrodite--supposedly as she is because of her mother's intercourse with demons before her birth--who inspires love and brings death to everyone she knows, male or female.

WOODFORD, JACK. _Male and Female._ Woodford Press, 1935.

_Unmoral._ Woodford Press, 1938. Both of these are evening wasters--racy stuff, not bad at all when compared with the current crop of trashy paperbacks. The "lesbian" content, of course, is strictly for fun.

WOOD, CLEMENT. _Strange Fires._ Woodford Press, 1951. "Shipwreck on Lesbos" in his _Desire_, Berkeley n. d. 1958 (copyright 1950, perhaps Woodford Press?) Clement Wood is either a pen name for, or a successor to, Jack Woodford, a popular writer of racy, risque, sexy books of little literary merit but relatively innocuous even for teen-agers ... the trash of the thirties and forties was a very different thing from the scv of the fifties.

WOOD, CLEMENT, and Gloria Goddard. _Fair Game._ Woodford Press, 1949, pbr Beacon 1958. Evening waster about girls coming to the wicked big city, and we all know what happens to such girls in this kind of book. One of them falls in with the dangerous women instead of the dangerous men.

+ WOOLF, VIRGINIA. _Orlando._ _To The Lighthouse._

_Mrs. Dalloway._ All of these are classics easily available in small, medium and large libraries, college bookstores, and the like. The lesbian content is vague and subtle, but good; one of the best woman writers.

WOUK, HERMAN. _Marjorie Morningstar._ Doubleday 1955, pbr 1956. The variant element in this is minor and problematical. In conversation, it occurred to a group of reviewers that the developing relationship between Marjorie and Marsha "resembled a love affair", that Marsha's attack of hysterics at her wedding, and her outcry that all she had ever wanted was a friend, and now she'd always be alone, was of distinct significance. BAYOR.

WYLIE, PHILIP. _The Disappearance._ Rinehart 1951, pbr Pocket Books 1958. Science fiction; for men, all women vanish; for women, all men vanish. The problem of lesbianism arises in the women's world; Wylie, though technically and superficially approving of homosexuality, has his heroine reject it for herself, saying "I'm not a child."

_Opus 21._ Rinehart 1949, pbr Signet 1952, 1960. The hero, rewriting a book in a hotel during a weekend of crisis, runs across many unusual characters; among them a woman, shaken because her husband is having a homosexual affair, is shamed into tolerance by dallying with a lesbian prostitute. Wylie, again superficially approving, has his hero act in a skirt-withdrawing way, refusing such things for himself at the last minute in every book.

WYNDHAM, JOHN. "Consider her Ways" in _Sometime, Never_, Ballantine 1956-57. Science Fiction; a woman experimenting with strange drugs goes into the future, where all men have perished and society resembles that of the ant. Good.

_The Midwich Cuckoos._ Ballantine, 1957. Science Fiction. Alien visitation from outer space leaves every nubile female in Midwich--married or single, young or old--pregnant. Hilariously funny situations arise; one of the funniest involves a pair of lesbians. Wonderful fun.

YAFFE, JAMES. _Nothing But the Night._ Little, Brown & Co, 1957, pbr Bantam 1959, (m). More fake Leopold-Loeb. Good.

YOURCENAR, MARGUERITE. _Hadrian's Memoirs._ Farrar, 1954, qpb Anchor 1954, (m).

ZOLA, ÉMILE. _Nana._ Literally dozens of hardcover and paperback editions of a shocker about a street girl who, in addition to all her affairs with men, also has an affair with Satin, a streetwalker.

_A Lesson in Love._ Abridged edition of Pot Bouille. Pyramid, 1959.

ZUGSMITH, ALBERT. _The Beat Generation._ Bantam pbo based on screenplay by Richard Mathesen, (m) minor.

_The Poetry of Lesbiana_

An index of Poems and Poets of interest to Collectors of Lesbiana

_Compiled by Gene Damon_

Briefly, this includes variant as well as overtly lesbian poetry, written in English or available in English translation. The arrangement is chronological, rather than alphabetical. All of these are easily available in public libraries, unless otherwise indicated.

THE ANCIENT WORLD:

_Erinna_--only one fragment left. Available in the Greek Anthology and other miscellaneous collections of that type.

_Nossis_--Various variant poems and fragments. Greek Anthology, Putnam, 1915-26 (5 vol.). Also in similar collections.

_Sappho_--The classic poet of lesbianism. Over 50 editions available in hard covers. New translation by Mary Barnard, University of California Press, 1958, qpb $1.25. An attractive edition is also published for $2.50 by the Pater Pauper Press, on display in most bookstores.

_Juvenal_--Satires. Many editions in hardcover and qpb. (Rolfe Humphries trans. and ed. the Indiana University Press, 1958, $1.50; also number 997 in Everyman's Library, $1.85.) The Sixth Satire.

_Martial_--His "Epigrams" contain various references to lesbians. Cambridge University Press, 1924, $2.75.

THE MIDDLE AGES:

_Ariosto, Ludovico_--Orlando Furioso. London, Bell, 1907.

_Labe, Louise_--Love Sonnets (trans. by Frederick Prokosch), New Directions, 1947, $2.50, still in print.

_Shakespeare, William_--The first 27 of the "Sonnets" are generally adjudged to be male-homosexual in emphasis and are therefore of interest to collectors in this field.

THE ROMANTIC POETS--19th CENTURY:

_Coleridge, Samuel T._--Christabel. Long narrative poem of a curious attachment between a guileless young girl and a female demon; available in virtually every anthology of English literature.

_Rossetti, Christina_--Goblin Market. Lovely and fantastic poem with distinctly variant overtones. See anthologies of English literature.

_Romani, Felice_--Norma. Italian libretto for the opera by Vincenzo Bellini, generally adjudged to be subtly lesbian in overtones. Many translations are available in collections of opera libretti, but most English translations edit out the variant content or alter the emphasis.

_Baudelaire, Charles_--The Flowers of Evil, (trans. from the French of Les Fleurs du Mal by Edna St. Vincent Millay and George Dillon) N. Y., Harper, 1936, also New Directions, pbr, 1958. Many other editions and translations available.

_Swinburne, Algernon Charles_--Poems and Ballads, 2 vols, London, Chatto & Windus, 1893, 1895. Many of the poems in this series are explicitly or implicitly lesbian. In the interests of space limitation, only the major titles will be listed for those who want to sift through anthologies; Anactoria, Fragoletta, Sapphics, At Eleusis, Sonnet with a copy of Mlle. de Maupin, The Masque of Queen Bersabe, Erotion. The entire series of Poems and Ballads is available in hcr no. 961, Everyman's Library, Dutton, 1940, 50, for $1.95.

_Louÿs, Pierre_--Songs of Bilitis. Many editions available, the most easily located probably being the Liveright "Collected works of Pierre Louys", $3.50. There is also a paperback edition, Avon Red and Gold Library, no date. The "Songs" have been published singly in numerous privately printed and illustrated editions, some of which are very beautiful collector's items.

_Brontë, Emily_--Complete Poems. N. Y. Columbia University Press, 1941 (still in print at $4.00). A scattering of these poems are (or can be interpreted as) vaguely variant.

_Mencken, Idah Isaacs_--Infelicia. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1875. (Rare, and expensive.)

_Field, Michael_--(pseud. of two Englishwomen.) Entire work of lesbian interest and a "must" for completists. Most medium to large public libraries have some of their work.

_Dickinson, Emily_--Bolts of Melody. N. Y. Harper, 1945. Also variant poems are scattered throughout her earlier editions. (Selected Poems, Modern Library, 1948, $1.65.)

THE MODERN POETS:

_Lowell, Amy_--No one volume of her work can be singled out; her poems are perhaps the most openly variant of any of the English or American poets. Her "Complete Poetical Works" is still in print; Boston, Houghton & Mifflin Co., 1955; Introduction by Louis Untermeyer, $6.00.

_O'Neill, Rose_--The Master Mistress. N. Y., Knopf, 1922. The creator of the "Kewpies" also was the writer of these sensitive, occasionally erotic poems. Perhaps a dozen are explicitly lesbian.

_Hall, Radclyffe_--Poems of the Past and Present, London, Chapman & Hall, 1910. Songs of Three Counties, Chapman & Hall, 1913. The Forgotten Island, London, Chapman & Hall, 1915. Sheaf of Verses, London, Chapman & Hall, 1905. Twixt Earth and Stars, London, Chapman & Hall, 1906.

These poems by the author of "Well of Loneliness" are so overt that it is almost unbelievable that they were printed at all, but they were, and I have the books to prove it ... she managed to get away with it, I guess, because she talks in these poems as if she were a man, writing to a woman.

_Millay, Edna St. Vincent_--Collected Poems, N. Y., Harper, 1956, $6.00. This is the favored anthology of Millay for this purpose, since it contains everything of hers which is variant in tone. However, there are many single volumes of her poetry available, and also pbrs; Collected Lyrics (Washington Square, 50c), and Collected Sonnets (Washington Square, 50c).

_Sackville-West, Victoria_--King's Daughter, N. Y., Doubleday, 1930.

_Sterling, George_--Strange Waters. Privately printed, n.d., also in American Esoterica, N. Y. Macy-Masius, 1927. Lengthy narrative poem of supposed incestuous lesbianism ... shocker.

_Doolittle, Hilda (H.D.)_--Red Roses for Bronze, London, Lord, Chatto & Windus. Also the Grove Press qpb, Selected Poems of H.D., 1957; this, however, does not contain the best-known of Sappho paraphrases, "Fragment Thirty-six". Also "Collected Poems", Liveright, $2.50.

_Pitter, Ruth_--English poetess, whose work is rather difficult to locate in this country. Many of her early poems are tinged with variance and well worth the effort of locating them in large libraries.

_Smith, Alicia Kay_--Only in Whispers. Privately printed; Falmouth, Rockport, Maine. This is the hardest book on this list to obtain, and of course, the most overt. Ardently but in good taste, this tells of a lengthy and beautiful lesbian affair. A "must" book for serious collectors who like poetry.

_Wright, James_--The Green Wall. Yale University Press, 1957, $3.00. Two overt poems in an excellent and sensitive collection.

_Variant Films_

compiled by LauraJean Ermayne and Gene Damon

With the exception of a few privately filmed and circulated stag films, which of course do not come within the scope of this study, lesbianism is treated only vaguely and by indirection in motion pictures. Hollywood codes (which regulate distribution even of foreign films in this country) state unequivocally that homosexuality may not be portrayed _or suggested._ (Italics mine). Even when the predominantly homosexual novel COMPULSION was filmed, the script--though including a rape scene--was fudged so that the relationship between the two boys was never hinted at--except vaguely in one scene, where Orson Welles as the great lawyer said that the opposition might find "something fishy" in the fact that they had no other friends. Your editor has since been informed that the movie NEVER SO FEW portrayed recognizable homosexuals. Hollywood codes are growing less stringent by the day, with the general relaxation of censorship, and by next year there should be some additions to this list. Thanks are due to Miss Ermayne for allowing us to reprint the material used in her article on The Sapphic Cinema in THE LADDER for March, 1959 ... the Editors.

THE ADVENTURES OF KING PAUSOLE. Filmed in France in 1932, with Emil Jannings. Based on the Pierre Louys novel, this starred 366 models and dancers from the Folies Bergère; among these near-nude and nubile nymphs was one disguised as a male ballet dancer, with whom the King's daughter Aline had a romance even after discovering that they were of the same sex.

ALL ABOUT EVE took the Academy Award in 1950. There is a very lesbian situation used to introduce the main protagonist into the movie; later events proved the woman only pretending lesbian-type devotion, but the inference, in the beginning, is clear and unmistakable. (GD)

THE BARKER 1928. A short silent picture which was banned in many cities because it featured a scene in which a very butchy type in men's pajamas got into bed with a fluffy blonde type; caused a lot of critical hoop-la. (GD)

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, a film based on the Lillian Hellman play reviewed in this Checklist, bears a question mark; will someone who has seen the picture please let us know whether lesbian content was implicit in the movie?

CHILDREN OF LONELINESS, outright anti-homophile propaganda, was mostly male-oriented, but did contain a gay night-club scene, and picture and office butch whose offer of affection and protection drove one girl to a psychiatrist's couch--where she was counselled against "abnormal love".

DARK VICTORY. 1939, recently shown on TV, concerns a talented, charming woman (Bette Davis) dying of a brain tumor; her constant companion and secretary is clearly in love with her, and there were numerous beautiful and heartbreaking scenes, some of which would be impossible in a movie not dealing with such a sad situation.

CLUB DES FEMMES (Girl's Club in English) an admirable French film starring Danielle Darieux, reviewed at length in THE LADDER. The lesbian element is treated explicitly and with taste and charm.

ESCAPE TO YESTERDAY, a French film with one brief sequence in a cabaret, where recognizably lesbian types were portrayed.

MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM, a classic German film of the thirties, reviewed at length in J H Foster's book, starring Hertha Thiele as Manusia and Dorothea Wieck as her teacher. The film has recently been re-made but has not yet reached the USA.

THE GODDESS, an art film released about a year ago, starring Kim Stanley, shows the life of an unwanted child who grows up to be a movie queen and ends up living with her secretary, obviously a lesbian; the relationship is portrayed with unusual frankness. This movie is still playing in specialty theatres around the big cities.

NO EXIT, a French film of the play by Jean-Paul Sartre; setting, limbo; one of the characters, a lesbian who fell in love with a married woman and drove her to suicide by spooking her.

OPEN CITY, realistic Italian film of 10 years or so ago, had a recognizable lesbian type-cast in it.

PIT OF LONELINESS, a French film based on the novel OLIVIA and starring Simone Simon. "Something of a disappointment" says LJE.

QUEEN CHRISTINA, 1934. This famous screen classic starred Greta Garbo; the variant bits were minor, but they were there. (GD)

ROSE OF WASHINGTON SQUARE 1939. Now-dated tear-jerker starring Alice Faye; in one long scene the heroine sings standing by a piano, while a clearly seen, very mannish and extremely obvious "type" drools over her. Not imagination; this one was the veddy veddy correct, monocled type. (GD)

SIGN OF THE RAM, a filming circa 1947 of the Margaret Ferguson novel, starred Susan Peters as the wheelchaired heroine; the "crush" between Leah and Christine was treated vaguely but recognizably to anyone who had read the book.

TIME OF DESIRE. "Much has been made of the Uranian aspect of this film but personally I couldn't see it...." LJE

TORST ("Thirst") directed by Ingmar Bergman, is supposed to tell the lives of three women strangely in love, including a lesbian. As yet none of your editors or contributors have seen the film.

TURNABOUT, the Thorne Smith sex-farce where a man's ego is transmuted into a woman's body.

TITLE UNKNOWN; 1950 or 1951; French with English subtitles; action took place in a girl's reformatory, much reference to lesbianism and some overt scenes; one where a girl caressed the breast of another and whispered love words to her, another where a tough street type tells a young innocent "See these marks on my thighs, they are each the marks of a lover, the left leg for boys and the right for girls." I don't see any other way to interpret that scene. (GD)

THE END, OF COURSE, IS NOT YET.

Related Publications

Information about the following publishers in the field of homosexual studies was supplied by the editors; we at the Checklist assume no responsibility for this information. We have, however, been constant readers of all three of these magazines and can recommend them as dignified, worthwhile and occasionally scholarly pioneering in a neglected field; they deserve support.

ONE, INCORPORATED. 232 South Hill Street, Los Angeles 12, California. Non-profit organization, established in 1952, concerned with the problems and interests of homosexual men and women; publishers of:

ONE Magazine, monthly. Five dollars per year, fifty cents per copy. Sent first class, sealed. Editor Don Slater; Woman's editor, Alison Hunter. Editorials, fiction, poetry, articles, book reviews, letters, artwork. Special attention given to the Feminine Viewpoint. Fiction, articles, poetry by and about the lesbian.

ONE Institute Quarterly; Homophile Studies. Official Organ of One Institute, a university-level facility presenting classes on the history, biology, sociology and psychology of homosexuality. Articles include scholarly evaluation of literary figures such as Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, homosexuality and religion, etc. Five dollars per year, $1.50 single copy. Editor James Kepner, Jr.