Celebrity Sexuality: Judith Anderson, Mrs Danvers, Sexuality and ‘Truthfulness’ in Biography

Abstract

Australian-born actress Judith Anderson's portrayal of the housekeeper Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock's 1940 film Rebecca has made her the poster girl for scholarly analyses of lesbian sexuality on film; and the plethora of books in the last few years about gays in Hollywood—scholarly and sensational—assume that Anderson was a lesbian. Yet evidence about her sexuality is highly ambiguous. This article uses Anderson's case to examine the biographer's problem in dealing accurately and meaningfully with their subject's sexuality, especially that of celebrities.

Notes

¹Anna Bemrose, Robert Helpmann: A Servant of Art. (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2008). The front flyleaf further describes the book as ‘A Career Perspective’. See reviews by Ian Britain, Australian Book Review, Dec 2008–Jan 2009 and Dennis Altman, Australian, 13 December 2008.

² Helpmann: The Authorised Biography of Sir Robert Helpmann, CBE (Brighton, UK: Angus and Robertson, 1978), 156.

³Wikipedia entry for Helpmann. Graeme Leech's review of Nigel Starck, Life after Death: The Art of the Obituary (Melbourne: University Press, 2006), Australian, 26 August 2006, called this obituary a ‘turning point for editors, who have since tried to publish the full truth, safe in the knowledge that the dead can't sue’. See also ‘Helpmann Obituary Leaves a Bad Taste’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 October 1986.

⁴L. Hickson, Woman's Day/Woman's World, 21 January 1981: 62–3, quoted in Michael Gard, Men Who Dance: Aesthetics, Athletics & the Art of Masculinity (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 79.

⁷Mark Twain, Autobiograpy, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 220–21.

⁵Susan Magarey and Kerrie Round, Roma the First: A Biography of Dame Roma Mitchell (Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press, 2007).

⁶Jim Davidson, A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W K Hancock (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010), Chap. 12; and Australian Book Review, July–August 2010: 42–5, esp. 44–5. See following review by Deryck Schreuder (46–7), who notes, without comment, that ‘Hancock lived an emotional life of triangular commitments – primarily to England, Australia and Italy’.

⁸See Katharine Cornell, Judith Anderson and Ruth Gordon, Cover, Time, 21 December 1942.

⁹For Anderson's plays see Internet Broadway Data Base.

¹⁰See Internet Movie Data Base.

¹¹ Los Angeles Times, 5 January 1941: C1; New York Times, 10 February 1941: 21; Hollywood Reporter, 21 March 1940: 3; Dr. Phelps Casts a Vote for Rebecca, clipping New York Public Library (NYPL); Daily Variety, 21 March 1940: 3; Los Angeles Times, 28 April 1940: C3.

¹²The copyright holder of Rebecca, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, would not give permission for us to include a film clip of this scene. Readers not familiar with it can readily view it on YouTube.

¹³Toni Ruberto, Buffalo News, 19 October 2001: G23. 

¹⁴Joseph I. Breen to David O. Selznick, 5 September 1939, 3, 4. Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles (MHL). Selznick was not allowed to retain the more overt statement by Mrs Danvers that Rebecca ‘despised all men. She was above all that!’ See Rhona J. Berenstein, ‘Adaptation, Censorship, and Audiences of Questionable Type: Lesbian Sightings in Rebecca (1940) and The Uninvited (1944)’, Cinema Journal (CJ) 37:3, 1998: 16–37 for the politics of censorship in Rebecca; also Patricia White, Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

¹⁵ Rebecca premiered in Los Angeles 27 March 1940 and New York City 28 March. It was officially released 12 April Internet Movie Data Base. Compare Olivier and Fontaine in advertisement, New York Times, 31 March: 4 with advertisement with Anderson, 6 April 1940. For knowing audience see Andrea Weiss, ‘“A Queer Feeling When I Look at You”: Hollywood Stars and Lesbian Spectatorship in the 1930s’, in Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (New York: Routledge, 1991) 286; for lesbian identification in a later generation see White, Uninvited, xiii.

¹⁶ Daily Variety, 21 March 1940: 3; Hollywood Reporter, 21 March 1940: 3; John Mosher, New Yorker, 30 March 1940; Boris Karloff, New York Sunday Times, 18 May 1941, clippings NYPL.

¹⁷For the linkage of lesbianism and horror see Berenstein, ‘Adaptation, Censorship, and Audiences of Questionable Type; ‘“I'm Not the Sort of Person Men Marry’: Monsters, Queers and Hitchcock's Rebecca’, cineACTION 29 (1992): 82–96; reprinted in Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture, ed. Corey K. Creekmur and Alexander Doty (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 239–61; and Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

¹⁸ Los Angeles Times, 24 May 1940: 28. For Haunting star Liam Neeson's memory of being scared as a child by Anderson in Rebecca see Laura Gross, Sun Mirror (London), 15 August 1999: 19.

¹⁹ Los Angeles Times, 25 September 1946: A7. For growth of lesbian communities during the war see M. Davis and E.L. Kennedy, ‘Oral History and the Study of Sexuality in the Lesbian Community’, Feminist Studies 12:1, 1986: 7–26.

²⁰Armen Svadjian, ‘A Life in Film Criticism: Robin Wood at 75’. Yourflesh, 1 January 2006, http://yourfleshmag.com/books/a-life-in-film-criticism-robin-wood-at-75/

²¹Robin Wood, Hitchcock's Films (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co, 1965); Svadjian, ‘A Life in Film Criticism’. For a comprehensive account of writings on Hitchcock see Jane Sloan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Filmography and Bibliography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Hans Lucas (Jean-Luc Godard), Maurice Schèrer (Eric Rohmer) and others began major critical discussion of Hitchcock's work in the French journal Cahiers du Cinéma from its first issue in 1951. The British journal Movie, which began in 1962, brought scholarly debate on Hitchcock to the English-speaking world.

²²‘Introduction (1965)’, in Robin Wood, Hitchcock's Films Revisited (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 74.

²³Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16:3, 1975: 6–18 (written 1973).

²⁴Vita Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), rev 1987. See Robin Wood, Canadian Forum, February 1982: 35–6.

²⁵ The Celluloid Closet (1995) produced and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. See New York Times, 13 October 1995. The DVD Special Edition (Sony 2001) includes an audio commentary with the late Russo, a 1990 interview and some deleted interviews making up a second documentary, Rescued From the Closet.

²⁶ Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Criterion Collection, 2001. See Los Angeles Times, 29 November 2001: F13.

²⁷White, Uninvited, 67.

²⁸Axel Madsen, The Sewing Circle: Sappho's Leading Ladies (New York: Kensington Books, 1995), pb 2002, 2, 124–5, 181–2 (for Hadleigh); David Ehrenstein, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928–2000 (New York: William Morrow, 1998). Updated Millennial Edition, HarperCollins (Perennial), 2000, 211; Diana McLellan, The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood (London: Robson Books, 2001); Boze Hadleigh, Hollywood Lesbians (New York: Barricade Books, 1994), 159–76.

²⁹London Observer, 5 November 1998: 3. Reference to ‘the bullish Anderson’ does not appear in Ehrenstein's book.

³⁰See Vincent Price in Denis Brian, Tallulah, Darling (New York: Macmillan, 1980: 90), cited in Madsen, Sewing Circle, 119.

³¹ Glasgow Herald, 18 May 2000: 6. See also Ruberto; Conrad; Julie Burchill, Guardian, 31 March 2001: 9; Hugh Massingberd, The Mail on Sunday (London), 1 April 2001:66; David Ehrenstein, Los Angeles Times, 30 December 2001: R2. William J. Mann, Behind The Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910–1969. Viking, 2001, 135–6, confesses to finding nothing ‘queer’ about Anderson's life, but still assumes she was (317).

³²Hadleigh, 170, quoting David Wallace, ‘Santa Barbara’, People, 24 September 1984.

³³Anderson's unpublished autobiography, ghost-written by Robert Wallsten 1961–4 is in the Wallsten (Robert) Papers, 1930s–1950s, University of California, Santa Barbara Special Collections (hereafter Autobiography).

³⁴Anderson to Lehman (Peter), posted 22 June 1929; posted 18 March 1932; ca. 10 December 1933, Dame Judith Anderson Collection, 1915–1980s, Special Collections, University of California, Santa Barbara (hereafter UCSB).

³⁵See Autobiography, 104–5, 113–113A, 167–8; correspondence from Metre, Greg Bruer, Percy Maude and Oliver Hogue, UCSB; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1919: 10:7; Anderson Diary, 5–23 April 1919, UCSB; Elyne Mitchell, ‘Hogue, Oliver (1880–1919)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 9 (Melbourne University Press, 1983), 326–7.

³⁸Anderson to Lehman, posted 19 September 1933, UCSB. Anderson always regretted her lack of schooling and her spelling and grammar are reproduced as written. Lehman's letters to Anderson have not been found.

³⁶Autobiography, 178–85.

³⁷Anderson to Nickolas Muray, posted 27 June 1928, Muray Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

³⁹Anderson to Lehman, posted 22 September 1933, UCSB.

⁴⁰Anderson to Lehman, (ca. 10 December 1933), UCSB. Anderson's older sister Elizabeth had a nervous breakdown.

⁴¹ Los Angeles Times, 20 May 1937: 16.

⁴²Anderson to Lehman, posted 20 October 1937, UCSB.

⁴³Autobiography, 382–6; Lilian Baylis to Anderson, 2 October 1937; Anderson to Lehman, 1? October 1937, UCSB.

⁴⁴Anderson to Lehman, posted 20 October 1937, UCSB.

⁴⁵Telegraphic exchanges between Anderson and Lehman, 31 December (1937)–9 February 1938; letters Anderson to Lehman, 31 December 1937–7 February 1938, UCSB.

⁴⁶Anderson to Lehman, posted 28 January 1938, UCSB. John Broadus Watson, best known for his research on infant behaviour, had a lifelong interest in sexual behaviour. His wife Rosalie had been a close friend of Anderson's before her death in 1935. Dr Hannah Stone was author, with her husband Abraham, of A Marriage Manual: A Practical Guide-Book to Sex and Marriage.

⁴⁷Anderson to McClintic, (spring 1938), Katharine Cornell Papers, Box 31, New York Public Library (hereafter Cornell).

⁴⁸Anderson to McClintic, 20 September 1938, Cornell.

⁴⁹Una Jeffers to Anderson, (spring/summer 1938), UCSB; Fred Johnson, ‘Interlude With The Calmer Judith Anderson’, 11 September (1948), clipping UCSB.

⁵⁰Anderson to Lehman, posted 30 October and 17 November 1938, UCSB.

⁵¹Anderson to Lehman, posted 14 November 1938, UCSB.

⁵² New York Times, 19 November 1938: 8; and 9 December: 30; correspondence Anderson to Lehman, 18–(29) November, UCSB.

⁵³Anderson to Lehman, (25) January 1939; and (30) November 1938, UCSB.

⁵⁴ New York Times, January 28, 1939: 22; Anderson to Lehman, 2 February, UCSB.

⁵⁵ Chicago Daily Tribune, 30 July: 10; Los Angeles Times, 24 August: 12.

⁵⁶ Blood Money (Twentieth Century, 1933). See Internet Movie Data Base.

⁵⁷Katherine Brown to David O. Selznick, 9 March 1939, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin: Rebecca, Cast, Mrs Danvers, Anderson, Judith (hereafter HRHRC).

⁵⁸David O. Selznick to Kay Brown, (14 July 1939), HRHRC; press release from Selznick International Pictures, 20 July, NYPL; New York Times, 21 July: 17.

⁵⁹See People, 23 May 1951: 31–2. Anderson wrote to McClintic, (after May 2, 1951), ‘Oh, the magic of it, the wonder of great theatre, well you gave me that and I will be everlastingly grateful’. (Cornell).

⁶⁰John Gielgud to mother, 17 January 1937, in Gielgud's Letters, introduced and edited by Richard Mangan. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004 (Letters).

⁶¹Cf Anderson to Lehman, posted 20 October 1937, UCSB. See Tad Mosel, Leading Lady: The World and Theatre of Katharine Cornell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978).

⁶²Anderson and producer/director (and former lover) Jed Harris had been discussing a production of Medea since the early 1930s. They commissioned Californian poet Robinson Jeffers to do the translation in 1945, but negotiations broke down and Harris withdrew. The Theatre Guild took up the option but decided not to go ahead. See Autobiography, 492–503; New York Times, 4 January 1946: 28 and 11 February: 36; 14 June: 17; Los Angeles Times, 3 June: A2.

⁶³Anderson and Greene were married 11 July 1946. See Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, 19 July: 6.

⁶⁴Michael Henry Adams, ‘“No Homo”: More Queers in the Mirror’, Huffington Post, posted 9 July 2009; accessed 29 August 2010. Amānullāh Khān was ruler of the Emirate of Afghanistan 1919–29. Soraya Tarzi, his liberated and influential wife, was his only wife (Wikipedia).

⁶⁵‘It Lasted Four Months’, News? 30 November 1946, clipping NYPL. See also Toby Rowland to Angna Enters, (late November 1946); Greene to Enters, 11 December (1946); and (9 March 1947), Enters Papers, NYPL (hereafter Enters); Los Angeles Times, 13 December 1946: A3; 24 January 1947: A7; and 30 January: A2.

⁶⁶ New York Times, 22 January 1947; 9 February: X1 and 11 February: 36; 14 March: 27; 26 April: 10; Los Angeles Times, 2 February: cover, F4; 17 February: A2; John Gielgud to mother, 29 April, Letters.

⁶⁷Autobiography, 503–14. For problems see correspondence Gielgud, Anderson, Jeffers, and Lawrence Langer, UCSB. For reception see New York Times, 21 October, 1947: 27; and 26 October: X1.

⁶⁸Autobiography, 487–92, 527–9; Diary, 28 January 1948, UCSB; New York Times, 29 January 1948: 29 and 31 January: 14; 6 March: 9; 26 March: 26; Johnson, ‘Interlude With The Calmer Judith Anderson’; John Gielgud to Mrs Robinson Jeffers, 12 September, Letters. For Robert Whitehead's later account see ‘A Theatregoer's Notebook’, Playbill, May 1982.

⁶⁹Autobiography, 530.

⁷⁰Autobiography, 529–31. For arrangements with McClintic see Diary, 12 March–11 August 1948, UCSB; Anderson Medea Lobero, Santa Barbara 2 and 4 September, Cornell. For reunion see postcard Rowland to Enters, 17 April 1948; Greene to Enters, (July), Enters; Diary, 4, 5 May; Los Angeles Times, 16 June: 19.

⁷¹Interview with author, 2004.

⁷²Autobiography, 549.

⁷³Autobiography, 549–60; Ellie (Greene Martin) to Enters, (ca. end August 1949), Enters; Los Angeles Times, 8 October: 15. Jessie Anderson arrived in New York 22 March 1950 with her daughter-in-law Laura, Susan aged 10, Judith, 8, David, 6 and Jenifer, 5. Frank Anderson did not arrive until 1951 because of visa problems.

⁷⁴ New York Herald Tribune, 21 March 1950, clipping NYPL.

⁷⁵ New York Times, 27 November: 38. The Tower Beyond Tragedy ANTA Playhouse November 26–December 22, 1950 Internet Broadway Data Base.

⁷⁶Autobiography, 565; New York Times, 24 December 1950: 41; Gielgud to mother, 1 January 1951, Letters.

⁷⁷Diary, 18 January–27 April 1951, UCSB. Los Angeles Times, 28 May: B3. For death of mother see People, 23 May: 31–2.

⁷⁸Hadleigh, 160.

⁷⁹Art collector Wright Ludington was a founder of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, vice president in 1940 and president in 1951. See Jean Lipman, ed. The Collector in America (New York: A Studio Book/The Viking Press, 1971). Ala Story was director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art 1952–57. For Lehmann see Michael H. Kater, Never Sang for Hitler: The Life and Times of Lotte Lehmann (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); for Holden, Los Angeles Times, 25 August 1996: 30.

⁸⁰Diane Langmore, Glittering Surfaces: A Life of Maie Casey (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997). There is an extensive correspondence from Casey in the Anderson Papers, UCSB.

⁸¹Jane Bowles to Anderson, after 14 February 1954; see also Diary, 8 and 9 February, UCSB.

⁸²Leo Lerman, 15 February 1954, in The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2007), 155–6.

⁸³ Los Angeles Times, 27 September 1970: 30, 40.

⁸⁴Conrad, The Observer, 15 November 1998.

⁸⁵Margaret Webster produced and directed Family Portrait and directed Anderson and Maurice Evans in Macbeth in 1941. See Milly S. Barranger, Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

⁸⁶The Book Show, Radio National, 23 September 2011.

⁸⁷Hadleigh, 169.

⁸⁸See Deacon, ‘Shallow Roots? Judith Anderson and Her Transnational Families’, History Program Seminar, RSSS, ANU, 20 August 2009.