#occupation:singer

[ladiesalmanack]

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)

Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress, who performed on stage, film and television for sixty years.

She was orphaned and raised in foster homes. She started her career in 1923 at the age of sixteen as a Ziegfeld girl, and became a Broadway star with her role in the musical Burlesque (1927), after which she transitioned from the stage to the film industry. Some of her iconic roles were in Night Nurse (1931), Baby Face (1933), The Lady Eve (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), and Walk on the Wild Side (1962).

She was nominated for four Academy Awards and received an Honorary Oscar in 1982. She was ranked as the 11th-greatest female star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.

Her status of Hollywood icon and affiliation to Republicans make it quite impossible to openly discuss her sexuality, even today. She bought land, build a ranch and lived on it with her agent's wife, Marion Marx, and most likely had a 40 years relationship with her publicist Helen Ferguson, who allegedly admitted there was no doubt in her mind that Barbara & Joan Crawford, on top of their very well-known friendship, had been intimate on more than one occasion. Find here a thread of all her possible female lovers.

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Juliette Gréco (1927-2020)

Juliette Gréco was a French singer and actress. During World War II, her mother, Juliette Lafeychine, and her sister, Charlotte Gréco, both members of the Resistance, were deported to Ravensbrück. Juliette, aged 16, was arrested along with her sister. Charlotte was tortured by the Gestapo, and Juliette was severely beaten. Unlike her sister, however, she was released due to her young age and found herself alone and penniless on the streets of Paris. She found refuge with a former French teacher, Hélène Duc, who was a member of the Resistance and was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" for having saved dozens of Jewish children in the south of France.

After her mother and sister returned from deportation, Juliette and Charlotte settled in Paris. Juliette Gréco spent the post-war years in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which was at the time a very poor neighborhood, but one of the centers of Parisian cultural and artistic life. She took acting classes, landed her first roles, and then launched a singing career. In 1949, she participated in the reopening of the cabaret "Le Bœuf sur le toit". From the early 1950s, she began a long career that would last nearly 60 years and make her one of the most iconic figures in French music. She also starred in some thirty films and in the television series "Belphégor, or the Phantom of the Louvre," which was a huge popular success.

Juliette Gréco confided to the German newspaper "Die Zeit" that she had had romantic relationships with women. She notably had an affair with the writer Françoise Sagan and the singer Annabel Buffet.

[ladiesalmanack]

Lizabeth Scott (1921-2015)

Lizabeth Scott was an Amercian actress and singer, known as a film noir star during the 1940s and 1950s. She started a career as a model and acted on Broadway before transitioning to films in Hollywood. Of her 22 films, she was the leading lady in all but three.

Some of her most famous roles were in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), Desert Fury (1947, see gifs below), and Too Late for Tears (1949).

Although entertaining public affairs with men, Lizabeth Scott never married and apparently lived as a single woman. She was in the midst of a scandal in 1954 when tabloids claimed she was a lesbian whose name had been listed in "the little black books kept by Hollywood prostitutes". She was also said to have frequented famous lesbian nightclubs in Paris and mingled with Frede, a famous lesbian entertainer.

The film All About Eve (1950) starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter was said to be based on the relationship between Tallulah Bankhead and Lizabeth Scott, which in turn sparked rumours of a romance between them (or was it the other way around?).

[ladiesalmanack]

Emma Calvé (1858-1942)

Emma Calvé, born Rosa Noémie Emma Calvet, was a French opera singer. During her 44-year career, Emma Calvé was a huge international star, regularly singing in the greatest opera houses in France, England, Italy, the United States, as well as performing in India, Japan, and Australia. She is most famous for her interpretation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, which she performed over 1,000 times.

In 1901, Emma Calvé had an affair with Natalie Barney. A few months later, Natalie Barney asked Emma Calvé for help in winning back Renée Vivien, who refused to see her. Natalie and Emma, ​​disguised as street singers, appeared outside Renée's window. While Emma sang an excerpt from G.W. Gluck's opera "Orpheus and Eurydice," entitled "I lost my Eurydice," Natalie threw Renée a bouquet of flowers in which was hidden a poem begging Renée to see her again.

[ladiesalmanack]

Clara Smith (1894-1935)

Clara Smith was an American classic female blues singer, named as the "Queen of Moaners". In 1910, Smith began working on African-American theatre circuits, in tent shows, and vaudeville. By the time she settled in New York City in 1923, she had performed at major theatres across the States of the time, such as the Lyric in New Orleans, and the Dream Theatre in Columbus. That year she made the first of her commercially successful series of gramophone recordings with Columbia Records. She recorded two duets with Bessie Smith, who was the only blues singer of the era whose record sales topped hers—"My Man Blues" and "Far Away Blues". Smith was mentor and lover of Josephine Baker. She is accredited for giving Baker her start in the recording business.

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Carole Landis (1919-1948)

Carole Landis, born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste, was an American film actress who worked in Hollywood under a Twentieth Century-Fox contract. Her breakout role was in Hal Roach Studios' One Million B.C., 1940.

She was also a singer and starred in Broadway's musical A Lady Says Yes, 1945, alongside her lover Jacqueline Susann, who would become an author and whose character Jennifer North, from her 1966 best-selling novel Valley of the Dolls, is said to have been based on Landis. During World War II, she toured with the USO (United Service Organizations) as a pin-up. She is photographed below at her wedding party with Kay Francis, one of her rumoured lovers.

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Ada Bricktop Smith (1894-1984)

Ada 'Bricktop' Smith was an African-American Jazz singer, dancer and entertainer. She owned famous nightclubs in Paris (the renowned 'Chez Bricktop' in Pigalle), Mexico city and Rome.

She started her career when she was 16, performing in Vaudeville circuits and in Harlem at Barron's Exclusive Club. Her career was a very enduring one and she performed across the world well into her eighties. She wrote her autobiography, Bricktop by Bricktop, published in 1983 by Welcome Rain Publishers. She also broadcast a radio programme in Paris from 1938 to 1939, for the French government.

She was dedicated throughout her life to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest and oldest American civil rights organisation, formed in 1909 to advance justice for African Americans. According to Josephine Baker's son, Jean-Claude, a homosexual himself, and as recorded in his own mother's biography, titled Josephine - The Hungry Heart, Baker and Bricktop were lovers for a time, early in their careers.

[ladiesalmanack]

Damia (1889-1978)

Damia, née Louise Marie Damien was a French singer, actress, and dancer. Rebellious and feisty, she ran away from home at the age of 15 and spent months wandering the streets of Paris. She escaped poverty by landing small roles as a dancer in music-hall shows. In 1911, she began a singing career. She performed a repertoire belonging to the French genre of "chanson réaliste" with the talent of a tragedian. Damia frequented Natalie Barney's salon, where she met three women who would become her lovers; dancer Loïe Fuller, choreographer and director Gab Sorère (Loïe Fuller's partner), and designer and architect Eileen Gray.

Thanks to Loïe Fuller and Gab Sorère, who were interested in lighting effects on theatrical stages, and Eileen Gray, who instilled in her a taste for refined design, Damia perfected the staging of her shows, which remained unchanged throughout her career and became iconic in the eyes of audiences. Lit by a single spotlight, on a pitch-black stage, Damia appeared wearing a black dress and sang without a microphone. This stage arrangement would inspire many other French singers, such as Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, and Barbara. Damia became a major star of French music, mainly during the 1930s and early 1940s. Between 1921 and 1956, she also appeared in around ten films and shorts.