For some reason, it’s easier to find a list of gay men in old Hollywood than lesbians. Especially if you’re looking at people who eventually came out. Which had frankly been my preference. I’m not terribly interested in people who were just whispered to be gay when they were alive, who appear on lists of “gay people of Old Hollywood” after their deaths with no evidence, just a bare assertion. And I found a bunch of men, some of whom need to go on my list for Pride to come. What I wanted, though, was a woman who was indisputably bi or lesbian who wasn’t written about by everyone about whom I had something to say. And that wasn’t happening.

So. Janet Gaynor. She’s probably most famous these days for being in the original A Star Is Born. Though she didn’t receive an Oscar for that; her award was in the 1927/28 Oscars, the first woman to win the award. She is also the only woman to win the award for multiple films, a practice banned three years later, and the youngest until Marlee Matlin. She was one of the few actresses to make the transition to sound in leading roles. She retired from the screen in 1938, making but one more movie, in 1957. She painted and acted on the stage and seems to have lived the quiet life she wanted to lead.

And there is speculation that she was in a long-term relationship with Mary Martin. Her second husband, costume designer Adrian, was openly gay, and they were speculated to have been in a “lavender marriage,” a marriage in which one or both parties are hiding sexuality by marrying a person of the opposite sex. They had adjoining ranches in Brazil for a while, and Martin was in the car with Gaynor when they were crashed into, giving Gaynor the injuries that would eventually cause her death.

Does that prove anything? Nope. I dreamed last night that my best friend and I moved into practically adjoining apartments, and it made me very happy, because I would love to see my best friend all the time. (We’ve agreed that we could only actually live together if we had enough space for all our stuff, which we didn’t when we were roommates, but we could definitely live together.) We seem to have this cultural belief that close friendships exist solely to cover up affairs, from what I can tell, and if there’s more evidence that Gaynor and Martin were partners, I’ve yet to hear it. Actor Bob Cummings supposedly once said that Adrian may have been her husband, but Mary Martin was her wife, but did he? And if he did, how did he know?

It’s the one demographic whose history is missing, I think. Women’s history is spotty and only surfaces when a specific woman does something important. But so many places so vilified homosexuality that the history there is just gone. Most of the time, the best we have is speculation. The interesting thing is how often that prevents people from knowing themselves that they don’t have what society thinks of as “standard” sexuality in whatever way. Several other people I’ve considered writing about this month did not themselves know until adulthood, and even sometimes late middle age, why their heterosexual relationships never quite worked.

I mean, I’m not asking for a ranch in Brazil, but if you can afford $1 or more a month, consider supporting my Patreon!