That Furious Lesbian: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta

by Robert A. Schanke

Book Overview

In this first book-length biography of Mercedes de Acosta, theatre historian Robert A. Schanke adroitly mines lost archival materials and mixes in his own interviews with de Acosta's intimates to correct established myths and at last construct an accurate, detailed, and vibrant portrait of the flamboyantly uninhibited early-twentieth-century author, poet, and playwright.

Born to wealthy Spanish immigrants, Mercedes de Acosta (1893-1968)...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809325799
• ISBN13: 9780809325795
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Mercedes De Acosta : An Intriguing Woman.

I read Mercedes' autobiography Here Lies the Heart and liked her what she wrote about her life and experiences. This book That Furious Lesbian was very well researched and gave me more insight into her life and who she was. I admire her and respect what she tried to achieve in life. The book was excellent and i loved it.

Much Needed Bio on a Woman Many Loved Yet Even More Forgot

This is an interesting account of her life. I found that there is even more information at the author's website - take a look and you'll learn more about this woman...There is a paperback coming out soon so check out the site and come back to get the paperback!www.mercedesdeacosta.com

Silk purse vs. sow's ear

Schanke's previous book on the stage actress Eva Le Gallienne was a knockout, and this one suffers in comparison. Perhaps the character of Mercedes was just too hard to pin down, and this may not be Schanke's fault. Acosta's work seems slight and dated, and no amount of cutting and pasting is going to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. This leaves her as a curiosity, a woman who must have been something in her prime, when so many gorgeous women succumbed to her; and then as a victim of what we would now call "erotomania," desperately clinging to the hope that someday Garbo would smile on her again, even though she must have known that "outing" Garbo in her insipid memoir "Here Lies the Heart" (which Le Gallienne heatedly called, "The Heart Lies and Lies and Lies") wasn't the way to curry favor with such a private individual. The last chapters of the book are pathetic in extremis, it's almost hard to believe Mercedes stayed alive from week to week she was so poor and abject, having no money of her own and totally dependent on charity from others. She was like Job in every way except, of course, genitally. But then again Job was probably pretty annoying too. Schanke does a fine job putting together the pieces of a fabulist's life, jigsaw pieces from many different puzzles.

Jehanne d'Arc and Mercedes: Two Saints in one Act.

I guess it took the Roman Church 500 years to rehabilitate, integrate, and neutralize a troubling voice from the past. Mercedes de Acosta had no such qualms and reincarnated Jehanne in the person of Eva le Gallienne in the 1925 production of Jehanne d'Arc.Robert Schake's " That Furious Lesbian": The Story of Mercedes Acosta is a sustained effort to peel away the recurring labels that obliterate the magnificent other that was Mercedes. Schanke's re-creative efforts, stemming in large part from Mercedes' poverty driven sale of her "Aspern Letters" to the Rosenbach Library, are well worth the attention of those still capable of amazement before those bolides which burst through Victorian conventions into a new century.