Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

Copyright © 2021 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

Published by Mango Publishing, a division of Mango Publishing

Group, Inc.

Cover Design: Jermaine Lau

Art Direction: Jermaine Lau

Interior Layout: Katia Mena

Mango is an active supporter of authors’ rights to free speech and artistic expression in their books. The purpose of copyright is to encourage authors to produce exceptional works that enrich our culture and our open society.

Uploading or distributing photos, scans or any content from this book without prior permission is theft of the author’s intellectual property. Please honor the author’s work as you would your own. Thank you in advance for respecting our author’s rights.

For permission requests, please contact the publisher at:

Mango Publishing Group

2850 S Douglas Road, 2nd Floor

Coral Gables, FL 33134 USA

[email protected]

For special orders, quantity sales, course adoptions and corporate sales, please email the publisher at [email protected]. For trade and wholesale sales, please contact Ingram Publisher Services at [email protected] or +1.800.509.4887.

Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels, and One-of-a-Kind Women

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2021936138

ISBN: (print) 978-1-64250-582-5, (ebook) 978-1-64250-583-2

BISAC category code BIO022000, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women

Printed in the United States of America

To unabashed women everywhere.

And to my special women: My mother, Gilda Wagman, my daughter, Jordanna Geller, and my friend Jamie Lovett—the wind beneath my writer’s wings.

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

—Laurel Ulrich (1976)

I decided long ago/Never to walk in anyone’s shadow.

—Linda Cree and Michael Masser (1977)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Sarah Bernhardt

Chapter 2

Elizabeth Cochrane/Nellie Bly

Chapter 3

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh

Chapter 4

Mae West

Chapter 5

Dorothy Parker

Chapter 6

P. L. Travers

Chapter 7

Ella Maillart

Chapter 8

Anaïs Nin

Chapter 9

Lillian Hellman

Chapter 10

Josephine Baker

Chapter 11

Lee Miller

Chapter 12

Antonina Żabiński

Chapter 13

Martha Gellhorn

Chapter 14

Rose Louise Havok/Gypsy Rose Lee

Chapter 15

Clare Hollingworth

Chapter 16

Nancy Wake

Chapter 17

Florynce Kennedy

Chapter 18

Bella Abzug

Chapter 19

Françoise Gilot

Chapter 20

Yayoi Kusama

Chapter 21

Barbara Hillary

Chapter 22

Miriam Makeba

Chapter 23

Diane di Prima

Chapter 24

Jane Goodall

Chapter 25

Dr. Bridget Rose Dugdale

Chapter 26

Shere Hite

Chapter 27

Elaine Brown

Chapter 28

Janis Joplin

Chapter 29

Ingrid Newkirk

Chapter 30

Malalai Joya

Chapter 31

Megan Rapinoe

Chapter 32

Billie Eilish

Chapter 33

Greta Thunberg

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

Anyone’s Shadow

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice/And all things nice/That’s what little girls are made of. When Mother Goose penned her rhyme, little did she realize the heavy load she had placed on female shoulders. To be nice is daunting. And what of those girls who shirked the role of Ms. Goody Two-Shoes? In every age, in every clime, there are those whose DNA does not contain the Pollyanna gene.

Ever since Eve, the original bad girl, went against God’s directive against eating from the Tree of Good and Evil, wayward women have had a bad rap. The wages of sin was an angel with a flaming sword who ensured eternal banishment from Paradise. Eve’s punishment—as well as that of all her female descendants—was to give birth in great pain. As penance for his participation in Original Sin, her partner—and his male descendants—had to work by the sweat of their brow. No more free rides, thanks to the lady fashioned from Adam’s rib. From this biblical couple, the male-female power structure was born.

Throughout the first millennium, the standard of womanhood was to exercise modesty, especially in the sexual arena. The Old Testament admonishes, Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. Revered role models remain Madonna (not the Material Girl) and Mother Teresa—hard shoes to fill. In the Medieval era, when the knights rode off on crusades, to ensure their wives didn’t play while their hubbies were away, they devised the chastity belt. After all, trust can only go so far. While brides wear white to signify virginity, a prize surrendered on the wedding night, males are allowed free rein to their libido due to the mindset of boys will be boys. The male adage for sexual conquest—a notch on the crotch—is a much-vaunted trophy. A woman equally liberal with her body is viewed as a slut. Rebel girls viewed the legs crossed mindset as another way for the patriarchy to clip their wings.

Language is symptomatic of societal mores, and English has a plethora of words to describe women who do not walk the prescribed gauntlet. The most derogatory put-downs for those ladies who do not subscribe to the time-honored double standard for sexual transgressions: whore, cougar, frigid (feel free to add your own)—all which have no male equivalent. And no matter how much one peruses Webster’s, there is no male counterpart for wallflower, or shrinking violet. Other searing adjectives to describe pushy broads: sassy, shrill, spinster, hag, ditzy, bitch, hormonal. And we have a newer term to describe a bride who places unreasonable demands on her wedding party: Bridezilla. No one seems to feel the need to use the male equivalent of Groomzilla.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on perspective), there have always been badass broads. In Aristophanes’s 411 BC play Lysistrata, the titular heroine arranged for wives to withhold sex until their soldier husbands ended the Peloponnesian War. As a further measure, the ladies took over the Acropolis, which halted access to the money funding the feud between Athens and Sparta. Another feisty fictional femme was the lady whose name manifested her fiery spirit: Scarlett O’Hara, from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Unlike most women in the antebellum South, Scarlett was brash, bratty, and ballsy. She is far more memorable than her archrival Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, the embodiment of virtue—the quintessential good girl. Another woman who gave no fucks was Lisbeth Salander, the tattooed, chain-smoking anti-heroine who favored courtier Goth.

Non-shrinking-violets go through life with upraised middle finger, with an ever-ready retort. Much to the chagrin of those who looked askance at gender equality, there were always women who did not abide by the premise that, when playing a game, everyone accepts the same rules. And for their daring to listen to a different drummer, for their audacity of treading the road less traveled, condemnation was swift. Society put them in pillories of social ostracism, marking them with figurative scarlet letters.

Liberal ladies often use ink as a means to fight against a hostile status quo that does its utmost to keep different femmes in line. Dorothy Parker, the Jewish girl from Jersey, had no tolerance for the constraints of a Victorian mindset. As a prolific drinker in the era of Prohibition, she smoked, and slept with whomever caught her fancy. In the 1920s, a decade when the Ku Klux Klan had its largest membership, she wrote the short story Arrangement in Black and White to skewer racism. Her take-me-or-leave-me philosophy (which expression summed up her romantic history) can be explained in Parker’s words, But I shall stay the way I am/Because I do not give a damn.

Unabashed Women pays homage to the anti-Martha-Stewarts—those who do not define themselves by their prowess in the kitchen or the bedroom, those who pried themselves from the shadows. Although they paid a price for their ballsy behavior, they, in the words of Mr. Sinatra, had the satisfaction of being able to say, I did it my way.

The Mother Goose counterpart for little boys is, What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails/That’s what little boys are made of. The ladies who made leaps into the flames are an amalgam of the sugar and the spice. The most memorable of the Shakespearean heroes were great men with fatal flaws that made them relatable, human. The ladies profiled in Unabashed Women serve as their female counterparts; their prickly personalities did not earn them the title Ms. Congeniality, though it freed them of cookie-cutter corsets. They left their historic imprints because they dared to be different and difficult. In the final analysis, badness is in the eye of the beholder.

The list of feisty females is legion, including the nineteenth-century British author Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre, although madly in love with Mr. Rochester, spurns his proposal to live with him as his mistress in his estate, Thornfield Hall. The protagonist’s response (an eyebrow-raiser in its time): I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you. Similar to Ms. Eyre, the unabashed women were no birds.

Although the ladies who populate these pages come from different eras and far-flung locales, a common thread binds them: the refusal to let their light be dimmed by another. Martha Gellhorn, the journalist wife of Ernest Hemingway, wrote, Why should I be a footnote to someone else’s life? Françoise Gilot, the painter and common-law wife of Pablo Picasso, declared, I’m not here just because I’ve spent time with Picasso.

In fairy tales, bliss arrives in the guise of a prince; in literature, Heathcliff’s passion extends beyond the grave; in film, Ricky Blaine’s devotion to Ilsa is the litmus test of adoration. However, songwriters Michael Masser and Linda Creed argue that the greatest commitment has to be to one’s self, a philosophy shared by those who forge their own paths. Their lyrics, immortalized by Whitney Houston, state, I decided long ago/Never to walk in anyone’s shadow.

Chapter 1

Quand Même? (1844)

Slow down? Rest? With all eternity before me?

—Sarah Bernhardt

Used a letter holder named Sophie made from a human skull? Check. Accessorized with a stuffed bat? Check. Slept in a coffin? Check. The woman who could answer in the affirmative to these questions was also the possessor of the honorific Divine.

The flamboyant nineteenth-century actress’s name is employed by mothers to criticize their melodramatic daughters: Who do you think you are? Sarah Bernhardt? However, no matter how histrionic, no matter how eccentric, no one could emulate the famed star in eccentricity, in talent, in hubris.

Sarah Bernhardt’s onstage and offstage lives rivaled one another in showmanship. She was the illegitimate daughter of Youle Bernhard, a Jewish woman from Amsterdam who became a sought-after courtesan when she arrived in Paris, and a father who was most likely an officer from Le Havre. Sarah spent her early years with a foster family in Brittany, and later attended a convent near Versailles. A drama queen when thwarted, on one occasion she threw herself in front of a carriage; on another, out a window. Youle did not involve herself in Sarah’s life other than to make her contribute to the family’s income by working as a teenage courtesan.

The Duc de Morny, the half-brother of Napoleon III, one of Youle’s lovers, perceiving Sarah would be as much a drama queen onstage as off, arranged for the fifteen-year-old to attend the prestigious Paris Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. Two years later, she transferred to the Comédie-Francaise; after watching her first production, she pronounced, The curtain of my life has risen. She failed to attract notice, partially because she was considered unfashionably thin. A wit remarked that Sarah was so skinny that, when she got into a bath, the water level went down. As Alexandre Dumas fils, novelist and Sarah’s friend, observed, You know, she’s such a liar that she may even be fat. Critics panned her performances, and further salt entered the wound when Youle told her, See! The whole world calls you stupid, and the whole world knows that you’re my child!

The performance that captured the public’s interest took place in 1893, at an event that played out behind the theater’s curtain. Régine, Sarah’s younger sister, was with her at an annual ceremony to honor Molière, and accidentally stepped on the train of veteran actress Madame Nathalie. Angered, the older woman shoved Régine against a pillar. Sarah’s knee-jerk reaction was to scream, You miserable bitch! and slap Nathalie on both cheeks. Sarah refused to apologize, and in the first publicity coup of her career, she tore up her contract. The incident made her the talk—and toast—of Paris.

Sarah depended on wealthy lovers for support until she joined the Théâtre de l’Odéon, run by a father and son; she slept with them both. Her performances made her a star in the theatrical firmament. When she played the Queen of Spain in Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas, the aged writer knelt down, kissed her hand, and uttered, "Merci, merci." The tribute was genuine, not merely the result of their earlier affair, in the course of which he had gifted her a human skull. She took a brief hiatus in 1864 for the birth of her son Maurice, whose father may have been a passing Belgian dalliance with Prince de Ligne.

Although a consummate narcissist, Sarah still possessed a soul. During the 1870 siege of Paris, she transformed the Odéon into a field hospital, filling the stage, dressing rooms, and auditorium with cots for the injured and the dying. She persuaded her well-heeled stockholders (the name she gave to her lovers who supported her lifestyle) to supply medicine and food, and convinced one to donate his overcoat. She also thumbed her nose when it came to religion. Sarah had been raised as a Catholic, and as a child, she had entertained an inspiration to be a nun. Indeed, one of her prized possessions was a rosary, a gift from Pope Leo XIII. Nevertheless, in an age of virulent anti-Semitism, she adhered to her Jewish roots. Caricatures circulated of her with a Star of David and bags of money, denoting her as a money-grubbing Jew. The only truly embittered disagreement she had with her beloved son was over the Dreyfus Affair, when she defended the Jewish officer charged with treason.

Due to her surging popularity, the Comédie-Francaise arranged her return, and she transformed into its shining star. The newspaper Le Figaro declared that everyone was coming to Paris to gaze upon its two main attractions: the newly erected Eiffel Tower, and Sarah Bernhardt. Sigmund Freud wrote of her performance, my head is reeling, and he hung her photo in his office. D. H. Lawrence compared her to a gazelle with a beautiful panther’s fascination and fury. Mark Twain observed, There are five kinds of actresses. Bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses—and then there is Sarah Bernhardt. The Divine (her honorific) leading lady also served as muse: Oscar Wilde wrote Salomé for her; Marcel Proust portrayed her in his novel In Search of Lost Time; Aubrey Beardsley drew her portrait as Salomé holding John the Baptist’s severed head. One naysayer was the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who later admitted his acrimony was because she had reminded him of his Aunt Georgina.

From 1880 onwards, Sarah toured Europe and America, and she took along her menagerie of pets—dogs, a snake, and an alligator called Ali-Gaga, who passed away after consuming too much champagne. Adoring fans lavished tributes: Australians danced to The Bernhardt Waltz; Argentina presented Sarah with thirteen thousand acres of land; in London, Oscar Wilde laid lilies at her feet. In America, reporters bombarded the famed thespian: What was her waist size? Did she feed live birds to her lion cub? In New York, Sarah made her way to a theater through a crowd of worshippers who demanded she sign their shirt cuffs. At one point, to avoid the throng, her younger sister Jeanne, camouflaged in Sarah’s outlandish clothes, hoodwinked the public so the prima donna could make her getaway. She took the opportunity to visit Thomas Edison, likewise smitten, who gave her a tour of his laboratory. In return, he persuaded her to make a recording on his new invention: the phonograph.

However, not everyone was in Camp Bernhardt. Fundamentalist preachers pronounced her sinful. Ever resourceful, when a Texas theater owner refused to rent his place for her performance, she set up her own tent in a field. Ladies in the audience returned home with the hems of their dresses frayed by the cornstalks.

The woman who had grown up in a foster home, with money from her roles as an actress and a courtesan, purchased her own home located in the Parc Monceau area of Paris, as over-decorated as her stage sets. She shared the space with Maurice, her menagerie of pets, and a constant stream of visitors. Guests who came through her door were the stuff of legend: Theodore Roosevelt, Oscar Wilde, Louis Pasteur, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola. The hostess also served as a muse; Alexander Dumas fils declared after a visit, but when I get home, how I can write! How I can write!

The most-utilized piece of furniture in her home was the Bernhardt bed—lovers were legion. Some of the famous were Victor Hugo, Charles Haas (Proust’s model for his character Swann), Albert Edward, a.k.a. the Prince of Wales, and Gustave Doré. An equal opportunity lover, Sarah also slept with a variety of female paramours.

Along with own her own property, Sarah, who always desired to be at the helm of her ship, commandeered her own playhouse that she unsurprisingly christened the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. In a signature exit at the close of a Bernhardt production, in a male role such as Hamlet, she would expertly expire on stage. A critic was so inspired he wrote, dying as angels would die were they allowed to. In the same show, the audience rose to its feet; their enthusiasm was not diminished by the fact that the star was fifty-six and had played the role of a twenty-year-old.

Despite looking after her exotic animals, grueling schedule, and erotic liaisons, Sarah also took the conventional step of marriage. She fell for a dissolute Greek shipping heir, Aristides Damalas, twelve years her junior, who she described as pleased with himself as Narcissus. They married in England in 1882, between her engagements in Naples and Nice. He worked as a representative of a Greek delegation stationed in Paris, and due to diplomatic indiscretion, his country reassigned him to a post in St. Petersburg. Acting the part of the devoted wife, Sarah changed her tour engagements and followed him to Russia. Alas, Aristides slipped back into his morphine habit, and one day abruptly deserted to join the French Foreign Legion. When he died from his drug addiction at age forty-two, Sarah referred to herself as the widow Damalas. Irish writer Bram Stoker said he had partly based his character Dracula on Sarah’s husband.

Alongside van Gogh’s ear, Bernhardt’s leg is the most famous appendage in history. She had suffered an injury when she leapt from a parapet while performing La Tosca that resulted in years of chronic pain. According to legend, while enduring an amputation under anesthetic, she had drifted into unconsciousness while singing La Marseillaise. P. T. Barnum offered her $10,000 for the severed limb to put on display. She refused. If it’s my right leg you want, see the doctors; if it’s the left leg, see my manager in New York. Eight months later, at age seventy-one, she starred in La Dame aux Camelias, the play that Verdi later adapted as La Traviata, where she moved about the stage in a wheelchair that she preferred to a wooden leg. Shortly afterwards, Sarah set off for her ninth and last American tour, to convince the United States to enter World War I. Undaunted, she left for the Front to entertain the troops, where she described herself as hopping about like a guinea hen.

The immortal thespian’s specialty was dying from daggers, betrayal, heartbreak. When the actress herself passed away in her son’s arms in 1923, thousands of Parisians gathered at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt to pay homage. During World War II, the Germans de-consecrated the playhouse because of Sarah’s Jewish roots, and thus it became the Théâtre de la Ville. Her funeral was the largest since that of her admirer, Victor Hugo. Currently, Sarah’s leg resides at Bordeaux University medical school; her tomb lies in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Of all the reams of dialogue that Sarah spoke, perhaps her remarkable life is best encapsulated by words she uttered at age