DRsingshaw, it's a nice photo, actually.
Do you all know what the world needs? I'll tell you. It's a good book revealing accurately the sexual peccadilloes of the American Theatre in the first half of the 20th Century. Like Henry Willson's clients, in which the person telling the story tells about all the actors having sex for representation with Henry but never the narrator of the tale, I'm finding that researching all of these folk from the early 20th Century performing arts is a maze of lies and concealment. One would gather from several of Ruth Gordon's books that the casting couch was rife in 1917 (PG Wodehouse and Guy Bolton claim that young ladies get minks the way minks get minks), and there are lots of stories about producers, agents, and actresses. There was clearly, from the newspaper articles, a lot of whoredom going on amongst the BABES IN TOYLAND company.
I've heard rumors that David Montgomery of Montgomery & Stone, Elsie Janis, Maude Adams, Charles Frohman, and over half the peple I'm researching were gay but it's all so covert. I believe Eva LeGallienne was the first "outed" lesbian and that's because her lover's husband accused Eva in the divorce of stealing Josephine Hutchinson from him. Elsie Janis' mother ran about with Bessie Marbury, producer with Ray Comstock of the Princess Theatre, and other lesbians, according to the book "Passing Performances" but, even in such a covert period, there's got to be more info on backstage and casting sexual politics in early 20th Century American Theatre. God knows there's certainly enough about the film industry.