(Un)spooling the Magic Threads: The Making of a Mini-Installation at the Rosenbach

by Shoshana Bockol, Visitor Experience Coordinator

A glimpse of the exhibit: “Bound Together by Magic Threads: Lesbian Devotion in the Lives and Works of Mercedes de Acosta, Marlene Dietrich, and Eva Le Gallienne” in the Rosenbach’s partners’ desk. Photo taken by Bryn Michelson-Ziegler.

Like many visitors to the Rosenbach, my first introduction to Mercedes de Acosta (1892-1968) was through “Rebellious Love,” a hands-on Behind the Bookcase tour examining objects that speak to queer art and history in Rosenbach collections. I was struck by one item in particular: a delicate, deceptively simple bible [MDAL 0029]. Opening its cleverly monogrammed cover reveals pages plastered with photos of women of importance to Acosta. There were faces of relatives and mentors, but most striking were the recognizable pictures of her lovers, like Hollywood film stars Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, dancer Isadora Duncan, and stage actress Eva Le Gallienne.

Although I felt connected to her through this charming queer collage, Acosta, a playwright, poet, and socialite, suffered from her public queerness being made spectacle, overshadowing her creative work. Her legacy rests more on her romantic relationships with famed women than the countless poems and plays she wrote. Indeed, a financially struggling Acosta chose to sell a significant number of correspondences, papers, creative works, photos, and ephemera to the Rosenbach in 1960. 

Over a year after my first encounter with Acosta, who immediately attracted me as a character in her own right, I had the opportunity to create a mini exhibit for the Rosenbach’s partners’ desk [1954.0311] situated in our East Library. I worked with Cecilia Kryzda, a brilliant volunteer who also assists with curatorial projects here at the Rosenbach. The goal was straightforward enough: research, curate, and write an installation of three to five objects around queer Hollywood figures in our collection for Pride Month. Between Cecilia’s ongoing doctoral studies in Cinema and Media Studies and my background in Gender Studies and English, we were ecstatic.

Cecilia and I scoured the Rosenbach’s databases and the Acosta papers finding aid, noting items of visual, historical, and contextual interest during multiple research appointments with our librarians Elizabeth Fuller and Nancy Loi.

Research tends to change initial plans or, at the very least, reveal limitations that can give way to unexpected opportunities. We decided early in the process to hone in on a few notable figures, and Acosta was a given.

We also wanted to delve into the topic of sexuality in a way that wouldn’t recreate shocking pageantry, which meant highlighting the work of notable women rather than focusing on their mere proximity to one another. How did queerness and relationships impact the work these women created? What did one say about the other? How could we present this meaningfully? Ultimately, we decided to focus on Acosta and two of her lovers and creative colleagues, film star Marlene Dietrich, and stage actress Eva Le Gallienne. This focus meant requesting to see specific folders that contained, say, Acosta’s correspondences with Dietrich during a certain time period, or ephemera from plays that Acosta and Le Gallienne, worked on together.

Photograph of Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) wearing a cowboy hat atop a mounted horse. 2006.0414 (Acosta 20:11).

Being new to creating museum displays meant having to remind myself about scope and audience. The small display area of the partners’ desk meant we had to limit the number of objects to install, and wrangle urges of verbosity when it came to writing labels. How could we encourage visitors to draw new meanings without being overwhelmingly didactic? Ultimately, how were we to create a display that was both cohesive and wide-reaching?

We always planned to emphasize at least one creative work of Acosta’s in the exhibit, but it was only when we read her 1925 play Jehanne d’Arc: A Tragedy in Two Parts that everything truly came together.

The play stars Le Gallienne, Acosta’s muse, famous for her role in Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom (1909), as the titular heroine. It begins with Joan of Arc’s rejection of an arranged marriage and her appeal to leadership that she, led by Saints Catherine, Michael, and Marguerite, could aid in saving France from the English Occupation during the 14th century Hundred Years’ War. The play goes on to depict her success in doing so with the siege of Orléans and the immediate aftermath of her trial and execution for heresy.

It’s no wonder Acosta, a passionate Spanish Catholic, would feel so drawn to Joan of Arc, who was only canonized as a saint a few years prior. Acosta would see herself reflected in Joan; both were known and indeed scrutinized for their masculine presentations and disassociation with traditional heteronormative gender roles, their passion, and their devotion. Le Gallienne would feel the pressure to portray Acosta’s work to satisfaction because of just how close the work was to her.

Mercedes de Acosta (1893-1968), [Jehanne d’Arc: English]. Jehanne d’Arc: typescript, part 2, p. 26. 1925. Acosta 04:05.

Though Acosta had proven herself worthy in her creative circles, she struggled at the hands of homophobia in the broader industry. Robert A. Schenke discusses how difficult it was for Acosta and Le Gallienne to produce Jehanne d’Arc in his biography of Acosta, That Furious Lesbian (2003) [PS3501.C7 Z87 2003]. Firmin Gémier, director at the Odéon Theater in Paris, agreed to produce the play if the two women found an American financial backer. A female socialite from Chicago offered to back it until she met Acosta and Le Gallienne and learned the two were lovers despite Acosta being married. It wasn’t until heiress and lesbian Alice DeLamar offered to be their benefactor that the play would be produced, to rave reviews among fellow artists, but flat remarks from critics. Acosta also compiled nearly 20 pages of historic facts about Joan (whom she refers to with the traditional ‘Jehanne’) and her life for film director Irving Thalberg in 1934. Thalberg greenlit a film adaptation of Jehanne d’Arc starring Greta Garbo (another of Acosta’s lovers), which ultimately fell through.

Bouney, photo clipping of Eva Le Gallienne. New York: Town & Country Magazine, 15 July 1925. Acosta 18:01.

The parallel, intense realities of the play and Acosta’s life made the narratives of queerness, of devotion, of failure, and of inspiration click for us as we planned the installation. In a letter from Le Gallienne to Acosta [Acosta 10:03] written during their relationship and the production of Jehanne d’Arc, Le Gallienne scrawled:

“Don’t forget I said I would fight for you - and I must - if I want to go on living and working. I stood a long time in front of the ‘Pieta’ in the Louvre -how all beauty seems bound together by magic threads - ‘Pieta’ - you - the Crucifixion - your ‘Jeanne’ [sic] - the poignant reflections of light in dark waters - Notre Dame - all part of a beauty that must be inexpressible.”

It is the inexplicable “magic threads” that bind the queer beauty and devotion of Joan of Arc to the lives and works of these women. From there, we felt we had the lens with which to frame the installation. A page of the Jehanne d’Arc typescript in English leads the display.

It’s worth noting that not all objects are created equal; not everything in our collection is in the condition to be displayed and exposed to semi-consistent light. For example, the collaged pages in the aforementioned Acosta bible are fragile and difficult to display safely. One of the items Cecilia and I chose was segments of motion picture film depicting Marlene Dietrich in the 1933 picture The Song of Songs, a devotional story between a sculptor and a model. This felt like a perfect metanarrative distillation of the craft we were focusing on, combined with the subjects of reverence, muse, and romance. The only way to clearly view the film is with a concentrated light source, like a light box– though this was out of the question. For object safety, my colleagues Bryn Michelson-Ziegler and David Rhys Owen helped create facsimiles that still speak to the original form, and which ultimately look quite snazzy.

While selecting from correspondence between Dietrich and Acosta, Cecilia was able to translate Dietrich’s unique green script from the French, but we ultimately decided to go with more legible telegrams to Acosta. In lieu of a photo of Acosta, we picked a simple pencil sketch depicting her masculine beauty as drawn by French artist, friend, and possible lover Marie Laurencin. In total, there are seven objects in the exhibition.

Marie Laurencin (1883-1956), Mercedes de Acosta. Pencil, wove paper. Paris, 1938. 1964.0001.

Once we had chosen our objects and finished writing labels, the rest of the process continued to be a collective one. In addition to the creation of the film facsimiles, multiple colleagues edited our labels, Elizabeth Fuller aided with the fickle thing of adjusting tombstones (essential information about the object, its origins, etc.), Bryn assisted with label printing, and David, Bryn, and I carefully installed objects and labels in the partners’ desk. Ideas and research were transformed into a physical display for visitors to take in.

The exhibit “Bound Together by Magic Threads: Lesbian Devotion in the Lives and Works of Mercedes de Acosta, Marlene Dietrich, and Eva Le Gallienne” will remain on view at the Rosenbach until November 4, 2025. You can also learn more about Acosta by requesting a free research appointment with our librarians, attending an encore of the “Rebellious Love” Behind the Bookcase Tour in 2026, and by listening to this episode of the Rosenbach Podcast with Robert A. Schanke, who utilized the Acosta papers for his biography.