Diana McLellan reveals the complex and intimate connections that roiled behind the public personae of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, and the women who loved them. Private correspondence, long-secret FBI files, and troves of unpublished documents reveal a chain of lesbian affairs that moved from the theater world of New York, through the heights of chic society, to embed itself in the power structure of the movie business. The Girls serves up a rich stew of film, politics, sexuality, psychology, and stardom.

If you were 'one of the girls', as early Hollywood described Sapphic stars, lesbian affairs lent an edge to both your life and your work. This book lifts the veil from the lives of such powerful and uninhibited Hollywood goddesses as Nazimova, Dietrich, Bankhead and Garbo.