Non-Fiction, History, Biography, Historical, Lesbian, Bisexual, Biographies, Biographical, Relationships, Entertainment, Film, Television, Celebrity, Celebrities, Pop Culture, Popular Culture, United States, North American 

THE GIRLS lifts the veil on the private lives of early Hollywood's most powerful and uninhibited goddesses....The most unforgettable and immortal women of Hollywood's golden era thrilled to a hidden world of exciting secrets.In THE GIRLS, Diana McLellan reveals the complex and intimate connections that roiled behind the public personae of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and the women who loved them.Previously unseen FBI files, private correspondence and a trove of unpublished documents reveal a chain of lesbian affairs that moved from the theater world of New York through the heights of chic society to embed itself in the power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.Why did Garbo and Dietrich deny knowing each other to the bitter end? THE GIRLS documents how they not only knew one another, but the swoon that started their ill-starred amour.How did Garbo-worshipper Tallulah Bankhead save Dietrich's career?FBI files make it clear how an intervention with J. Edgar Hoover helped.When was Marlene Dietrich first married? Not when her official biography claimed she was-an early marriage to a sexy, smoky communist was hushed up; THE GIRLS shows how and why.From the uninhibited appeal of lover-to-the-stars Mercedes de Acosta to the role of Garbo's lover Salka Viertel in torpedoing her career, from the sapphic world of silent star Alla Nazimova'sGarden of Alla to Rudolph Valentino's lesbian brides, THE GIRLS explores a rich stew of film, politics, sexuality, psychology and stardom.