BEFORE GOOGLE: Costume designer Irene Sharaff and her partner, artist Mai-Mai Sze
(Above: The Oscar and Tony winning Irene Sharaff. Photo source: Playbill.)
(Above: Mai-Mai Sze photographed by George Platt Lynes. Many photographers from Dorothy Norman to Carl Van Vecthen were fascinated by her beauty and intellect and artistry.)
When Hollywood was even more closeted than it still alas is - especially if one longs to be a movie star and thus lives a transactionally romantic public life - there was a group of lesbian and bisexual women who would regularly meet, often at the home of Delores del Rio but at the homes of others as well for lunch, conversation, and connections that might evolve romantically and/or sexually. They referred to themselves at The Sewing Circle. The circle is reported to have included Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Tallulah Bankhead, Hattie McDaniel, Mercedes de Acosta, Patsy Kelly, Katherine Cornell, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Maude Adams, Salka Viertel Lynn Fontanne, Myrna Loy, Edith Head, Janet Gaynor, Jill Esmond, Elsa Lanchester, Isadora Duncan, Laurette Taylor, Libby Holman, Marjorie Main, Agnes Moorehead, Dame Judith Anderson, and Eva Le Gallienne among others who were less known and worked in the production and creative and business sides of the motion picture industry.
I am not sure if longtime partners Sharaff and Sze attended the Sewing Circle’s socials since they ended up living a life centered in New York where they resided together until each died in her early 80s within a year of each other in the early 1990s. This is the entry about them at The New York Public Library:
“In 1993, the Library received a bequest of nearly 800 books from the estates of Irene Sharaff and her partner, Mai-Mai Sze. The collection reflects the interests of these New York women, both of whom were active in the worlds of fashion and drama.
“Irene Sharaff (1910-1993) was an award-winning costume designer honored with both Academy and Tony awards for her work on the film and stage productions of West Side Story, Cleopatra, The King and I, and An American in Paris. She also worked as a set and costume designer for the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, the New York City Ballet, and the Royal Ballet in London. Mai Mai Sze was the daughter of a Chinese diplomat who grew up in Britain and Washington D.C. She also found success in the arts in New York City, working first as a landscape painter and later as a writer, actress, and model. Her translation of the 15th-century Chinese text, The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, published as The Tao of Painting, is still in use today by students of Chinese painting.
“The Sharaff-Sze collection focuses on the arts and humanities: painting, literature, drama, eastern religions, and poetry. Many of the books are warmly inscribed by their authors to Sharaff and Sze. The collection as a whole thus forms a web linking these women and their social, cultural, and intellectual circles with the books they read, shared, and surely discussed.”
In 1915, Sze moved to London when her father, Alfred Sao-ke Sze became the Chinese Ambassador to the Court of St. James. They lived here in London until 1921 when her father was then appointed as the first Chinese ambassador to America. The family settled there and Mai-Mai attended both the National Cathedral School and then Wellesley College. Sharaff was born in Boston to parents of Armenian descent. She studied at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, the Art Students League of New York, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.
The last year of their shared life they donated one million pounds to Lucy Cavendish College at Cambridge University. This is an entry at Cavendish about their gift:
“[Sharaff and Sze] had a strong commitment to the education and advancement of women and, inspired by the work of our College outlined in a New York Times article in 1985, they began to correspond with the then College President Dame Anne Warburton. This correspondence eventually led to a generous legacy, which funded the building of the Pavilion, completed in 1995. It also led to the establishment of two named Research Fellowships - the Alice Tong Sze Fellowship for the Humanities and the Lu Gwei-Djen Fellowship for the Sciences. Sadly, Irene Sharaff and Mai-mai Sze never visited Lucy Cavendish College during their lifetime. However, their memorial stones, created by the David Kindersley Workshop, and formed from one single stone split into two, stand beside the Pavilion.”
Their ashes are buried side by side beneath that stone on the campus.
(Above: Sharaff on the Cleopatra set with Elizabeth Taylor)
(Mai-Mai Sze, Mrs. Hsiung, playwright Dr. H.T. Hsiung, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, and producer Morris Gest backstage at the Booth Theatre after a performance of the Broadway production of Lady Precious Stream. 1936. From the Billy Rose Theatre Collection. The New York Public Library.)
*THE REMAINING TWO RUBRICS - STARS IN BLACK TURLTLENECKS and SOME JOY - ARE FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS.