The Sexuality of Maude Adams

There has been speculation about the sexuality of Maude Adams, whether or not she was a lesbian. There are various web pages that claim she was a lesbian, listing women she had sexual relations with. What I do not know is where these pages got their information from. There is one place,though, which has letters sent by Maude Adams to a woman

First of all, it doesn't matter to me, personally, whether she was a lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual or asexual. She was a beautiful woman physically and, from what I have read, equally beautiful as far as her actions went.

Circumstantial Evidence

First, circumstantial evidence can be strong but in itself it does not prove something. It indicates a possibility but a possibility does not necessary equal a realty. Thus, all the circumstantial evidence about Maude Adams being a lesbian is interesting but does not prove she was a lesbian. I'll go into the circumstantial evidence below.

1. She never married.

2. She was never engaged.

3. She kept strictly to herself, did not appear in public hardly at all, and when she did it was sort of in disguise. She didn't grant interviews. Her behavior overall was quite reclusive.

4. Most of her correspondence was burned upon her death. This is fairly strong evidence, in that such an extreme act is usually not undertaken unless someone wants something kept secret.

5. She is buried next to Louise Boynton, her secretary and companion for many years. This is also fairly strong evidence.

Specific Persons she was associated with.

Scouring the Internet you can find a number of women that she was supposed to be intimate with. This information can be found online and also in books. Now that would seem to be strong evidence and maybe even proof but I don't know where those places got their information.

Below are the names of the women who she was alleged to have a lesbian relationship with.

Alla Nazimova

Although the ebay page listed her as being connected with Maude Adams, it contained no actual information on Maude Adams and her. As with the above person, I could find no information linking her with Maude Adams.

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

Alma Kruger

Listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

Eva la Gallienne

Although the ebay page listed her as being connected with Maude Adams, it contained no actual information on Maude Adams and her. Nor could I find anything else anywhere directly tying her and Maude Adams together.

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

Katharine Cornell

“She is noted for her major Broadway roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic. Theirs was a tandem marriage as he was a homosexual and she a lesbian, having had a long on-again off-again affair with Mercedes de Acosta, another relationship with actress Maude Adams, as well as other noted women of her time.” (4) (I found exactly the same entry on the site Homostory 101.)

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

Lillie Florence

”While the actress apparently never involved herself romantically with a man, she engaged in two long-term same-sex domestic partnerships, which endured in each case until the beloved's death. the first, dating from the early 1890s until 1901, was with Lillie Florence...”

”While the actress apparently never involved herself romantically with a man, she engaged in two long-term same-sex domestic partnerships, which endured in each case until the beloved's death. the first, dating from the early 1890s until 1901, was with Lillie Florence...” (13)

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

Louise Boynton

“From 1905 to 1951, her “lifelong love” was Louise Boynton. They are buried side-by-side.” (2)

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

In 1905, Adams began a passionate and deeply private relationship with Louise Boynton that lasted for forty-six years, during which time Boynton “dedicated herself to Miss Adams and won her lifelong love. (29)

Mercedes de Acosta

Ebay did not have a page on this actress, even though they had her listed as having a connection with Maude Adams.

“While in her early twenties, Acosta became involved in the lesbian theatrical circles of Broadway, particularly the salon of Bessie Marbury, a powerful producer and literary agent, and Marbury's lover Elsie de Wolfe, the prominent interior decorator. Among Acosta's early lovers were actresses Maude Adams, Alla Nazimova, and Katherine Cornell, as well as dancer Isadora Duncan.” (6)

“Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 - May 9, 1968) was a Spanish-American poet, playwright, costume designer, and socialite best known for her lesbian affairs with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Alla Nazimova, Eva Le Gallienne, Isadora Duncan, Katharine Cornell, Maude Adams, Ona Munson (”Belle Watling” in the movie Gone with the Wind), Adele Astaire, and others.” (7) (Note; I saw exactly the same entry, word-for-word, in various other sources.)

“She never married and there have always been rumors that she preferred the company of women; and she was linked romantically to Mercedes de Acosta (although who wasn’t!)” (8)

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

Spring Byington

“ Byington was also linked in an affair with actress/writer Maude Adams.” (3)

Also listed at https://www.famousfix.com/topic/maude-adams/dating.

More than one woman mentioned in a document.

Biographers have concluded that Adams was a lesbian. She had two long-term relationships that only ended upon her partners' deaths: Lillie Florence, from 1892 until Lillie's untimely death in 1901, and Louise Boynton (1858–1951) from 1905 until 1951.

She is supposed to have had a romantic relationship with Spring Byington, Eva Le Gallienne, Katharine Cornell, and Alla Nazimova. Adams' relationships with her partners transpired within a close circle of women friends who also led homosexual lives. For Adams, some of these friendships evolved out of ardent star worship.

Phyllis Robbins and Laura Kennedy, for example, made their adoration for Adams into an all-consuming hobby. The Harvard Theatre Collection's extensive holdings on Maude Adams contain the correspondence of another female friend,

Nan Hodgkins, with whom Adams was close from 1902 into the 1930s. Before her death Maude burned all the personal papers between her and her lovers, but Nan Hodgkins did not burn the many letters from Maude. The very compelling papers are filled with lots of discussion of same sex romantic travails and desires. Adams is listed as Mercedes De Acosta's lover. While in her early twenties, De Acosta became involved in the lesbian theatrical circles of Broadway, particularly the salon of Bessie Marbury, a powerful producer and literary agent, and Marbury’s lover Elsie de Wolfe, the prominent interior decorator. Apparently this is where they had met.(14)

Frohman and Adams were both in long-term same-sex relationships. Adams had two, in fact, her first only ending with her partner’s early death in 1901. The loss sent Adams into a temporary retirement, which entailed extended stays at a spa-sanatorium and convent in Europe, out of the public eye.  

From 1905, and for almost the rest of her life, Adams lived with the second of her two life partners, Louise Boynton, who had her own career as an editor, author, and publisher, and they are buried together at Adams’s former estate in New York. Frohman, Adams, and Boynton carefully concealed their private lives from an adoring but potentially unaccepting public. Frohman took pains to keep stories of Adams’s domestic relationships out of the press, and he allowed rumors to circulate that posited romantic connections between Adams and men—himself, even. None of these rumors were true, but they provided good cover.  

...Nevertheless, Adams’s sexuality was a fact of her life—a fact that makes her accomplishments all the more impressive. She managed to work, innovate, and excel under public scrutiny, against a backdrop of misogyny and homophobia that might have brought her down in scandal at any moment.(17)

We do know that she shared two significant relationships with women. Her first known relationship was with Lillie Florence from the early 1890’s to Florence’s death in 1901. Her second relationship was with Louise Boyton from 1905 until Boynton’s death in 1951. (31)

Maude Adams was in relationships with Mercedes de Acosta, Katharine Cornell, Lillie Florence, Louise Boynton, Alma Kruger and Spring Byington.Maude Adams had encounters with Eva Le Gallienne and Alla Nazimova.(32)

General and Circumstantial References

The book Strange Duets by Kim Marra refers to the “closeted homosexuality of Charles Froman and Maude Adams.” That's what one review says, anyhow; I have not been able to get a copy of the book to see what it specifically says.

The ebay actors page on Maude Adams: “She was a lesbian, a well known fact in acting circles, but well concealed as was the way in those days. Allegedly preferring women younger than she, Adams had a brief affair with actress Spring Byington , another more meaningful relationship with actress Katharine Cornell and a reportedly passionate yet brief affair with actress Eva Le Gallienne. Two of her most noted lovers was poet and writer Mercedes de Acosta, and actress Alla Nazimova.”

Maude Adams never married.  Rather, she was married to the stage.(30)

A source labeled Lespedia lists Maude as a lesbian: “Maude Adams (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1872 – Tannersville, New York, 1953), attrice” (9)

Maude Adams lived near Mercedes de Acosta for a while. “The de Acostas lived in a house on Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues...Maude Adams, famous for the spiritual quality of her acting, for never marrying, and, in the parlance of the time, for exhibiting a calculated coolness toward men, lived for a while on the street.” (10)

Maude Adams was a co-founder of a women's club. “Rita [de Acosta] had joined the Colony Club, the first social club for women in New York, which had been founded by Marbury and Morgan in 1907 and whose founding members included Maude Adams, Amy Lowell, Emily Post, and Jane Addams.” (11)

Spring Byington, Eva la Gallienne, and Alla Nazimova were also linked in an affair with Maude.Also noted to have had an affair with Katharine Cornell and Lillie Florence. (15)

The Gay and Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era, 2005:

”While the actress apparently never involved herself romantically with a man, she engaged in two long-term same-sex domestic partnerships, which endured in each case until the beloved's death. the first, dating from the early 1890s until 1901, was with Lillie Florence, and the second, from 1905 to 1951, was with Louise Boynton. Because Adams burned all of her personal papers except her correspondence with J.M. Barrie, 'hard' evidence from the principals about the nature of their relationships is elusive.

”Like other Boston marrieds of the period, Adams's relationships with her partners transpired within a close circle of women friends who also led homosocial lives.”

It is now believed that Adams was a lesbian. She enjoyed long-term relationships with two woman over the course of her lifetime. The first being with Lillie Florence until Florence’s death in 1901. The second being an over 45-year relationship beginning in 1905 with Louise Boynton. Boynton died in 1951. When Adams passed away in 1953 in New York, four months shy of 80, she was buried next to Boynton where they share a headstone.(16)

WHAT MORMON-BORN, WIDELY-ASSUMED LESBIAN WAS THE MOST LOVED AND RICHEST PERFORMER IN AMERICA IN THE EARLY NINETEEN HUNDREDS? (With a picture of Maude Adams by the above statement.)(19)

Maude was a lesbian and had two long term relationships with women.(18)

Adams was a closeted lesbian, and was determined to portray women as different, and more nuanced, than the one-dimensional female stereotypes that were common at the time.

Sexually, Adams has been linked to: Mercedes de Acosta, Katharine Cornell, Spring Byington, Eva la Gallienne and Alla Nazimova . Missing from these famous names is Adams' secretary, Louise Boynton, who Adams is buried next to. ...It is now believed that Adams was a lesbian. (20)

She may have enjoyed long-term relationships with two woman over the course of her lifetime. The first being with stage actress Lillie Florence until Florence’s death in 1901. The second being an over 45-year relationship beginning in 1905 with Louise Boynton. (21)

Adams had two long term lesbian relationships (essentially Boston Marriages) from the early 1890s through the end of her life. (22)

The public’s reception of Maude was as eternally-virginal and virtuous, but the truth of the matter was that Maude avoided relationships with men not because she was childlike, but because she was a lesbian. She had two serious relationships throughout her lifetime. Her first partner was a woman named Lillie Florence, whom she was with from the 1890s to the early 1900s. She met a woman named Louise Boynton in 1905 and the two stayed together until Louise’s death in 1951. (23)

But the secret behind her allure was the hidden fact that Maude Adams was a lesbian, the first in a long line of sapphic actresses playing Peter Pan. (24)

Peter Pan has long been a transmasc icon, but his history is even queerer than you think. One of the earliest actresses to define the role, the witty and beloved Victorian starlet Maude Adams, was a lesbian. (25)

Peter Pan has long been a transmasc icon, but his history is even queerer than you think. One of the earliest actresses to define the role, the witty and beloved Victorian starlet Maude Adams, was a lesbian. (26)

Biographers have concluded that Adams was a lesbian.[31][32][33] She had two long-term relationships that only ended upon her partners' deaths: Lillie Florence, from the early 1890s until 1901, and Louise Boynton from 1905 until 1951/ (33)

In 1894, rumors in a gossip column reported that Adams had liaisons with other actresses, and the rumors resurfaced when reporters claimed that a young woman of Cuban descent had spent too much time backstage during a run of Peter Pan in New York. Frohman attempted to suppress these reports and fabricated an account that Adams was engaged to a writer, Richard Harding Davis.(27)

She was a lesbian and was known to have two long-term relationships: Lillie Florence and Louise Boynton. She may have had a relationship with the actress Spring Byington.(28)

References saying she was not a lesbian

“...she had no known romantic relationships with women, either.” (5)

“...the audiences she granted to Mercedes de Acosta were nothing more than the grudging indulgence of a gushing, and pesky, fan.” (12)

Sources

(Yes, I know the references above are not in the exact order they should be. I'm putting this together piece by piece and will be adding things, so it's just easier to use the next number available rather than renumbering everything every time I add anything.)

(1) http://listing-index.ebay.com/actors/Maude_Adams.html
(2)Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example; 2001; D. Michael Quinn, p.135.
(3) http://listing-index.ebay.com/actors/Spring_Byington.html (ebay)
(4) http://listing-index.ebay.com/actors/Katharine_Cornell.html (ebay)
(5) http://www.geocities.com/bidtimereturnmp/ma.html (Bid Time Return, a Somewhere in Time Website)
(6) http://www.glbtq.com/arts/acosta_m.html (GLBTQ; an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture)
(7) http://www.femmenoir.net/new/content/view/229/155/ (FemmeNoir)
(8) http://www.brookspeters.com/index.php?s=maude+adams&Submit=Search (Brook Peters)
(9) http://lexiamberson.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
(10)The Sewing Circle: Sappho's Leading Ladies; Madsen, Axel, 1995, p.42.
(11) That Furious Lesbian: The Story of Meredes de Acosta; Schanke, Robert A., 2003, p.36
(12) Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia.
(13)The Gay and Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era, 2005:
(14)http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/klmno/Maude%20Adams.html.
(15)https://cantgetanygayer.tumblr.com/post/69312722802/maude-adams-a-k-a-my-wife-3-maude-ewing.
(16)https://affirmation.org/maude-adams-mormon-lesbian-and-the-broadways-first-peter-pan/
(17)https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/journeys-innovation/historical-stories/out-limelight
(18)https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/17tb176/my_queer_woman_of_the_day_is_the_beautiful_maude/
(19)https://www.pinterest.com/pin/739082988850044597/
(20)https://www.utahhumanities.org/stories/items/show/353
(21)https://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/msgbrd/index.php?topic=2565.0
(22)https://travsd.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/maude-adams-the-original-peter-pan/
(23)https://365daysoflesbians.tumblr.com/post/167391089986/november-11-maude-adams-1872-195
(24)https://www.instagram.com/p/CmUZgyLPUHM/?ref=zcmjf1t6kp&hl=af
(25)https://twitter.com/marlowelune/status/1604545129783914496?lang=en
(26)https://twitter.com/marlowelune/status/1604545129783914496?lang=en
(27)https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/maude%20adams?sort=top
(28)https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kiskadden-1
(29)https://www.kauai.hawaii.edu/gbtql-HistoryMonth#day20
(30)https://www.reliefsocietywomen.com/blog/2010/08/16/maude-adams/
(31)https://dragkinghistory.com/1900-1918-maude-adams/
(32)https://www.whosdatedwho.com/dating/maude-adams
(33)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Adams