You Must Remember This

Libby Holman, a Jewish girl from Cincinnati, arrives in Manhattan in 1925 and begins to make a name for herself as a torch singer, trading on her racially-ambiguous skin tone and deep voice at a time when white hipsters think the height of cool can be found in Harlem. Libby and friends like Tallulah Bankhead sojourned uptown not just to listen to Black music, but also to explore their bisexuality. Through mutual co-star Clifton Webb, Libby meets Jeanne Eagels – one of the greatest actresses of her generation, and a high-profile casualty of Roaring 20s debauchery.
(00:00) Torch Singer, Accused Murderess, Bisexual
(09:05) A Confederate Jew
(17:53) Sex Appeal to Burn
(25:59) “Coon Shouting” and Libby’s Racial Ambiguity
(41:32) Blackface on Broadway with “Moanin’ Low”
(49:10) Sex Tourism in Harlem
(58:28) Jeanne Eagels

Listen to a trailer for The Bisexuals, the new season of You Must Remember This, coming September 15.
A sultry, racially-ambiguous singer who became a sensation on Broadway in the late 1920s and 30s, Libby Holman popularized a number of jazz and blues standards of the Great American Songbook. At the height of her fame, Holman shocked her mostly queer coterie by marrying the heir to the Camel cigarettes fortune. Within months, Libby’s husband was dead, and Libby was accused of his murder. The ensuing scandal marked the star as a “black widow,” and in the years to come, a number of friends and lovers who drifted into Libby’s web wound up dead. The most famous of these was Montgomery Clift, who like Libby was bisexual, struggled with substance abuse, and felt misunderstood within a pop culture that increasingly demonized anyone who didn’t fit neatly into the post-WWII American ideal.

Over 8 episodes – with a cast of characters including Elizabeth Taylor, Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead, Billie Holiday, Jane and Paul Bowles, Nicholas Ray and more – The Bisexuals will begin by describing Libby’s rise to stardom, and her sexually-fluid social life, in the New York theater scene of the 1920s. From there we’ll explore the murder scandal that transitioned her from fame to infamy in the 1930s. Then, we will skip to the 1940s and 50s, and a very different climate than the free-wheeling 1920s when Libby Holman thrived. The cultural pendulum had swung back the other way, and there was no possibility for a movie star like Monty Clift to be openly queer. By the time the social and sexual revolutions of the 60s began to be felt, both Libby and Monty were too deeply scarred by trauma, stigma and addiction to benefit.

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