Personal Life
De Acosta was involved in numerous lesbian relationships with Broadway’s and Hollywood's elite and did not attempt to hide her sexuality, which was rare in her generation. In 1916 she began an affair with actress Alla Nazimova and later with dancer Isadora Duncan. Shortly after marrying Abram Poole in 1920, de Acosta became involved in a five-year relationship with actress Eva Le Gallienne. The two women vacationed and traveled together often. De Acosta wrote two plays for Le Gallienne, Sandro Botticelli and Jehanne de Arc. After the financial failures of both plays they ended their relationship.
Over the next decade she had romances with several famous actresses and dancers including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Ona Munson, and Russian ballerina Tamara Platonovna Karsavina. Additional unsubstantiated rumors include Pola Negri, Eleonora Duse, Katherine Cornell, and Alice B. Toklas.
An ardent liberal, de Acosta was committed to several political causes. Deeply concerned about the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936, for example, she supported the loyalist Republican government that opposed Franco and fascism. She was also a tireless advocate for women's rights and wrote in her memoir, "I believed...in every form of independence for women and I was...an enrolled worker for women's suffrage."
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