In 1926, lesbian love walked out on a New York stage for the first time, when Edouard Bourdet’s play The Captive premiered at the Empire Theatre on Broadway. Irene (played by Helen Menken) is (secretly) a lesbian engaged to a man, tortured by her love for Madame D’Aiguines. Menkes painted her face ghastly white, an outward display of the emotional toll she experiences at the hands of her perverse feelings of desire! Her lover was never actually seen on stage through the production. Rather, throughout the story she sends D’Aiguines bundles of violets (the flower that lesbian poet Sappho of Greek antiquity, and her lovers wore during happily amorous hours on the isle of Lesbos in seventh century B.C)…