JUNE 2017
BY MONIQUE GRANT
* * *
When Evelyn Hugo, legendary actress, producer, and philanthropist, died earlier this year, she and I were in the process of writing her memoirs.
To say that spending the last couple of weeks of Evelyn’s life with her was an honor would be both an understatement and, to be frank, somewhat misleading.
Evelyn was a very complex woman, and my time with her was just as complicated as her image, her life, and her legend. To this day, I wrestle with who Evelyn was and the impact she had on me. Some days I find myself convinced that I admire her more than anyone I’ve ever met, and others days I think of her as a liar and a cheat.
I think Evelyn would be rather content with that, actually. She was no longer interested in pure adoration or salacious scandal. Her primary focus was on the truth.
Having gone over our transcripts hundreds of times, having replayed every moment of our days together in my head, I think it’s fair to say that I might just know Evelyn even better than I know myself. And I know that what Evelyn would want to reveal in these pages, along with the stunning photos taken just hours before her death, is one very surprising but beautifully true thing.
And that is this: Evelyn Hugo was bisexual and spent the majority of her life madly in love with fellow actress Celia St. James.
She wanted you to know this because she loved Celia in a way that was in turns breathtaking and heartbreaking.
She wanted you to know this because loving Celia St. James was perhaps her greatest political act.
She wanted you to know this because over the course of her life, she became aware of her responsibility to others in the LGBTQ+ community to be visible, to be seen.
But more than anything, she wanted you to know this because it was the very core of herself, the most honest and real thing about her.
And at the end of her life, she was finally ready to be real.
So I’m going to show you the real Evelyn.
What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming biography, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, to be published next year.
I have settled on that title because I once asked her if she was embarrassed about having been married so many times.
I said, “Doesn’t it bother you? That your husbands have become such a headline story, so often mentioned, that they have nearly eclipsed your work and yourself? That all anyone talks about when they talk about you are the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo?”
And her answer was quintessential Evelyn.
“No,” she told me. “Because they are just husbands. I am Evelyn Hugo. And anyway, I think once people know the truth, they will be much more interested in my wife.”