Mercedes de Acosta, Here Lies the Heart
Acosta, Mercedes de. Here Lies the Heart, A Tale of My Life. First American Edition. 1960. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—jacket shows minor wear. Jacket photo by Marlene Dietrich.
Mercedes de Acosta, the younger sister of New York socialite Rita Lydig, was a deeply passionate and highly fatalistic romantic. In other words, she was far too intense for her story to end happily. Though a gifted poet, playwright, and screenwriter, her name endures chiefly through her relationships with some of the 20th Century’s most celebrated women. Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Eva Le Gallienne, Alla Nazimova, Tallulah Bankhead, and Isadora Duncan all appear in her orbit, often in ways that blur the line between friendship, romance, and obsession. Published at a time when discretion still governed much of Hollywood’s public mythology, this memoir was among the industry’s earliest and most revealing tell-alls. Yet its lasting appeal lies not in scandal but in de Acosta herself—intelligent, self-dramatizing, emotionally fearless, and possessed of an almost reckless capacity for devotion. Few memoirists have left behind a more vivid portrait of what it meant to love intensely and suffer accordingly.
“Greta [Garbo] had a bright idea. She said she would like to play Dorian Grey [sic] and have me write the scenario. I said, ‘You go tell Irving [Thalberg] that idea and have him throw you out the window—not me!’ But she was right. At that time, she could have played this role brilliantly.”
--Mercedes de Acosta