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In the 1920s and 1930s, as the film industry left for other neighborhoods, a group of writers, painters, sculptors, and printers settled in their wake among the hills of Edendale. Contrary to the common belief that Los Angeles was devoid of an art community before the 1950s, Edendale artists constructed a community for themselves around the passion of artistic expression. Within their community structure, the artists grappled with many questions about how much and in what way the artist could strip life down to its fundamentals and convey those through art. In doing so, they framed a discussion similar to the arguments about the continuity of sexual desires and the relationships between those inner desires and external behavior. Although the artists did not focus entirely on desire, they wrestled with the related task of expressing the artist’s “essence”—an “inner self” which they saw as constituted by feelings and psychological constructs. This formulation of essence is more than sexual and gendered behavior, but it shared the notion that an interior truth about people spoke the most about who they were. This chapter discusses the questions of expression and politicization. It discusses what is meant by being an artist, and the meaning of art, representation, meaning, and social responsibility. These questions provide a glimpse into the importance of the inner life, its validity and significance in the broader political and social context. As the 1920s and the 1930s emerged, the answers to the artists’ questions shifted increasingly toward an inner self more publicly revealed and a society more directly engaged. They began to argue that the life of emotion and desire did matter, was worth expressing, and had relevance to the entire world.

One of the iconic persons of Edendale, Los Angeles was Julian Eltinge, a film and vaudeville sensation. While he was hailed and adored as one of the best performers of his time, Eltinge lost his splendor as a star. Sixty years after his death, his name was not remembered, because Eltinge was a particular kind of performer; one whose performances made him a star in the 1910s, but whose mode of performance was scorned by the mid-century and largely forgotten at the century’s end. Eltinge was a spectacular female impersonator. This book is not only about Edendale and its communities. It discusses identities, such as those of the artists, the Communists, and the homosexuals. The book discusses the politicization of sexual identity, and the changing notions and practices of selfhood. It traces the intellectual developments and the application of those ideas in how people built individual lives and communities. The construction of identity emerged from complex interactions. The emergence of homosexual politics and identity politics was not only a creative product of many homosexuals; rather, it was shaped by the community that was re-imagining the relationship between emotions and politics. Los Angeles, captivated by the ties between vice, race, and politics, participated in that transformation, which led to a political world.

Even as Edendale Communists elaborated and deepened their own sense of community and their own distinct politicized identity, they also become increasingly concerned with the identities of others. In particular, the white Angelenos were eventually paying attention to racial identities and the treatment of racial minorities in the city. Across the 1930s and 1940s, the white Communists and Edendale leftists became focused on addressing racial discrimination and injustice. In fact, for many Edendale leftists, what drew them to the Party and its associate organizations was the priority over racial issues. Beyond cultivating a community, culture, and identity of their own, they also examined identities broadly as a matter of political practice and principle. This chapter discusses the Communist and related organizations’ effort to bring forth the issue of racial discrimination. It discusses the emergence of racial issues during and after World War II. During this period, racial concerns became central for many Angelenos, particularly the whites. The conflicts over race during the war and postwar years injected a vital conceptual framework into the evolving thinking about the political meaning of individual essence: the broad notion of oppressed social minorities with valid political claims. As the essence was being politicized, the racial battles of the 1940s promoted a clear and powerful model of oppression-driven group-based political power. This model formed the base for the quest for essence in an explicitly political framework of group action. The awakening of the Angelenos to racial identities and racial discrimination transformed the understandings of the city and how other minority groups came to see themselves.