Netflix’s heartfelt documentary explores the durable romance between two women who stayed within the closet for over 60 years.
The few came across in 1947, at a hockey rink in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Terry Donahue had recently relocated to the U.S. To try out baseball — in a skirt — for the now-famed All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Pat Henschel had been a sinewy farm kid from a turbulent house. They fell in love, their swoony adoration immortalized in clandestine letters one to the other aided by the signatures torn through the bottom associated with pages so no body could later recognize the writers. Their passion needed to remain concealed from their own families: they certainly were both females.
A Secret Love, director Chris Bolan not only chronicles the 62 wonderful and heartbreaking years the pair lived as spouses while remaining closeted, but also centers their experience within queer North American history, contextualizing their choice to hide their love from everyone but close friends in the LGBTQ community with his triumphant Netflix documentary. [Read more…]