When we went to movies together, I would come out raving about Marlene Dietrich and she came out raving about... Marlene Dietrich, not Gary Cooper. Like me, she liked Betty Grable's legs, not Clark Gable's ears. It finally dawned on me - before she herself even realized her nature - that she must be (a word spoken only in whispers then) a... lesbian!

Tigrina had slowly come to this realisation herself. As she later recalled:

One day when I was sunning myself up on the top of the garage of the place where I had a room. Some other girls that lived in the building came up and spread out their towels and started to talk among themselves. I noticed that although there was plenty of talk, they never mentioned boys' names. I thought, Well, gee, that's refreshing to hear some people talk who aren't always talking about their boyfriends and breakups. I got started talking to them just out of friendliness.

I don't know what brought up the subject, but one of the girls turned to me and said, "Are you gay?" And I said, "I try to be as happy as I can under the circumstances." They all laughed. Then they said, "No, no," and told me what it meant.

The next week or so they took me down to a gay bar called the If Club. The girls could dance together there. I started dancing with one or the other of them who would come over and ask me. I never asked them. They asked me because I was obviously feminine. I had my hair long and I wore jewelry.

She came out at some point in 1946, presumably after this page appeared in the PACIFICON programme book in July '46. Here's Ackerman:

I sort of nudged her out of the closet. In 1947 she went on to boldly create the legendary VICE VERSA, America's first underground "Uranian magazine," a type-written and carbon copied affair. She had so few contributors that I, as an empathetic writer, adopted the pseudonym Laurajean Ermayne and wrote reviews, poetry and fiction.

(The above Ackerman quotes are taken from his piece in the programme book for 1994's GAYLAXICON V, where he was a 'special guest'.)

In a letter dated 13 February 1947 (and now held at the ONE Archive), Tigrina formally resigned as a member of LASFS, though she continued as Secretary until June 1947, the same month the first issue of VICE VERSA appeared. Publishing anonymously (her pseudonym 'Lisa Ben' - an anagram of 'lesbian', as is ANSIBLE - came later), Tigrina produced it because although she had begun frequenting lesbian bars:

"I was by myself, and I wanted to be able to meet others like me. I couldn't go down the street saying 'I'm looking for lesbian friends'...[VICE VERSA] gave me a way of reaching out to other gay gals—a way of getting to know other gals....when I had something to hand out and when I tried to talk girls into writing for my magazine, I no longer had any trouble going up to new people."

In her job as a secretary-typist at the film studio she had been told there was not enough work to keep her occupied full time but that she still needed to "look busy". So, no doubt with fanzines in mind, she began working on VICE VERSA, producing what had long been known in fannish circles as a carbonzine. Issues were typed and re-typed using carbon paper, so that no more than ten copies were ever produced of each. Tigrina would give these out at lesbian venues, asking that they be passed on to others once they had been read. She produced nine issues in all (link below), only stopping when she lost that job in Feb '48. But by then it had done what she had hoped and widened her social circle.

In June 1947 - the same month VICE VERSA #1 appeared - it was reported in TYMPANY #8 that:

Tigrina, former farm girl now in the Big City of Los Angeles, recently was chosen to portray a "farmer's daughter" as a publicity broadcast stunt in conjunction with the RKO film "The Farmer's Daughter". She won a radio for being a participant in the radio team that was tops in a spelling bee. Film "Farmer's Daughter" is of fan interest from the standpoint that Walt Liebscher, Al Ashley and FJAckerman worked in it as extras -- but their parts all wound up on the cutting-room floor!

Despite resigning as a member of LASFS Tigrina maintained social contact with friends there and for a while at least was leading a double life of sorts. Issues of TYMPANY - which ran from March 1947 to May 1948, an existence encompassing that of VICE VERSA - contain many accounts by Ackerman of events she was at. In the Dec '47 issues, he listed Tigrina as one of those in support of the decision to remove Charles Burbee as editor of SHANGRI-L'AFFAIRES and reported that:

"Ultra-weird artist Ralph Rayburn Phillips revisited the Land of L.A. recently, dining with Tigrina, and meeting Forry Ackerman, Tripoli and other fangelenos again."

In 1949, Forrest Ackerman married Mathilde (Malka) Wahrman (Warner gives her name as 'Tilly Porjes'), who subsequently became known as Wendayne Ackerman, and in February 1958 began his long editorship of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND when Jim Warren published the first issue and it became a surprise hit. (The full story of which is the second item here.)

Though still a secretary by day, 'Lisa Ben' performed as a singer-songwriter in numerous gay venues throughout the 1950s, often penning gay parodies of songs of the day. In 1960 the lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis released a 45 rpm record of two of her songs as a fundraiser. Not surprisingly this is now an extremely rare collector's item, but you can listen to it here (and a further track can be found here).

All through this period she and Ackerman remained friends and as Tigrina (the name Edythe Eyde continued to use for SF-related activities, hence my use of it in these SF fandom related pages) she was the author of several stories in collaboration with him, including "The Lady Takes A Powder", which had first appeared in BLACK FLAMES (Jan 1946. ed. Virginia Daugherty), and was republished in INSIDE #3 (Sep '53) as by Weaver Wright, one of Ackerman's many pseudonyms. The following issue carried a correction:

INSIDE regrets the omission of his collaborator's byline on "The Lady Takes A Powder", which should have read: by Tigrina, as told to Weaver Wright.

Another collaboration was "The Girl Who Wasn't There". This was first published in GAMMA in 1963, and both tales were later included in the collection, 'The Science Fiction Worlds of Forrest J Ackerman'.

Given Tigrina's interest in horror movies, it's not surprising she made appearances in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. I've been able to locate two of these, but there are almost certainly more:

#97 (Apr '73) "Three scenes have been added to SCHLOCK since it was previewed here last issue and 6 lucky FM fans got to appear in the monster movie sequence. Watch for Bruce & Pam Hanson, Alan Grossman, Vivien Burgoon, Edythe Eyde & David Cooper in the theater scene where they are seen watching THE BLOB & DINOSAURUS. Sci-fi author Charles Fritch is also in the sequence and some monster magazine editor who looks suspiciously like Vincent Price sits right next to the Schlockthropus all thru the proceedings. (You Have Been Warned!)"

#98 (May '73) - cover by Randy Counts "A funny thing happened on the way to our 98th issue. In fact, you can see that it did, just by looking above. Ye Editor ran into the Mighty Schlockthropus (center), star of SCHLOCK, and it took three FM fans (left to right: David Cooper, Edythe Eyde & Don Glut) to rescue me." * [These passages were found online. I do not have the magazines. Below is the photo referenced above, scan courtesy of David Ritter.]

In later life Tigrina became something of a 'cat lady'. The Los Angeles Times for 7th October 1973 carries a report (with photo) on her battle with city hall when she was ordered to reduce the number of cats in her home from thirty-two to just three. Then there was this:

• Lisa Ben and Hometown Buffet

Below is a photo taken at the Ackermansion. Wendayne Ackerman died in March 1990, so this was probably taken sometime in the late-1980s:

H.L. Gold, Tigrina, Bill Rotsler, Wendayne Ackerman, Cylvia Margulies, Forry Ackerman, A.E. van Vogt. - photo by Walter Daugherty, supplied by Andy Porter

Forrest Ackerman died in December 2008.

In 2010, Edythe Eyde was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's Hall of Fame for her pioneering work with VICE VERSA.

Edythe Eyde - aka Tigrina - aka Lisa Ben (1921-2015)

Links:

• They Were Always Here: Tigrina
• International Speculative Fiction Database: Tigrina
• Zinewiki: Edythe Eyde
• Breaking the Glass Slipper podcast (at 27:00 mark)
• Lisa Ben
• VICE VERSA - all issues
• Instagram posts tagged 'Edythe Eyde'
• Main Lisa Ben page at Queer Music Heritage
• Tigrina/Lisa Ben's papers
• Wikipedia
• Edythe Eyde: Gay Publishing Pioneer
• War Dogs
• The Tigrina/Rusty Hevelin Letters - a reading (10 mins)

Related:

• James Kepner at LASFS
• Ackerman's War
• Morojo
• The LASFS Clubroom
• Femizine

Also (click on cover):

My thanks to Joe Siclari and to everyone else at fanac.org who have laboured mightily over the past few decades putting astonishing numbers of old fanzines online. I couldn't have pulled this one together without you, guys. My thanks also to Sandra Bond for putting me on to TYMPANY.

- Rob Hansen, 11 April/1 June 2019

UPDATE

As indicated by the number of links above, there has been increasing interest in Tigrina/Lisa Ben in recent years and her cultural footprint has expanded in some unexpected ways. This includes the medium of the tattoo, in the form of an impressive reproduction of her cover for VOM #22:

used with permission of inkbearer

While I never met Tigrina, I've belatedly realised that I might have been in the same room as her at one point. In 1946 she was at the first Worldcon to be held in Los Angeles and given that she maintained contact with friends in the SF field (as witness the Ackermansion photo above) it's plausible she might have dropped in at later ones to get together with those friends and others from out of town who were all now conveniently gathered together in one place. In 1984 I was at LACon II, the fourth Worldcon to be held in Los Angeles - my first ever visit to the US. Sadly, even if I was in the same room as her at some point during the con I would have only had the vaguest idea who she was since I didn't begin my fanhistorical researches until the end of that decade. So it goes.

- Rob Hansen, 26 July 2021