Netflix documentary A Secret Love tells the story of Melaval, Sask.-born catcher Terry Donohue, left, and her partner of more than 65 years, Pat Henschel, from Cabri, Sask.Courtesy of Netflix
If the 1992 box office hit A League of Their Own finally brought a fascinating sports footnote into the spotlight – between 1943 and 1954, wartime-starved Americans turned out in droves to watch women play professional baseball – one important element of the story remained in the shadows. Operating under strict league rules, and in fear of harsher laws, gay players were forced to hide their sexuality. Now, the new Netflix documentary A Secret Love tells the story of one of those players, the Melaval, Sask.-born catcher Terry Donohue and her partner of more than 65 years, Pat Henschel, from Cabri, Sask. We spoke this week with Drumheller, Alta.-born, New York-based Chris Bolan, the film’s director and Donohue’s great-nephew, and his Los Angeles-based producer, Alexa L. Fogel.
How much did you know about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and the whitewashing of the players’ lives?
CHRIS: I was very close with my great-aunt Terry. I remember being obsessed with the movie A League Of Their Own, and when I found out she was a consultant on the film, it was just amazing. In terms of the whitewashing – no idea. I discovered that part as we started to dig into the documentary.
The documentary follows Terry and Pat, seen here, back to when they met for the first time, coming out to their conservative families and grappling with whether or not to get married.Courtesy of Netflix
In your doc, we often see both Terry and Pat wearing sweatshirts that read, “There’s no crying in baseball” – one of the famous lines from League. Did you ever ask them what they thought about the movie’s erasure of lesbian players?
CHRIS: No, because honestly their sexuality never came up. I just thought of them as “Aunt Terry and Pat.” They both loved [League]. Terry and all the baseball players thought it gave them a voice, that it told a story that might not have otherwise been told, and a piece of history that might have disappeared.
Terry and Pat came out to your family in 2009, when they were in their 80s: They had been fearful, because, decades earlier, some members of their family were virulently homophobic. You began making the documentary in 2013 or so. What took so long to finish it?
ALEXA: We kept running out of money. But the reality is, that meant we shot [over the course of] four years, and it started to show itself to also really be a story about aging. And that is part of the beauty of it.
I’m struck by the fact that the history of the gay liberation movement is usually told through bold personalities taking what are sometimes called radical public positions – say, Stonewall or the ACT-UP movement. But there are also stories of people like Pat and Terry, who stayed out of the spotlight. Is part of your goal to tell a story that is also radical, but quietly so?
CHRIS: You hit the nail on the head. They weren’t out there protesting. I think that’s okay, because they were being true to who they were during that time. And it was so dangerous. They risked everything to be together, quietly. And I think there’s a tremendous power in that.
Terry played in the women’s professional baseball league, inspiring the hit movie A League of Their Own.Courtesy of Netflix
The film is enlivened by archival footage, home movies and photos that Pat and Terry shot over the decades. Did you get the sense that they were crafting a private testament to something they couldn’t declare publicly at the time?
CHRIS: What a great question. They did document so much of their life. We have eight-millimetre film, audiocassette tapes, photos.
That strikes me as quietly subversive.
CHRIS: Yeah. I mean, the other side of it is they were terrified that any of this stuff would be found by their blood family when they passed away. So, I think it might have just been for the two of them. And they had their [circle of close friends] in Chicago: their lesbian family, their gay family. And maybe it was for that family.
Terry and Pat came out to their families when they were in their 80s.Courtesy of Netflix
What kind of conversations did you have to persuade them to participate in the film?
CHRIS: After they came out, I just knew I needed to make this film [and they said] “Sure ... [but] why would you want to make a documentary about us?”
ALEXA: They didn’t understand what was special or particularly interesting about them until well into the process. We took them to the John Hancock Building in Chicago, and we were being taken around by a young man, a docent. [Afterwards] we told him who they were, and he started tearing up, hearing that they had been together for that long. In the car later, it was like a light bulb went off. It was the first time they really understood that what they considered to be their ordinary life could be something that could be a beacon for young gay people.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Simon Houpt