Hove couple Rosie Wakley and Ali Child began performing as their heroes, Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney in 2014. They took their show about them to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to great acclaim. Since then Ali has written a 90,000 word biography of the forgotten pair of lesbian variety stars who were household names in 1924.
She has uncovered a story that mirrors her own. Like Norah Blaney, Ali entered into a conventional marriage and retired from performing. This happened young, and it was not until she was fifty and the mother of three grown up children that she came out as gay and started acting again.
Ali Child and Rosie Wakley
For Norah Blaney the process happened in reverse. She was living with Gwen Farrar in fashionable King's Road, Chelsea, partying alongside Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward and the notoriously decadent Bright Young Things, starring with Gwen in West End revues and making hit recordings. The 1930s ushered in a more critical age and her relationship with Gwen came under closer scrutiny. She became ill and, when a surgeon saved her life on the operating table, she accepted his proposal of marriage. However, as Ali has found, this was not the end of her love affair with Gwen.
Ali Child's book "Tell Me I'm Forgiven:The Story of Forgotten Stars Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney" is published by Tollington Press on 22nd October 2019. Copies can be ordered here:
https://www.behindthelines.info/tell-me-i-m-forgiven-gwen-farrar-norah-blaney/
A party to celebrate the launch took place at 7p.m. on Friday 25th October at Horatio's on Brighton's Palace Pier where MyCharleston co-founders Elena and Fiona took to the stage to teach audience members the Charleston.
