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Aged 16, Paul Bailey told his family that he wanted to go on the stage, only to be warned that 'actors are the sort of people who interfere with boys like you'. To a gay man in the 1950s this was considered less of a threat and more of an attraction; in an era when homosexuality was illegal the theatrical world offered the nearest thing to a safe haven for 'queers'. The three subjects of these short biographies were also gay and appeared on stage. Fred Barnes, 'the blue-eyed Adonis', gained great acclaim and financial success, bringing the house down in the music halls with his signature song The Black Sheep of the Family: 'It's a queer, queer world we live in/And Dame Nature plays a funny game...' Naomi Jacob, commonly known as Micky, also acted professionally but achieved greater success as a popular novelist. She lacked Fred Barnes's physical appeal: 'If you saw her you'd think, if you didn't know to the contrary, that you were looking at an especially truculent man-about-town.' Encountering her one day in the book department of Harrods, Bailey mistook her for J B Priestley. The last of the trio, Arthur Marshall, took to the stage early in life but also had a career in journalism which included book reviewing for the New Statesman and as a TV panellist on Call My Bluff. Arthur's most endearing quality was his sense of humour; he claimed, 'I have made laughter my prime consideration in life', and when interrogated by Russell Harty as to whether or not there was a serious man behind the merry exterior, Arthur replied, 'speaking in all sincerity and from the heart', 'I regard myself as the Janette MacDonald of the prose world.' The author admits that his subjects are not from the first rank of stardom: 'Fred Barnes and Naomi Jacob were famous for a time but are now forgotten, and Arthur Marshall's books are unlikely to endure.' But he brings them to life affectionately, shining a spotlight on three full, energetic and idiosyncratic lives and also illuminating the theatrical and literary worlds they inhabited. (Kirkus UK)
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This work presents the stories of two remarkable men and an extraordinary woman, and how they lived in an age when gayness was reviled and outlawed. Paul Bailey's interest in Naomi Jacob was awakened in 1959, when he waited on her in Harrods's book department under the impression that she was J.B. Priestley. "Micky" Jacob was the author of dozens of bestselling novels, and several volumes of autobiography, which can be found today in charity shops. Fred Barnes, who survived an attempted murder by his father, was a singer, dancer and light comedian at the beginning of the century. His is a classic riches-to-rags story, his downfall foreshadowed by two very public events. Arthur Marshall who completes the trio, is the sunniest presence here, chuckling his way through the World War II and becoming a much-loved television personality in old age. In a personal introduction, Paul Bailey describes how he came to be fascinated by these very different human beings, all gay in more senses than one.
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