Thursday 15 July 2010

Pansies By The Pair!

I have to pay due deference to the fantastic Felix in Hollywood, whose blog I have been following for a while, for introducing me to some wonderful excerpts from gay history - and I just have to reproduce this blog for your delectation today. It gave me such great pleasure...



Leif and Paul Rocky (nee Leif and Paal Roschberg), were born 27th February 1909 in Oslo Sweden. If the boys' Army Officer dad had no inkling of their 'artistic' bent, clues started arriving when at age 11 they co-authored a book of fairy tales. Uh-oh. Soon enough though, the lads traded in their writing plumes for ballet slippers. After studying the dance in Oslo and seemingly London and Paris, they turned 18 and made their stage debut at The Casino de Paris.

To say they wowed the people is to understate. They were described as "two tall disturbingly attractive youths…alike as two peas in a pod. On stage and off it was impossible to tell them apart."



It was in the summer of 1928 at the Concert Mayol that Paul and Leif introduced an act that would seal their fame, impersonating the legendary, and recently retired, Dolly Sisters.



No less than "The Queen of Parisian Music Hall" Mistinguett was entranced. She took the little Swedish meatballs under her wing, and of they flew to tour London. While there, the twins managed to get themselves arrested for public indecency and soon the three returned to Paris. A very successful tour of the continent with Mistinguett followed...

In 1932 The Rocky Twins arrived to conquer Hollywood. They didn't do so bad at it either. They performed all over town, and were invited guests at the Hearst Castle and Lew Cody's Malibu ranch. They ran around with a glamorous Pink Brigade that included Tallulah Bankhead, songwriter Lorenz Hart, Tyrone Power, Billy Haines, director Edmund Goulding, and producer Leonard Sillman. Sillman remembered:
"Talent they had not, but they were fairly bursting with boyish charm. They had taken over a huge villa in Beverly Hills and proceeded to give the most gilded parties since the great days of the wild, or silent era, when a party was a party. The Rocky parties were always climaxed by a mass visit to their bedroom where the twins would display their jewelry. They had diamonds by the peck and gold ornaments by the pound, given to them (they said) by the crowned heads of Europe."


Any act based on youthful beauty has a 'sell by' date stamped all over it, and this one was no exception. The twins appear to have retired their partnership in 1937.

The rest of their lives were lived always connected in some way to the arts. Paul died in New York on 21st March 1955. Lief died on 10th May 1967 in Kristiania, Norway.


Another fascinating blog about the Rocky Twins

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