ABSTRACT
For Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, negotiating an acceptable presentation of femininity both on and o stage was a particularly important factor in maintaining what became an increasingly high-pro le career in the inter-war period. Despite the more challenging roles examined in the previous chapter, the majority of stage roles played by Ffrangcon-Davies tended to conform to conventional assumptions of female behaviour, and she was careful to reinforce these connections in interviews about her life and career. e qualities by which the actress might be judged o the stage, as described in Noel Coward’s popular inter-war song Mrs Worthington (1935), are that she be petite, slim and pretty: a decorative epitome of femininity. ese expectations chime with assessments of FfrangconDavies in ‘at home’ interviews during the inter-war period, in which her petite frame and decorative professional reputation belied interviewers’ expectations about her ability to be a fully practical and domesticated woman. ese themes of domesticity and decorative femininity were attributes which FfrangconDavies cultivated in her o -stage public presentation throughout her career. As a woman who was both unmarried and working in the public sphere, FfrangconDavies, like many others in her profession, found herself the subject of public fascination and scrutiny. During the inter-war period when public interest in her was especially high, conventional on-and o -stage presentations provided a convenient means of obscuring her lesbian sexuality.
