52 Ancestors 2021 - Week 4 - Favourite photo
This photo of my mother was taken in 1942 when she was 17. She is dressed in the costume she wore for a revue put on by the Patriotic Younger Set in Qurindi, a small town in NSW, Australia.
The local paper said that Gwynn Whitten "sang very prettily". She could remember most of the song years later when three of her granddaughters reproduced it for "The Pet Lamb Show", a play about her life which was written and performed for her 80th birthday.
Patriotic Younger Sets sprang up all over the country in the first years of World War II. They gave those at home an opportunity to help the war effort by raising money, but they also served to entertain and boost morale. The line-up in this cast includes many of Mum's childhood friends and her cousin Beryl. The director is Russell Bell who was a teacher at Quirindi High School, married to Beryl's sister Doris.
Mum married at the end of 1943, and never performed on stage again, but she was a great storyteller. There must have been a strong performance gene as two of her granddaughters are actors, and other members of the family have appeared in both amateur and professional productions.
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