Partner Pearl M. Hart, Bertha Isaacs
Queer Places:
2821 N Pine Grove Ave, Chicago, IL 60657, Stati Uniti
J. Blossom Churan (August 17, 1896 - October 15, 1973) moved to Chicago in the 1920s and reinvented herself as actress Patricia O'Bryan.
In the 1920s Blossom Churan moved in with Pearl M. Hart. From 1918 until 1924, Hart shared a law office with Churan's father, and sometime during this period she met Blossom, some six years her junior. Probably no relationship developed fully until the death of Hart's father in mid-1923. By 1926 when her mother died, Hart felt freer to express her own sexuality. Hart would live with Churan in a fluctuating relationship (kept secret from her family) for more than 40 years.
In 1931 Churan was a member of the radio troupe W-G-N Players. The radio station WGN first broadcast in 1922 and was operated by the Chicago Tribune out of the Wrigley Building, then in the early 1930s out of the Drake Hotel. The W-G-N Players presented Under Arizona Skies, described in the Chicago Tribune of June os, 1931, as "the old melodrama of the Mexican border with its story of the love of two kinds of women. The half-breed played by Patricia O'Bryan, the society girl by Alice Munson." Blossom appeared in many radio plays after that, and also Easy Aces, a comedy show set around a card table. Blossom's acting career after the 1930s is unclear; it's possible it began and ended in the 1930s with the W-G-N Players.
In the 1940s Blossom fell into the arms of Doctor Bertha Isaacs, a professor at Northwestern University medical school. Not wanting to lose the love of her life, Hart proposed the three of them live together, so in 1947 she and Isaacs bought a property at 2821 North Pine Grove, where the three resided for thirty years. According to Valerie Taylor, the three lived “a rather gothic existence” until Churan’s death in 1973. Taylor wrote: “Neighbors saw three aging women, two with successful careers, one who stayed at home. Out-of-town relatives or friends stayed in nearby hotels. They kept their lives compartmentalized.” As Churan became more frail, she was less interested in sex and “leaned on Pearl as she had in the beginning.”
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