Mae West: Merchant of Menace

MAE WEST was not unfamiliar with menace. One of her former lovers, a money machine who could afford to finance all of her extravagant Broadway productions, was Owen Vincent Madden. On Friday evening 17 August 2007, a walking tour "Mae West Side Story" will take participants to several locations where the gangster rendezvoused with the Broadway actress — — including the place where Mae said they met.
• • British news man Graham Nown wrote a book about Owney, The English Godfather [London: Ward Lock Ltd., 1987] exactly twenty years ago. The dustjacket pictures a youthful-looking mobster and the marquee of the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem.
• • "Have you ever heard of this top Yankee gangster who was raised in Wigan?" asks Geoffrey Shryhane of his UK readers in the publication Wigan Today. Explaining further, Shryhane says, "Owney (The Killer) Madden was born in Leeds in 1891 and became America's most dangerous public enemy, an influential godfather of organized crime.
• • Enormously proud of himself for reading a book printed two decades ago, Geoffrey Shryhane goes on . . . and on. According to Shryhane:
. . . I've just read a fascinating account of Owney (real name Owen) Madden's life by the late local journalist Graham Nown. I can recommend it. Seems that the Madden family came to live in Wigan when he was a lad. Thick yellow smoke enveloped the town and clogs clattered on the cobblestones at dawn.
. . . Owney, who listed Mae West among his friends, remembered the Wigan schoolmaster's polished cane ready to swoop as pupils chanted edifying maxims such as "Discipline is the backbone of the British Empire."
. . . After school he tended his dad's pigeons ... and throughout his life as gangster, he retained a love of his feathered-friends.
. . . Later, the family moved to New York — — a Hell's Kitchen where the young Owney was drawn into a life of petty crime and gang violence.
. . . The English Godfather rose to criminal fame during the dry years of prohibition, when he ran chains of speakeasies, selling bootleg beer, and smuggling alcohol. ...
• • If you have not gotten around to The English Godfather yet, consult this UK-based site.
• • Source: Wigan Today — — http://www.wigantoday.net/
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's former lover on a bookjacket • • 1930s • •
NYC
Mae West.