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MAE WEST served eight days [of a ten day sentence for obscenity and the corruption of morals] at the Women's Workhouse, located on an island not far from the 59th Street Bridge. Known as Welfare Island in 1927, it was grandly renamed Roosevelt Island. 
• • For three days, Canadian artist Thom Sokoloski is commemorating the penal spirit of Mae's temporary home in the workhouse.
• • Beginning on Friday and ending this Sunday [September 28 -30, 2007] individuals can explore The Encampment.
• • Thom Sokoloski's massive three-night installation on Roosevelt Island in New York evolved directly from his previous outdoor display "Confinement of the Intellect" — — which he created in Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park for their local Nuit Blanche Festival [2006]; last September he erected 68 tents containing artifacts tied to people with a mental illness.
• • Peter Goddard, staff writer for the Toronto Star, explained the site-specific exhibit this way: "The Encampment's rigid, militaristic formation of some hundred 19th-century tents lit from within by an LED light will remind New Yorkers looking out from their apartment windows of Roosevelt Island's history as a centre of control and confinement. The ship-shaped wedge of land on New York's east side has been a smallpox quarantine centre, a mental health site, and a prison that saw Mae West serve eight days in jail after her play Sex was busted in [February] 1927 for obscenity."
• • Swing by Roosevelt Island on 30 September 2007 to catch the last day. • • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West leaves the workhouse • • April 1927 • •
NYC
Mae West.
Born in the Bronx on 4 March 1933, gorgeous Richard DuBois caught Mae West's eye in 1954. The 6-foot-one stunner 
— — who had just won his "Mr. America" title — — was hired to be the lead bodybuilder for "The Mae West Revue." Off the set, 21-year-old Dick DuBois and the 61-year-old Brooklyn bombshell enjoyed a steamy relationship. (When DuBois left the show, Mickey "Mr. Universe" Hargitay took his place as the lead gladiator.)
• • In 1957, when DuBois was crowned Mr. USA at the Shrine Auditorium, Muscle Power Magazine praised his "good biceps," "well proportioned figure" and "greatly improved posing." Four years earlier, DuBois had won the Amateur Athletic Union Mr. America bodybuilding contest — — and scooped the Mr. America trophy the next time around.
• • During the 1950s and early 1960s, DuBois was a much sought-after pin-up and physique model who appeared in magazines often.
• • Comes word today that native New Yorker Richard DuBois died in a Santa Monica hospital.
• • This obituary was circulated by The Associated Press.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Richard Dubois, 1950s bodybuilder and pin-up, dies at 74 in California
• • SANTA MONICA, Calif.— Richard DuBois, a bodybuilder whose brawny physique landed him parts in 1950s movies and Mae West's stage act, has died. He was 74.
• • DuBois died Wednesday [26 September 2007] at Saint John's Health Center, his wife Marcy said. She said an autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death. He lived in Santa Monica.
• • The winner of Mr. America and the Mr. USA bodybuilding contests in the mid 1950s, DuBois' Herculean frame landed a contract with MGM and a role in the 1954 movie "Athena" with Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell. He appeared in the musical comedy under the stage name Richard Sabre.
• • DuBois later appeared with Mae West in her nightclub act as it toured across the country.
• • Dubois eventually abandoned his show business pursuits to become an evangelist, his wife said. He spent the last 19 years preaching as pastor of Gospel Lighthouse in West Los Angeles.
• • Besides his wife of 47 years, DuBois is survived by his son Elijah, daughter-in-law Carol, granddaughter Jasmine, and sister Marcy.
• • A memorial service was scheduled for next weekend.
• • Source: The Associated Press
• • Published: 9 September 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West and Dick DuBois • • 1954 • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST and a number of notables tried to cash in on the phenomenon known as The Beatles. 
The Stranger's staff writer Ari Spool, in his mini review of a new book — — Fab Four FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Beatles... and More! [authored by Stuart Shea and Robert Rodriguez; published by Hal Leonard, 2007] — — offers some bittersweet backward glances.
• • According to Ari Spool, In Chapter 34 of Fab Four FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Beatles... and More!, there is a list of 10 odd covers of Beatles songs. It's a pretty star-studded list — — MAE WEST, Lena Horne, and Bing Crosby are all on it.
• • When the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, every label that wasn't carrying Beatles records took a huge hit in sales. In desperation — — today's RIAA willy-nilly litigation party is not the first time the record industry has been driven by desperation — — many record labels persuaded their old-school failing artists to try and contemporize by covering Beatles songs.
• • This strategy revived exactly zero careers, which is probably why I'd never heard of any of the recordings. Mae West's cover of "Day Tripper" is said to "have growled rather uncomfortably through the Fab's guitar-laden rave up." [This bombed for Mae. However, Mitch Miller's corny cover of "Give Peace a Chance" did no better — — even though he was then the president of Columbia Records.] . . .
• • Source: The Stranger [Seattle, Wash.]
• • Byline: Ari Spool
• • Published: 26 September 2007
— — http://www.thestranger.com/ — —
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1928 • •
NYC
Mae West.
It was mid-September 1931 when MAE WEST was stepping onstage as the slinky temptress "Babe Gordon" at the Royale Theatre's production of her newest play The Constant Sinner. The play had had its Broadway premiere on 14 September 1931 and would last until November. 
• • Set in Harlem during the Prohibition Era, the play followed the escapades of a honey-haired prizefighter groupie. Here's a selection from Mae West's novel The Constant Sinner [1930] — — after Bearcat Delaney has attracted Babe's attention by winning a fight.
• • • • Babe walked out with Bill [Larson] and headed for Toni's. She knew then that she was sure to meet the Bearcat.
• • • • With her escort, Bill Larson, she walked to the corner of 135th Street and Fifth Avenue, and then turned to the left, walking through a block of chop suey fronts, dance halls, and speakeasies, where you bought gin for ten cents and where high-strung society nerves dropped in incognito for their shots of morphine and coke, while blood-stained criminals sat drinking and smoking at the tables in resigned security. In this block they were in Coke Village, below the deadline in deep Harlem. 
• • • • They came to 134th Street and dropped a short run of steep stairs to Toni's. Toni's was a basement restaurant of red walls stippled with gold and lighted by blue and red bulbs. It was an Italian place and had become popular as a sporting hangout. The food was good. Fighters from the Marathon Club, mangers, and other sporting bloods often dropped in.
• • • • Bill arranged to reserve two tables for the expected party, and Babe and he sat down at one of them to wait. She ordered a gin rickey, while Bill chose rye.
• • • • A couple of drunken white girls sat over empty gin glasses at a table nearby. Babe knew these hustlers. They were guzzlers. They worked the streets till they made enough for a few drinks and then they parked around the Fifth Avenue creep joints, waiting for downtown explorers that needed a "steer" to dope or wanted to be led to a "circus" where women resorted to strange practices to gratify morbid curiosity. There was more money in this racket and it was easier. It took energy to be a leg worker and they were wasted skeletons, bones showing.
• • • • Toni's was crowding up. Musicians and chorus girls from the burlesque houses on 125th Street came in to spend the night and morning over cheap gin and a hunk of chicken.
• • • • The Bearcat appeared in the doorway, with Joe Malone; Harry Flick, another fighter; and three buddies from the express company. They came toward the table where Babe and Bill were eagerly awaiting the party. ... — — excerpt The Constant Sinner by Mae West — —
• • Mae West's fascination with Harlem is discussed in the play "COURTING MAE WEST" [based on true events during 1926 —1932]. Look for updates about this play on the MAE WEST Blog.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's castmates • • 1931 • •
NYC
Mae West.
In 1893, during the summer Mary Jane West was born in Brooklyn, a bellydancer known as Little Egypt created a sensation at the Midway Plaisance of the Chicago World's Fair. ...
• • And so begins Becoming Mae West, a fascinatin' 431-page bio by Emily Wortis Leider that is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. The Californian poet received rave reviews in The New York Times and elsewhere, bringing her 1997 hardcover [NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux] to many readers' attention.
• • Since then Becoming Mae West has been reprinted twice. It is available in paperback [NY: Da Capo; published 4 April 2000; 480 pages] as well as in a large-print edition in hardcover [Thorndike Press; January 2001; 912 pages].
• • To celebrate the book's tenth anniversary, here is an excerpt from the review printed a decade ago by Library Journal:
• • Emily Wortis Leider (California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton & Her Times, LJ 11/15/90) traces Mae West's development from child performer to coltish shimmy dancer to the drawling, wise-cracking persona recognized today. The author's focus on West's early career allows her to examine significant changes in American culture as the population became predominantly urban and the new media of film and radio began encroaching on established forms of entertainment. Yet the heart of the story is West — — already a veteran performer with over 30 years' experience when she arrived in Hollywood. But once West honed her persona, she was reluctant to deviate from the successful formula, stifling her arresting creativity and originality. This combined with perennial censorship problems caused the decades-long break in her film career. Recommended for large public libraries and subject collections. ...
• • Reviewer: Marianne Cawley, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Maryland
• • Source: Library Journal — — summer 1997
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
Viewpoints on MAE WEST vary. And the overall success achieved by "Belle of the Nineties" is often in the eye of the beholder.
• • According to a current critic Dave Kehr, who writes for The Chicago Reader, Leo McCarey, the director whose obsessive Catholicism in the midst of anarchic humor sometimes made him the Fritz Lang of comedy, seems slightly ill at ease when faced with the unbounded libido of Mae West in this 1934 production ["Belle of the Nineties"]. West is a Saint Louis torch singer (backed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra) who exhales "My Old Flame," "Memphis Blues," and "When a Saint Louis Woman Comes Down to New Orleans" in between amours, Kehr concludes.
• • But, in fact, the screenplay and its "unbounded libido" was a re-tread. 
• • The script for "It Ain't No Sin" [re-titled "Belle of the Nineties"] was Mae West's 1934 rewrite of her controversial bestseller "Babe Gordon" [1931] — — re-titled "The Constant Sinner" — — a work of fiction set in Harlem during the Prohibition Era.
• • In the stage version [and its novelization], the story is focused on a white prizefighter's tart [as Babe Gordon styles herself] who dallies in Harlem with an Irish boxer Bearcat Delaney and a dashing black pimp Money Johnson. Babe Gordon also sells cocaine, cleverly hidden in rouge containers, for some extra income and intrigue during her boring job in a department store. The cocaine sub-plot was bleached out of the Paramount screenplay, obviously.
• • In both the novel and the play, beautiful Babe Gordon marries Bearcat Delaney.
• • Though some believe that Mae West capitulated to the Hollywood censors by agreeing to a walk down the aisle for her characters Ruby Carter and the Tiger Kid, faithful readers recognized the similarity to Mae's 1931 storyline, which always contained the marriage angle.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.
In September 1934, MAE WEST was involved in promoting her fourth feature for Paramount Pictures: "Belle of the Nineties." Here is the movie review that was published in The New York Times on 22 September 1934. 
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Mae West and Her Gaudy Retinue in "Belle of the Nineties"
• • By ANDRE SENNWALD
• • Although Mae West has graciously permitted the New York censors to make an honest woman of her in her new picture, she has not adopted the emblematic blue-nose. Back in the days when "Belle of the Nineties" — alias "Belle of New Orleans" and "It Ain't No Sin" — was locked in a death grip with the local censorship board, one of the major points of dissension was the shocking fade-out in which Miss West won her man without the assistance of a justice of the peace. In the new and approved version there is a wedding ceremony and Miss West is now safe for her large following to visit.
• • It is pretty futile to strive for an air of detachment toward Miss West and her new work. A continuously hilarious burlesque of the mustache cup, celluloid collar, and family entrance era of the naughty Nineties, it immediately takes its place among the best screen comedies of the year. Its incomparable star has been bolstered by a smart and funny script, an excellent physical production, and a generally buoyant comic spirit. There are gags for every taste and most of them are outrageously funny according to almost any standard of humor.
• • Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow have provided four crimson chansons — "My Old Flame," "Troubled Waters," "My American Beauty," and "When a St. Louis Woman Comes Down to New Orleans" — which are quite perfect, and Miss West delivers them in her inimitable adenoidal contralto.
• • Amid the lithographic Police Gazette settings of the Sensation House in New Orleans, Ruby Carter (in Miss West's classic person) rules the sporting world with queenly insolence. As she herself sagely observes, "It is better to be looked over than to be overlooked" — — and her serpentine gowns, hayloft coiffure, and hour-glass figure insure her against neglect. Ruby's expressed preference is for two kinds of men — domestic and foreign — and the gentlemen moths, in their tight pants, bowler hats, and Ascot cravats, flock to the flame. Even the bartenders with their walrus mustaches and spit-curls silently yearn for her.
• • Of course, Miss West is her own plot, but there are a fixed prize-fight, some stolen jools, an envious siren, a fire, and a pair of rival claimants for her affections to add the necessary business. While Ruby's personal philosophy is, in her own words, to keep cool and collect, she has a healthy admiration for a good man, and the Tiger Kid fills the bill. Sinister interests conspire to separate them, and Ruby Carter is forced to fight for what she politely refers to as her honor against the evil and wax-mustached Ace Lamont, proprietor of the Sensation House. This last is of a vintage so objectionable as to cause the amiable Ruby to remark, "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
• • Roger Pryor as the Tiger Kid, John Miljan as the contemptible Ace, and Katherine DeMille as the jealous mistress of Ace Lamont all contribute excellently to the comedy, while Duke Ellington's boys provide the sulphurous musical background for Miss West's songs. If the great lady's public expects a cool and reasoned appraisal of "Belle of the Nineties" this morning, it will have to be disappointed. Not being immune to the common human failing of magnifying the virtues of the past, this reporter will always consider "She Done Him Wrong" her greatest show. At any rate, her present masterpiece is superior on every count to "I'm No Angel." As for its morality, you have Miss West's own testimony, when she tells an overwrought admirer, "Remember, I'm a lady, you worm."
• • You will have to take her word for it.
• • BELLE OF THE NINETIES, adapted from a story by Mae West; music and lyrics by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow; directed by Leo McCarey; a Paramount production. At the Paramount.
• • Source: The New York Times
• • Critic: Andre Sennwald
• • Originally published on: 22 September 1934• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.
Around 21 September 1934, MAE WEST was busy promoting her latest release: 
"Belle of the Nineties."
• • At first, Paramount Pictures was advertising this new production as "It Ain't No Sin" before re-titling the picture in which Mae West plays a St. Louis entertainer named Ruby Carter.
• • Mae West was fond of saying: "It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then — — as long as you don't break any."
• • Here are some memorable lines from "Belle of the Nineties":
• • Ruby Carter: "Don't let a man put anything over on ya 'cept an umbrella."• • • Situation: Miss Ruby Carter walks off a boat.
• • Man: "Are you in town for good?"
• • Ruby: "I expect to be here — — but not for good."
• • • Romantic encounter:• • Man: "You're the kind of woman I've dreamed about — — always desired. I'm wild about you."
• • Ruby: "Some of the wildest men make the best pets."
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • In a still from the film, Katherine DeMille [who played Molly Brant] inspects a poster. • • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.
On 21 September 1934, MAE WEST was busy promoting her latest release: "Belle of the Nineties."
• • Paramount Pictures advertised this motion picture as "directed by Leo McCarey from story and scenario by Miss West" — — but they might have credited Joe Breen for additional "editing" since the censor had a hand in down-sizing Mae's juicy one-liners until the script was on a starvation diet. The original title had been the provocative "It Ain't No Sin" — — which got the Hays Office's knickers in a knot.
• • Once the censor's scissors stopped shredding, alas, no one was yelling "Hips-hips-hooray!" Variety's fim critics wrote this instead.
• • From Variety: Mae West's latest opera, "Belle of the Nineties," ain't no sin for the b.o. nor the customers. It's been sufficiently denatured from within and yet not completely emasculated. It's not up to par, but who cares? The customers won't, if the Paramount Pictures first-nighters are any criterion. They came to laugh at Miss West's robust quips and they did; so much so that the film's shortcomings impress mostly on the improper timing of laughs. The audience guffaws extended into the ensuing dialogue, and whether those particular portions of the gab are ad lib will not be known from this particular screening. Hence, if the reaction is that spontaneous, what matters the rest?
• • True, the story is deficient. It's as ten-twent-thirt as its mauve decade time and locale. The melodramatics are put on a bit thick, including the arch-villain who is an arch-renegade, a would-be murderer, a welcher, an arsonist and everything else in the book of ye good old-time mellers [i.e., melodramas]. That Miss West treats villainy with equal cunning (although it's labeled as extraordinary counter-shrewdness) and foils all of the intended dastardliness is mitigated only by the benefit-of-clergy finale, an obvious curtsey to Joe Breen.
• • Apart from the melodramatics, Miss West's "Belle" is really a vaudeville two-act — — a comedienne with a straight; only it's a succession of straight men feeding her the quips. The Westian epigrams are reeled off in orthodox variety manner; somebody, anybody (her maid, an admiring swain, the on-the-make muggs, a casual stooge) asks her a simple question and she never answers in a straight-forward manner. Always a wisecrack.
• • But that's the West technique. She's built a nifty into a marquee name and the customers seem to expect it. Some are out of the trunk, but they jell nicely.
• • "Belle of the Nineties" is a little of everything. Even "St. Louis Blues" and "Memphis Blues" are in it — — she did "Frankie and Johnny" in "Diamond Lil."
• • The original songs by Coslow and Johnston are "My Old Flame," "American Beauty," and "Troubled Waters." Duke Ellington's nifty jazzique is a natural for the Westian song delivery. "Waters" introduces a little of the Elder Michaux revival meeting. That's in the offing, but within seeming earshot, and thus she does a semi-spiritual against the heated colored revival meeting background which productionally is rather well worked in.
• • Just like she makes stooges of almost anybody assigned to bandy talk with her, Miss West dittoes with her principal support, including Roger Pryor, the fave vis-a-vis, John Mack Brown as the good time Charlie, and John Miljan, a villain of darkest mien. Katherine DeMille as the spurned gambler's sweetheart looks better and suggests better opportunities than the prima facie script accords her. The publicity, the glamor, and the star appeal — — in these factors alone "Belle of the Nineties" underwrites itself. — — Abel.
• • Variety [originally published 25 September 1934]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Belle of the 90's Paramount production and release. Stars Mae West. Directed by Leo McCarey from story and scenario by Miss West. Songs, Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow; Photography Karl Struss. At Paramount, New York, week Sept. 21. Running time, 73 minutes.
• • Ruby Carter . . . Mae West
• • Tiger Kid . . . Roger Pryor
• • Brooks Claybourne . . . John Mack Brown
• • Molly Brant . . . Katherine DeMille
• • Ace Lamont . . . John Miljan
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.
So far, MAE WEST ranks sixth as The Reader's Digest polls their audience to help choose the most side-splitting screen gems. Reader's Digest Editor Stefan Kanfer, who wrote about this quest to select the top hundred funniest films, listed these as the top ten.
• • THE GOLD RUSH (1925) — — Charlie Chaplin's greatest silent film.
• • THE FRESHMAN (1925) — — The third of the great silent film trio (the other two were Chaplin and Keaton), Harold Lloyd did all his own stunts, many of them dangerous, with skill and humor.
• • THE GENERAL (1927) — — Buster Keaton in an extraordinary silent comedy set during the Civil War.
• • DUCK SOUP (1933) — — Perhaps the purest film farce ever made — — directed con brio by Leo McCarey — — starring Harpo, Chico, and Groucho Marx at their manic peak.
• • DINNER AT EIGHT (1933) — — The "talkies" grew up with this adaptation of a Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Under George Cukor's canny direction John and Lionel Barrymore, sex goddess Jean Harlow, and comedians Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery enliven the narrative.
• • SHE DONE HIM WRONG (1933) — — Mae West became something of a joke in later life, but as her films prove, she was one of the best comedy writers in 1930s Hollywood. Here, she plays a Gay Nineties saloon singer in trouble with the law — — impersonated by Cary Grant in an early role. "When a woman goes wrong, the men go right after her." "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" The great lines are here, and Mae wrote 'em all. Lowell Sherman directed unobtrusively.
• • SONS OF THE DESERT (1933) — — Arguably Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's best film.
• • THE THIN MAN (1934) — — William Powell and Myrna Loy play Dashiell Hammett's sophisticated married sleuths, Nick and Nora Charles.
• • IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) — — Clark Gable is a cynical newspaperman who meets a pampered heiress (Claudette Colbert) in director Frank Capra's screwball comedy.
• • MY MAN GODFREY (1936) — — with Carole Lombard as the spoiled-rotten heiress and William Powell as the bum who becomes a butler and a guru in Gregory La Cava's rambunctious screwball farce.
• • As the publication is narrowing the field down to the top 100+ side-splitters of all time, write them and vote for Mae and more Mae.
• • Source: The Reader's Digest — — http://www.rd.com/ — —
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1933 ad • •
NYC
Mae West.
Jerry Orbach, a friend of MAE WEST, just had a New York City street corner dedicated to him.
• • In Manhattan, a stretch of West 53rd Street at Eighth Avenue has been renamed for the 6' 2" actor who was respected on Broadway, on the silver screen, and on the tube. Like Mae, Jerry was a native New Yorker — — and his widow, Elaine Orbach, unveiled the new street sign in his hometown on Monday 17 September 2007.
• • Jerome Bernard Orbach was born in the Bronx [on 20 October 1935] to a Polish Catholic mother from Pennsylvania and a German Jewish father whose ancestry was Spanish Sephardic.
• • In 1952, the 17-year-old had just graduated from high school when he appeared in summer stock at the Chevy Chase Playhouse in Wheeling, Illinois. Orbach's first troupe mates were Mae West, Vincent Price, and John Ireland.
• • In 1960, he created the role of El Gallo in "The Fantasticks,'' singing the catchy theme song "Try to Remember'' that opened this off-Broadway musical, which ran for 40 years at the Sullivan Street Playhouse.
• • For awhile Orbach worked as a chauffeur for Mae West in Hollywood.
• • In 2004, after a long battle with cancer, Jerry Orbach died at age 69.
• • Put that sad thought aside. Envision your favorite September, when you were young. . . when many American households had a copy of the soundtrack to "The Fantasticks" . . . and when this song would play on the radio, filling the room with Orbach's powerful tenor.
— — — — — — — — — — — —
• • "Try to Remember" • •
Try to remember that time in September
When grass was green
And grain was yellow
Try to remember . . .
When you were a young and callow fellow . . .
— — excerpt from the theme song sung by Jerry Orbach in "The Fantasticks" — —
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
Flushed with success was MAE WEST.
• • In her book "Mae West on Sex, Health, and ESP" [New York: W. H. Allen, 1975], the screen queen held forth on her habit of starting each day with a daily enema.
• • Other celebrities have since discovered the ritual of colonic hydrotherapy, for instance, Demi Moore, Janet Jackson, Damon Wayans, John Lennon, James Coburn, etc.
• • Ever hear of a royal flush? Titled people, too, have gone on record about their enjoyment of a full body clean-out. Egyptian Queen Cleopatra endorsed this as well as Great Britain's Princess Diana.
• • The British tabloids announced that Diana spent more than $4,300 a year irrigating her colon. And in 1993, The Globe estimated that the Princess of Wales had her bowels swished out with 12 gallons of water 3 times a week. The hope was that she would keep slim by this "royal flush" — — and be released from ailments such as anorexia, headaches, allergies, fatigue, depression, and candida.
• • Lately, the 47-year-old musician Courtney Love [born in San Francisco on 9 July 1964] is claiming that her scrawny — — almost skeletal — — physique is due to “detoxing” through colonics. Do you believe it?
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
Mae West's friend Roderick McDowall was born in London on 17 September 1928.
• • Perhaps you remember seeing the lanky Englishman when he played the female impersonator Rene Valentine in "Mae West" [1982], a made for tv bio-pic. McDowall also received credit for [gulp!] "Technical Details" — — which is astonishing since his choices in his scenes with the Brooklyn bombshell all seem false.
• • Moreover, his rift on the elegant Julian Eltinge misses the point; Roddy McDowall looks more like one of Cinderella's ugly step-sisters than the Broadway star of "The Fascinating Widow."
• • Shouldn't someone have noticed that the bawdy over-the-top drag queen Mae most adored was the campy cut-up Bert Savoy — — not the inscrutable Mr. Eltinge?
• • Anyway, one happy fella was Richard F. Shepard, whose New York Times review said: "Roddy McDowall is persuasive as a female impersonator who puts Miss West on the path to stardom by fixing her stage personality and appearance; he is almost scholarly and calm, the lifelong friend and confidant" [Richard F. Shepard, NY Times, 14 August 1984].
• • Directed by Lee Phillips, the 1982 bio-pic also featured Ann Jillian as Mae West, James Brolin as Jim Timony, et al.
• • Decide for yourself how watchable Roddy McDowall is in this scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVZflfidfy4
• • The actor died of lung cancer in California on 3 October 1998.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
