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In January 1934, MAE WEST was with her fellow vaudevillian Eddie Cantor. 
• • Born on the Lower Eastside of New York — — on 31 January 1892 — — Eddie Cantor was an American comedian, singer, actor, songwriter, and one of the most popular entertainers in the USA in the early and middle 20th century. He was known to Broadway, radio, and early television audiences as "Banjo Eyes" and "the Apostle of Pep." Cantor was regarded by millions as "a member of the family" because of his intimate radio shows that involved anecdotes and antics about his wife Ida and their five daughters.
• • Stages where MAE WEST and Eddie Cantor both performed in NYC include the Paramount (the one in Manhattan as well as the Brooklyn venue), The Palace, and many places in Coney Island.
• • On 20 January 1934, Eddie Cantor was the M.C. during a stage show at the Paramount Theatre (Broadway and West 43rd Street). In one number, he appeared in a Mae West costume. Yes, this actually happened onstage, so try to imagine it.
• • On 22 January 1934, both Mae West and Eddie Cantor entertained at the New Amsterdam Theatre [214 West 42nd Street] — — at the 52nd annual benefit for the Actors' Fund.• • 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.
This summer MAE WEST will get an extra special birthday gift: a spotlight. 
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" (based on true events when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway) will be presented at The Algonquin Theatre during July 2008 as part of The Annual Fresh Fruit Festival.
• • According to Artistic Director Carol Polcovar, The Annual Fresh Fruit Festival encompasses theater, performance, poetry, comedy, spoken word, music, dance, visual arts and some talents that defy categorization. Artists come from around the city, nation and, indeed, the world. Australia, Canada, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, France, Maui, Israel, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and all of New York City's boroughs and suburbs have been represented.
• • As Ms. Polcovar explains: Fresh Fruit is the most inclusive expression of LGBT arts ever held in the City of New York. Performers of all racial and many ethnic backgrounds, sexualities, gender orientation fill out stages. They have been African-, Caribbean-, Chinese-, East Indian-, Filipina-, Hispanic-, Japanese-, Korean-, Native-, and even unhyphenated Americans were among groups represented by both performers and audience. The work brought forth is always fresh, exciting and insightful."
• • Their brochure says, “Fresh Fruit seeks variety, challenge, excitement, and FUN! “ — — www.freshfruitfestival.com
• • Hard-working Carol Polcovar wears many hats; she is a playwright, poet, director, and producer who has been working in NYC theater since the 1980s. She founded New Village Productions in 1989 to expand the vision of theater to include greater diversity.
• • A 95-minute play set during the Prohibition Era, "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" will be directed by Louis Lopardi, who has also worked with The Annual Fresh Fruit Festival as their very capable Production Manager and Technical Director.
• • The Algonquin Theatre (at 123 East 24th Street, NYC 10010) houses two air-conditioned performance spaces: the 99-seat "Kaufman" and the 40-seat "Parker." The Kaufman features a proscenium stage that is 21 feet wide and 23 feet deep.
• • The larger playhouse is named in honor of George S. Kaufman [16 November 1889 — 2 June 1961], an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. The petite playing space honors another Algonquin Round Table member: author Dorothy Parker [22 August 1893 — 7 June 1967]. Both writers attended performances of Mae West's plays during the 1920s and critiqued them.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Maebill • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST's film "Klondike Annie" (Paramount) led to this coverage in Time Magazine.
• • Said the Hearst New York American last week: "The attention of the churches, the women's clubs, the various state censors, the state legislatures and the Congress of the United States is called to the fact that Mae West has produced another screen play which she wrote herself. . . ."
• • Whether or not Klondike Annie is really worth the attention of Congressmen will depend on how familiar they are with earlier West efforts from which the current one differs only in detail. This time she is a San Francisco strumpet who knifes her Chinese paramour, slips on board an Alaska-bound freighter, enraptures its captain (Victor McLaglen), befriends a churchworker bound for Nome, usurps her identity when she dies, lands in Nome as Sister Annie Alden, enslaves a young territorial police officer (Philip Reed), renounces him rather than ruin his career, returns to San Francisco to face the music. As usual, the comedy depends mainly upon the incongruity between Mae West's up-to-date wisecracks and their fin de siècle background.
• • For Cinemactress Mae West, last week was possibly the liveliest she has experienced since she entered the cinema industry in 1932. The Hearst editorials she inspired, however useful they may have proved as publicity for Klondike Annie, were not intended to be laudatory. They were part of a sudden Hearst campaign against Miss West supposedly inspired by a slighting remark she was reported to have made about Cinemactress Marion Davies. While they ballyhooed the picture with angry editorials, Hearst papers paradoxically refused to carry paid advertising for it (see p. 61).
• • In Kansas City, Cinemactress West's Manager James Timony was asked to comment on her current bickering with Paramount about her contract. Said he: "Lubitsch thought in his Hitler way he could push her around. ... In the end she pushed him around. . . . After all. she was in the show business before he thought of being. . . ."
• • On his way to Europe for a honeymoon. Director Ernst Lubitsch replied as impudently as possible: "Try to push her around? . . . She's much too heavy. ... Of course she was in show business before I was. She's older than I am." Director Lubitsch is 44.
• • In Manhattan Actor Frank Wallace, who last spring announced that he and Mae West were married in Milwaukee in 1911 and had never been divorced, re-opened his suit to prove it. Said Mae West: "Wait a minute, sweetheart — which Frank Wallace is it? There are three of them. ... I'm not married to him and I never was. . . ."
— — Source: — —
• • Time Magazine — — "New Pictures"
• • Published on: Monday, March 09, 1936
• • 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.
It was late January 1927 and MAE WEST was en route to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
• •
By Monday January 31st, Bridgeport, Connecticut's main street was decorated with a banner that read: "The Drag by the author of SEX, more sensational than Rain or The Captive."
• • That Monday evening — — after intense arguments with the local police — — the curtain rose and theatre-goers (and Mae West watchers) saw the first public performance of The Drag written by "Jane Mast" (the pen name of Mae West) at Poli's Theatre.
• • Rush from Variety Magazine was in the audience as well. In his column — — published on 2 February 1927 — — Rush complained that Mae's production was "a deliberate play for morbid interest," and a "jazzed-up revel in the garbage heap." Ouch!• • In The Drag, the drag queen Winnie has an interesting line: "So glad to have you meet me. Come up sometime and I'll bake you a pan of biscuits." That was Mae West's intentional echo of the very well-known line of the late great female impersonator Bert Savoy, who used to say, "Oh, Margie! You must come over!"• • Jill Watts writes: "New Yorkers lured by gossip surrounding West's latest undertaking paid premium prices for reserved seats. West claimed it drew fans from Boston to Philadelphia. It also brought out the New York City Police Department's James Sinnott. ..." 
• • How ironic is it that one of NYC's vice over-lords was named SIN NOT!
• • On Tuesday February 1st at 5:00 AM, Mae West was arrested along with her sister and the director Edward Elsner. That would not be the end of her headaches. It would, however, be the start of Mae's headlines in the newspapers. Pole-vaulted out of the ghetto of the clubby entertainment section, the Brooklyn bombshell suddenly became national news.
• • Sergei Treshatny, the husband of Beverly West, immediately began divorce proceedings due to this arrest. He used the Bridgeport trial transcripts as evidence against his wife.
• • The arrest at the Arcade Hotel is dramatized in the play "Courting Mae West." Beverly's drunken antics and Mae's strategies are featured in Act I, Scene 2.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.• • Arcade Hotel — 1001 Main St, Bridgeport, CT 06604; Tel (203) 333-9376
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1927 • •
• • Photo: • • Arcade Hotel • • 1925 • •NYC
Mae West.
Stork exchange! On 8 December 1898 MAE WEST and her parents welcomed a new pink-ribboned addition to the household — — sister Mildreth Katharina, who later charged her stage name to Beverly. 
• • Also an aspiring actress, kid sister Beverly performed at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in 1916 in an act billed as "Mae West and Sister."
• • January was a big month in Beverly's personal history.
• • On 29 January 1917 Beverly wed her first Russian husband Sergei Treshatny. An inventor, Treshatny had arrived in the United States in 1916. Vaudevillians Beverly and Mae West were both busy working in Paterson, New Jersey during January 1917 when Beverly took some time off to become a "missus" at Brooklyn City Hall on Joralemon Street.
• • A decade later, when Mae and Beverly were arrested in Bridgeport, Connecticut in early February 1927, Sergei took advantage of the scandal, using the trial testimony as his grounds for divorce. Their marriage was dissolved the same year.
• • By January 1934, Beverly was once again ready to ride the marry-go-round. In Chicago, Beverly and Russian-born Vladimir Baikoff applied for a marriage license early in the month and tied the knot. Vladimir and Beverly met when both were working at a radio station.
• • On her marriage license, Beverly gave her age as 27, meaning that she had been born in 1907. This was consistent with Mae's calculations; in 1934, Mae was giving her birthyear as 1900.
• • Good thing municipal clerks were not crossing checking New York State's records with Illinois — — otherwise someone might have wondered about the bride who was born in 1907, having been first married in 1917 when she was 10 years old.• • Get ready to come up and see Mae and Beverly onstage during July 2008.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • Beverly • • 1930 • •
NYC
Mae West.
A 95-minute serious-minded comedy, "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" — — based on true events when actress-author MAE WEST was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway (New York City) — — combines real-life people and fictional personae. The story begins in December 1926, when Mae West is celebrating the 300th performance of her play "Sex" at a Greenwich Village speakeasy where she has hired some gay males and drag-queens to star in her upcoming production "The Drag." The final scene, set in December 1932, shows Mae West in her Hollywood dressing room, preparing to shoot a scene for a Paramount Pictures motion picture called "She Done Him Wrong" — — a screenplay based on her 1928 Broadway smash "Diamond Lil." 
• • The cast of "Courting Mae West" includes some colorful characters. Meet Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan [1884-1933], called "Texas Guinan" in the play.
• • Born in Waco, Texas, Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan was an amiable hell-raiser who lived in Greenwich Village with her mother, father, and younger brother, and had an unusual career that required two armored cars. Active in vaudeville and musical theater, Texas starred in dozens of silent films (often as the gun-toting lawmaker in 2-reel westerns, a match for any cowboy or revenue agent). During the prohibition era, Texas's talents for whooppee-making and shameless self-promotion came together for a successful reign as the queen of the night clubs and speakeasies, where her job was to help people spend money.
• • Learn about her: TexasGuinan.blogspot.com
• • In "Courting Mae West," Texas Guinan's counterpart TEXAS GUINAN is witty, confident, stylish, wealthy, and diamond draped; as MAE WEST observes, being together means "basking in the glow of your investment grade jewelry." Frequently arrested for violating the Volstead Act, Texas is riveted on opening new gin mills each time the feds padlock her nightspots. Therefore, she views the penitential perils as part of the game. In her mid-forties and an influential Broadway backer, TEXAS GUINAN provides a contrast to MAE WEST, an onstage outlaw who is generous with everything — — except sympathy.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets"
• • Cast size: seven [4 females, 3 males play rotating roles — — except for the MAE WEST role]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • SYNOPSIS [100 words] • •
• • Based on true events during the Prohibition Era, this 95-minute play follows a vaudeville veteran whose frustrations with the rules of male-dominated Broadway have led her to write her own material and cast her own shows. Is the Gay White Way ready for love stories that feature New York City drag queens instead of card-carrying members of the union? Is the legitimate theatre ripe for racially integrated melodramas set in Harlem? Is the Rialto raring to reward a working-class heroine determined to sin and win?
• • Come up and see Mae West as she challenges bigotry, fights City Hall, and climbs the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • Texas Guinan • • 1930 • •
NYC
Mae West.
During December 1925 and January 1926, MAE WEST and her collaborator Adeline Leitzbach were expanding a sketch "Following the Fleet" into a three act play under the working title of "The Albatross." 
The action followed Margy LaMont, a prostitute from Montreal’s red light district as she traveled to Trinidad and the well-helled mansions of Westchester County, New York. Energized by her bold waterfront vixen, West revealed that ideas flowed forth — — and covered paper bags, stationery, envelopes, and old scraps of paper that she forwarded to Timony’s secretaries for transcription. It was a sprawling band concert of a narrative, a might busy and messy story with the center act given over to a musical night club frolic.
• • Eventually, this 3-act drama was retitled.• • In her play "Sex," Mae West broke with Broadway's middle-class moralities and the fey tradition of "off-shore sex" by making sin a domestic product. She set her brothel scenes not in the South Seas but squarely in North America (Canada); the final scenes were set in tony Connecticut.
• • During Prohibition, sin was in and the Gay White Way was no exception, noticed Mae.
• • The rialto was frequently overrun with crowd-pleasing "dirt plays," shows such as John Colton's "Shanghai Gesture" [Martin Beck Theatre, 1926], starring Florence Reed in the role of an Oriental madam Mother Goddam — — an occidental overlord who presided over an elaborate bordello with specialty suites such as the Gallery of Laughing Dolls. Other examples were "The Half Caste" [1926], "White Cargo" [1924], and "Lulu Belle" [1926].
• • Sin, however, had a black syntax. The subtle subtext of the "dirt play" was retribution. All of these theatre pieces obeyed an unwritten rule: fallen women had to suffer and repent. And these exotic tanned temptresses were always positioned in foreign lands — — Samoa and the South Pacific being popular as the pants seat of Satan's circus.
• • Theatre-goers were in for other surprises, though, when "Sex" by Jane Mast debuted at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre on 26 April 1926.
• • According to Brooklyn College Professor Lillian Schlissel, "Sex" was an amateur effort with echoes of O'Neill's "Anna Christie." . . . But no playwright had ever attacked "respectable women" from the stage before. Margy accuses Clara, the "society lady," of being a whore in disguise. "She's one of those respectable dames who . . . is looking for the first chance to cheat without being found out." And later, "I'll bet without this beautiful home, without money, and without any restrictions, you'd be worse than I have ever been. . . . The only difference between us is that you could afford to give it away." Margy goes on, "I'll remember this night as long as I live. And if I ever get a chance, I'll get even with you, you dirty charity. I'll get even." Margy's anger is one of the startling apects of the play." [From Three Plays by Mae West edited by Lillian Schlissel, N.Y.: Routledge, 1997].
• • Before Mae West's play was closed down by the New York City cops, urged into compliance by the non-uniformed "purity police" (i.e., The Society for the Suppression of Vice), "Sex" had run for 339 performances — — and been seen by over 300,000 adults.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Illustration: Michael DiMotta • • Mae West star of SEX • • 1927 • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST appeared on many stages and on many pages, for instance, in the venerable Players Directory, which just celebrated their 31st anniversary this month.
• • First printed in January 1937, the Academy Players Directory is the industry's oldest and best-known casting directory. The first issue was a 248-page publication listing 1,257 players, including names like Mae West, James Stewart, Gene Autry, Bette Davis, Mary Astor, and Gary Cooper.
• • To be a part of the Players Directory [headquartered in Burbank, California 91506], you must be a member of an actor's union. Acceptable unions in the United States are SAG, AFTRA and AEA.
• • Visit them online: www.playersdirectory.com.
• • 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.
Forty two years: the life of Mae West impressionist Craig Russell was short and bittersweet. 
• • "Craig Russell" was the stage name of Russell Craig Eadie [10 January 1948 — 30 October 1990), a Canadian female impersonator. Craig Russell would have turned 60 during January 2008. But even though he died of AIDS-related illnesses, he lived long enough to establish himself as one of the best female impersonators of his or any other time.
• • His impersonations also included acclaimed actresses such as Carol Channing, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Midler, Anita Bryant, Peggy Lee, and Judy Garland. While performing, he always spoke and sang in the voices of the celebrities he was impersonating. Not only did he speak like them, he joked in their particular idiom. Unlike most other drag queens, Russell didn't lip-synch. He didn't need to.
• • Born on January 10th in Port Perry, Ontario, Russell Craig Eadie was fascinated by show biz glamour from an early age. When he was 13 and still in high school, he formed the Mae West International Fan Club. By the age of 15, Eadie had moved to Los Angeles to work for Mae West, a pivotal experience in his show biz education. He soon returned to Toronto to finish high school but dropped out for good, toiling as an insurance clerk before returning to California in 1967.
• • Eadie moved in with Mae West, becoming her personal secretary for seven months, assisting with her fan mail and honing his impersonations of her. In 1968 Eadie returned to Toronto, moved in with Margaret Gibson, and enrolled in hairdressing school. By day, he worked as a professional hairdresser [1969 — 1971]. By night, he pursued a career onstage.
• • By 1971, he was a regular headliner in Toronto gay clubs and had a burgeoning international following.
• • In 1977, Russell starred in Richard Benner's wonderful film "Outrageous!" — — based on a short story written by Margaret Gibson about their time as roommates. Two more films followed.
• • Hollis McLaren's character was drawn from the troubled life of Margaret Gibson, a schizophrenic Toronto author who penned The Butterfly Ward, a debut collection of stories. One of the stories in the book is "Making It," based on her relationship with her flatmate Craig Russell.
• • Cinema critic Janet Maslin was not charmed by the character of Robin nor his schizo soulmate Liza Connors (played by Hollis McLaren). But in her New York Times write-up, Maslin conceded that the characters were "more than convincing," if "a little hard to watch." Hollis McLaren, wrote Janet Maslin, "is either a brilliantly skittish performer — — or an authentic nervous wreck."
• • Though he publicly identified himself as gay rather than bisexual, Russell wed close friend Lori Jenkins in 1982. They remained married until his death at age 42 from a stroke (related to complications from AIDS) in 1990.
• • "Outrageous!" was screened 21 January 2008 in the Cinematheque Ontario lecture series.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West impressionist Craig Russell • • c.1980s • •
NYC
Mae West.
West Ninth Street, Manhattan, is only one block long, from Fifth Avenue at one end to Sixth Avenue at the other, east to west. It was at the west end, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, where another West, a lady named Mae, spent one night in jail in 1927 in what is now the historic old Jefferson Market Library but was then the Jefferson Market Courthouse, wrote Jerry Tallmer in his article for The Villager about the play "Courting Mae West." 
• • Jerry Tallmer continued: The full title of this serious-minded comedy is “Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets,” and the based-on-real-life characters in it include the pre-Hollywood Mae West; Mae's sister Beverly; Mae's lawyer-manager Jim Timony; night club queen Texas Guinan; gorgeous, doomed Starr Faithfull, a Greenwich Village good-time girl — the Gloria Wandrous of John O’Hara’s blazing “Butterfield 8” — whose corpse rattled many of the rich and powerful when it washed up on a Long Island beach; and a news dealer named Mr. Isidore who was the last person in Manhattan, from his stand under the El at Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street, to see Starr Faithfull alive as she disappeared into the PATH station on her way to the L.I.R.R.
• • There are also a number of fictional characters, notably Eliza Rourke, a repressed, glamour-worshipping, working-class Irish-American girl who slaves without pay in her parents’ boarding house on Ninth Street, and Mario “Shortie” DeAngelis, a young, over-eager New York newspaper reporter who dashes frantically between such headline events as the jailing of Mae West and the discovery of Starr Faithfull’s body on Long Island (which actually happened in 1931). Eliza is sweet on him; her mother is not happy about this budding romance.
• • Veteran news man Jerry Tallmer, who founded the Obie Award in the mid-1950s, is one of the few who realized the truth: that Mae West's arrest for obscenity was provoked by the midnight performance of her new homosexual play "The Drag." Variety Magazine reported that this "sneak preview" occurred in Daly's 63rd Street Theatre and, hours later, the vice squad showed up to raid Mae's performance in "Sex."
• • Headline-hungry tabloids rushed to photograph the new felon on 9 February 1927 at Jefferson Market Police Court on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Understandably, Mae West was upset that night. Little did she know what would happen to her in the near future because of her police record.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Illustration: Michael DiMotta • • Mae West star of SEX • • 1927 • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST had little in common with Edgar Allan Poe [19 January 1809 — 7 October 1849], whose 200th anniversary will be commemorated by new films about his life (including one by Sylvester Stallone).
• • Nevertheless, there are undeniable links between these American icons. The best known yoking of the Brooklyn bombshell and the Boston-born master of the macabre is their appearance together on the Beatles album cover called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" [1967], a photomontage of a crowd gathered round a grave. The curious onlookers included MAE WEST, Edgar Allan Poe, Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Lawrence of Arabia, Sonny Liston, etc. along with eight Beatles.
• • Yes, there is more. Though the "Baby Vamp" was born in 1893 — — forty-four years years after the poet's demise — — she was a frequent visitor to a gay cabaret on West Third Street that was directly opposite Poe's residence in Greenwich Village where he worked on "The Raven."
• • Neither was a stranger to Tinseltown. Numerous motion pictures have been made from Poe's verse and short fiction, onscreen projects that outnumber Mae's. What is similar is that her films — — and the adaptations made from Poe's nineteenth century writing — — tell a familiar story which never goes much below the surface of what it has to tell. Still, what a surface. Bright and funny in her case — — morose and suspenseful in his — — but both definitely belong in the category of good commercial entertainment.
• • Both retreated to the past, a distant era neither one had actually lived in, when it came to story-telling. Not for them the latte-fueled pulse of the modern world.
• • Their narratives are driven by the engine of desire — — not the desire for sex. Their main characters want power and authority, sometimes money, to achieve an end. The protagonist is willful, active, goal-oriented, and an agent of change.
• • Mae West always wanted to portray a working woman who looks great and runs things. Poe depicted his heroines as great-looking beauties who are running towards the after-life.
• • Mae West often arranged a seance. Who knows? Maybe Poe even dropped in during one.
• • 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.
For eight years, actress Kate Peters toured with her "Mae West Show" in Australia. In an interview for Gold Coast Magazine, the ever-ready Sydney-born thesp (who made her stage debut at age 7) discussed her current projects, her recent trip to California and Nevada, and her a-MAE-zing journey with reporter Doug Parrington.
• • This is an excerpt from Parrington's chatty sit-down with the seasoned doyenne of the stage.
• • Doug Parrington writes: In Canberra, Australia, while being a celebrity artist at the School of Arts Cafe and regularly performing one-woman shows, she kicked off the June Dally-Watkins school of modelling franchise in Canberra, a talent school and production company called Top Hat Productions and the first professional actor's agency in Canberra called CAN-ACT.
• • Her one-woman show focused on Mae West, the outrageous, scandalous and bawdy screen siren of Hollywood last century. Peters loves the irreverence and strength of Mae West, especially the way she ran her own race.
• • "I empathize with her," says Peters.
• • "I did the 'Mae West Show' show for about eight years, based on her famous quote 'goodness had nothin' to do with it' and obviously I grew to know a lot about her life as part of the character. I acquired her old movies — — 12 I think — — which are all fantastic."
• • Kate Peters adds, "She was very clever. Although she was targeted and pursued by the US National Legion of Decency, and at one point jailed for public obscenity, she never swore. She was so clever with the double entendre ... in other words whatever you made of what she said, it was all in the mind."
• • "I loved that line about goodness. Someone said to Mae West: 'Goodness, what beautiful diamonds' and she answered 'goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie'.
• • "She was a screen writer, an actress, a playwright and a singer, and her career lasted a long time. She reinvented herself midway through her movie career, did singing and dancing, and wrote all her own stuff. And she always celebrated the glamour of her industry — — she would never go out without furs, limo, make-up, and jewelery. Where has that sort of glamour gone now?
• • "Many of today's entertainment stars are pictured in magazines in their jeans, going shopping, looking daggy. Now what's going on there? They seem to have forgotten that glamour is important, it should be part of their scene."
• • The Mae West discipline about glamour certainly is not lost on Kate Peters, who takes great care in how she looks and dresses before she steps out her front door. . . .
• • . . . She is just back from a trip to Palm Springs where she saw the Fabulous Palm Springs, featuring a 'galaxy' of old stars in a singing, dancing extravaganza.
• • "These are people who were the best of the best in places such as Las Vegas, and they stage 3-hour shows that play to packed houses and attract rave reviews. They're not young, but they're sexy, exciting and, as old professionals, absolutely perfect in everything they do," says Kate. "And being America, there always is a patriotic ending, complete with American flags and the US anthem."
• • "I'd like to do something like that on the Gold Coast, " she adds, "maybe not on such a grand scale, but the core of the show already is here. We have a wealth of older, marvelously talented people who could do it."
• • Kate Peters is well connected with scores of entertainers, past and present, . . . Her core aim — — through Top Hat Productions — — is to generate more work for Gold Coast performers of any age. . . .
• • "Theatre is the mark of a civilized society," she says. "It's the second oldest profession in the world, after the oldest one of course."
• • No doubt Mae West, her provocative and thoroughly entertaining heroine, would agree.
• • Source: GoldCoast.com — — www.goldcoast.com.au
• • Byline: Doug Parrington
• • Published on: 19 January 2008
• • 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.
Come up sometime. . . I'll tell your fortune! Ah, you can be had. 
• • It’s a kick to see January birthday boy Cary Grant [18 January 1904 — 29 November 1986] opposite MAE WEST before his own movie star image had solidified. The promise may be there, but Grant is stiff in the role of Captain Cummings. He would not yet become the polished and adroit comic leading man that he turned himself into by the end of the nineteen-thirties. As the uniformed do-gooder, he is baby-faced and no real match for West’s dominating presence.
• • Cary Grant was not yet thirty the first time he starred opposite West, and his age adds another provocative element to West’s gleefully taboo-busting, sexually frank presence. “To be sexual with younger men has been, according to Hollywood, a female sin punishable by death or dishonor,” feminist film critic Kathi Maio writes in her book Popcorn and Sexual Politics. “There have only been rare exceptions. When Mae West encouraged Cary Grant, a much younger man, to come up and see her sometime, she wasn’t interested in baking him a batch of brownies. Mae was sexy, but her blatant bawdiness was never threatening because her come hither looks were played for comedy. And besides, Mae West got to break the rules governing female comportment because Mae West was a law unto herself.”
• • Kathi Maio is mostly right here — — West really does seem to be a law unto herself as she shimmies across the screen and swaps lascivious double entendres, but what Maio neglects to acknowledge is that there were a great number of people who did find West extremely threatening, and that her persona only emerged as the result of cleverness and persistence in the face of censorship.
• • As for Cary Grant's emerging persona, he confessed, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” In other words, Cary came up sometime — — to see his better self.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Cary Grant • • 1932 • •
NYC
Mae West.
Never the underdog, MAE WEST is front and center is a discussion down under about the sexualization of young girls through advertising and fashion.
• • Australian Mark Bahnisch, addressing himself to "The religious politics of puritan purity," takes issue with David Jones’ law suit against the Australia Institute. According to Bahnisch: One irony of such discussions is the fact that articles about the pernicious influence of pop culture on adolescent and tween sexuality often end up playing to the same celebrity hype and hyperbole that they purport to critique or dissect. A case in point is Newsweek’s piece on “Girls Gone Bad.”
• • At this point, Mark Bahnisch refers to an article published in Salon by Tracy Clark-Fory, who wrote: This time around it’s a meandering, confused [Newsweek] cover story on how the publicised exploits of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan affect tweens and teens, and it addresses the burning question of whether we’re “raising a generation of ‘prosti-tots’.”
• • Back to Bahnisch for this: Reading the [Newsweek] article proves just as painful as handing over a fistful of dollars in exchange for the issue, with its cover image of high-as-a-kite Britney and Paris paired with the headline “The Girls Gone Wild Effect.” Luckily, you become kind of numb after seeing Nancy Pelosi’s ascendancy in the House mentioned paragraphs away from a reference to Lindsay’s “fire crotch.” There’s a hasty rundown of the history of “bad girls” — — complemented by a photo gallery, of course — — which starts with Mae West and ends with the Brit Pack (or whatever they’re calling them these days). Ultimately — — about 3,000 some odd words in — — it concludes that our girls will be just fine because we adults “hold the purse strings” and, unless Paris releases a series of educational videos for toddlers, parents have a significant head start on imparting morals to our children.
• • Are you wondering why didn't Newsweek's splashy cover feature explore the more subtle ways that the highly publicized Britney Spears/ Brit Pack scandals affect the way girls feel about themselves?
• • Bahnisch has a saucy answer; he writes: Instead, the piece latches on with a vampiric thirst to parents’ worst fears and, as was probably the genesis of the piece, finds an excuse to talk about Britney’s vagina once more. ...
• • Though Mae West does not pop up again, the issues of free speech, censorship, and pop culture crawl all over his essay like fire ants at a picnic. Bahnisch grinds away at Newsweek's effaced strength, the once proud publication looking like nothing resembling a moral compass.• • To continue reading this debate at On Line Opinion, a not-for-profit publication, see below.
— — Source: — — • • Article: "The religious politics of puritan purity"
• • Byline: Mark Bahnisch
• • Publication: On Line Opinion — — onlineopinion.com.au/
• • Published on: Thursday — 17 January 2008
• • 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.
New York City's venerable PAGE SIX led off its gossip column with MAE WEST, who has got to be the most quotable actress that ever lived.
• • Page Six wrote: The inimitable actress Mae West once quipped “Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.” Hopefully [sic] that won’t be the case for Jessica Biel’s new romantic comedy Easy Virtue, a period film currently filming in Oxfordshire U.K. based on a play by Noel Coward. Justin Timberlake's girlfriend stars [sic] an American divorcée who spontaneously marries a young Englishman, played by Ben Barnes. ...
• • Source: Page Six column, The New York Post
• • Published on: 15 January 2008
• • Now, if only the New York Post's editors could learn to use the word "hopefully" correctly and also proofread their copy. Is it too much to ask for? Sigh.
• • 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.
In January, MAE WEST would reminisce about a fearless, financially flush female who loyally backed her Broadway productions, and who also knew Jefferson Market Court, the Federal Court House, judges, and Dry Agents intimately during the Roaring 20s.
• • Greenwich Village resident Texas Guinan [1884-1933] always insisted that she didn't have to sell the hard stuff because she got as much for sparkling water as people paid for Scotch before Prohibition. She said her clients brought their own hooch on their very own hips, and what could she do except provide set-ups? Of course, you could buy a "booster" in her gin-joints if you knew the headwaiter, or if you looked as if you knew him, or if you knew somebody who was pretty sure he knew him, or maybe if you were good and thirsty and didn't have the seedy look of the Dry Agent.
• • Often in a tight spot due to her night spots, Texas had more than her share of arrests and padlocks and paddy wagons.
• • Returning to her speak after winning an acquittal at court once, Texas sang this ditty:
Judge Thomas said, "Tex, do you sell booze?"
I said, "Please, don't be silly.
I swear to you my cellar's filled
With chocolate and vanilly!"
• • A woman of courage and charm if not convictions, her birthday is 12 January 1884.
• • Let's give the little lady a nice big hand!
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Texas Guinan • • 1930 • •
NYC
Mae West.
