Mae West: Edgar Allan Poe

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
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Mae West.