Mae West: Booth Tarkington

No less than Booth Tarkington [1869 — 1946] was assigned by Collier's to write about the arrest of MAE WEST on 9 February 1927.
• • Surely, the dramatist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner had his own feelings about the purity police interfering with the written word when he addressed himself to the magazine's readers in his essay "When Is It Dirt?" [published in Collier's, The National Weekly, on 14 May 1927].
• • It used to be said, along the coasts of Bohemia in New York, "To the pure all things are impure," a shot at the Puritans — — was Booth Tarkington's opening. But even a Bohemian of that day must feel some misgivings now, when he goes to the theatre or reads modern novels and many of the livelier journals, for apparently he has become purified and is in danger of being penetrated by the arrow he himself aimed at the late Mr. Comstock. ...
• • Anthony Comstock [7 March 1844 — 21 September 1915] was a former United States Postal Inspector and politician dedicated to ideas of Victorian morality. In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public.
• • "When Is It Dirt?" was illustrated with large photographs of actress Helen Menken [12 December 1901 – 27 March 1966] and actor Basil Rathbone, also arrested on 9 February 1927 — — and a huge portrait of the dirt-devil herself, Mae West.
• • God-fearing editors at Collier's penned this caption: Mae West and others connected with "Sex" answer in court.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Mae West.