Mae West: Terrible Thirties

Book reviewer Tom Mackin mentioned MAE WEST in his short critique of "Dream Lucky: When FDR Was in the White House, Count Basie Was on the Radio, and Everyone Wore a Hat" [NY: HarperCollins, 2008].
• • Tom Mackin wrote: Hoboken resident Roxane Orgill has done her homework for "Dream Lucky: When FDR Was in the White House, Count Basie Was on the Radio, and Everyone Wore a Hat." This thin volume is packed with information on the Terrible Thirties, some of it about the scabrous treatment of black entertainers of the era.
• • Tom Mackin added: But she seems less interested in a sobering treatise on Jim Crow than in short riffs about the famous personalities of the time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Fibber McGee and Molly, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, Mae West, Benny Goodman, Amelia Earhart. The result is a tired digest of overly familiar history. Surely there is much more to tell about the black singer Billie Holiday, who had to darken her fair skin to sing with a black band; about Harlem's famed Cotton Club, where only whites were served; and about Count Basie, the renowned Red Bank pianist and bandleader, who could not read music.
— — Source: — —
• • Book Review: "In Brief"
• • Written by: Tom Mackin for New Jersey's Star-Ledger
• • Published in: The Star-Ledger — — www.nj.com
• • Published on: 11 May 2008
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• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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