Mae West: Steel Swan

Most often linked to Brooklyn, MAE WEST moved to Queens (an area still known as "Long Island" then) sometime after 1917 — — when her family secured a modest dwelling in suburban blue-collar Woodhaven, New York. In 1920, when the census-takers interviewed the household, John West, 53, was engaged as a masseuse, teenage John was clerking at a newspaper, 21-year-old Beverly (though married to Sergei since 1917) was still living with her parents and jobless, and 26-year-old Mae was touring steadily in vaudeville.
• • Blackwell's Island Bridge • •
• • The 59th Street Bridge had opened to the public on 30 March 1909, having cost about $18 million and dozens of lives. A ceremonial grand opening was held in June 1909. It was then known as the Blackwell's Island Bridge. The double cantilevered span, also called the Queensboro Bridge, crosses the East River, connecting Long Island City with Manhattan, passing over the once bustling Women's Workhouse on this curious spit of land that had also housed a hospital and a lunatic asylum.
• • Thanks to this graceful steel swan, Long Island acreage that had been farmland, cemeteries, and swamps became growing neighborhoods accessible by the streetcar, trolley, bicycle, railways, and the automobile.
• • As a working actress, Mae West crossed this bridge dozens of times as she returned to the parental abode after a performance. Encouraged by her mother, during March 1921 Mae mailed her slim playscript "The Ruby Ring" to the Library of Congress. At 20 pages, this manuscript was more of an extended "sketch" than a play. Gloria, the female lead, is a man-trap who is able to pick the gents off with ease.
• • Her family was still living there in 1922 when 29-year-old Mae added a full-length play — — "The Hussy" — — to these Washington, DC archives. Nona, the female lead, likes generous fellows who demonstrate their devotion to a gal by dropping jewelry on her.
• • But a different path in late January 1927 would lead to events that took the ambitious trouper across the span with other inmates to the Women's Workhouse.
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• • Roosevelt Island — — At one point in time, New York City exported most of its problems to Roosevelt Island, now a cozy off-shore town, explains Amanda Cormier. The small strip of land in the East River — — known first as Blackwell’s Island, then Welfare Island in 1921, and Roosevelt Island in 1973 — — housed some of the city’s most famous “undesirables” in its penitentiary: Boss Tweed, Mae West, and Billie Holiday, who served a four-month term for prostitution charges.
• • “The river became the place where they put all sorts of public institutions,” says Edwin Burrows, professor of history at Brooklyn College, holder of a doctorate from Columbia, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.” He adds, “It wasn’t until the early 1940s and 1950s that it became prime real estate.” ....
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Reconstructing History — — professors speak on New York’s forgotten buildings and blocks
• • BY: Amanda Cormier | Columnist
• • Published by The Eye | The Columbia Daily Spectator — — eye.columbiaspectator.com
• • Published on: 28 January 2010
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• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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