Sunday, January 23, 2011

Mae West: Henry Beaumont Herts

MAE WEST was thrilled to be onstage, featured in two mainstage playhouses engineered by Henry Beaumont Herts, a native New Yorker who was born in January — — on 23 January 1871.
• • In 1911, the architectural firm of Herts and Tallant carried out work on a short-lived dinner theatre known as the Folies-Bergere at 210 West 46th. The owners wanted tables for ticket-holders, even in the orchestra and the boxes.
• • For eight performances durng September 1911, Mae was in the cast of "A La Broadway," playing (as usual) an Irish maid.
• • The dining surfaces merely wasted valuable space, making the entire scheme too expensive to continue. By October, the tables were removed and the auditorium was renamed the Fulton Theatre.
• • Shortly after their completion of the Folies-Bergere commission, however, the partnership had fallen apart.
• • In 1911, after Herts had ended his partnership with Hugh Tallent [1870 — 1952], he teamed up with Herbert J. Krapp, who had been their assistant. Together they produced the Booth, its companion the Shubert, and the Longacre Theaters. A native New Yorker who studied architecture and fine art abroad as well as in his hometown, Henry Beaumont Herts's first huge success on Broadway came during the early years of the new century. In his New Amsterdam Theater, completed in 1902, a cantilever balcony was used for the first time.
• • Those creations were praised for their beauty and interior structure — — and Mae found herself working at the Shubert Theatre before long.
• • Henry Beaumont Herts attended, but did not graduate from, Columbia University, and apprenticed under Bruce Price. He studied architecture in Europe at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Universities of Rome and Heidelberg.
• • But, unfortunately, Herts, who was very likely an alcoholic and perhaps a morphine addict as well, seemed to have been in a downward spiral by the age of 40.
• • Henry Beaumont Herts died in March 1933.
• • Mae West: Money Guru • •
• • Author Sarah Ban Breathnach, age 63, recently published a new book: Peace and Plenty: Finding Your Path to Financial Serenity. According to reporter Kerry Hannon: Sarah Ban Breathnach is not a financial guru of any sort. . . . To educate herself about personal finance, she turns to some modern day money gurus like Suze Orman, but also to Mae West, Miss Piggy, Scarlett O’Hara, Auntie Mame, and advice from magazine and newspaper articles written during the Great Depression. ... [Source: Forbes, 22 January 2011]
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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1 comment:

  1. Just did a blog post on Mae:

    http://mickle10-latetotheparty.blogspot.com

    Are you the Naked Playwright? His/her comment directed me to this site. Great blog on Mae! I will be exploring it.

    ReplyDelete