• • "Miss Monroe's Cult" • •
• • "A Festival for M.M." — — by Dave Heim
• • A local bookstore is currently proffering enormous photographs of movie stars captured at their greatest moments: Brando, sitting on a motorcycle, glowers in a scene from "The Wild Ones;" W. C. Fields sizes up his luckless gambling partner in "My Little Chickadee;" Chaplin smirks coyly and Garbo allures icily.
• • It is most appropriate that these particular luminaries should be lionized in larger-than-life photos, for each of these actors and actresses is now virtually a demigod in cinema circles. Fields flicks, Chaplin shorts, and Garbo extravaganzas will never die. No, not if the film festival panderers have their way.
• • How unfortunate it is, then, that film festivals exploit the same stars and the same films time after time. A spectator can endure Fields, Brando, Bogart, and Mae West only so long before he turns to "The Singing Nun" out of utter desperation.
• • What is needed, then, is a new canonization, a new members of the film festival Olympiad. To appease the mortal audience of the festival demigods, any new superstar should possess the coyness of Chaplin, the physical allure of Mae West, and the suavity of Garbo.
• • Clearly, only one actress satisfies these requirements and she is, appropriately, honored by a large portrait in the same local bookstore.
• • She is, of course, Marilyn Monroe — the last of the classic movie stars, the last blonde. And how deserving she is of a renaissance . . .
• • Source: Article written by Dave Heim in the Columbia Daily Spectator (NYC); published on Friday, 21 October 1966.
• • On Saturday, 21 October 1933 • •
• • The Broadway musical "Let 'Em Eat Cake" previewed on Saturday, 21 October 1933 — — not far away from Election Day — — and played 90 performances at the Imperial Theatre [249 West 45th Street, NYC 10036]. One character in "Let 'Em Eat Cake" issues an order that Mae West should replace George Washington on the postage stamp.
• • On Thursday, 21 October 1943 • •
• • Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures went to see Mae West in "The Heat's On" during the previews Cohn had let Gregory Ratoff smooth talk him into a contract for it. "The hicks may remember Mae West but the preview houses don't," Harry Cohn told a reporter on Thursday, 21 October 1943. "This picture is going to be a bust." The public concurred. Even Mae West would agree. Tsk.
• • On Tuesday, 21 October 1947 • •
• • It was on Tuesday, 21 October 1947 that Mae West first set foot in a playhouse in Manchester, England to present her Bowery melodrama "Diamond Lil."
• • On Thursday, 21 October 1993 • •
• • John Cohen's article on Mae West, "And West Is West," appeared in The New York Sun on Thursday, 21 October 1993.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • "Belle of the Nineties" is now in its second week at the Denham.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "My advice to those who think they have to take off their clothes to be a star is, once you're boned, what's left to create the illusion? Let em wonder. I never believed in giving them too much of me."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • Special Midnight Show on Saturday Night at 11:30 pm — — Mae West in "Goin' to Town" at the Chateau Movie Theatre. . . .
• • Source: Item in The Daily Banner; published on Friday, 18 October 1935
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 11th anniversary • •
• • Thank you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during these past eleven years. The other day we entertained 3,497 visitors. And we reached a milestone recently when we completed 3,200 blog posts. Wow!
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3293rd blog post. Unlike many blogs, which draw upon reprinted content from a newspaper or a magazine and/ or summaries, links, or photos, the mainstay of this blog is its fresh material focused on the life and career of Mae West, herself an American original.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • in 1935 • •
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