Thursday, April 14, 2016

Mae West: Seductive Sex

In the summer of 1932, MAE WEST sat down with Tinseltown journalist Madge Tennant, who wrote this article for Movie Classic.
• • Mae West, Broadway's Most Daring Actress, Is In Hollywood • •
• • Playwright—Actress, Whose Plays about Sex Have Often Been Raided, Will Make One Film — — Is Different From What Hollywood Expected • •
• • Madge Tennant wrote:  Miss West does not indulge in night life after the theatre. She doesn't drink, and she doesn't smoke. But she often sits up to three in the morning in her apartment, writing plays, novels, songs." 
• • If, as is claimed for her, Mae West is only thirty-one years old [sic], she must have worked hard and fast to produce the enormous volume of Broadway successes, books, vaudeville acts, skits, and popular songs that have appeared under her name. Unkind gossipers who hint that she must have a ghost writer for some of her work are given the lie by her manager. 
• • "Most people only talk about what they're going to do when they get the time," he says. "Miss West makes the time. She's the hardest-working little gal in the country. She has been on the stage since she was a child." 
• • In her colorful history, there are several trips to jail after her plays were raided by the police. But undaunted, she simply wrote another, even hotter, for the next season.
• • Mae thinks that several of her plays would make good motion pictures, particularly "Diamond Lil."  Hollywood, having seen pictures of Mae as the bosomy Lil, was hardly prepared for the lissom little blonde who stepped off the train. "And I haven't dieted, either!" she avers. "I never was fat. I never weighed an ounce over a hundred and nineteen. That was padding." Hollywood wonders if she will be a sensation in Hollywood, where sex is a trademark and not a novelty. Time — — and Mae, herself — — will tell.   
• • This was Part 2 of two parts;  Part 1 was posted yesterday.
• • Source:  Article written by Madge Tennant for Movie Classic; issue dated for September 1932.
• • On Saturday, 14 April 1973 in Hollywood • •
• • It was an SRO celebration on Saturday night, 14 April 1973 when the Masquers Club honored the Empress of Sex with a "Mae Day" tribute. Unlike previous honorees, Mae had insisted on performing a shimmy and singing "Frankie and Johnny." The ceremony was attended by Sidney Skolsky and many other notables.
• • For instance, Mae's "Myra Breckinridge" cast mate Jim Backus attended the Masquers Club's salute as one of her "Gentlemen in Waiting" (along with George Raft, Jack LaRue, Steve Allen, Lloyd Nolan, etc.).
• • When the 1973 event was reborn in an audio format as "Mae Day: The Masquers Club Salutes Mae West CD" [1998], Mae-mavens could hear Jim Backus offering an amusing 4-minute tribute [exactly 4 minutes and 16 seconds long, if you want to get technical] to the buxom blonde guest of honor.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • A 'Mae West' was an airman's yellow life-jacket, so named because of its obvious pneumatic properties.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said:   "I am opposed to nudity, crudity and vulgarity in all forms. I provide healthy entertainment to the movies because I have never taken sex seriously. I  only 'kidded' it."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A memoir mentioned Mae West.
• • Tony Cointreau wrote:  I was talking to the columnist Dorothy Manners when she looked over my shoulder and said, “Here comes Mae, in her virginal whites.” Mae West was then in her sixties ...
• • Source: Item in a book "Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me" by Tony Cointreau; published in 2014
• • 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 3,400 blog posts. Wow! 
• • By the Numbers • • 
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3420th 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 1973 flyer

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