Mae West: Harlem Knocks

It was mid-September 1931 when MAE WEST was stepping onstage as the slinky temptress "Babe Gordon" at the Royale Theatre's production of her newest play The Constant Sinner. The play had had its Broadway premiere on 14 September 1931 and would last until November.
• • Set in Harlem during the Prohibition Era, the play followed the escapades of a honey-haired prizefighter groupie. Here's a selection from Mae West's novel The Constant Sinner [1930] — — after Bearcat Delaney has attracted Babe's attention by winning a fight.
• • • • Babe walked out with Bill [Larson] and headed for Toni's. She knew then that she was sure to meet the Bearcat.
• • • • With her escort, Bill Larson, she walked to the corner of 135th Street and Fifth Avenue, and then turned to the left, walking through a block of chop suey fronts, dance halls, and speakeasies, where you bought gin for ten cents and where high-strung society nerves dropped in incognito for their shots of morphine and coke, while blood-stained criminals sat drinking and smoking at the tables in resigned security. In this block they were in Coke Village, below the deadline in deep Harlem.
• • • • They came to 134th Street and dropped a short run of steep stairs to Toni's. Toni's was a basement restaurant of red walls stippled with gold and lighted by blue and red bulbs. It was an Italian place and had become popular as a sporting hangout. The food was good. Fighters from the Marathon Club, mangers, and other sporting bloods often dropped in.
• • • • Bill arranged to reserve two tables for the expected party, and Babe and he sat down at one of them to wait. She ordered a gin rickey, while Bill chose rye.
• • • • A couple of drunken white girls sat over empty gin glasses at a table nearby. Babe knew these hustlers. They were guzzlers. They worked the streets till they made enough for a few drinks and then they parked around the Fifth Avenue creep joints, waiting for downtown explorers that needed a "steer" to dope or wanted to be led to a "circus" where women resorted to strange practices to gratify morbid curiosity. There was more money in this racket and it was easier. It took energy to be a leg worker and they were wasted skeletons, bones showing.
• • • • Toni's was crowding up. Musicians and chorus girls from the burlesque houses on 125th Street came in to spend the night and morning over cheap gin and a hunk of chicken.
• • • • The Bearcat appeared in the doorway, with Joe Malone; Harry Flick, another fighter; and three buddies from the express company. They came toward the table where Babe and Bill were eagerly awaiting the party. ...
— — excerpt The Constant Sinner by Mae West — —
• • Mae West's fascination with Harlem is discussed in the play "COURTING MAE WEST" [based on true events during 1926 —1932]. Look for updates about this play on the MAE WEST Blog.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's castmates • • 1931 • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Harlem Idyll

MAE WEST wrote a play that starred her feisty and lusty character Babe Gordon, and it was produced on Broadway by the Shubert Organization.
• • However, her popularity was so widespread that the publishers Macauley and Sheridan House also printed a Mae West "novelization" that expanded on the same Harlem-centered material. Macauley printed the book first in 1930 under the title "Babe Gordon." Two decades later, the clever Fourth Avenue (Book Row) publisher Sheridan House held a contest to retitle the book, reprinting it as "The Constant Sinner" in 1949.
• • Mae West gets off to a rousing start on page 1, painting the alcohol and cocaine-fueled life led by her 18-year-old heroine Babe:
• • • • Babe Gordon leaned against the crumbling red brick wall of the Marathon Athletic Club in Harlem, at 135th Street off Fifth Avenue, and pulled at a cigarette. The Saturday night fight crowd picked its way under the glaring arc lamp in front of the main entrance like a slow moving black beetle. Babe scanned the humans with an eye to business. Babe was eighteen and a prize-fighters' tart, picking up her living on their hard-earned winnings. Her acquaintances numbered trollops, murderers, bootleggers, and gambling den keepers. Two well-modeled bare legs were crossed at the ankles; her waist pressed to the wall rose to two voluptuous breasts that almost protruded from the neglible neck of her black dress. Babe waited for Cokey Jenny.
• • • • Cokey Jenny had led Babe to her first drink in an apartment apeakeasy in Harlem, where a colored woman sold corn whiskey to black and white girls and their gentlemen friends, and where coke peddler and sniffer made their "connection" in safety. As Babe watched the mob push into the fight enclosure, she wondered what the hell was keeping Cokey. ... [Chapter 1, The Constant Sinner by Mae West].
• • Walk on the WEST side, starting right on Broadway on Friday evening 17 August 2007, when a guided tour will explore Manhattan's WEST-side during the "Mae West Side Story" walking tour. The event — — open to the public — — is timed to salute Brooklyn's own sexpot on her birthdate. [See the Annual Mae West Gala posting below.]
• • Only 17 more days until Mae's birthday!
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's novel • • 1949 • •
NYC
Mae West.