Mae West: Sam Coslow

One songwriter provided MAE WEST with jazzy cinema numbers — — and several are still memorable. Though he worked in California for years, Sam Coslow died in New York City, his hometown, in the month of April.
• • Preparing for the release of her latest movie "Every Day's a Holiday" in 1937, Mae was busy rehearsing and taping Sam Coslow's number "Mademoiselle Fifi." The song was recorded during October 1937 with "Chorus and Paramount Studio." Wielding the baton was LeRoy Prinz.
• • A native New Yorker like Mae, Sam Coslow [7 December 1902 — 2 April 1982] — — was educated at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn — — and became an Oscar-winning producer and songwriter. In 1928 he formed the music publishing company Spier and Coslow in The Big Apple, where he often wrote show tunes.
• • He wrote several songs for Mae West's motion pictures. These include "My Old Flame," "Troubled Waters," and "When a St. Louis Woman Comes Down to New Orleans" for "Belle of the Nineties"; "Now I'm a Lady" for "Goin' to Town"; and "Mademoiselle Fifi" for "Every Day's a Holiday."
• • Orchestra conductor LeRoy Prinz [1895 — 1983] first found work as a dance director on Broadway. Relocating to California, Prinz worked for Paramount Pictures (1933 — 1941) and Warner Brothers (1942 — 1957) among others.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West's song scribe • • Sam Coslow • •
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Mae West: Dutch Ducked

MAE WEST's pal Texas Guinan got on the wrong side of Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as "Dutch Schultz" [6 August 1902 — 24 October 1935], the NYC-born mobster slaughtered at age 33 by a rival's gunmen in Newark, New Jersey. Briefly, during the 1920s, all three were regularly in the same premises on West 54th.
• • Indeed some New Yorkers still recall meeting Dutch Schultz. Nevertheless, if they were to read a script about the gangster, it might be startling how little it resembles memory. But, after all, fiction and plays are concerned with other things — — such as conflict, tension, balance, and how most women must wobble and wiggle to live, wearing youth and beauty as a suit of armor for close fighting.
• • Born during the month of August, Dutch Schultz pops up in a well-financed play set during the lawless decade. His enemy Texas Guinan is not in it. However, actress Jennifer Swiderski portrays Mae West in the critically razzed "Scandalous People: A Sizzling Jazzical," a musical that got on the wrong side of a number of New York reviewers, who lodged complaints about being forced to sit through a lavishly produced but poorly written two hour mess at this year's Fringe Fest. [Heck, no wonder so many call this annual noise-making "The Cringe."]
• • Created for a cast of 21 actors/ dancers, and set in an era juicy with mayhem and dramatic potential, this show found enough Benjamins to float on. Reviewer Matthew Murray offered this detailed autopsy of the slaughter he witnessed onstage in Minetta Lane that left ticket-bearers with post-dramatic stress disorder.
• • "Low-impact theatre of the most disappointing kind" • •
• • Lamenting the misfired sparkplugs in this limousine of a spectacle, Matthew Murray writes: When a musical has everything going for it except spark, you may find yourself wishing it were instead a colossal flop — — that way, you could at least delight in its destiny of nowhere. Unfortunately, no such reassurance is possible with Scandalous People: A Sizzling Jazzical. This show at the Minetta Lane Theatre, by Benny Russell (music) and Myla Churchill (libretto), must be one of the most professional, elaborately realized, and luxuriously appointed musicals ever seen at the New York International Fringe Festival. But its terrific cast and exquisite trappings cannot disguise the fact that it is low-impact theatre of the most disappointing kind.
• • According to Matthew Murray: Churchill's story follows the progression of Prohibition-era Harlem performing artists to legit stages in the run up to the Great Depression. Dewey Demarkov (Eugene Fleming) is the Ziegfeld-lite impresario behind the Do Drop Inn, an uptown speakeasy whose floor acts are filled with attractive chorus girls (that Dewey has personally, uh, hand-picked); two sisters, Desiree (Nicole Hill) and Cindy (Nirine S. Brown), the former a smoky vocalist and Dewey's wife, the latter a lithe and gifted hoofer who has long loved Dewey from afar; and enough talent and variety to attract the come-hither regular Mae West (Jennifer Swiderski). So popular is the club that it's also attracted the notice of a Bronx gangster, Dutch (Ryan Clardy), who wants to move the whole show to Broadway — — with, of course, a few small changes.
• • Matthew Murray observes: This is a premise rife with possibilities, and Russell and Churchill bypass none. Scandal, adultery, and depression play key roles in the characters' lives. The harsh realities of show business, both devastating and elevating, with individualism and working together both of paramount importance, receive their just due. The ensemble women are appropriately eye-popping, all frantic legs and perpetual shimmy as they pound through Obediah Wright's remarkable choreography, which cannily demonstrates the fusion of black (tap) and white (ballet) styles that was soon to revolutionize mainstream American musical theatre.
• • Topping the 21-person cast is a roaring nine-piece band. . . .
• • "A desperate, educational feel that prevents any part of it from catching fire" • •
• • Matthew Murray concludes: But despite everyone's best efforts, the show is plagued by a desperate, educational feel that prevents any part of it from catching fire for more than 10 consecutive seconds. It seems that Russell and Churchill were more interested in capturing the look, the sound, and the politics of the era than they were in bringing it to life theatrically. The inclusion of so many identifying features of 1929, from a Jolson-style blackface specialty to police raids for not just alcohol but also mixed-race dancing onstage to even Mae West's presence, does not so much immerse you in the time as ham-handedly point at it. That the songs — — sometimes torchy, sometimes steamy, sometimes vaudevillian, but always evanescently pleasant — — recall a raft of period styles without providing much originality of their own, also does not help.
• • If Russell and Churchill are looking for a model, they could examine Michael John LaChiusa's version of "The Wild Party," which is set around the same time and treats roughly the same subject, if from a very different perspective. In that show, LaChiusa melded the sounds of the late 1920s with his own distinct musical aesthetic, creating a score that sounded as fresh as it did familiar. When Russell and Churchill similarly learn that way they bring to their examination of pre-Depression black entertainment is every bit as important as what it did for America, chances are they'll find a way to grant "Scandalous People" the scorch its subtitle promises.
• • Right now, however, it is too chilly to cause anyone but the hard-working dancers to even break a sweat.
• • Scandalous People — — part of The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC)
— — Source: — —
• • Review: "Scandalous People"
• • BY: Matthew Murray | Theatre Critic
• • Published in: Talking Broadway.com — — http://www.talkinbroadway.com
• • Published in: August 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Lloyd Nolan

In 1937, Paramount Pictures spent a record one million dollars on its MAE WEST vehicle "Every Day's a Holiday" [released in the USA as holiday fare on 18 December 1937].
• • Mae West portrays Peaches O'Day, a turn-of-century con artist who poses as a famous French chanteuse to avoid arrest. In this guise, she manages to expose crooked police chief Lloyd Nolan and smooths the path for reform mayoral candidate Edmund Lowe. A strong cast of supporting comedians — — including Charles Winninger, Charles Butterworth, and Walter Catlett — — match Mae quip for quip. Set in the Naughty Nineties, the motion picture features the gayest New Year's Eve party ever held at Rector's on 31 December 1899.
• • Born in San Francisco, Lloyd Nolan [11 August 1902 — 27 September 1985] was a film, stage, and television actor.
• • Even though critics often hailed his acting ability, Nolan was relegated to B movies for the most part and spent his career in Hollywood portraying police officers, detectives, and physicians.
• • On 27 September 1985, Lloyd Nolan died at age 83 in Los Angeles of lung cancer.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1937 • •
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Mae West: Muralist

The bedroom walls in Mae West's Los Angeles apartment were decorated by George Quaintance, a tall, handsome blond artist who often included his own image in his paintings.
• • Born in the month of June — 3 June 1902 — to a farming family in Virginia, by 18 years old he had enrolled at the Art Students' League in New York City.
• • Around 1947 gorgeous George had moved to Los Angeles and his flair for painting and photography began to attract attention among the Hollywoodites.
• • However, his career was short lived. At age 55, George Quaintance died of a heart attack on 8 November 1957.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Margaret Hamilton

MAE WEST's film "My Little Chickadee" [1940] featured an American character actress who died in May.
• • Severe looking and sharp featured, Margaret Hamilton was born in Cleveland, Ohio on 9 December 1902. Hamilton played the role of prudish Mrs. Gideon, who faints on the train when Flower Belle Lee, Mae's character, pulls out two guns.
• • Then there is the scene where Cuthbert J. Twillie [W. C. Fields] is told that there is nothing good about Flower Belle Lee by the holier-than-thou Mrs. Gideon [Margaret Hamilton], and he responds: "I can see what's good. Tell me the rest!"
• • Best known for her iconic portrayal of The Wicked Witch of the West, who imprisons the ruby-slippered Dorothy from Kansas [Judy Garland] in The Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton died on 16 May 1985 in Salisbury, Connecticut.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West 's co-stars • • 1940 • •
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Mae West: Tallulah-ed

MAE WEST posed with actress Tallulah Bankhead at an event during the 1950s.

• • Tallulah Bankhead [31 January 1902 – 12 December 1968] was an American actress, talk-show host and bonne vivante.
• • At 15, Bankhead won a movie-magazine beauty contest and moved to New York. She quickly won bit parts. During these early New York years, she became a peripheral member of the Algonquin Round Table, and was reputed to be a hard-partying girl-about-town.
• • In 1931 her name was tossed out as Paramount Pictures' "next Marlene Dietrich", but Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 30s. Critics agreed that her acting was flat, that she was unable to dominate the camera, and that she was generally outclassed by Dietrich, Carole Lombard, and others.
• • In Hollywood, Tallulah rented a home [1712 Stanley Street], and began hosting frisky parties. On 9 September 1932, she was on the cover of Film Weekly.
• • She was outspoken and uninhibited.
• • In 1932 she briefly expressed interest in spirituality and met with an Indian mystic.
• • In 1933 Tallulah Bankhead nearly died following a 5-hour emergency hysterectomy for an advanced case of gonorrhea, contracted – – she said – – from either actor George Raft or Gary Cooper. Only 70 pounds when she was able to leave the hospital, she stoically said to her doctor, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"
• • In 1963 she gave her last theatrical performances in a Tennessee Williams play, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More.
• • Tallulah Bankhead died in New York City in December of double pneumonia arising from influenza, complicated by emphysema, at the age of 66 [12 December 1968] and is buried in Saint Paul's Churchyard, Maryland.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • Tallulah Bankhead • •
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