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Another person who worked with MAE WEST was a colorful attorney who was born and died during the month of July.
• • Born in Sonora, California, Melvin Belli [29 July 1907 — 9 July 1996] represented Mae before the bench along with clients such as Jack Ruby, mobster Mickey Cohen, Errol Flynn, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Muhammad Ali, and a long list of the notable, the naughty, the nefarious, and the notorious.
• • Dramatically attired in scarlet-lined Saville Row suits and $750 cowboy boots, Mel the Bellicose whizzed around the hilly Bay Area in his customized marigold-yellow Rolls-Royce.
• • If the screen queen came up to see him in person, then she would have put in an appearance at Frisco's historic structures situated at 722 and 728 Montgomery Street. Known as the Belli buildings, these charming earthquake survivors had been the San Francisco offices of the renowned lawyer who had been known as "The King of Torts." Constructed in 1851 and 1853, these had originally housed the Langerman's tobacco warehouse and the original meeting house of the Masonic Lodge
• • The much-married expert on personal-injury law was in the news today because his former estate in San Francisco has gone on the market for $39.5 million. That’s about six times its sale price in 1992.
• • Melvin Belli's courtroom successes afforded him an opulent lifestyle. From 1978 — 1992, he resided in a 1922 brick Tudor Revival of about 11,000 square feet with six bedrooms, five baths, and two powder rooms. Set on an unusually wide 80-foot lot in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, the four-story home includes a heated outdoor pool, spa and four-car garage and bay views, on 0.3 acres.
• • Not shy with a comeback, Belli once told a reporter: There is never a deed so foul that something couldn't be said for the guy; that's why there are lawyers.
• • In 1996, fourteen weeks after his sixth wedding, Belli died at age 88.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST defined camp as "the kinda comedy where they imitate me." In "Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna" [Duke University Press, 1996] Pamela Robertson saw things differently.
• • In her book review, Harmony H. Wu writes: Pamela Robertson has set out a difficult task for herself in GUILTY PLEASURES: FEMINIST CAMP FROM MAE WEST TO MADONNA. Never mind that “traditional” notions of camp are contentious and hard to pin down, Robertson wants to define a “feminist camp” sensibility, one that has relationships to but is distinct from more familiar conceptions of gay camp. She argues that while women have historically been active participants in camp, discourse AROUND camp has increasingly posited an exclusively gay male agent of camp, distancing women from the site of camp production. Robertson seeks to re-center women in camp, drawing on popular culture texts and gay constructions of camp to argue for a specifically feminist camp sensibility and practice.
• • Harmony H. Wu explains: In a brief genealogy of the term, Robertson finds that “camp” can be located as far back as 1909. By 1945, the term was understood to connote gay or lesbian . . .
• • Harmony H. Wu focuses on the MAE WEST section: The chapter on Mae West most successfully illustrates that feminist camp both resides within and extends beyond the sphere of gay males. Noting that Mae West was/is frequently referred to as doing “female drag,” Robertson notes that West actually modeled her performance on contemporary female impersonators, which would have been recognized by her audience. Furthermore, the gay male played a significant role in West's act and functioned as a crucial element of her proto-feminist camp sensibility. From stage plays to Hollywood movies, “West did not simply copy gay style but linked certain aspects of gay culture to aspects of a female sensibility” (33). While, as Robertson points out, West's acts were in collusion with the inversion theory of gay men, on the other hand, West clearly believed that women and gay men were aligned because of their shared oppression by straight men. In her hyperbolic performances of femininity, Robertson suggests that West rewrites the gay male drag performance, extracting the masculine characteristics and “articulate[s] a specifically feminine form of aggressivity… She paradoxically reappropriates — and hyperbolizes — the image of the woman from male female impersonators so that the object of her joke is not the woman but the idea that an essential feminine identity exists prior to the image” (34). It is within this reinscription of a gay male camp activity (female drag) that Robertson locates West's feminist camp. Furthermore, she suggests that female VIEWERS have access to the critical stance of West's feminist camp — not only through watching the narratives but also in the female spectators' practice of West imitation, a practice alluded to by contemporary fan magazines and reviews, giving women “imaginary access to [West's] autonomy, transgression, and humor” (51). . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: Book Review of "Guilty Pleasure: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna"
• • Written by: Ms. Harmony H. Wu
• • Publication: International Gay & Lesbian Review, Los Angeles, CA — — www.gaybookreviews.info
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1935 • •
NYC
Mae West.
It was on 30 April 1956 that Robert W. Dana's felicitous coverage of "The MAE WEST Review" appeared. 
• • Dana's popular daily dish "Tips on Tables" was printed in the now defunct New York World-Telegram & Sun.
• • His column "Mae West's Show Grows" [dated April 30th] indicated Dana had seen the routine previously.
• • Robert W. Dana wrote: The old belief that everything should be bigger and better — — a thought most forcefully pronounced by Hollywood trailers — — can be applied with forthright honesty to Mae West, who has returned to the Latin Quarter [in New York City on West 48th Street], where she scored heavily in the fall [sic] of 1954. . . .
• • A native New Yorker, Robert Dana was born in 1907. His lengthy writing career began on the Drama Desk of the New York Herald Tribune. Years later, after penning a column on restaurants and night spots for this daily paper, Dana gathered those reviews into a book published in 1948. So well-known was he among New York's nightlife czars, that he did a stint for awhile as a night club and restaurant press agent. Subsequently, Robert Dana commandeered a regular byline at the New York World-Telegram column. This energetic reporter also hosted a radio show and short-lived TV program offering his opinions on the stars and entertainers during the 1940s—1950s.
• • Staying active and alert to the end, Robert W. Dana lived to be 89 and died in 1996.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1955 • •
NYC
Mae West.
