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On the birthday of Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington - - born 29 April 1899 in Washington, D.C. - - it's interesting to recall how hard MAE WEST had to fight with Paramount Pictures to get the musician into her film "Belle of the Nineties."
• • Always the champion of the African-American talents she met, Mae insisted that the studio hire him to play and also appear in the movie. The studio didn't want to hire Ellington, at first, because they said the famed Cotton Club headliner would be "too expensive." When Paramount finally gave in to Mae, they agreed to let Ellington and his orchestra play - - however, they insisting on having all white musicians on the set.
• • Mae West marched into the head office at Paramount and said, "White men can't play black music in my picture!" And it was done. Ellington and his band were used and shown onscreen, thanks to Mae (who refused to budge on this).
• • Hollywood's censors did have the final say, though; they refused to let Mae appear next to the musicians in the same scene.
• • "Belle of the Nineties" was in production from 19 March 1934 until June 1934.• • During the 1920s, Mae West met Duke Ellington at Owney Madden's speakeasy. An autographed photo of Mae given to the "Duke" was among his most cherished possessions.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •NYC
Mae West.
During the 1930s, MAE WEST and Shirley Temple were featured together in lavish spreads for Look Magazine and other publications. Occasionally, the curly-headed child star was photographed in an 1890s gown, hand on hip, deliberately imitating Mae's trademark gesture.
• • Shirley Jane Temple was born in Santa Monica, California during April - - 23 April 1928 - - and celebrated her 79th birthday this month.
• • In 1931, her parents propelled her into dance classes in Hollywood when the moppet was only three years old.
• • Extremely talented and enormously popular, Shirley Temple made about 40 films during the Depression, out-performing the box office offerings for many adult actors.
• • In 1967, British artist Jann Haworth put together this collage featuring Mae West, Shirley Temple, and W.C Fields. The "mixed media" piece [50 inches high and 31 inches wide] was created using fabric, wood, and plastic. An English gallery noted that it was available for sale. • • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West collage • • 1967 • •NYC
Mae West.
In April 1928, MAE WEST was busy - - and not just onstage.
• • Gangster Owney Madden, not especially famous for his spiritual side, often found his way to West 45th Street during 1928 to communicate with the unquiet dead. Before performances of "Diamond Lil" at the Royale Theatre [242 West 45th], the actress Mae West was fond of holding séances in their smoking room to channel Rudolph "The Sheik" Valentino and tenor Enrico Caruso.
• • Participants included speakeasy owners Texas and Tommy Guinan.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •NYC
Mae West.
Comedian George Carlin, sneaking up up his 70th birthday, is performing this weekend the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC. In an interview, the funnyman revealed that when he was 5 years old, his mother used to bring him to her marketing office to stand before the ladies at lunchtime and entertain them with his Mae West imitation.
• • Carlin told Washington Post Staff Writer Ellen McCarthy:
"I noticed two things. . . . I noticed that I got the attention of the adults and I got their approval for doing these things," he recalls. "It was just very attractive, in the literal sense of that word."• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST was born in August but she associated herself with April's birthstone: the diamond. Her mother seems to have been fascinated by the same stone; Matilda West bought her daughter her first diamond. Of course, in her most successful stage play "Diamond Lil," the actress sparkled plenty.
• • Diamonds, a wonder of nature, have a sparkling fire that has held humans spell-bound for centuries, inspiring myths of romance, intrigue, power, greed, and magic.
• • Ancient Hindus, finding diamonds washed out of the ground after thunderstorms, believed the gems were created by bolts of lightning.
• • In America, the diamond is marketed as a symbol of enduring love. Typically, they appear on engagement rings.
• • There are many kinds of diamonds: transparent, translucent or opaque; ranging from colorless to sooty black, with many colors in between. For the most part transparent, diamonds [colorless or tinted] are used as jewelry. They are also used for industrial purposes.
• • The color of a diamond depends on the kind of impurities embedded inside it. Yellow diamonds, for example, betray minute quantities of nitrogen, while boron imparts a bluish hue.
• • Diamonds are the rich cousins of graphite; both are crystalline forms of pure carbon.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • "Diamond Lil" • • 1928NYC
Mae West.
The role of Captain Cummings — — in Mae West's play "Diamond Lil" — — required a handsome, charismatic man with stage training. For the Broadway role, Mae chose Curtis Cooksey, who was born 9 December 1891 in Indiana. 
• • "Diamond Lil" debuted at the Royale Theatre [242 West 45th Street, NYC] on 9 April 1928. It was a box office success as well as a favorite with drama critics.• • Since 1916, the 25-year-old actor began winning leading roles on The Great White Way. Curtis Cooksey had starred in over a dozen productions before stepping into his Salvation Army uniform to make an impact on a beautiful saloon singer, a vivacious blonde bombshell who told him, "Diamonds is my career."• • Since 1911, Curtis Cooksey had also been cast in silent films [debut: "Taming a Tyrant"] and he made a smooth transition into talkies.
• • In the film version of Mae's play, Cary Grant played Captain Cummings [a.k.a. "The Hawk"].• • After a long career in Tinseltown, Cooksey contracted cancer. He committed suicide in Hollywood on 19 April 1962.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's co-star Curtis Cooksey • • circa 1950s • •NYC
Mae West.
In April 1954 and April 1956, Mae West returned to Manhattan to perform at the Latin Quarter.
• • Impresario Lou Walters [1896-1977] had produced shows for The Ziegfeld Follies, and wanted a regular "French style" cabaret of his own. • • On 1 April 1942, Lou Walters opened The Latin Quarter [at 200 West 48th Street, New York -- zipcode 10036]. It was housed in the two-story structure where The Cotton Club had been [September 1936 - April 1940].• • In his on-going column "Tips on Tables" night-life reporter Robert W. Dana reviewed "The Mae West Revue"; his critique appeared in the newspaper on 30 April 1956. Here is an excerpt from Dana's coverage.
• • • • Mae West's Show Grows • • • • • • 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, where she scored heavily in the fall [sic] of 1954.
• • Instead of changing her act, Miss West embellished it. Most noteworthy, I think, is the addition of some song-and-dance men whose soft-shoe capers and grace provide a fair contrast to the muscle boys who are the background for her boudoir comedy. They rock and they roll and Miss West demonstrates that her vocal chords are as roving as her come- hither eyes.
• • . . . Packaged in regal white robes, [the bodybuilders] march first toward the audience then turn to Miss West and throw back their robes. Her expression of approval regales the customers. One of the muscle specimens is Mickey Hargitay, Mr. Universe. ...• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1954 • •NYC
Mae West.
"I've gotten a lot of bunnies on Easter," Mae West retorted in her throatiest, breast-heaving contralto, when confronted by a Time Magazine reporter, "but this is the first time I've ever received a husband."
• • In 1937, Time was making an issue of "Mr. Mae West" in an article discussing the actress's secret marriage on 11 April 1911.
• • Here's what the article said about Mae's "Easter Honey" when she was 18 years old - - and perhaps afraid that she was pregnant:
• • Voluptuous, invitational Mae West, public passion of 50 million movie-going males, had to do last week the one thing every middle-aged woman hates most to do: admit having reached her middle forties. And she had to admit the other one thing that Mae West least wished to admit: that she is married.
• • Her marriage was not entirely news to Mae West's fans. Two years ago a female WPA researcher flipped a marriage card out of Milwaukee's registry which attested the wedding of one Mae West to one Frank Wallace, April 11, 1911 (TIME, May 6, 1935).
• • The Mae West then married was 18, would today be 44. Promptly Vaudeville Hoofer Frank Wallace popped up in Manhattan to boast that he was the man. But she would have none of him. "I've gotten a lot of bunnies on Easter," she retorted in her throatiest, breast-heaving contralto, "but this is the first time I've ever received a husband. I've never heard of the fellow. I'm a spinster and I'm not 42. I was practically a child in 1911 and I never was in Milwaukee until four years ago. They'll have me married to triplets next! Let this alleged Mr. Mae West c'm' up and see my lawyer sometime and prove it!"
• • Last week in Superior Court in Los Angeles it was as obvious as Mae West's best curves that Mr. Mae West had taken her advice. Even her most devoted fans chortled when they read that her now-admitted hoofer husband's real name is not Wallace but Willities or Szatkus and that the Szatkus family always knew her as Mamie. "Mrs. Mamie Szatkus" was scarcely box-office for glamorous Mae West.
• • Lawyers pondered the possible legal harvest of Mr. Mae West's suit. Under California law, property, except gifts, acquired by either husband or wife after marriage becomes community property, owned half & half by either spouse. Mae West's 1935 income was $480,000.
• • Her current worth, mostly acquired since the 1911 wedding, is estimated as $3,000,000.
• • Mae West's husband might not be tall, dark, nor handsome but the inside of his head was apparently not as bald as the outside. He had said he wished to vindicate his honor, money was of secondary moment. Snorted Mrs. Szatkus last week, "We were married but we never lived together as man and wife." Snorted Mr. Szatkus' lawyer, "They offered us $30,000 to settle the case. . . . Mae West can have half of Wallace's [Szatkus'] possessions. . . . Next week we expect to apply for an injunction that will tie up all of Miss West's property in California." That his client's share-Mae-West's-wealth movement might be halted by California's community property law proviso that a separated wife's earnings are her own was poohed by Mr. Szatkus' Los Angeles lawyer who said the clause was discriminatory sex legislation and might be found unconstitutional.
• • Source: Time Magazine
• • Published: Monday, 19 July 1937• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • to come • •NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST knew she had a real hit on her hands, at last. On 4 April 1928, if you were standing outside of Leo Teller's Broadway Theatre in Brooklyn, New York [once located at Court Street and Stockton Street], you would have heard thunderous applause and cheers. 
• • "You'd have thought that a favorite bootlegger had come back from Atlanta," wrote drama critic Robert Garland in the New York Evening Telegram on 5 April 1928. "[Mae] makes Miss Ethel Barrymore look like the late lamented Bert Savoy."
• • Mae West and her producers had decided to try out her play "Diamond Lil" in the actress's hometown before bringing it to Manhattan. Apparently, the show brought down the house. It was a clean sweep: both the critics and the public adored it.
• • It's always been said that Mae selected an 1890s Bowery setting because the corsetted turn-of-the-century fashions were more flattering to her curvy figure. No one has yet given her credit for recognizing that an old-fashioned saloon setting - - showing bar-goers enjoying their beer - - would touch the right nerve during the "parched" Prohibition Era.
• • So consider it said: Mae West understood her audience and gave them onstage what they missed very much in 1928 - - freedom to bend an elbow and imbibe in public. Brilliant, Mae!• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • April 1928 • •NYC
Mae West.
