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A signed letter from MAE WEST will change hands at Julien's Auctions' Icons & Idols sale — — scheduled to take place next month on December 3rd — 4th in Beverly Hills.
• • Rare items from the worlds of film, music, and pop culture along with an extensive selection of Beatles memorabilia will go on the auction block within the next two weeks in California.
• • Fans of Michael Jackson will be able to bid on a red leather "Beat It" jacket signed by the late King of Pop. Also up for grabs are storied female garments: a D&G coat from Madonna's Girlie Show tour, Vivien Leigh's blouse from Gone With the Wind, and Barbra Streisand's Funny Lady dress. Signed correspondence from Mae West and Bette Davis will certainly attract attention.
• • For details, contact Julien's Auctions at 310-836-1818.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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On 15 May 2010, at the Cascades Casino Summit Theatre, MAE WEST, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Tina Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Barbra Streisand, and eight other famous females will share the stage — — and the voice and body of the British Columbia based entertainer Bonnie Kilroe.
• • Bonnie's revue "Vegas Meets Vaudeville" has, she said, "the glam and glitz of Vegas and the slapstick comedy/ audience participation of old school vaudeville."
• • The Canadian actress went through a similar situation as Mae West once did: tired of waiting to be cast in someone else's show, she developed her own. Though she began with impressions of the late Patsy Cline, she felt portraying only one individual was too limiting and boring. Increasing her number of characters also forced her to upgrade her wardrobe and wigs. Bookings at local saloons, war veterans gatherings, and social clubs led to fancier engagements at golf resorts, at corporate celebrations, and on cruises.
• • Bonnie, now a polished quick-change artist and seasoned impressionist, has expanded her act. "I do characters that cover every age group... Mae West and Carmen Miranda for the older generations and Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga for the youth," she explained. "And then there are characters for everyone — — Cher, Marilyn Monroe, and Tina Turner."
• • WHERE to see Bonnie Kilroe's "Vegas Meets Vaudeville" — — Cascades Casino Summit Theatre: 20393 Fraser Hwy, Langley, BC Canada V3A 7N2; T. 604-530-2211.
• • Tell them you heard about it on the MAE WEST BLOG.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/________
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British Columbians will be entertained this month by a versatile impressionist who brings MAE WEST to life — — along with 13 other celebrities.
• • Styling herself as the "mistress of 1,000 divas," Bonnie Kilroe promises to be "a farce to be reckoned with."
• • In her one-woman revue, "Vegas Meets Vaudeville," she sings, glams up, and sautees a fresh dish in the guise of the red-blooded Brooklyn bombshell, zany redhead Lucille Ball, sultry Marilyn Monroe, songbird Streisand, drug-addled Amy Winehouse, and others.
• • "At last," one admirer noted, "a female impersonator who is actually female!"
• • Bonnie Kilroe (along with her Mae West boa and strut) will commandeer the spotlight on Sunday afternoon 25 October 2009, entertaining Canada's Cloverdale Legion [17567 57th Avenue] in B.C. Vancouver's vamp has also been seen at the Vancouver Comedy Festival and other venues.
• • Each time you sigh at yet another product being outsourced, give a thought to clever North American comediennes who continue to create a domestically produced product that does some good. Laughter is still the best medicine.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Mae West.
MAE WEST, Colette noted in a 1938 publication, had the confidence to create an unapologetic majority-of-one presence on the silver screen — — as self-sufficient and durable as a diamond solitaire. "She alone, out of an enormous and dull catalogue of heroines, does not get married at the end of the film, does not die, does not take the road to exile, does not gaze sadly at her declining youth in a silver-framed mirror …. She alone has no parents, no children, no husband," wrote Colette. "This impudent woman is, in her style, as solitary as Chaplin used to be."
• • Can you imagine the buxom Brooklynite translated into the character of one of the 1890s Parisian prostitutes who people "Gigi," an arch novella written in 1944 by Colette [28 January 1873 — 3 August 1954]? Ooooh-la-la!
• • Defanged by the American musical comedy team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who laundered and starched all the sex and naughtiness out of the original, "Gigi" became a romantic tale of mismatched parts and was chastely adapted for the screen in 1958, starring a very ladylike French native Leslie Caron [born 1 July 1931] as the ingenue tutored by the scarlet women in her family. The motion picture version premiered at the Royale Theatre — — the Broadway house where "Diamond Lil" debuted in 1928 — — in Manhattan on 15 May 1958.
• • Still active and sought after, the 78-year-old Academy-Award-nominee will soon portray Madame Armfeldt in a Paris revival of Stephen Sondheim’s "A Little Night Music," a musical about shady ladies that leaves the sex and sass intact. Moreover, Leslie Caron's memoir "Thank Heaven" will be published by Viking around Christmas.
• • Mae West and Leslie Caron • •
• • In The Examiner, Alan Petrucelli has put together a most intriguing profile that includes this morsel about Leslie Caron and Mae West.
• • Pittsburgh Stage and Screen Examiner Alan Petrucelli writes: And this story, which we’ll call The Women, Part Deux, is a hoot! One day director George Cukor “begged” Caron to make up a lunch quartet with — — are you ready? — — Mae West, Greta Garbo, and Barbra Streisand. Caron coos: “An absolutely historical luncheon, I know, but I would have felt very uncomfortable in front of these great dames. You know what happened? Streisand says, ‘Gee, Miss West, I do so admire your work,’ and West replies, ‘Sure honey, I can tell by the way you been stealin’ it…’” [from "Leslie Caron? Oui! Make no reservations about it, just thank heaven for this little/ big girl" printed on 7 September 2009; by Pittsburgh Stage and Screen Examiner Alan Petrucelli; published in: The Examiner — — www.examiner.com].
• • Hmmmm. Though that nostalgic nugget goes together like misfitted pipes amid nougat, and the imagined comeback by Mae West to Brooklyn's Barbra twangs like a nail mis-struck, it is nice to see the Empress of Sex fondly recalled by an awestruck foreign thespian who did not have lunch with her after all (and who did not do her own singing on screen either). We do hope her memoir is a real page-turner quite unlike the clutch of mud most of these celeb tell-alls have been.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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She's 77, still unsinkable, and she's doing an imitation of MAE WEST in a cabaret show in Manhattan not far from where the Empress of Sex once lived with sister Beverly.
• • Born in El Paso, Texas on 1 April 1932, Debbie Reynolds is an actress — — and currently describing herself as a vaudevillian.
• • Included in her little bit of this, little bit of that act are celebrity impersonations of Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, Zsa Zsa Gabor (advising Paris Hilton), Barbra Streisand, and others she knew.
• • Before launching into a Judy Garland [10 June 1922 — 22 June 1969] medley, Debbie confided that she and the troubled vocalist were neighbors who used to bend an elbow together. It's left unsaid which woman could outperform the other at the bar but — — at a microphone — — let's just say that Garland's reputation is still safe.
• • Debbie Reynolds will entertain her fans through 27 June 2009 at Café Carlyle [Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, New York, NY; (212) 744-1600]. If you go, tell us what you think of her impersonations.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Word comes that a publicist who worked with MAE WEST has gone to the everlasting "Spin City" in the beyond.
• • Born in Brooklyn like Mae, Lee Solters came into the world on 23 June 1919. A creative person who enjoyed writing, the native New Yorker studied journalism and advertising at New York University. He covered high school basketball for The New York Times before he was drafted. While in the military, he penned pieces for Stars & Stripes. After receiving discharge papers, Solters began his own public relations firm during 1948 with partner James J. O'Rourke: Solters O'Rourke.
• • During the 1940s and 1950s, columnists were regulars at the top nightspots. Solters dropped in at clubs like Toots Shor and learned how to plant items with gossip guru Walter Winchell and finesse favorable mentions with society snitch Hedda Hopper.
• • The New York Times (and others) have made mention of his shrewdness. For example, one trick was devised to aid producer David Merrick to salvage a foundering Broadway show: Lee Solters and Merrick concocted a newspaper advertisement with quotations from men they had found in the phone book with the same names as top theater critics.
• • It has been said that in the late 1970s, Mr. Solters moved to Hollywood, where he helped set the trend for hiring entertainers to sell products and images. Forty years before that, however, Mae West was hired to lend glamour and sex appeal to cigarette brands and even soap in the 1930s.• • Unlike many theatrical press agents of today — — who charge $7,500 + merely to send out a boring press release by fax — — it seems that Lee Solters had the imagination, personal touch, amicable deceitfulness, and discernment that creates buzz.
• • His client roster of entertainment stars included: Mae West, Benny Goodman, Cher, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, the Muppets, Cary Grant, Led Zeppelin, Dolly Parton, and others. He claimed he knew Dolly when she was still flat-chested.
• • He also worked with more than 300 Broadway productions, musicals, and dramas including "Guys and Dolls," "Funny Girl," "The King & I," "My Fair Lady," "Camelot." as well as works by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon. In Nevada, he repped Sinatra, Caesars Palace, and (eventually), the City of Las Vegas.
• • Solters' namesake public relations firm says the New York native died at age 89 at his West Hollywood, California home on Monday morning.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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MAE WEST's former fan club president, female impersonator Craig Russell was married for eight years to Lori [1982-1990], a warm-hearted brunette.
• • Canadian blogger Nancy Paiva writes that Lori's first love was Craig Russell — — and a fabulously juicy memoir is in the works.
• • According to Nancy Paiva: Though he never made a secret of his homosexuality, they were married in 1982. Craig was a female impersonator during the 1970s and 1980s, and Lori was his biggest fan. Craig became famous after his starring role in the Canadian feature film Outrageous! (1977). He portrayed a gay hairdresser who wanted to be drag queen — — and it was one of the first North American films with a gay theme to receive widespread distribution.
• • According to Nancy Paiva: His impersonations included Mae West, Carol Channing, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Midler, Anita Bryant, Peggy Lee, and Judy Garland. Unlike most drag queens today, he spoke and sang with his own voice and was able to sing abroad range of octaves. As a teenager, Russell became president of MaeWest's fan club, and briefly worked and lived in Los Angeles as West'ssecretary. He eventually returned to Toronto and worked as ahairdresser while pursuing his career as a stage performer. By 1971, he was a regular performer in Toronto gay clubs and had a widespread international following.
• • According to Nancy Paiva: Lori shared Craig's life for eight years — — as his wife. She also shared his battle with AIDS. Craig died of an AIDS-related stoke on October 30, 1990. She kept diaries of their time together and has started writing a book.
• • Lori, 49, has her own battle to overcome. ...
— — excerpt — —
• • Source: Faces of Toronto: Lori — — http://blogto.com/
• • Byline: Nancy Paiva
• • Posted: 1 September 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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