skip to main |
skip to sidebar
On September 28th MAE WEST's latest play was reviewed by Time Magazine's critics. Here's the view from an aisle seat. 
• • The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: 28 Sep. 1931, Time Magazine • •
• • "The Constant Sinner" • •
• • Three seasons ago Mae West's lusty singing of "Frankie and Johnnie" and the nostalgic flavor of bar and brothel scenes made Diamond Lil a Broadway hit. In The Constant Sinner, which Mae West wrote from her own novel, the bars and brothels are Harlem, 1931, and Mae West does not sing. But The Constant Sinner is no tame play, nor is it a dull play.
• • Though handicapped by a more effete period, Mae West in some of her lines attains the lush bawdiness of her earlier production:
• • "That dame [Cleopatra] went in for everything . . . she even went to bed with snakes."
• • "I never turn anything down but the bed-covers."
• • She plays the part of Prostitute Babe Gordon with a forthright enthusiasm, sometimes tempered by irony, as in the curtain line, after she has convinced her husband that she is not living with another man (which she is) and the husband has mouthed a few platitudes about Faith. Says Babe Gordon: "I used to know a fine poem about Faith. It begins — Oh, Hell! I've forgotten it."
• • [Review printed on Monday 28 September 1931, Time Magazine]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Excerpt from Babe Gordon by Mae West [NY: The Macaulay Company, 1930] • •
• • • • "Well, it was a woman. A beautiful woman. She was seated at a table in a corner of the room with a big negro — — actually enjoying him, fascinated by him."
• • • • "Do you mean that stunning blonde woman in an ermine wrap?" asked Jack Rathburne. "I did notice her, but I didn't see the negro."
• • • • "Well, he came in later," explained Wayne Baldwin. "Come to think of it, you were at the opposite side of the table. Your back was to them. How in the name of all that's decent, Jack, could a woman like that, obviously a person of refinement, allow a black to make love to her?"
• • • • Jack crushed out his cigarette in a green-glass tray.
• • • • "A matter of taste, Wayne. In this case, a very depraved taste."
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • as Babe Gordon • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
It was the fourteenth of September when MAE WEST was sashaying 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, received mixed reviews, 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 — —
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • the Harlem cast in Mae's play • • a street in Harlem • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
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/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's castmates • • 1931 • •
NYC
Mae West.
Viewpoints on MAE WEST vary. And the overall success achieved by "Belle of the Nineties" is often in the eye of the beholder.
• • According to a current critic Dave Kehr, who writes for The Chicago Reader, Leo McCarey, the director whose obsessive Catholicism in the midst of anarchic humor sometimes made him the Fritz Lang of comedy, seems slightly ill at ease when faced with the unbounded libido of Mae West in this 1934 production ["Belle of the Nineties"]. West is a Saint Louis torch singer (backed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra) who exhales "My Old Flame," "Memphis Blues," and "When a Saint Louis Woman Comes Down to New Orleans" in between amours, Kehr concludes.
• • But, in fact, the screenplay and its "unbounded libido" was a re-tread. 
• • The script for "It Ain't No Sin" [re-titled "Belle of the Nineties"] was Mae West's 1934 rewrite of her controversial bestseller "Babe Gordon" [1931] — — re-titled "The Constant Sinner" — — a work of fiction set in Harlem during the Prohibition Era.
• • In the stage version [and its novelization], the story is focused on a white prizefighter's tart [as Babe Gordon styles herself] who dallies in Harlem with an Irish boxer Bearcat Delaney and a dashing black pimp Money Johnson. Babe Gordon also sells cocaine, cleverly hidden in rouge containers, for some extra income and intrigue during her boring job in a department store. The cocaine sub-plot was bleached out of the Paramount screenplay, obviously.
• • In both the novel and the play, beautiful Babe Gordon marries Bearcat Delaney.
• • Though some believe that Mae West capitulated to the Hollywood censors by agreeing to a walk down the aisle for her characters Ruby Carter and the Tiger Kid, faithful readers recognized the similarity to Mae's 1931 storyline, which always contained the marriage angle.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.
