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Apparently always "in the mood," MAE WEST sang "I'm in the Mood for Love" — — and it was featured on the LP Fabulous Mae West [released in September 1955]. The song had been published twenty years earlier in 1935.
• • Born in Boston on 10 July 1894, James Francis McHugh was a prolific songwriter who was doing his best work from the 1920s through the 1950s. McHugh composed over 270 songs and his hits were recorded by Mae West as well as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, Dinah Washington, June Christy, Peggy Lee, Deanna Durbin, and Ella Fitzgerald.
• • Composer Jimmy McHugh collaborated with lyricist Dorothy Fields on "I'm in the Mood for Love," which enjoyed great popularity and is still being sung today.
• • Jimmy McHugh died during the month of May — — on 23 May 1969 — — at age 74 in Beverly Hills, California.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Reflecting upon her courtroom troubles due to the two homosexual plays she was prosecuted for, Mae West told a West Coast reporter: "I was ten years ahead of my time. Some day I'm going to produce those plays again . . . We make things that exist too important by whispering about 'em, rather than bringin' 'em right out into the open. We talk around a subject and make it something it isn't . . ." [Source: Movie Classic, 1934].
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • Surveying the best album covers, such as The Beatles classic — — ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' — — Ben Gilbert writes: Has there ever been a more artfully considered cover than The Beatles' landmark sleeve? Featuring more than 70 famous people, Peter Blake's collage left out Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus Christ and had to seek permission from all those featured. Mae West initially refused, asking: "What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?" She relented when the band sent her a personal request.
• • Source: Article: "Greatest album covers" written by Ben Gilbert for New UK Music; posted on Friday, 20 May 2011
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 1939th blog post. Unlike many blogs, which draw upon reprinted content from a newspaper or a magazine and/ or summaries, links, or photos, the mainstay of this blog is its fresh material focused on the life and career of Mae West, herself an American original.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1955 • •
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Mae West.
When Paramount was in production with their latest MAE WEST vehicle "Go West, Young Man," the studio turned to Johnny Burke. 
• • Born in Antioch, California in the month of October — — on 3 October 1908 — — John Burke was a light-hearted American lyricist. It was 1936 when the pianist and vaudeville songwriter was hired by Paramount Pictures, where he would turn out movie music for two decades.
• • After Burke moved to Hollywood, he was paired with composer Arthur Johnston (who created lots of songs for Mae), and they were assigned to their first project: "Go West, Young Man," released that November. No hits emerged from that film, however, Burke and Johnston’s next project was more successful. They were lent, along with Bing Crosby, to Columbia Pictures and had five songs in "Pennies from Heaven," including the title song, which topped the hit parade for Crosby and earned an Academy Award nomination.
• • Between 1930 — 1956, Johnny Burke penned tunes for almost 50 motion pictures often with his collaborators James V. Monaco or Arthur Johnston. Occasionally, he composed as well. He specialized in optimistic even whimsical songs.
• • On 25 February 1964, Johnny Burke died in New York. He was 56 years old and very fondly remembered for his million-sellers such as “Swinging on a Star," "Moonlight Becomes You,” “Sunday, Monday or Always,” as well as other notable numbers.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1936 • •
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Mae West.
Meditating on MAE WEST jumpstarted the juice for one discerning essayist published by Bright Lights Film Journal.
• • There is much to consider and mull over in Erich Kuersten's delightful piece "Help us, Mae!" — — and we know you'll savor his hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations [below].
• • According to Erich Kuersten, the pre-code is alive and well today, just not onscreen. The stars have split their private life off, so the tabloids tell the sordid stories, while the screen shows teenagers trying on clothes to montage pop. But since 1934 America has always liked its love and desperation to be separate. In real life, the love of the desperate is as intense as the love of the genuinely enchanted; in fact in our age of digital hermits and alienation, there is no difference.
• • Take for example, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, Babs Streisand and Madonna. These are camp icons for a reason, women whose ferocious drive was such that they changed the face of beauty in order to make themselves pass for beautiful. The hallowed hierarchy of class, genes, and style that make us "attractive" is relative, of course; it's in the eye of the beholder: a very lonely sailor might, for example, fall in love with a dust mop, or mistake a seal for a beautiful mermaid. On the other hand, a jaded rock star might see Sienna Miller as an ocelot or common sea snail.
• • Take Mae West for another example. • • Take Mae West for another example. Kind of heavy and yet small breasted, short and coarse, but it didn't matter. She could have been a dust mop crossed with a sea snail and men would still be falling for her. No one could tell Mae she wasn't a knockout glamour girl, so whether she was or not becomes — with the passing of each new generation — more and more immaterial. She defines beauty because we have seen her on the silver screen being adored. It must be true; we saw it on television.
• • Remember Cary Grant and Mae West in "She Done Him Wrong"?
• • She's so startlingly progressive, we presume all of ancient history defined her as the ultimate; it all has the iconic haze of myth, folklore. Mae is like (and would probably sleep with) Paul Bunyan, or John Henry, the steel-drivin' man. Like them she's embodying an archetype, she is the elevation of the cathouse harlot to the status of a benevolent, wisecracking Aphrodite. If she was genuinely beautiful, the ridiculous fawning of the men around her would be irritating and immodest. But because it's Mae, it's joyous, because we realize that beauty — if it wasn't already in the eye of the beholder before her — is now. She made it flex and bend until even the shy and ugly kids got some, too. She brought cake out to the guards. She shared her humongous appetites with her next-door neighbor in the Paramount dressing rooms, Marlene Dietrich; they passed guys like Gary Cooper and Cary Grant around like playing cards. West actually launched Grant's career for him. She had an eye for real moxie — a talent scout like her is sorely missed in Hollywood these days. But at any rate, the disciples of her brilliance live on; there are shades of her in everyone from Roseanne Barr to Diane Keaton, Paula Prentiss and up to Nicole Kidman and Anna Faris. Age, height, weight have nothing to do with it per se, it's all in the hips and their willingness to subvert the status quo from within, and the genius to know how to make it work and the nerve to pull it off at just the right time. When a girl at the end of her rope admires Mae's diamonds in "She Done Him Wrong," for example, Mae remarks, "Men, it's their game. I just happen to be smart enough to play it their way."
• • What does that mean exactly? It means she doesn't fight the current, and so has the energy to swim to the front and direct the whole wave. This means Mae is genuinely subversive, which is why the Catholic Legion of Decency was so quick to have her censored (she made only one radio appearance in her entire life, an "Adam and Eve" sketch, which got her banned forever). It's nothing in her double entendres so much as her complete lack of inhibition and — even more important — the copious admiration and financial gain she shows herself getting, onscreen, for her unmarried sexual congress. If Mae's characters had died alone and unloved, having sacrificed all for her child to marry a prince, etc., she would have been fine with the censors. But daring to indulge in the forbidden fruits and end the film all the richer and with Cary Grant on your arm and no harm done? It was just too dangerous to a rigid class and sex system like the Catholic delusory 1930s.
• • Those moralists wanted sex to be served in little teacups to a temperate nation. Mae served it by spreading tea leaves on the floor and flooding the building with hot water. It was like showing the corruptible females of the world a magic faucet by which they could drown their men's precious capitalist system with a few flicks of their diamond-bespangled wrists. And that doing it was not only easy but rewarding as hell; Mae was a lost generation Tyler Durden!
• • What was more than a mere threat to the Christian status quo, though, was Mae's willingness to peek behind the magic curtain where the big deals are made, and to point out that regardless of how much they bellow and bluster, they're all just men underneath the suits and uniforms. They can be had. If the Christians were reading this right, Mae was training women all over the country to step into men's affairs and topple them, just to see if they can. The whole social ladder seemed to shake and buckle from the force of Mae's tsunami hips.
• • We don't really have a similar figure to Mae West today, right now, do we? Kate Winslet, Vera Farmiga, Naomi Watts, Nicole, they're all genetic miracles who represent the next step in our evolution, knock on wood, and the sexually active party girls, like Paris Hilton, aren't really movie stars (the Paris equivalent of the time would have been Peggy Hopkins Joyce).
• • No, the merely semi-attractive women — the ones for whom finding dates is actual work — have no one to champion them, no one like Mae West or Bette Davis to star in movies where they're adored as beautiful and desirable beyond words while all the straight men in the room go "What? I don't get it." Instead, the non-goddesses have to make do with martyrdom, the dregs of the coffee cup. I guess the closest we have at the moment are those British soul singer tarts across the sea, but I'm too old to know anything about that.
• • All I know is, I watch Bette in some of these DVDs, like Now Voyager, and I long for the blurriness of VHS. As our world moves more and more to high definition and blu-ray, that eye of the beholder is going to see some things better left obscured by Blanche's paper lantern, that's all I'm saying, with all the format changes. Even the most airbrushed and metallic of goddesses won't catch any fanboys if they can see "that" much. You know what I mean, bro? Do I got to underline it in highlighter marker? Darkness makes everyone equally attractive. It's key! The high-def future will mean the end of sex for all but the supermodels. The rest of us will punch our way through days so gray and isolated they make Gilliam's Brazil look like Christmas with Bing Crosby. No matter how lovely you think you are, we'll be able to see into your pores from the back row.
• • Spend some time in France or England and you'll see a whole different approach to casual hooking up for sex. It's not that big a deal. People feel better, eat better, look better, when they're having steady sexual relations, say twice a week minimum. In America, somewhere along the line we got the idea that it's better not to have sex unless the partner is gorgeous, rich, famous, or you're very drunk; otherwise, we're "saving" ourselves. If we take home someone unattractive, we slump home the next day, guilty, as if we were so hungry and poor we ended up eating at McDonald's and now feel sick. But we don't really feel sick, my friends, that's social conditioning! That's why we need a Mae West or a Bette Davis to come along and sashay their weight around, or smile their crooked teeth and still have Tyrone Power or Cary Grant grow mad with desire for them. Maybe we don't want it, but we need it. We're a nation that's grown sexually anorexic.
• • Help us, Mae! Show us how to enjoy our food again.
— — Source: — —
• • Desperation and Divinity — — "Help us, Mae!"
• • • • Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
• • Byline: Erich Kuersten | Columnist
• • Published in: Bright Lights Film Journal — — www.brightlightsfilm.com
• • Published on: May 2009 | Issue 64
• • Copyright © 2009 by Erich Kuersten
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
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Mae West.
MAE WEST will return to the Pittsburgh area tomorrow night in a rollicking nostalgia-rich stars and stripes production set during wartime.
• • "A USO Tribute Variety Show" will focus on the heyday of Bob Hope's tours, the World War II years of the 1940s. There are some GIs who still can remember when Bob Hope ventured out to the war zones taking with him a constellation of Broadway's best and Hollywood's biggest names.
• • Bob Hope would be accompanied by high-profile stars such as Mae West, Judy Garland, the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Rita Hayworth, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, Shirley Temple, Jack Benny, and more.
• • All these famous entertainers (and many others) will come to life again through the 50-member — — the largest ever for ACT — — cast.
• • "A USO Tribute Variety Show" was written and organized by producer Paul Wright of North Buffalo and co-directors Cortney Bavera of Worthington and Laura Lloyd of Washington Township.
• • "A USO Tribute Variety Show" is being presented by Pennsylvania's Armstrong Community Theater
• • When: Thursday — Saturday on February 19, 20, and 21, 2009 at 7:30 PM.
• • Info: 724-763-3680
• • Location: Armstrong Community Theater Group at Lenape Technical High School [2215 Chaplin Avenue, Ford City, PA 16226-1608]• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
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Mae West.
During the 1930s, MAE WEST's motion pictures had exclusive engagements at both the New York Paramount and the Brooklyn Paramount [385 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11201] near DeKalb Avenue. 
• • The Brooklyn Eagle reminds us of this: During its heyday, up to 4,000 patrons at a time sat to watch movies accompanied by “colossal” stage shows at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre.
• • The last show on August 22,1962 attracted around 300 patrons to see a John Wayne feature.
• • Gracing its ornate stage during its reign as the mecca of Brooklyn entertainment were such celebrities as Mae West, Frank Sinatra, Liberace, Rudy Vallee, Ginger Rogers, Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and most of the big band era orchestras.
• • Basketball fans now sit to watch Long Island University games in the former movie palace auditorium.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: On This Day in History: August 22 — — Paramount’s Last Picture Show
• • By Brooklyn Eagle — — www.brooklyneagle.com/
• • Published online: 22 August 2008
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Brooklyn Paramount • • circa 1932 • •NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST returns to the Brooklyn Paramount on Friday 25 April 2008.
• • An all-day conference "Vaudeville at the Paramount" will be presented at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus and offer rare film clips along with panels including radio legend Joe Franklin, critic Dave Kehr and screenwriter Norman Steinberg, and a reception.
• • Once a prestigious Brooklyn landmark, the historic Paramount Theatre enjoyed a heyday during the Prohibition Era.
• • The wide-ranging cultural impact of vaudeville and the historic Brooklyn Paramount Theatre in the 1920s and 30s will be the topic of a special conference at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus on Friday, April 25, 2008. Featuring panels with writers, critics, and researchers along with rare film clips, a musical performance and reception, the event is free and open to the public.
• • The conference, entitled Vaudeville at the Brooklyn Paramount, will recall the history of the famed Paramount theatre — — now part of the Brooklyn Campus — — and explore the vaudeville variety art form and its influence on American popular culture in the twentieth century. More than ten scheduled speakers will include Dave Kehr, film critic for The New York Times; Norman Steinberg, writer of Blazing Saddles now teaching screenwriting at the Brooklyn Campus; and Joe Franklin, talk show icon and host of the weekly Memory Lane program on WOR.
• • Popularized in venues throughout the United States as accessible entertainment for the whole family, vaudeville performances included acts from the worlds of music, acrobatics, dance, comedy, trained animals and magic. When the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre opened in 1928 as a destination for viewing the new talkie films, it included vaudeville with the cinema offerings, drawing performers such as MAE WEST, Ginger Rogers, Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Ethel Merman. Although vaudeville was eclipsed by radio, film and television, it left an indelible influence on formats for diverse and democratic nightlife.
• • "Vaudeville at the Brooklyn Paramount" will take place in the Spike Lee Screening Room, LLC 122, on the Brooklyn Campus, located near Flatbush and DeKalb avenues in downtown Brooklyn, on Friday, April 25, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A reception with a performance by the Sol Yaged Quartet will begin at 5 p.m. The event is open and free to the public.
• • Info: contact Michael Hittman, professor of anthropology at (718) 488-1185; or Joseph Dorinson, professor of history, at (718) 488-1191.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
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Mae West.
It was December 1935, the height of the Great Depression, and newspapers began posting the annual earnings of adults in the United States who had made over $15,000. Only about 18,000 Americans had a salary that topped $15,000 during the mid-1930s. Publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst received half-a-million that year. MAE WEST was right behind her nemesis with salary checks totaling $339,166.65 during the same period. 
• • Obviously, Hollywood's talented top doll was bringing in top dollars at a time when breadlines and soup kitchens were a common sight across this nation. However, "Hundreds of corporation officials were revealed as making as much salary in one year as most men dream of accumulating in a lifetime of work," noted The New York Times, quoting figures furnished by the U.S. Treasury Department. "Salaries of $100,000 and more were not rare."
• • Financially speaking, MAE WEST outpaced her male and female movieland peers. Dozens of salaries are memorialized in this lengthy year-end report. Here are a few.
• • Bing Crosby, actor — — $104,449 — — in addition to $88,499 he earned as a crooner from Crosby Productions, Inc.
• • W.C. Fields, actor — — $155,083.
• • Marlene Dietrich, actress — — $145,000.
• • Charlie Chaplin, actor — — $143,000.
• • William LeBaron, producer — — $114,711.
• • Adolph Zukor, Paramount Pictures Distributing Co. — — $52,193.
• • Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse — — $51,500.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1932 • •
NYC
Mae West.
Apparently always "in the mood," MAE WEST sang "I'm in the Mood for Love" — — and it was featured on the LP Fabulous Mae West [released in September 1955]. The song had been published twenty years earlier in 1935.
