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In 1935, MAE WEST was battling the charges raised by Frank Wallace that they were still man and wife when another marriage license surfaced in Texas.
• • What really happened in March 1924? Was it a touch of Cupid or career capitulation that made Mae entertain the idea of settling down? Maybe Mae was overcome by the heat of hormones — — or did she have a pregnancy scare? And how long could she have known Mr. R.A. "Bud" Burmeister, a 34-year-old resident of Harris County, Texas anyway?
• • "Texas Romance of Mae West Is Told in Record" • •
• • HOUSTON, April 24 [U.P) — — Whether Mae West, Hollywood's "Diamond Lil," is or isn't married to Frank Wallace, or ever had been wed to anyone was still moot today, but it seemed pretty definitely established that she never tied the connubial knot with R. A. (Bud) Burmeister, now a Fort Worth publicity man.
• • The Harris County clerk's records show that Miss West obtained a marriage license with Mr. Burmeister, then a newspaper man, on Saturday, 22 March 1924. The license record shows no return to indicate it was ever used. Mr. Burmeister, now in Fort Worth, refused to discuss it, saying he thought it "very bad taste to bring up such a matter."
• • Deputy Clerk Don H. Kennedy, who issued the license, still works in the clerk's office. The license, No. 52,812, bore the notation signed by Burmeister, "I swear that Miss Mae West is over I5 years of age, that I am over 21 years of age, and that there is no legal objection to our marriage."
• • Eddie Bremer, theater manager, admitted he remembered Miss West "vividly" as a vaudeville hoofer, "because he had a little trouble with the censor."
• • Article on page 13 in The Mexia Weekly Herald (Mexia, Texas); published on Friday, 25 April 1935.
• • On Saturday, 22 March 1924 in The Lone Star State • •
• • An application for a marriage license was filed in Texas on Saturday, 22 March 1924 by R. A. "Bud" Burmeister, who intended to wed Mae West.
• • Then on tour through the southwest, the spunky vaudevillian was noticed by the reporters who reviewed for the San Antonio Light, where an article on her appeared in the paper on Sunday, 23 March 1924.
• • On Friday, 23 March 1934 • •
• • French magazine Hebdo (No. 50), released on a Friday, 23 March 1934, flashed a beautiful Mae West cover. At the time, Jean Esters was the Editor-in-Chief and Hebdo was being published by Baudiniere, Paris. Hebdo means weekly (shortened from "hebdomadaire").
• • On Monday, 23 March 1964 • •
• • Rick Du Brow, a Hollywood columnist, discussed the episode "Mae West Meets Mister Ed" (broadcast on Sunday, 22 March 1964) on page 4 of Cumberland Evening Times, on Monday, 23 March 1964. The headline was "Mae West Could Be Star of Own Situation Comedy." Du Brow was favorably impressed. Papers in the U.K. and the USA reviewed the TV episode.
• • "Mae West Meets Mister Ed" is the twenty-first episode of the fourth season of "Mister Ed," and the ninety-ninth episode overall. Director was Arthur Lubin. Airdate was on Sunday, 22 March 1964.
• • Guest Stars: Mae West (Herself), Nick Stewart (Charles), Mae West (Herself), Jacques Shelton (1st Groom), Roger Torrey (2nd Groom).
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • It takes more than merely acting to become a national figure — an emblem — which, strange and contradictory as it may seem, is exactly what Mae West is.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "I like restraint if it doesn't go too far."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A London newspaper discussed Diane Arbus and Mae West.
• • Sir: While I was art editor of Show Magazine in New York during the 1960s, I commissioned the great Diane Arbus to photograph the (by then) forgotten Mae West (Books, 16 March) at home in Los Angeles.
• • The results revealed that Miss West had a fearsome fetish for symmetry — matching grubby white grand pianos bearing vast identical plaster statues of her naked self, duplicate papier-maiché urns of dusty mock camellias, place settings mirrored either side of the plates, etc. Mae also slept between two (real) apes called Toughie and Pretty-boy.
• • As Cecil Beaton once said about Josephine Baker, if that is not camp, I don't know what is!
• • Written by: Nicholas Haslam, 12 Holbein Place, London SW1
• • Source: Letter (page 29) in London's Spectator; published on Saturday, 23 March 1996
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 10th anniversary • •
• • Thank
you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during this
past decade. The other day we entertained 1,430 visitors. We reached a
milestone recently when we completed 3,100 blog posts. Wow!
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3140th blog post.
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photos,
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • marriage license in 1924 • •
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NYC Mae West
It was the 23rd of March 1924 and MAE WEST was deep in the heart of a Texan.
• • It's also true that she was 30 years old and watching her star-dusted dreams slowly dimming. When she did snag a booking, it was on a low-level variety circuit. Though a few years before she had negotiated an appearance fee of $500, in 1924 she was accepting gigs for only $125 a week. During this frustrating interval, she was hiring and firing her accompanists.
• • Imagine Mae's prickly state of mind as she trouped during the month of March in 1924 through the southwest, where she had accepted a four-week contract to perform on the Interstate Vaudeville Circuit. Covering Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas, this was one of variety's least desirable routes and a far cry from Broadway.
• • In Houston, Texas, the Brooklyn bombshell turned the head of a publicity flack for a nearby playhouse.
• • Eventually, the Associated Press discovered a marriage license [dated 22 March 1924] obtained — — but never used — — by Mae West and a local theatre press agent named R.A. "Bud" Burmeister.
• • Despite the fact that a marriage did not take place in Texas, on 24 April 1935 newspapers like The Berkeley Daily Gazette were announcing Mae had indeed tied the knot with Bud eleven years before. Yikes! And in 1935 it was discovered that a bald, skinny former vaudeville hoofer named Frank Wallace was legally still married to the movie queen.• • What really happened in 1924? Was it a touch of Cupid or career capitulation that made Mae entertain the idea of settling down? Maybe Mae was overcome by the heat of hormones — — or did she have a pregnancy scare? And how long could she have known Mr. R.A. "Bud" Burmeister, a 34-year-old resident of Harris County, Texas anyway? Hmmmmmm.• • Marching down the Playhouse Aisle in late March 1924 • • • • Before any orange blossoms were ordered for the bride, Mae took off (as scheduled) on March 23rd for San Antonio, where she played through March 24th.
• • Perhaps this was the time when Mae registered at the famous Menger Hotel. Located in downtown San Antonio, Texas, this landmark was built in 1859 (23 years after the fall of the adjacent Alamo) by William Menger, a German immigrant. In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt had used the bar to recruit Rough Riders which fought in Cuba in the Spanish-American War.
• • The Menger was San Antonio's most popular hotel in the 19th Century. Mae West along with O. Henry, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Babe Ruth, Oscar Wilde, and others were known to frequent the bar and hotel, which was periodically enlarged and remodelled to accommodate more guests. The Menger Hotel is located here: 204 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX 78205.
• • After such a rough ride with romance, Mae headed for the footlights in a Fort Worth theatre, and then saddled up for an engagement in Detroit before returning to the East Coast — — and a long hitch of unemployment.• • 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 gave birth to "Sex," her sensational and controversial play [registered with the U.S. Copyright Office from her parents' address in blue-collar Queens], thanks to some unusual mid-wives and odd-fathers.
• • In 1923, one year before James Timony acquired the rights to "Following the Fleet" by John Joseph Byrne, Mae had celebrated her thirtieth birthday. She had briefly returned to variety in 1924 on the touring wheel known as the Interstate Circuit. The month of March found the vaudevillian in heat in Houston, where she had fallen for a handsome Texas-based Variety reporter, Bud Burmeister. By then, Mae had quietly divorced her Italian husband Guido Deiro in the Queens County Courthouse but she was still legally (secretly) wed to danceman Frank Wallace. Either the romance went pretty far or perhaps Mae had a pregnancy scare — — because Burmeister applied for a marriage license.
• • After this hot-blooded escapade (or escape) in the Lone Star State, and after a brief commitment in Detroit at one of Keith's vaudeville emporiums, Mae was back in New York City under her parents' roof. By then Timony had made the acquaintance of a fellow Irishman, John J. Byrne, a 24-year-old thespian living with Mr. and Mrs. Patrick C. Murphy (his married sister and brother-in-law) in East Orange, New Jersey.
• • In Jim Timony's Manhattan office, Mae explained to Byrne she needed a play in the style of Rain, a sin-sational drama that had starred Jeanne Eagels in the role of Sadie Thompson, a beautiful tart who was a wanted woman in San Francisco, and on the run from a Honolulu brothel. After all, Rain — — based on W. Somerset Maugham's short story — — was the Broadway boxoffice smash of the 1922-1923 season. .
• • On the New York stage during the 1920s, whores and brothels were in vogue. David Belasco had scored a success with his racially mixed production of Lulu Belle; Leonore Ulric portrayed the mulatto courtesan. And Mae had been monitoring the meteoric rise of Eugene O'Neill, whose Anna Christie opened in 1921 with Pauline Lord playing the title role of the Swedish farm gal from Minnesota who winds up in New York City — — after escaping from a St. Paul brothel — — and is searching for her alcoholic father, a seaman. Quite aware that O'Neill had helped legitimize a raw realism fueled by life's seamy, seedy side, Mae West was ready to express herself in this idiom.
• • Explaining what she wanted to Byrne, Mae pointed out that Rain's Sadie Thompson was a loose woman who made a living from soldiers. "I told him I had an idea of a girl who made her living from sailors — — and to call the play A Sailor's Delight or True to the Navy, sayings I had previously used in a song," Mae revealed to a reporter.
• • Though Following the Fleet seems to have been written to order by J.J. Byrne and Ted McLean, it did not suit Mae. So she contacted a female playwright of German descent who was often hired to collaborate. The author was living in the Bronx with her widowed mother Mrs. Maximilian Leitzbach and had worked on projects such as adapting a woman's novel Wife in Name Only [1923] for the screen. Soon Mae West, age 32, and Adeline M. Leitzbach, age 38, were revising the script that would become Sex and be staged in April 1926.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West onstage in Sex • • 1926 • •
NYC
Mae West.
