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The showman who asked MAE WEST to come up and see him in The Buckeye State has died.
• • According to Associated Press, John Kenley began acting in New York City in the 1920s — — and once served as an aide to famed producer Lee Shubert. He became a summer theater producer in 1940 in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, and worked in other eastern cities, including Washington D.C. Kenley produced hundreds of plays and musicals. His Kenley Players, a summer stock circuit that began in Dayton, Ohio, in 1957, featured such stars as Mae West, Arthur Godfrey, Ethel Merman, Burt Reynolds, Billy Crystal, Gypsy Rose Lee, Tommy Tune, William Shatner, and Robert Goulet.
• • According to The New York Times, Mr. Kenley was born John Kremchek in Denver on 20 February 1906. His parents were saloon keepers who later moved the family to Cleveland. In the 1920s he made his way to New York, hoping to break into show business. He performed with Martha Graham as a dancer-acrobat in John Murray Anderson’s Greenwich Village Follies. It was Mr. Anderson who suggested he change his name to Kenley.
• • The New York Times obituary offered this background detail: In 1928 Mr. Kenley began reading plays for the Shuberts. In 1930 he became assistant to one of the Shubert brothers, Levi, who was known as Lee — “Mr. Shubert’s left-hand man,” as Mr. Kenley put it in an interview with Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco for her history “Summer Stock! An American Theatrical Phenomenon” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). ...
• • John Kenley opened Ohio-based theaters in Warren, Columbus and Akron before moving into the Playhouse Square Center in downtown Cleveland in 1984.
• • The vibrant Midwestern impresario was celebrated for his producing clout, casting coups, and a passion for live entertainment that brought pleasure and glamor to hundreds of thousands of hard-working coal miners and Ohio residents.
• • On 23 October 2009 John Kenley died at the Cleveland Clinic from complications of pneumonia. He was 103.• • 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.
William Landon Jones enjoyed a close friendship with MAE WEST for 50 years.
• • Born in Memphis, Tennessee on 12 May 1906, he was known in boxing by the moniker "Gorilla" Jones. This weekend, the five-foot-nine fighter will be inducted posthumously into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y. He died at age 75 on 4 January 1982. After Mae's death, it's said he lost the will to live.
• • The 22-year-old Jones met Mae West in a New York night club during 1928. He had enjoyed a long career in the ring and was about to come into the big time in 1929, when he would earn a $100,000 purse — — about $1.2 million in today's money — — for winning a bout in Madison Square Garden.
• • Often photographed in a ringsize seat, the daughter of "Battling Jack" also befriended other black pugilists such as Chalky Wright and Joe Louis.
• • In a colorful feature for the Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio, reporter Mark J. Price covers the career of Gorilla Jones as well as his private life with Mae West. Many pleasures await you.
• • Mark J. Price writes: Outside the boxing ring, Gorilla Jones was an unforgettable personality. He wore impeccable suits, flashed diamond rings, drove a Lincoln coupe, consorted with a Hollywood vixen — — Mae West — — and walked a lion cub on a leash.
• • Inside the ring, stripped of all excess, he was equally memorable — — except perhaps to the dozens of fighters he knocked out. They were excused for not recalling a thing after Jones' right glove cratered their faces.
• • One of the greatest boxers in Akron's history, Jones won the world middleweight title twice in the 1930s. He will be inducted posthumously this weekend into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y.
• • Jones fought in 138 professional bouts, winning 101, losing 24 and drawing 13. He KO'd 52 opponents, but never suffered a knockout or serious injury.
• • ''I have been blessed with a mind that works rapidly in the ring and hands that work as rapidly as my mind tells them,'' Jones told the Beacon Journal early in his career. ''I think I can figure fight moves a bit faster than can the fellows I am fighting, and once figured out, my hands move as they should to carry me to victory.''
• • Why did they call him "Gorilla"? • •
• • The nickname ''Gorilla,'' politically incorrect in today's world, was attributed to Jones' long reach — 75 inches — in the ring. In 1932, Beacon Journal sports scribe Jim Schlemmer said the Gorilla moniker didn't fit ''in looks or actions,'' and called Jones ''as classy a piece of fighting machinery as the game has known.''
• • ''He is an unusual type of fighter,'' Schlemmer wrote. ''He doesn't like to hurt anybody. He wishes every fellow he fights could be as good or nearly as good as himself.''
• • William Landon Jones was born in 1906 in Memphis, Tenn. He confessed to doing a lot of things wrong in his youth, such as giving up on education after grammar school. He worked for a bootlegger, ran with a tough crowd and learned to fight.
• • The ring was his way out. At age 18, Jones started boxing for $7.50 a bout. He stood 5 feet 9 inches and tipped the scales at 145 pounds.
• • Jones' first fight outside Memphis was at the Akron Armory in 1927. He beat welterweight K.O. Kelly and won $100. Unfortunately, Jones tried to add to his earnings in a late-night dice game and lost everything.
• • He begged Akron boxing promoter Suey Welch for another fight so he could buy a train ticket to Memphis.
• • Jones won the rematch, but stayed in Akron after the promoter offered to be his manager and train him at the Welch Athletic Club at 219 S. Main St.
• • Welch called Jones ''the greatest fighter in the world, pound for pound.'' The two made a fortune together.
• • Jones pummeled his way through a long line of foes: Sailor Maxwell, Mickey Fedor, Tommy Freeman, Bucky Lawless, Al Mello, Izzy Grove, Jackie Horner, Nick Testo, Meyer Grace, Jock Malone. The purses grew larger, and soon he was fighting as a middleweight at Madison Square Garden in New York.
• • In 1929, Jones earned $100,000 — about $1.2 million in today's money — and went on a spending spree. He bought his parents a Ford sedan and $10,000 home in Memphis, then rewarded himself with a $5,400 Lincoln. He bought three suits after each bout, giving away older outfits to pals. He added a diamond-collared lion to his act, walking the cub on a leash to matches and personal appearances.
• • ''In 1929 when I was in the so-called 'big' money, I spent too much,'' he later recalled. ''I liked fast horses, fast autos, fast airplanes. I had too many friends who helped me spend.''
• • Jones hit the big time in January 1932 with a sixth-round knockout of Italian boxer Oddone Piazza in Milwaukee for the National Boxing Association middleweight crown. A cheering crowd greeted him at Union Depot as he returned to Akron.
• • Five months later, he lost the title to Marcel Thil before 70,000 spectators in Paris, but regained it in 1933 by knocking out Sammy Slaughter at Cleveland Public Hall. He declined to defend the title after that.
• • Jones boxed for seven more years, but his right punch lost its sting. His final fight at the Akron Armory was a 1938 loss to Babe Risko. Jones retired in 1940 after losing a bout in Idaho. ''Gorilla Jones will never stay in the fight game until he's ready to cut paper dolls,'' Jones vowed.
• • Mae West met Gorilla Jones in a nightspot in 1928 • •
• • In many respects, the next chapter of his life was flashier than boxing. He went to work as Hollywood legend Mae West's chauffeur and bodyguard.
• • He first met the wise-cracking actress at a New York nightclub in 1928. Mae West's father had been a prizefighter, and she enjoyed bankrolling boxers.
• • ''The boxers had a hard time, even some of them who were pretty good,'' West told biographer Charlotte Chandler in 1979. ''There was one I backed named Gorilla Jones. I don't know why he was called 'Gorilla.' He wasn't that kind of fighter. I saw he was getting pounded too much, and he really didn't like fighting anymore, but he didn't know what else to do.''
• • She asked him if he could drive a car. Sure, he could. Even with a lion cub in the back seat.
• • ''So I hired him as my chauffeur,'' West said. ''He turned out to be a very good driver — — and he was also protection.''
• • Mae West also employed Jones' mother, Daisy, as a wardrobe assistant when the actress traveled. She bought homes for the boxer and his mother in Los Angeles, and served as Jones' financial manager and personal manager.
• • Biographers agree that the relationship wasn't all business. West and Jones remained close companions for 40 years. In public, he referred to her as ''The Lady,'' never by her name.
• • One time, a heckler made a bawdy remark to the actress, and the boxer threatened to rearrange the man's face.
• • ''Let 'em talk,'' Mae West told him. ''It's good for business.''
• • According to Hollywood lore, West got aggravated when house managers tried to block Jones from visiting her sixth-floor suite in the Ravenswood apartment complex. She bought the building and hired new staff.
• • ''A motion picture company offered me a quarter-million to film my story, but they wanted to make me say I was her lover,'' Jones told Jet magazine in 1974. ''That would be a lie because she was my manager and my friend. All the money in the world would be no good without a friend who has done everything to keep me on top and let me live the life I wanted to live.''
• • When Jones began to suffer from diabetes and lose his eyesight, West kept him on the payroll and handled his bills.
• • Jones was devastated in 1980 when West died in Ravenswood at age 87. She left him two apartment buildings and three houses.
• • Acquaintances said Jones gave up the will to live after ''The Lady'' passed away.
• • As his health deteriorated, his weight plunged to 102 pounds. In 1982, William ''Gorilla'' Jones died of arteriosclerosis at age 75.
• • The final bell sounded for an Akron boxing legend.
• • Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send e-mail to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
— — Source: — —
• • Article: Akron's king of rings: Boxer Gorilla Jones conquers the world and lives the high life
• • Byline: Mark J. Price | Beacon Journal staff writer
• • Published in: Ohio.com
• • Published on: 8 June 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • 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.
Jim Backus, a colleague of MAE WEST, was born in February — — on 25 February 1913.
• • The Cleveland native had a durable career and was one of the few actors to do it all: vaudeville, summer stock, Broadway, radio, TV, cartoons, and motion pictures.
• • Supposedly as handy with the ladies after the matinee as he was with charming a director at auditions, Jim Backus began getting his radio career going in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a regular on radio's "The Alan Young Show," portraying Eastern Seaboard snob Hubert Updike III, the prototype for his "Thurston Howell III" characterization on the 1960s TV sitcom "Gilligan's Island."
• • In the cast of "Myra Breckinridge" [1970], the 57-year-old Backus portrayed a doctor.
• • Jim Backus reunited with Mae West three years later, attending the Masquers Club's salute to the Empress of Sex as one of her "Gentlemen in Waiting" (along with George Raft, Jack Larue, Steve Allen, Lloyd Nolan, etc.).
• • When the 1973 event was reborn in an audio format as "Mae Day: The Masquers Club Salutes Mae West CD" [1998], Mae-mavens could hear Jim Backus offering an amusing 4-minute tribute [exactly 4 minutes and 16 seconds long, if you want to get technical] to the buxom blonde guest of honor.
• • Jim Backus died in Los Angeles, California on 3 July 1989 of pneumonia.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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NYC
Mae West.
Critics continue to weigh in on MAE WEST.
• • Cleveland journalist Tricia Springstubb did a column for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. According to her, 'She Always Knew How' by Charlotte Chandler [Simon & Schuster, 317 pages, 2009] is a sexy, smart biography of Mae West, who ruled the screen and her own career.
• • Tricia Springstubb writes: The sofa is gilt, covered in eggshell satin, and the extended hand is baby soft, dripping with diamonds. But look out. Those diamonds are "old-cut" and sharp enough to scratch your palm. According to Mae West, that's the best kind, and what better authority than Diamond Lil herself?
• • "She Always Knew How," a biography from Charlotte Chandler, reads like an extended conversation with this witty, provocative, surprisingly sweet woman, and it's hard to imagine better entertainment than the musings of a "girl who climbed the ladder of success, wrong by wrong."
• • Born in Brooklyn in 1893 as Mary Jane West, the adored daughter of a beautiful corset model and a "bare knuckles fighter," she was never guilty of false modesty. Her father's offer to build her a dollhouse baffled her — — what she wanted, and got, was a toy stage. Baby May (she later changed it to Mae because it looked more cheerful) began her career at age 5 on the stage of Brooklyn's Royal Theater, where she took first prize in the amateur hour and never looked back.
• • Her formal education ended at third grade. "School kind of got in my way, you might say. . . . They told my mother, 'Mae's an average student.' Can you imagine?"
• • Her career was everything to her, and she insisted on complete control of it. She turned down an offer from the famous New York producer Florenz Ziegfeld because the theater where his "Follies" played wasn't intimate enough for her.
• • With titles like "Sex" and "The Wicked Age," her plays were never the darlings of critics or censors, ("Imagine censors that wouldn't let you sit in a man's lap! I've been in more laps than a napkin!"), but the public idolized her.
• • Throughout her career onstage and in film, she wrote her own lines, including that invitation to come up and see her sometime, and Diamond Lil's reply to the innocent coat-check girl who cries "Goodness!" at the sight of all those gems. "Goodness," Lil purrs, "had nothin' to do with it, dearie. "
• • In 1934, West was the highest paid female performer in the world. "Sex and work have been the only two things in my life, but if I ever had to choose . . . it was always my work." Yet the distance between the real West and her stage persona seems approximately the width of an emery board.
• • With the exception of her beloved mother, she preferred the company of men. "Women spend too much of their lives saying no."
• • West scripted parts for drag queens, championed black actors and musicians, and donated her used Cadillacs, still in pristine condition, to convents because "I just can't stand seeing a nun waiting for a bus."
• • She discovered George Raft and Carey [sic] Grant, and counted Elvis Presley and Marlene Dietrich among her confidantes. At the end of this book-length conversation, carried on with Chandler when West was in her 80s, the star leans forward with a confession.
• • "You know, my diamonds I told you all those men gave me? I wanted you to know — — I bought some of them myself." As she'd be first to point out, no one deserved them more.
— — Source: — —
• • Book Review by: Tricia Springstubb
• • Published in: The Cleveland Plain Dealer — — www.cleveland.com
• • Published on: 15 February 2009• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST, who avoided discussing death or illness, might have been horrified to learn that a death cab was shuttling her back and forth to a Cleveland theatre. In 1941, however, when Mae was booked for a week at the Palace Theatre, her chauffeur was the local funeral home director.
• • Born in 1914, Howard W. Edwards had proudly displayed in his home a photo of himself with Mae West. He often retold the tale of driving the brassy blonde from the Statler Hotel to Mass every morning — — and on to the Palace during her weeklong engagement. Edwards was hired to drive the limousine that was leased from Cleveland Memorial Temple Funeral Home, where he worked, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer [3 October 2007].
• • Plain Dealer Reporter Maggi Martin wrote: "At 14, Edwards decided on a funeral career when he worked as a professional pallbearer in New York City [in 1928] as an apprentice at Walter B. Cook Inc., the busiest funeral parlor in the city. He earned 50 cents for carrying the casket out of the home and another 50 cents for carrying it into church."
• • A native Clevelander, Howard W. Edwards became a licensed Ohio funeral director in 1936. He owned Edwards Funeral Home in East Cleveland for nearly 40 years.
• • After he died on 28 September 2007 at age 93, his friends told the media that none of his passengers had left the lasting impression that Mae West did.
• • Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
• • Byline: Maggi Martin wrote the obituary that this info was extracted from.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST's film "My Little Chickadee" [1940] featured an American character actress who died in May. 
• • Severe looking and sharp featured, Margaret Hamilton was born in Cleveland, Ohio on 9 December 1902. Hamilton played the role of prudish Mrs. Gideon, who faints on the train when Flower Belle Lee, Mae's character, pulls out two guns.
• • Then there is the scene where Cuthbert J. Twillie [W. C. Fields] is told that there is nothing good about Flower Belle Lee by the holier-than-thou Mrs. Gideon [Margaret Hamilton], and he responds: "I can see what's good. Tell me the rest!"• • Best known for her iconic portrayal of The Wicked Witch of the West, who imprisons the ruby-slippered Dorothy from Kansas [Judy Garland] in The Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton died on 16 May 1985 in Salisbury, Connecticut.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West 's co-stars • • 1940 • •NYC
Mae West.
