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The artist who helped create the cover for the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — — the icon album front-side that featured MAE WEST — — is having an exhibition of additional works inspired by The Empress of Sex.
• • Once based in London (while married to the painter Peter Blake), and now a resident of Sundance, Utah, Jann Haworth returned to England two years ago for a gallery show at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in December 2009. This week Ms. Haworth will give a talk that's billed as "Mae West Dressing Table." This is supposed to include work from the museum's collection.
• • When: 11:30 AM on Wednesday, 26 October 2011
• • Where: Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.
• • On 24 October 1935 • •
• • Mae West's pal Texas Guinan got on the wrong side of Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as "Dutch Schultz" [6 August 1902 — 24 October 1935], the NYC-born mobster slaughtered at age 33 by a rival's gunmen in The Garden State. Briefly, during the late 1920s, all three were regularly in the same premises on West 54th and Seventh Avenue. Bad feelings began to brew and dangerous Dutch was actively pursuing Texas Guinan for awhile (until she died after a performance in Vancouver, Canada in November 1933).
• • Gunned down: The Calabrian immigrant Albert Anastasia was ordered to arrange Schultz's assassination and assigned Jewish mobster Louis Buchalter to take care of it. At 10:15 PM on 23 October 1935, Schultz was shot at the Palace Chophouse at 12 East Park Street in Newark, New Jersey, an eatery that he was using as his new headquarters. Two bodyguards and Schultz's accountant were also killed. Schultz was in the men's room when he was shot.
• • Extreme Unction: Before Schultz was taken into surgery, he received Last Rites from a Roman Catholic priest at his request. Schultz lingered for 22 hours, speaking in various states of lucidity with his wife, mother, a priest, policemen, and hospital staff, before dying of peritonitis. The career criminal was only 33.
• • On 24 October 1942 • •
• • Short-tempered policemen, court officers, and judges were not some of the Brooklyn bombshell's favorite folks. But James C. Morton had been cast as all of them during his long silver screen career. In his modest role as an 1890s bartender, James C. Morton had appeared with Mae in "Every Day's a Holiday" [released in the USA on 18 December 1937]
• • Born in Helena, Montana on 25 August 1884, the balding character actor often worked for Hal Roach and, typically, he was the the butt of shenanigans by such comics as The Little Rascals, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, The Three Stooges. As Mae did, he had worked with W.C. Fields.
• • James C. Morton died in Reseda, California in the month of October — — on 24 October 1942. He was 58 years old.
• • In October, Let's Remember John Kenley [1906 — 2009] • •
• • Fifty Years Ago: In 1961, the Kenley Players featured Mae West in a play billed as "Sex-Tette" and staged in Warren, Ohio. That happened half-a-century ago.
• • John's group, the Kenley Players, was a summer stock circuit that had its beginnings in 1957 in Dayton, Ohio. Over time, this theatre company would feature a galaxy of stars: 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, John 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.
• • 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.
• • John Kenley died at the Cleveland Clinic from complications of pneumonia in the month of October — — on 23 October 2009. He was 103.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "I don't like myself — — I'm crazy about myself."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A book chapter on another actress mentioned Mae West.
• • Brian Kellow writes: Tired of having her achievements overlooked, Ethel got a little testy with the Hollywood press when it was suggested that her performing style owed something to Mae West's. Although they occupied different floors of the Ravenswood, West had not been particularly friendly, and Ethel got even by telling reporters that it was she who had started the Mae West vogue, not the other way around. "I was singing 'Eadie Was a Lady' all dressed up with the wiggly hips an' everything before Mae West's first picture, Night After Night, came out," Ethel said, ". . . so I shall always claim Mae sailed to glory on my vogue." In fact, West's style was fully evolved by the time of her big stage successes of the 1920s, long before she hit Hollywood. But Ethel's rewriting of history was a good indication of her defensiveness over her treatment in Hollywood. ...
• • Source: Biography: "Ethel Merman: A Life" written by Brian Kellow (Chapter 5)
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2093rd 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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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1967 album • •
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Mae West.
MAE WEST's pal Texas Guinan got on the wrong side of Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as "Dutch Schultz" [6 August 1902 — 24 October 1935], the NYC-born mobster slaughtered at age 33 by a rival's gunmen in Newark, New Jersey. Briefly, during the 1920s, all three were regularly in the same premises on West 54th.
• • Indeed some New Yorkers still recall meeting Dutch Schultz. Nevertheless, if they were to read a script about the gangster, it might be startling how little it resembles memory. But, after all, fiction and plays are concerned with other things — — such as conflict, tension, balance, and how most women must wobble and wiggle to live, wearing youth and beauty as a suit of armor for close fighting.
• • Born during the month of August, Dutch Schultz pops up in a well-financed play set during the lawless decade. His enemy Texas Guinan is not in it. However, actress Jennifer Swiderski portrays Mae West in the critically razzed "Scandalous People: A Sizzling Jazzical," a musical that got on the wrong side of a number of New York reviewers, who lodged complaints about being forced to sit through a lavishly produced but poorly written two hour mess at this year's Fringe Fest. [Heck, no wonder so many call this annual noise-making "The Cringe."]
• • Created for a cast of 21 actors/ dancers, and set in an era juicy with mayhem and dramatic potential, this show found enough Benjamins to float on. Reviewer Matthew Murray offered this detailed autopsy of the slaughter he witnessed onstage in Minetta Lane that left ticket-bearers with post-dramatic stress disorder.
• • "Low-impact theatre of the most disappointing kind" • •
• • Lamenting the misfired sparkplugs in this limousine of a spectacle, Matthew Murray writes: When a musical has everything going for it except spark, you may find yourself wishing it were instead a colossal flop — — that way, you could at least delight in its destiny of nowhere. Unfortunately, no such reassurance is possible with Scandalous People: A Sizzling Jazzical. This show at the Minetta Lane Theatre, by Benny Russell (music) and Myla Churchill (libretto), must be one of the most professional, elaborately realized, and luxuriously appointed musicals ever seen at the New York International Fringe Festival. But its terrific cast and exquisite trappings cannot disguise the fact that it is low-impact theatre of the most disappointing kind.
• • According to Matthew Murray: Churchill's story follows the progression of Prohibition-era Harlem performing artists to legit stages in the run up to the Great Depression. Dewey Demarkov (Eugene Fleming) is the Ziegfeld-lite impresario behind the Do Drop Inn, an uptown speakeasy whose floor acts are filled with attractive chorus girls (that Dewey has personally, uh, hand-picked); two sisters, Desiree (Nicole Hill) and Cindy (Nirine S. Brown), the former a smoky vocalist and Dewey's wife, the latter a lithe and gifted hoofer who has long loved Dewey from afar; and enough talent and variety to attract the come-hither regular Mae West (Jennifer Swiderski). So popular is the club that it's also attracted the notice of a Bronx gangster, Dutch (Ryan Clardy), who wants to move the whole show to Broadway — — with, of course, a few small changes.
• • Matthew Murray observes: This is a premise rife with possibilities, and Russell and Churchill bypass none. Scandal, adultery, and depression play key roles in the characters' lives. The harsh realities of show business, both devastating and elevating, with individualism and working together both of paramount importance, receive their just due. The ensemble women are appropriately eye-popping, all frantic legs and perpetual shimmy as they pound through Obediah Wright's remarkable choreography, which cannily demonstrates the fusion of black (tap) and white (ballet) styles that was soon to revolutionize mainstream American musical theatre.
• • Topping the 21-person cast is a roaring nine-piece band. . . .
• • "A desperate, educational feel that prevents any part of it from catching fire" • •
• • Matthew Murray concludes: But despite everyone's best efforts, the show is plagued by a desperate, educational feel that prevents any part of it from catching fire for more than 10 consecutive seconds. It seems that Russell and Churchill were more interested in capturing the look, the sound, and the politics of the era than they were in bringing it to life theatrically. The inclusion of so many identifying features of 1929, from a Jolson-style blackface specialty to police raids for not just alcohol but also mixed-race dancing onstage to even Mae West's presence, does not so much immerse you in the time as ham-handedly point at it. That the songs — — sometimes torchy, sometimes steamy, sometimes vaudevillian, but always evanescently pleasant — — recall a raft of period styles without providing much originality of their own, also does not help.
• • If Russell and Churchill are looking for a model, they could examine Michael John LaChiusa's version of "The Wild Party," which is set around the same time and treats roughly the same subject, if from a very different perspective. In that show, LaChiusa melded the sounds of the late 1920s with his own distinct musical aesthetic, creating a score that sounded as fresh as it did familiar. When Russell and Churchill similarly learn that way they bring to their examination of pre-Depression black entertainment is every bit as important as what it did for America, chances are they'll find a way to grant "Scandalous People" the scorch its subtitle promises.
• • Right now, however, it is too chilly to cause anyone but the hard-working dancers to even break a sweat.
• • Scandalous People — — part of The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC)
— — Source: — —
• • Review: "Scandalous People"
• • BY: Matthew Murray | Theatre Critic
• • Published in: Talking Broadway.com — — http://www.talkinbroadway.com
• • Published in: August 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.
There was sufficient enthusiasm over a new musical featuring MAE WEST and Duke Ellington to lure trendy Harlemites haloed by extravagant hats down to Greenwich Village a few night ago, where they galivanted past the stage door entrance, gad-zooking red nails and filtered smokes aloft, austerity pinched away and outweighed by the demands of glamour. We approve of adults who not only attend the theatre but also take pains with their evening attire. A swelling crowd of supporters, impressive bling, bejeweled cigarette lighters — — along with eye-catching garments onstage and in the audience — — alas, do not a stage hit make.
• • Here's one assessment by Talking Broadway's drama critic Matthew Murray:
— — http://maewest.blogspot.com/2009/08/mae-west-dutch-ducked.html — —• • Though Mae West has a pivotal role in "Scandalous People," which is part of the NY Fringe, the reviewer from Backstage left holding his nose.
• • Utter Ineptitude Quoth the Critic • •
• • Sparing no sparks when it comes to flaming outlandish folly, critic Erik Haagensen wrote this: The only thing scandalous about the musical "Scandalous People" is that the utter ineptitude of its writing didn't prevent someone from wildly overproducing it in the Fringe Festival.
• • Erik Haagensen elaborated: Myra Churchill's book attempts to tell the story of Dewey, proprietor, and star of Harlem's Do Drop Inn nightclub in the 1920s, who longs to present an interracial musical revue at a time when racial mixing on nightclub stages was forbidden by law. Mae West, Duke Ellington, and the gangster Dutch Schultz all figure into it, but the plotting is ludicrously obvious, the characterizations one-dimensional, the scene construction ragged, and the dialogue trite, particularly when lapsing into rhymed couplets for no discernible reason. Churchill's lyrics are even worse, so badly misaccented and rhymed that at times they sound like gibberish. Composer Benny Russell is clearly acquainted with the sounds of the period, but he has no sense of how to structure a song nor much of a gift for melody.
• • Erik Haagensen added: The talented cast includes Eugene Fleming as Dewey, but only Nicole Hill as his wife and star manages to rise above the authors' incompetence, which ultimately trivializes the important issues they raise.
• • Between August 19th — 29th, this musical will be offered by MyChurch Productions as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at the Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane, NYC 10011. Dress to impress. You might, at least, meet an attractive ticket-holder posing by the bar.
— — Source: — —
• • Review: "Scandalous People"
• • BY: Erik Haagensen | Theatre Critic
• • Published in: Backstage — — www.backstage.com
• • Published on: Monday, 24 August 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Being scandalous is the theme of a jazzy musical featuring MAE WEST — — who will be portrayed by brunette newcomer Jennifer Swiderski.
• • SYNOPSIS of "Scandalous People" — — Set in a 1920s Harlem speakeasy, "Scandalous People" is a "jazzical" rife with leggy chorus girls, vaudevillian antics, backstage drama, and comedy. The story revolves around Dewey Demarkov, an African-American showman and resident impresario of the Do Drop Inn. Dewey's innovative productions garner the praise and attention of the infamous Mae West, who would like a show built around her; and the notorious gangster Dutch Schultz, who is looking for a foray into Harlem's speakeasy scene. With their money and support, Dewey's dream of mounting a groundbreaking black and white revue on racially polarized Broadway seems within reach... but at what cost?
• • During August 2009, "Scandalous People" will play five performances at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.
• • Since Demarkov is a Slavic name, maybe the guy is planning a do-drop-inn move on the Russian empress Catherine the Great as well.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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MAE WEST might have put the blame on Bridgeport — — but did she go back to bedevil a playhouse? 
• • During the early 1920s, impresario Sylvestre Poli brought the Poli Palace to the Nutmeg State.
• • Designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb and eventually renamed Loew's Palace Theater [1325 Main Street, Bridgeport, CT 06604], this landmark was the biggest movie theater ever erected in Connecticut — — and the largest among Bridgeport's 20-plus theaters. Poli's was actually one of two theaters built inside a single building (the other being the Majestic).
• • Despite the public's curiosity about the controversial vaudevillian Mae West, and her latest play "The Drag," Jim Timony could only manage to secure half a week at Poli's Park, which was then in use as a burlesque house in Bridgeport. It was a dreary and wintery Monday on 31 January 1927 when the Morals Production Company hoisted a banner over the trolley cars criss-crossing Main Street. Pedestrians were intrigued by this saucy announcement: "The Drag" by the author of SEX — — more sensational than Rain or The Captive!"• • While they were lodging at the Arcade Hotel, Beverly West and Edward Elsner (Mae's sister and director) were arrested at 5 AM on 2 February 1927. Both the play and the arrest were the talk of Bridgeport. 
• • Ghost-busting and career-boosting • •• • Currently researching a local squad of spirit-chasing cops, whose haunts are the historic Bridgeport theaters, John Burgeson has alerted readers of The Connecticut Post to the intersection of ghost-busting and career-boosting aims currently afoot on Main Street.
• • Writing from Bridgeport, John Burgeson asks the famous question: When the ghosts that haunt Bridgeport's old Poli Palace theater get out of line, who you gonna call?
• • Why the cops, of course — — or, more specifically, the East Coast Paranormal Police.
• • Now, the newly formed ECPP might have a shot at fame. On Monday, a TV producer was in town to shoot footage of the ghost-hunting cops in action inside the Poli Palace and Majestic theaters downtown on Main Street, two long-abandoned, historic showplaces that score high on the creepiness scale.
• • "Today, we're doing a pitch tape for a new show we have in mind," said Rob Johnson, a production coordinator for Pangolin Pictures. "We understand that the Poli Palace might be haunted and Jim Myers suspects that there might be a poltergeist here."
• • Jim Myers, a 12-year veteran with the Bridgeport Police Department, is the man behind the ECPP, which has been getting help from one of the heavy hitters in the ghost-hunting business, famed psychic and Monroe resident Lorraine Warren.
• • Pangolin Pictures, which has three Emmy Awards to its credit, is primarily a producer of nature films for cable networks. These include "Tarantulas: King of Spiders" and "Jaws and Claws."
• • Johnson notes that while there are other ghost-hunter shows, Pangolin likes the fact that Myers uses "police training" to investigate strange occurrences.
• • "We think that's an interesting angle that will be new to paranormal shows," he said. "In 'Ghost Hunters,' they're plumbers by trade. Jim's group all have had police training."
• • On Monday, Johnson and his assistant, Gina Fitch, were busy shooting footage of Myers and his 11-person team as they explored the dusty innards of the Poli Palace and two attached buildings, the Majestic theater and the Savoy Hotel.
• • In 2007, the direct-to-video cop action flick starring Steven Seagal shot in downtown Bridgeport included scenes filmed at the Poli and Majestic theaters. The showcases continued screening movies sporadically into the early 1970s, long past their glory days as venues for elaborate live entertainment, and later for first-run Hollywood movies. Through the early 1950s, it wasn't unusual for movie stars to turn out on opening night to boost attendance.
• • While plans have been floated over the years to restore the theaters, nothing has ever become of them. Johnson hopes that the pitch tape, which will be about five minutes long, will be pedaled to the various cable channels, such as Discovery, National Geographic Channel, TLC, the History Channel and so forth. He said that it may take six months or longer for the channels to decide whether to proceed with the idea.
• • "It's just a quick piece to show Jim and his team, and what they can do," Johnson said, "and to show the network what it would look like as a series."
• • If a network picks up the idea, the ECPP would be central to the show, which would follow the team as it checks out various reports of paranormal activity up and down the East Coast, Johnson said.
• • Bridgeport City Historian Mary Witkowski, also interviewed Monday by Johnson, said there's no shortage of reasons why there might be strange goings-on inside the theaters.
• • Mae West: Is that you? • •
• • "First it could be the Golden Hill Paugusset [Indian] tribe, whose graves may have been disturbed when they built there. It could be Dutch Schultz, the rum-runner who was murdered in New Jersey — — he did a lot of business in Bridgeport back in the 1930s. Or, it even could be Mae West ---- she had performed here, got into trouble and spent the night in jail," Witkowski said. "Maybe she wants to get back at us."
• • Myers said he has 16 to 18 members in the ECPP, and all are trained in police work. "I actually come in here on a weekly basis because the city gave me the key, so I can keep an eye on the place," Myers said. "I've seen a couple of photos that were taken here that were pretty strange."
— — Source: — —
• • Article: "Ghost-hunting cops haunt historic Bridgeport theaters"
• • Byline: By John Burgeson
• • Published in: The Connecticut Post — — www.connpost.com
• • Published on: 11 May 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • The arrest at the Arcade Hotel after "The Drag" is dramatized in the play "Courting Mae West." Beverly's drunken antics and Mae's strategies are featured in Act I, Scene 2. You can watch a portion of this surprising scene on YouTube.
• • The "scene of the crime" is still in business: Arcade Hotel — 1001 Main St, Bridgeport, CT 06604; Tel (203) 333-9376.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Poli's and Main Street in 1927 • •
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Mae West.
The artist who helped create the cover for the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — — the icon album front-side that featured MAE WEST — — is having an exhibition of additional works inspired by The Empress of Sex.
