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Another New York City building has claimed MAE WEST as a former inhabitant — — though we have never heard of her living at this address. Typically, the article is hazy on specifics such as what year she was in residence or what floor she lived on. If she really lived (stayed) here, there ought to be some details preserved in writing, no?
• • According to The New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo, the next big Manhattan hotel to go on the market will be the giant Park Central at 870 Seventh Avenue. Located between West 55th and West 56th Streets near Central Park, the generously appointed inn has nearly 1,000 rooms.
• • Steve Cuozzo notes that the 1920s-vintage Park Central, which recently underwent a $65 million renovation, has had a colorful history under several different names. Residents have included Mae West, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jackie Gleason, while he was making "The Honeymooners," his popular TV series. Mobsters Arnold Rothstein [1882 — 1928] and Albert Anastasia [1902 — 1957] were assassinated there.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
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Mae West.
Wordplay wizards armed with pointy pencils faced off with MAE WEST this weekend.
• • New Yorkers got clues from Jim Horne, "Wordplay" blogger for The New York Times. In last week's column, Jim Horne teased crossword-addicts with his opening paragraph: “Honorary title bestowed on Bill Clinton, Muhammad Ali, and Mae West” has to be in serious contention for best clue of the year. Even better, the answer is outstanding too. I learn something with every crossword, and this little factoid is amazing. What do I need to do to become so honored? It’s my new personal mission. There is a lot to love in this collaboration by Doug Peterson and Barry C. Silk. ...
• • Jim Horne was referring to what is known as the Premium Crossword [or the Friday Puzzle for 17 July 2009] created by Doug Peterson and Barry C. Silk, a feature available to Times subscribers.
• • In Madison, Wisconsin, a local publication launched a quiz on July 5th, "Hidden in Plain Sight," challenging locals to I.D. local landmarks by their architectural details.
• • One photo showed a place where Mae West hung her hat once or twice in America's Dairyland. The Loraine, 131 W. Washington Avenue, completed as a $1.1 million hotel during 1924, was a chic structure converted 50 years later to a ho-hum state office building, then retro-fitted as a condo dwelling. In its heyday, The Hotel Loraine had been a hotspot whose notable guests included Mae West, Gloria Swanson, Ethel Barrymore, Dwight Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.
• • We have a quiz: list seven NYC addresses where Mae West lived. You can't? Then come up on August 16th, enjoy the Mae West walking tour, and eyeball a few of these places yourself.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
Celebrating "Women's History Month" — — by performing as MAE WEST and others — — usually keeps Dorothy Leeds busy and wearing many hats. 
• • The one woman show she does is “Good Lessons from Bad Women” and it is more than one singular sensation since the actress portrays a selection of goodie-goodies and bad girls. Her figures include Mae West along with Eve from the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Machine Gun Kelly, Elizabeth Freeman, pirate Anne Bonney, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
• • “Good Lessons from Bad Women” asks “Was mother really right?” — — while dramatizing some of the ways that a person will value the good and also find the bad irresistible.
• • Dorothy Leeds is an actress and author based in New York. The show was co-written by Daphne Greaves and directed by Eve Collyer. For the past three years, Ms. Leeds has been touring the USA with her virtual entourage of saints and sinners.
• • Another good lesson is that the interest Mae West arouses does not lessen.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Dorothy Leeds as Mae • •
NYC
Mae West.
Time Magazine has neither been gripping nor essential reading for decades, however, this week's article on Lily Dale did mention MAE WEST.
• • Nancy Gibbs fizzes up her nothing-new topic with a presidential twist. She writes: "And in an election year haunted by all kinds of ghosts, I thought I'd check in with the people who talk to the dead all the time — — just to get a different feel for the spirits that move us."
• • In her next sentence, Gibbs lists the usual names associated with the place: A hundred years ago, the New York Times described the Lily Dale Assembly, a gated compound in far western New York State, as "the most famous and aristocratic spiritualistic camp in America." Freethinking, forward-leaning, this was a place for prophets of all kinds. Susan B. Anthony visited half a dozen times; Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt came, and Harry Houdini and Mae West, and seekers from around the world looking to explore the continuity between life and what locals refer to as "so-called death." . . .
• • Alas, "Lessons from the Spirit World" is arid and predictable. And Mae-mavens will find no further details about which building her portrait hangs in nor any mention of her fascinating relationship with the Reverend Jack Kelly. Ho-hum. I predict Ms. Gibbs will put you to sleep, dear readers.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Lessons from the Spirit World"
• • Byline: Nancy Gibbs
• • Published in: Time Magazine — www.time.com
• • Published on: Thursday, 21 August 2008
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST once said, "A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up!" — — and broads definitely know the ropes, observes Geveryl Robinson.
• • Clearly a steel magnolia herself, the engaging Ms. Robinson has more to say about broads and babes: Babes work at Fortune 500 companies, but broads own them. Broads are the female CEOs and business owners who have managed to shatter the glass ceiling wearing Chanel and Manolos because broads can kick butt with style. ...
• • Women like Mae West, Bessie Smith, and even Stagecoach Mary lived hard, loved hard and made no excuses and had no regrets. They were women who were comfortable in their own skin and who could do things their male counterparts could do — — but only with a lot more finesse. ...
• • "85 Broads" is an organization with a network community of over 18,000 of the most powerful and intellectual women in the world, and "Great Old Broads for Wilderness," is a group of older women dedicated to wilderness growth and protection.
• • Modern day broads like Oprah and Martha (no last names necessary) Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and even media mogul Tyra Banks — — a broad in babe's clothing — — can and should inspire women to release their inner broad to achieve the goals they set for themselves.
• • So women should BROADen their horizons because from Eleanor Roosevelt to Betty Ford, Queen Elizabeth to Queen Latifah, broads are proving and have proven that although a too tight thong may be physically limiting, as women, the only real limits we have are the ones we place on ourselves.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Byline: Geveryl Robinson [a Savannah, Georgia writer]
• • Published in: Savannah Now
• • Published on: 29 June 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West.
Book reviewer Tom Mackin mentioned MAE WEST in his short critique of "Dream Lucky: When FDR Was in the White House, Count Basie Was on the Radio, and Everyone Wore a Hat" [NY: HarperCollins, 2008].
• • Tom Mackin wrote: Hoboken resident Roxane Orgill has done her homework for "Dream Lucky: When FDR Was in the White House, Count Basie Was on the Radio, and Everyone Wore a Hat." This thin volume is packed with information on the Terrible Thirties, some of it about the scabrous treatment of black entertainers of the era.
• • Tom Mackin added: But she seems less interested in a sobering treatise on Jim Crow than in short riffs about the famous personalities of the time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Fibber McGee and Molly, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, Mae West, Benny Goodman, Amelia Earhart. The result is a tired digest of overly familiar history. Surely there is much more to tell about the black singer Billie Holiday, who had to darken her fair skin to sing with a black band; about Harlem's famed Cotton Club, where only whites were served; and about Count Basie, the renowned Red Bank pianist and bandleader, who could not read music.
— — Source: — —
• • Book Review: "In Brief"
• • Written by: Tom Mackin for New Jersey's Star-Ledger
• • Published in: The Star-Ledger — — www.nj.com
• • Published on: 11 May 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West.
In Milwaukee on 11 April 1911, MAE WEST tied the knot with fellow vaudevillian Frank Wallace — — and quickly realized it was a bad idea. In Colorado in mid-April, Dorothy Leeds has got Mae tied up in her one-woman play — — "Good Lessons from Bad Women."
• • Reporter Kirsten Akens talked to the New York actress, who has been touring with this piece for two years. Let's listen in on the interview.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • When on the phone with Dorothy Leeds, you quite possibly will talk to more than one person.
• • Mae West, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Emperor Wu Chao are just three of the eight women — — other than herself — — whom Leeds portrays in her one-woman play, Good Lessons from Bad Women. And because the "well-over-21" former Broadway actress slips so seamlessly in and out of the women's personalities, each of the historic females takes a turn during our conversation.
• • On one hand, it's disconcerting to hear Mae West say, "Come up and see me sometime," 28 years after her death. On the other hand, it makes you aware of Leeds' skill with accents and inflection.
• • In her play, the characters each bring different lessons to the stage. They also explore various dimensions of badness.
• • Mae West, a comedienne, actress, and sex symbol, was deemed bad during her time because she didn't allow others to dictate her actions. As a 20th-century political and social icon, Roosevelt was revered by those around her, but she struggled internally with bad thoughts because she believed herself ugly. Wu, a concubine, was considered ruthless in her rise to power in China during the Tang dynasty because she "walked all over these weak men," says Leeds.
• • The play as a whole teaches two lessons. The first: You should accept who you are. Leeds says that's not an easy task because people carry goodness and badness within them, and they must be reconciled.
• • The second: We all tend to see the world in absolutes such as "good" and "bad."
• • "We need to see more of the grays," Leeds says.
• • Leeds, also an author from New York City, has been performing this play for two years and she says she is just getting started. She does express one slight concern: "I hope by playing multiple characters I'm not becoming schizophrenic."
• • "Good Lessons from Bad Women"
• • Pikes Peak Community College's Centennial Campus Theater, 5675 S. Academy Blvd.
• • Performances begin on: Thursday — 10 April 2008 — 7:00 PM
• • Tickets: 520-SHOW (7469).
— — Source: — —
• • Byline: Kirsten Akens
• • Article: Nine women, one body: Meet Dorothy Leeds — — and everyone in her head
• • Published in: The Colorado Springs Independent — — www.csindy.com/
• • Published on: 10 April 2008
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• • 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.
