Mae West: George Eiferman

George Eiferman was selected by MAE WEST to tour with her show, the Mae West Revue.
• • Born in Philadelphia on 3 November 1925, George Eiferman served in the Navy during World War II and then distinguished himself in the sport of bodybuilding. In 1947, Eiferman snagged the Mr. Philadelphia title in his hometown. He was one of a number of handsome hunks who displayed an impressive physique at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California and he went on to win the Mr. America competition in 1948.
• • As Mr. America, he was often invited to speak to high school assembly groups, encouraging teens to consider health and fitness as a lifestyle. Recruited in 1954 by Mae West, he became part of the original group of musclemen in her sold-out innovative stage show, a huge hit in its day.
• • Afterwards, in 1962, George Eiferman went on to be crowned Mr. Universe, a prestigious worldwide bodybuilding competition. Relocating to Las Vegas, during the 1970s and 1980s, Eiferman owned a number of local health clubs. "He'd be working out half the time he was there, or sitting at the smoothie bar and socializing," said his son, Shawn Eiferman, also of Las Vegas. "He walked around, answered questions, and just socialized."
• • George Eiferman had been married and divorced four times to three different women. He had one son Shawn and one daughter Leah. "My father was a workout fanatic," his son recalled. "It's a lifestyle for people who have been doing it for that long. He'd get up, brush his teeth, pay the bills, and go work out." After retiring in 1990, Eiferman spent the next decade visiting area health clubs as the "Ambassador of Fitness."
• • The longtime Las Vegan died of heart failure in the month of February — — on 12 February 2002. He was 76.
• • Eubie Blake [7 February 1887 — 12 February 1983] • •
• • In 1919, Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle were booked in the same Harlem showplace on 125th Street as Mae West, Keith & Proctor's Vaudeville Theatre.
• • Born in Baltimore in February as James Hubert Blake [7 February 1887 — 12 February 1983], Eubie Blake was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music.
• • In 1917 he became assistant conductor to Jim Europe at The Clef Club. After Jim's death in May 1919, Eubie forged a vaudeville team with Noble Sissle.
• • In 1921, Eubie Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical "Shuffle Along," one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans.
• • Eubie Blake continued to play and record into his later years. He died in Brooklyn, NY in February — — on 12 February 1983. He was 96.
• • On Sunday, 12 February 2012 • •
• • The TV series Hollywood Biography did a segment on Mae West. "Mae West and the Men Who Knew Her" [episode #507] will be broadcast two more times on Kentucky Educational TV. The KET air-dates have been announced:
• • KET: Sunday, 12 February 2012 at 4:00 am EST
• • KET2: Monday, 13 February 2012 at 9:00 pm EST
• • Kentucky Educational Television: KET provides educational, informational, and arts and cultural services for the home, the school, and the workplace via Kentucky’s statewide public television network, multichannel digital broadcast, original video productions, print, community outreach, and the World Wide Web.
• • On Saturday, 12 February 1949 in Billboard • •
• • Saturday night with Mae West as Diamond Lil at the Coronet Theatre, wow. Billboard reviewer Bob Francis was in the crowd on her opening night (5 February 1949) and recorded his fascinations in a lengthy, generously detailed piece that was printed the following week on Saturday, 12 February 1949 in Billboard Magazine. Bob Francis had an exceptional perspective, since he had seen the show in 1928, too.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "Personality is the most important thing to an actress’s success."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • An article on Style Bistro nodded at Mae West.
• • Tanya wrote: Giambattista Valli never ceases to enchant with his exuberantly frivolous collections. His spring couture line was heavily infused with retro glamour and standout feminine detailing (think Audrey Hepburn with a touch of Mae West). ...
• • Source: Article: "Fashion Forecast: Wrapped Up With a Bow" written by Tanya for Style Bistro; posted on 7 February 2012
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2207th 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 • • Dick DuBois (hugging Mae) and George Eiferman, 1954 • •
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Mae West: June 1954

The MAE WEST Revue would have turned 55 on 27 June 2009.
• • In April 1954, Jim Timony had suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving Mae without a steadfast, faithful manager by her side for the first time since 1917. Despite being hospitalized in 1950 for heart failure, and physically declining during the early 1950s, Timony had been laying the groundwork for a new Las Vegas hotel — casino called "Mae West's Diamond Lil Casino." His death put an end to this desert tribute but the idea of appearing in Nevada's most glamourous venues ignited Mae's daydreams.
• • By the early 1950s, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, Danny Thomas, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and other big names had all played Vegas. So why not Diamond Lil? Soon Mae was sashaying through the fanciest casinos. Eventually she signed with the Sahara, who agreed to give her $25,000 a week — — a whopper of a payday. There was only one teeny obstacle: the 60-year-old Brooklyn bombshell had to come up with a concept.
• • After Mae was introduced to the newly crowned Mr. America of 1954 — — supremely gorgeous Richard DuBois — — her fantasies got fired up. Instead of the usual extravantly costumed showgirls, West selected a bevy of bodybuilders to accompany bawdy songs such as "I Want to Do All Day What I Do All Night." George Eiferman, Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, Dick DuBois, Dominic Juliano, Joe Gold, Armand Tanny, Gordon Mitchell, Mickey Hargitay, and Charles Krauser were among the star bodybuilders in West's chorus for all (or part of) the show's three-year run. The act, which ran a little over half-an-hour, also featured a lusciously decked out Mae being attended by her onstage maid Louise Beavers, and being waltzed around by Steve Rossi.
• • As the young Apollos paraded onstage, Mae would announce: "I've got something for the girls — — boys, boys, boys!" Whereupon the females in the audience would rush up to crowd around the guys, recalled Steve Rossi. "It was sensational, almost a riot. It took 20 minutes for people in the audience to go back to their tables."
• • On 27 June 1954, the Mae West Revue would debut at the Sahara's Congo Room and remain there for almost three weeks.
• • In 1957, the long-running sold-out stage show would close in Las Vegas — — again at the Sahara.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1954 • •
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Mae West: Armand Tanny

How many of MAE WEST's bodybuilder buddies are still around?
• • Handsome hunk Armand Tanny, a former Muscle Beach mainstay, died in early April.
• • Born on 5 March 1919 in Rochester, New York, Armand was the younger brother of gym-fitness pioneer Vic Tanny — — and began posing in Strength & Health Magazine at 14 years old.
• • As many musclemen did back then, Armand entered the beefcake business as a weightlifter. Still a teenager, he began competing. Eventually, he placed second in the 1941 Junior nationals in Ohio. Reportedly, the 22-year-old champ was able to clean a 300-pound barbell one-handed.
• • When World War II summoned hardy Americans to the front, Armand joined the Coast Guard.
• • After his military service ended, Armand Tanny was a regular at his brother's Santa Monica gym and he wed Shirley Luvin, a Muscle Beach groupie. In 1950, they had a daughter. Disciplined and dedicated, he won the national titles Pro Mr. America [1949] and Mr. USA [1950] doing it the most difficult way — — by daily training and good nutrition and, yes, without steroids. He was an early advocate of raw foods.
• • Jon Thurber, who penned Armand Tanny's obituary for The Los Angeles Times, writes: During the 1950s, he was one of the original nine bodybuilders from Muscle Beach who were part of Mae West's traveling nightclub act. According to the book "Remembering Muscle Beach" by Harold Zinkin with Bonnie Hearn-Hill (Angel City Press, 1999), the nine were known as Mae's Muscle Beach Men. They included such prominent bodybuilders as Joe Gold, George Eiferman, Richard DuBois — — whom Zinkin and Hearn-Hill called "the star" of the group — — Harry Schwartz, Dom Juliano, Lester "Shifty" Schaefer, Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, Chuck Krauser, and Tanny. According to Hearn-Hill, Armand Tanny organized a strike with Joe Gold when Mae West cut their $250-a-week salaries in half to boost the take at a New York club [i.e., the Latin Quarter]. "Armand and Joe were ready to board the plane," Hearn-Hill told The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. "Mae quickly caved in and they got their full salaries."
• • After touring coast to coast with the Mae West Revue, Tanny, who had a quiet, bookish side, earned a living by writing about physical fitness and bodybuilding for the publication empire helmed by his buddy Joe Weider: Muscle Power, Muscle & Fitness, etc.
• • His daughter Mandy Tanny released a statement about her vivacious father, who was fairly active and still driving his car at age 89. Armand Tanny died of natural causes last Saturday (a month after his 90th birthday), on 4 April 2009, at a nursing facility in Westlake Village, California.
• • In addition to his daughter, Mandy, who is also a bodybuilder and writer, Tanny is survived by his grandson, Mario, a bodybuilder.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Paul Novak

Imagine those happy occasions that took place yearly each February 24th when MAE WEST planned a birthday celebration for her live-in lover.
• • Born Chester Rybinsky in Baltimore on 24 February 1923, Mae's darling was thirty years her junior.
• • They met and became acquainted when Charles Krauser, George Eiferman, Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, Dick DuBois, Dominic Juliano, Joe Gold, Armand Tanny, Gordon Mitchell, and Mickey Hargitay were among the star bodybuilders in West's chorus for all — — or part — — of the show's three-year run.
• • Chuck Krauser changed his name again, becoming Paul Novak — — Mae's main man for the next 24 years.
• • Paul Novak [1923 — 1999] lived to be 76 years old.
• • The British journalist Tom Vallance wrote this intriguingly detailed remembrance ten years ago in 1999.
• • THE LEGENDARY star Mae West once said, "A man in the house is worth two in the street" — — and for the last 26 years of her life Paul Novak was that man, her companion, bodyguard, and acknowledged love of her life who shunned publicity himself but ensured that West's last years were happy ones.
• • He had met West in the 1950s when he became one of the team of musclemen who backed her in her night-club act, and he soon fell in love with her, though she was nearly 30 years his senior. Described as "the epitome of the strong, silent type," he was content to stay in the background and let it be assumed that he was merely the star's bodyguard — — but in fact he was her husband in everything but name.
• • Born Chester Ribonsky in Baltimore in 1923, Novak served as a navy gunner in the Second World War and as a member of the merchant marines fought in Korea and Vietnam. A body-builder with aspirations to be a wrestler, he changed his name to Charles Krauser. His friend Joe Gold, founder of Gold's Gyms and another member of West's chorus line, said, "He changed his name legally in New Orleans to Krauser, thinking it was a good moniker for a wrestler."
• • (It was Mae West who suggested a final change to Paul Novak.)
• • He also worked as a circus handyman before joining West's line of eight loin-clothed musclemen to whom she sang, "I Like To Do All Day What I Do At Night" in the fabled night-club act that made a sensational debut in Las Vegas in July 1954. Time magazine reported, "Mae's troupe proved invigorating even for jaded Las Vegas", and the act subsequently toured the US for over five years. One of the other chorus-boys was the former "Mr Universe" Mickey Hargitay who in 1956 became romantically involved with Jayne Mansfield.
• • When Mansfield and West began to fight over Hargitay, and Mansfield made some publicly disparaging remarks about West's age, the ensuing uproar resulted in Novak's punching Hargitay — — the only occasion on which Novak made the headlines. An intensely private person, he managed for the rest of West's life to stay out of the limelight, though when photographed with her they made a striking couple, West's tiny if voluptuous body contrasting with the wide shoulders and massive chest of her companion.
• • Throughout her career, West had been known for her countless love affairs with actors, wrestlers, prize fighters and chorus boys (she once said, "Sometimes it seems I've known so many men the FBI ought to come to me first to compare fingerprints") but, according to the writer Justin Clayton, "Her love affairs continued until she fell in love with beefy muscle-man Paul Novak, who quickly became her lover, bodyguard, driver, cook and anything else to prove his love for her. From that meeting and up until the end of her long life, Novak would be at Mae's side to tend to her every need. His devotion was noted by nearly everyone who was in their company, and for the first time in her life Mae began to settle down in a monogamous relationship."
• • Though those who knew them attested to their mutual devotion, they were both strong-willed and temperamental, and Novak, like any paid companion, was not popular with all of West's friends and relatives. On one occasion after an argument with West's brother and sister-in-law, whom she supported, Novak rang Joe Gold and asked him to drive him to New Orleans so that he could sign up for another tour of duty with the merchant marines.
• • Dolly Dempsey, a long-time friend of the couple, said, "It was the first time I ever heard Mae really talk like Diamond Lil. As Paul was leaving, she told him, `Just remember, there ain't no swingin' doors in this place!' " Joe Gold added, "Just as Novak was about to board ship in New Orleans he stopped to make a phone call. Returning, he said, `I've got to catch a plane', and he flew home to West, leaving me to drive back to Los Angeles alone."
• • During the final years of West's life, she and Novak lived a quiet life, entertaining small groups of friends (including the directors George Cukor and Robert Wise) or strolling by the sea near the 22-room beach house in Santa Monica where they spent most of their time, though West also had an apartment in Hollywood.
• • With Novak's constant protection and his concern for her diet and exercise, West survived until the age of 87, when she had a series of strokes. On 22 November 1980 she died in her sleep, with Novak at her bedside.
• • A few years before she had said that Novak was "a good guy," adding, "Of course there's 40 guys dyin' for his job!" In her last years West continually asked him to contact an attorney so that she could change her will in his favor, but he later stated, "I always said to her, `Now now, dear, there's plenty of time to do that.' I guess I thought she would live forever. How did she ever pick me — — just a wrestler and roustabout?' "
• • Chester Ribonsky (Paul Novak), sailor, bodybuilder and bodyguard: born Baltimore, Maryland 1923; died Santa Monica, California 14 July 1999.
— — Source: — —
• • Obituary: Paul Novak
• • Byline: Tom Vallance
• • Published by: The Independent [London, England]
• • Published on: Tuesday — — 20 July 1999
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Correction! Mae West researcher and fan Mark Desjardins has furnished us with fresh information. Mr. Desjardins writes: That was a wonderful birthday tribute you posted for Paul Novak. However, I would like to point out that his original birth name, Chester Ribonsky was misspelt; his surname was actually Rybinsky. Kevin Thomas, who knew Paul Novak and Mae West, wrote the Los Angeles Times obituary for him and after it was published, sent me a hand corrected copy. Paul's nephew corrected him after publication. However, for some reason, the improper spelling of his name continues to occur.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Paul Novak (left side) • • 1955 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: 50 Years Ago

Fifty years ago, The MAE WEST Revue closed at the Sahara Hotel in 1957.
• • In 1954, at the age of 61, the former vaudevillian launched an extravaganza onstage surrounded by beefcake. Instead of the typical leggy showgirls, West selected a bevy of muscle-bound beauts to add eye candy when she performed bawdy songs such as "I Want to Do All Day What I Do All Night."
• • George Eiferman, Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, Dick DuBois, Dominic Juliano, Joe Gold, Armand Tanny, Gordon Mitchell, Mickey Hargitay, and Charles Krauser were among the star bodybuilders in West's chorus for all — — or part — — of the show's three-year run.
• • Chuck Krauser changed his name to Paul Novak and became Mae's live-in lover for the next 24 years.
• • The Mae West Revue opened at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas in 1954. Mae West's audience played America's top venues, drawing celebrities — — including the handsome Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy — — and breaking attendance records at New York City's legendary Latin Quarter.
• • In Las Vegas the successful show gave its last performance back at the Sahara in 1957.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Mickey Hargitay & Charles Krauser • • 1955 • •
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