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In the name of Oscar, two jolly parties took place — — and MAE WEST graced each event with her celebrity and panache. The Olympic Peninsula in Washington is a superb place filled with good-hearted individuals. 
Two galas offered those on the North Olympic Peninsula a chance to don their finery, walk the red carpet, and watch the Academy Awards on Sunday night, 7 March 2010 while raising funds for worthy local causes.
• • It was the second annual "Hollywood Nights" salute taking place at Port Angeles, for which nearly 300 merry-makers bought a ticket, tripling the overall take from last year's festivities, said Olympic Medical Center Foundation Executive Director Bruce Skinner, whose institution benefited. Attendees were gaily garbed in gowns and formal attire or as Hollywood notables such as Mae West, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and others.
• • And at the Oscars Red Carpet party held at the American Legion Hall in Port Townsend, Washington, Mae West was busy on the Reception Line greeting guests and (later on) posing with the golden statuette. The Port Townsend event raised a nice sum on behalf of the Port Townsend Film Festival, thanks to the generosity and goodwill of over 125 ticket-holders and movie buffs.
• • PHOTO: Mae West, aka Katherine Jensen, a most genial actress with the Key City Players, and Jeanette Force, executive director of the Port Townsend Film Festival, greet arriving guests at the Oscars Red Carpet party at the American Legion Hall in Port Townsend, Washington.
• • Photo by Steve Mullensky, courtesy of The Peninsula Daily News — — www.peninsuladailynews.com• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/________
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • aka Katherine Jensen • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
In a recent interview, comedienne, cabaret performer, and former stripper Lisa Faith Phillips discussed the life of a stand-up comic, MAE WEST, and whether women are actually funny,
• • Interviewer Betty Swallow asked Lisa: Why is it that men are considered funnier? Are men better at laughing at themselves, particularly physically?
• • Lisa Faith Phillips said: I was struck by a book that came out in 1986 Comedy Writing Secrets by Melvin Helitzer. In it he proposes that the two most important elements of why we laugh are superiority and surprise — — with the desire to feel superior the most important.
• • Melvin Helitzer writes: “There is a strong and constant need for us to feel superior… What we are often doing with humor is comparing ourselves with others we consider inferior by ridiculing their intelligence, their social standing and their physical infirmities.”
• • It seems easier for men to pursue this sort of comedy as they have been used to being in the power position for centuries. It is harder for women, though it has thankfully been changing, to come at the audience from a power position as for centuries we have been relegated to the position of helpmate, nurturing, and supportive. So women have to break the mold of how society has viewed them for centuries to follow their male counterparts.
• • Looking back over what comediennes were successful on television, there does seem to be only the “allowed” roles for women by the male controlled early movies and television. Gracie Allen — — ding-a-ling housewife, Lucille Ball — — ding-a-ling housewife, Phyllis Diller — — lazy, sloppy housewife, Rosanne Barr — — fat, lazy sloppy housewife. There was also the Mae West’s and Sophie Tucker’s brand of bad girl humor which didn’t thrive as well on TV — — though it has had a life in the comedy and cabaret clubs.
• • It is striking that many of the women comedians today who are the most successful are lesbians: Ellen Degeneres, Paula Poundstone, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, which ties into the aggressive outsider role that comediennes often are placed.
• • I am excited to see how comedy will change now that women are becoming a more accepted part of the comedy scene . . . . • • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Mae West.
MAE WEST is featured in a new title about American comedy and in a new series on PBS.
• • Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America
• • Written by: Michael Kantor & Laurence Maslon (Twelve, 384 pages, 2008)
• • An enlightening book review by John Grooms appears below.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Too often, books created to accompany major PBS documentary series make a crucial mistake: They try to reproduce the series, using still pictures and text. With a couple of notable exceptions (Ken Burns' The War and Lewis and Clark), it rarely works, and what had promised to be great coffee table books turn into dust collectors bound for the used bookstore. Fortunately, the authors of Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America took a different approach.
• • Let's back up a bit.
• • In January, PBS will broadcast Make 'Em Laugh, a 6-hour series about American comedy of the last century. The series, which promises to be extraordinarily wide-ranging, especially considering its time constraints, will be divided into six hour-long episodes. Series creator Michael Kantor (who produced and directed PBS' Emmy-winning Broadway: The American Musical) decided not to move chronologically through the years from, say, Laurel and Hardy to Chris Rock. Instead, he divided American comedy into six genres. "I was afraid if we broke it down by decade, it would get predictable," Kantor says. "With comedy, we wanted to have more surprise."
• • • • Here's how Make 'Em Laugh breaks down: • • • •
• • Episode One, "The Knockabouts," features masters of physical humor including, among others, Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Harpo Marx, The Three Stooges, and Jim Carrey.
• • Episode Two, "Satire and Parody," takes in everything from Will Rogers through Laugh-In and The Daily Show.
• • Three, "Smart-Alecks and Wiseguys," showcases the likes of Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, the great Tim Moore ("Kingfish" from Amos 'n' Andy), and Larry David.
• • Four, "Nerds, Jerks, Oddballs and Slackers," highlights everyone from Harold Lloyd and Bob Hope to Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters, and Andy Kaufman.
• • Five, "Breadwinners and Homemakers," looks at sitcoms through the ages, from radio's The Goldbergs and early television's George Burns and Gracie Allen to Seinfeld and The Simpsons.
• • Finally, Episode Six explores "Groundbreakers" (i.e., artists who got into trouble for their language and attitudes) such as Mae West, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and, of course, George Carlin.
• • The series features tons of classic clips, interviews with performers, and a cast of knowledgeable talking heads to provide context; all in all, Make 'Em Laugh promises to be a great mix of comedy, biography, and American history.
• • The only problem with the series is that it has too much ground to cover in too short a time. (Yes, six hours is a long series, but trying to fit all of American comedy of the last century into six hours? Come on.) That's where the accompanying book comes in. Lucky for us, the authors — — Kantor and Laurence Maslon, editor of Library of America's George S. Kaufman collection — — made their book into a solid, entertaining addition to the series. The pair realized how quickly a comedy routine deflates when it's merely described, so they took a different approach. Instead of replicating the series, they created a font of extra information about America's greatest comedians' lives and art, and made the book a source of additional insight into those artists' work — — not to mention a storehouse for hundreds of great photos. The book's widely varied chapters contain unexpected surprises, such as a series of essays on early developments in American comedy including vaudeville and radio comedies, or a well-told reminder of the explosive and important role played by "All In The Family" in the evolution of sitcoms.
• • There are also several moving chapters on the private struggles of some comic actors, including Mae West, Gilda Radner, and Charlie Chaplin. Perhaps none of the stories are more poignant, or odd, than that of Paul Lynde, a supremely sardonic, gay comic actor who did relatively well in theater and films during a still-closeted era, but wound up doing some of his funniest work as a perpetual guest on the Hollywood Squares game show.
• • Kantor structured the TV series and the book differently, but he says they both share the same purpose: to reveal truths about particular places and times by examining, and celebrating, what enchanted its audiences. Kantor explains that he hopes "to show how our greatest comedians have reflected America's social climate ... In the same way you can learn about the state of the country by the song, 'Brother, can you spare a dime?' or the musical Hair, you can learn about the Great Depression or Mae West's era by the jokes they were telling."
— — Source: — —
• • Book Review: "Make 'Em Laugh examines comedy greats"
• • By John Grooms
Published in: Creative Loafing — — charlotte.creativeloafing.com
Published on: 2 December 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • 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.
MAE WEST was not known to gamble but Penn National is betting that opening a new casino with a Mae might-be is lucky.
• • Feather-festooned showgirls and several Hollywood look-alikes greeted the first visitors as Penn National Gaming Inc.'s $132 million Hollywood Slots opened its doors to the public in Bangor, Maine this week.
• • A Mae West impersonator was on hand along with a Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, and Jack Nicholson impressionist.
• • This Tinseltown look-alike line-up was initiated five years ago when Penn National first acquired the Hollywood Casino Corporation in 2003. Well, let luck be a lady in Maine.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West.
In Hollywood, a very close friend of MAE WEST has passed away.
• • Herbert Kenwith, a director and producer for both Broadway and TV, and also a former summer stock director at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, died 30 January 2008 at his home in Los Angeles, California. He had been battling prostate cancer.
• • The birthdate that had been given for Herbert Kenwith was 14 July 1923. However, according to the Princeton Packet, he was 90 when he died.
• • During six summers, from 1947 — 1952, Kenwith produced and directed all 65 productions for McCarter Theater. The stars in his productions included MAE WEST, Lucille Ball, Charlton Heston, Shelley Winters, Cesar Romero, Walter Matthau, Maureen Stapleton, Eve Arden, Constance and Joan Bennett, Paul Muni, Miriam Hopkins, Gloria Swanson, Jeanette MacDonald, Zazu Pitts, and Nancy Davis.
• • Born in New Jersey, he started his career as an actor and appeared in several Broadway productions. He took his final Broadway bow in “I Remember Mama” with Marlon Brando, produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
• • Herbert Kenwith was interviewed for television celebrity profiles of Mae West and Joan Crawford. He appeared in "Intimate Portrait: Mae West" [1995] and — — more recently — — in footage devoted to the career of Mae West aired by The Biography Channel.
• • 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.
Vaudevillian MAE WEST explored her own style along the laugh route. Beginning with amusing novelty songs, often delivered in an ethnic idiom, "Baby Mae" honed her skills based on reactions from a live audience. Over time, Mae coined her own comic capital.
• • These days, college teachers teach courses in funny business to coeds. [This is what has replaced the "core curriculum," apparently.]
• • In a recent interview, Kelley Lynn explained that her male students approach stand-up humor with more assurance than females. "Comedy definitely mirrors the culture," says comedian Kelley Lynn, who is also an adjunct professor and teaches a comedy class at Adelphi University, in Garden City, NY.
• • Writing for the Christian Science Monitor, reporter Gloria Goodale observed: Certain roles have been acceptable for women since the rise of mass media: the sexy vamp (think Mae West) or the ditzy klutz (everyone from Carole Lombard to Lucille Ball and Debra Messing). "These roles are not threatening to men," says actress Jennifer Coolidge who has made a career of crafting cunning but klutzy air-headed females.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West.
Help get MAE WEST commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.
• • Here's a sample letter and here is where you should write:
• • To: Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee
• • c/o Stamp Development; U S Postal Service
• • 1735 North Lynn St [Rm 5013]; Arlington VA 22209-6432.
• • • • SAMPLE • • • •
• • Dear Chairman - Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee:
• • Please issue a US postal stamp commemorating MAE WEST, the former Broadway star and Hollywood icon who died in 1980.
• • Comedy and entertainment are hallmarks of the popular culture of the United States of America. The U.S. Postal Department has befittingly honored screen legends Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, James Cagney, Alfred Hitchcock, and Humphrey Bogart by issuing commemorative stamps depicting these adults.
• • However, none of these individuals wrote their own plays. MAE WEST wrote "Diamond Lil" and many other plays that were staged on Broadway.
• • None of these individuals wrote their own movie dialogue. MAE WEST wrote all of her own dialogue for most of the nine films she appeared in.
• • None of these individuals can match MAE WEST when it comes to numerous original quotes. Her witty sayings are often quoted in books and newspaper articles to this day.
• • Please approve the issuance of a US postal stamp commemorating a legendary American talent MAE WEST (1893 - 1980).
• • Source of this letter: The Mae West Blog http://MaeWest.blogspot.com
• • • • The Stamp Selection Process • • • •
• • Ideas for stamp subjects that meet CSAC criteria may be addressed to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee; Stamp Development; US Postal Service; 1735 North Lynn St Rm 5013; Arlington VA 22209-6432.
• • The Committee only reads hard-copy letters. No faxes or emails.
• • Subjects should be submitted at least three years in advance of the proposed date of issue to allow sufficient time for consideration and for design and production, if the subject is approved.
• • Submit stamp proposals in writing to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee. This allows everyone the same opportunity to suggest a new stamp subject. All proposals are reviewed by the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee regardless of how they are submitted, i.e., stamped cards, letters or petitions.
• • After a proposal is determined not to violate criteria set by CSAC, research is done on the proposed stamp subject. Each new proposed subject is listed on the CSAC's agenda for its next meeting. The CSAC considers all new proposals and takes one of two actions: it may reject the new proposal or it may set it aside for consideration for future issuance. If set aside for consideration, the subject remains "under consideration" in a file maintained for the Committee.
• • An "I Love Lucy" stamp appeared in the Postal Service's "Celebrate the Century" series. A new Lucille Ball stamp [released in 2001] is the seventh in a "Legends of Hollywood" series. Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Alfred Hitchcock, and Humphrey Bogart are among other Hollywood icons who have been featured.
• • Actor Karl Malden is a long-time member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, which helps choose stamp subjects and designs.
• • who • • why • • what • •
• • As of March 2001, these are the Committee's Stamp Subject Selection Criteria:
• • It is a general policy that U.S. postage stamps and stationery primarily will feature American or American-related subjects.
• • No living person shall be honored by portrayal on U.S. postage.
• • Commemorative stamps or postal stationery items honoring individuals usually will be issued on or in conjunction with significant anniversaries of their birth, but no postal item will be issued sooner than ten years after the individual's death. The only exception to the ten-year rule is the issuance of stamps honoring deceased U.S. presidents. They may be honored with a memorial stamp on the first birth anniversary following death.
• • Events of historical significance shall be considered for commemoration only on anniversaries in multiples of 50 years.
• • No stamp shall be considered for issuance if one treating the same subject has been issued in the past 50 years. The only exceptions to this rule are traditional themes such as national symbols and holidays.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •NYC
Mae West.
Two galas offered those on the North Olympic Peninsula a chance to don their finery, walk the red carpet, and watch the Academy Awards on Sunday night, 7 March 2010 while raising funds for worthy local causes.