Mae West: Loew's Journal Square

The popular comedy "She Done Him Wrong" starring MAE WEST will be shown tonight in The Garden State.
• • According to director Colin Egan, who is a big fan of the Pre-Code cinema, "It is one of the most fascinating periods of American films. There was a time when Hollywood films were very adventuresome and racy." Mr. Egan manages the venerable Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre, a movie house on Journal Square that can hold close to 3,100 popcorn-munchers. In his opinion, this Mae West motion picture (based on her Broadway hit "Diamond Lil," was the most notorious of the screen classics he selected. "These films have strong women figures, adds Egan, "which you didn't have for a couple of decades, with rare exceptions, in the movies."
• • New Jersey moviehouse history: The opulent Loew's opened on 28 September 1929, noted Colin Egan, and is the only one of the three major local theatres from that era — — including the State and the Stanley — — that still shows film and live events.
• • WHEN: Friday, 28 January 2011 — — a double bill begins at 8:00 PM and includes "Freaks" and "She Done Him Wrong." Pre-Code motion pictures will also be shown here on Saturday, 29 January 2011.
• • WHERE: Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre, 54 Journal Square, Jersey City, NJ; T. 201-798-6055.
• • Frank Mills [1891 — 1973] • •
• • Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the month of January — — on 26 January 1891 — — the character actor Frank Mills made his first appearance in a motion picture in 1928 when he was 37 years old. Cast often, and invariably in modest roles, he went on to perform stunts and portray photographers, carnival barkers, bums, cabbies, military men, reporters, etc.
• • In "She Done Him Wrong," Frank Mills played a barfly.
• • Frank Mills logged in more than 300 film and TV credits between 1928 — 1961. He died in Los Angeles on 18 August 1973 at the age of 82.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • filming as Lady Lou in 1932 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Noah Near Her Boa

MAE WEST worked in one project with a character actor who was born in January — — 17 January 1882.
• • In "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] the bejeweled chanteuse and brash entertainer Lady Lou (Mae West) works in the 1890s Bowery saloon of her boss and benefactor Gus Jordan (Noah Beery, Sr.), who has given her lots of furs and many diamonds.
• • Unbeknownst to Lady Lou, slick and sleazy Gus Jordan trafficks in white slavery (prostitution) and runs a counterfeiting ring (to help finance Lou's expensive rock collection). He also sends young women to San Francisco to be pickpockets. Gus works with two other crooked entertainer-assistants, Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rita's lover, the suave Serge Stanieff (Gilbert Roland).
• • Kansas City, Missouri native Noah Beery, Sr. [17 January 1882 — 1 April 1946] pursued a theatrical career from a young age.
• • Noah and his younger brothers William Beery and the legendary Wallace Beery all became Hollywood actors.
• • His much more successful younger brother, Academy Award winning Wallace Beery [1 April 1885 — 15 April 1949], was once wed to Gloria Swanson.
• • After a number of years touring on the stage, in 1915 Noah joined his brother Wallace in Hollywood to make motion pictures — — where he became a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the heavy.
• • Then, after years of working in silent films, he successfully made the transition to talking pictures. One film historian dubbed him "the villain's villain."
• • During a career that spanned three decades, Noah Beery, Sr. appeared in almost two hundred motion pictures.
• • In 1946, Noah Beery, Sr. died — — on his brother Wallace Beery's April 1st birthday — — in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack at age 64.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1932 • •
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Mae West: Metropolitan

Illustrated with a large and lovely photo of MAE WEST — — dripping with diamonds — — is an intriguing article about a new exhibit on view at a major Fifth Avenue museum located in the movie queen's hometown, New York City.
• • According to fashion maven Lori Ettlinger Gross: The new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” examines the evolution of style in this country and the appreciation of the breeze-easy female. Replacing the cosseted woman with a spirited American paradigm trumpeted more than the exchange of a corset for a shift dress, however. It sparked an upheaval in social etiquette: Women of independent means began buying their own jewelry. Fashion may have rattled the cage for change, yet it was gems and precious metals that broke the chains of Europe.
• • Lori Ettlinger Gross adds: The years covered by the exhibition, 1890 to 1940, were arguably the most innovative in jewelry design. Venerable houses and ambitious designers vied for the necks of socialites and celebrities. Success and the wealth that follows create their own self-determination. Take Mae West, for example, who bought a casket’s worth of Beaux-Art jewels and transformed herself into Diamond Lil. ...
• • Lori Ettlinger Gross emphasizes: As the movies became the style blueprint for the American woman, the costume designers Adrian and Edith Head created fashion iconography. . . . But whether on camera or off, the jewels were often the stars’ own. ...
• • To continue reading her article, or to learn more about the exhibition, check the link below.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "The Bling Factor | ‘American Woman’ at the Met"
• • By: LORI ETTLINGER GROSS
• • Published by: The New York Times Magazine — — tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com
• • Published on: 11 May 2010
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West with Noah Beery • • 1932 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Barroom with Beery

MAE WEST worked in one project with a character actor who died on April Fool's Day.
• • In "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] the bejeweled chanteuse and brash entertainer Lady Lou (Mae West) works in the 1890s Bowery saloon of her boss and benefactor Gus Jordan (Noah Beery, Sr.), who has given her many diamonds.
• • Noah Beery as a Beer Keg King • •
• • Unbeknownst to Lady Lou, slick and sleazy Gus Jordan trafficks in white slavery (prostitution) and runs a counterfeiting ring (to help finance Lou's expensive rock collection). He also sends young women to San Francisco to be pickpockets. Gus works with two other crooked entertainer-assistants, Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rita's lover, the suave Serge Stanieff (Gilbert Roland).
• • Kansas City, Missouri native Noah Beery, Sr. [17 January 1882 — 1 April 1946] pursued a theatrical career from a young age.
• • Noah and his younger brothers William Beery and the legendary Wallace Beery all became Hollywood actors.
• • His much more successful younger brother, Academy Award winning Wallace Beery [1 April 1885 — 15 April 1949], was once wed to Gloria Swanson.
• • After a number of years touring on the stage, in 1915 Noah joined his brother Wallace in Hollywood to make motion pictures — — where he became a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the heavy.
• • Then, after years of working in silent films, he successfully made the transition to talking pictures. One film historian dubbed him "the villain's villain."
• • During a career that spanned three decades, Noah Beery, Sr. appeared in almost two hundred motion pictures.
• • In 1946, Noah Beery, Sr. died — — on his brother Wallace Beery's April 1st birthday — — in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack at age 64.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Noah Beery, Sr. on the right • • 1933 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Tim Sullivan

Since MAE WEST had her eye on Tammany Hall perhaps for the entire time she lived in New York, she could spot a fixer.
• • "Big" Tim Sullivan [23 July 1862 — 31 August 1913] was a fixer extraordinaire and a born ward-heeler. This New York politician who controlled Manhattan's Bowery and Lower East Side districts as a prominent figure within Tammany Hall was the model for Mae's character Gus Jordan in "Diamond Lil."
• • Similarly, in "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] the bejeweled chanteuse and brash entertainer Lady Lou (Mae West) works in the 1890s Bowery saloon of her boss and benefactor Gus Jordan (Noah Beery, Sr.), who has given her many diamonds.
• • Several of the regulars who could be found bending an elbow at Gus Jordan's barroom were drawn from life. In 1928, many ticket-holders lining up in front of the Royale Theatre [located at 242 West 45th Street] probably would have recognized the name, for instance, of the legendary Bowery notable Chuck Connors, and relished seeing Chuck Connors, Jr. in the cast portraying his infamous Dad — — called "Lefty Eddie" in Mae's play.
• • "Big" Tim reworked as Gus Jordan • •
• • Unbeknownst to Lady Lou, slick and sleazy Gus Jordan trafficks in white slavery (prostitution) and runs a counterfeiting ring (to help finance Lou's expensive rock collection). He also sends young women to San Francisco to be pickpockets. Gus works with two other crooked entertainer-assistants, Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rita's lover, the suave Serge Stanieff (Gilbert Roland).
• • Not as handsome as Beery and certainly far heavier, "Big" Tim Sullivan was born to poor Irish parents in the notorious Five Points neighborhood. Determined to be successful, "Big" Tim Sullivan cultivated careers in business and politics. Over the course of 25 years beginning in 1886, Sullivan assembled a political machine that ruled the districts of lower Manhattan. A legitimate entrepreneur in the world of entertainment, Sullivan forged an effective brand of urban politics by fusing the traditional tactics of the machine with his influence in commercial leisure and organized crime.
• • Staging theatrical entertainments and athletic competitions, handing out food and clothing to constituents, and offering employment and social services to ordinary citizens won him many followers, but Sullivan's protection of key figures in the vice economy of the Lower East Side made him a rather controversial figure. Despite his frequent use of physical intimidation, "Big" Tim nonetheless worked to expand the franchise and give the disadvantaged a voice in municipal politics.
• • Both Mae West's character Gus Jordan and Tim Sullivan were active in a number of illegal activities including prostitution, white slavery, gambling, and extortion.
• • On 31 August 1913, "Big" Tim's body was found on the tracks in the Eastchester area of the Bronx, New York. He was 51 years old.
• • Sullivan's wake was held at his clubhouse — — located at 203 Bowery.
• • More than 25,000 people turned out for his funeral at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, New York on Mott Street. Perhaps some "mourners" turned up solely to make sure this politico was dead.
• • Tim's clubhouse was down the block from the notorious Bowery "resort" near Houston Street, namely McGurk's Suicide Hall [295 Bowery]. The second chapter of "Diamond Lil" (a 256-page novelization of the play published by Macaulay in 1932) is Suicide Hall.
— — Source for some of this information: — —
• • Article: "Underworlds and Underdogs: Big Tim Sullivan and Metropolitan Politics in New York, 1889 — 1913"
• • Byline: Daniel Czitrom
• • Published in: The Journal of American History, vol. 78, no.2
• • Published on: September 1991
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • saloon-keeper Gus Jordan a.k.a. "Big Tim" • •
• • Artwork: Big Tim Sullivan was drawn by artist Pat Hamou
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Mae West.

Mae West: Gus Jordan

MAE WEST worked in one project with a character actor who died on April Fool's Day.
• • In "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] the bejeweled chanteuse and brash entertainer Lady Lou (Mae West) works in the 1890s Bowery saloon of her boss and benefactor Gus Jordan (Noah Beery, Sr.), who has given her many diamonds.
• • Unbeknownst to Lady Lou, slick and sleazy Gus Jordan trafficks in white slavery (prostitution) and runs a counterfeiting ring (to help finance Lou's expensive rock collection). He also sends young women to San Francisco to be pickpockets. Gus works with two other crooked entertainer-assistants, Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rita's lover, the suave Serge Stanieff (Gilbert Roland).
• • Kansas City, Missouri native Noah Beery, Sr. [17 January 1882 — 1 April 1946] pursued a theatrical career from a young age.
• • Noah and his younger brothers William Beery and the legendary Wallace Beery all became Hollywood actors.
• • His much more successful younger brother, Academy Award winning Wallace Beery [1 April 1885 — 15 April 1949], was once wed to Gloria Swanson.
• • After a number of years touring on the stage, in 1915 Noah joined his brother Wallace in Hollywood to make motion pictures — — where he became a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the heavy.
• • Then, after years of working in silent films, he successfully made the transition to talking pictures. One film historian dubbed him "the villain's villain."
• • During a career that spanned three decades, Noah Beery, Sr. appeared in almost two hundred motion pictures.
• • In 1946, Noah Beery, Sr. died — — on his brother Wallace Beery's April 1st birthday — — in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack at age 64.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1932 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
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Mae West.

Mae West: Noah Beery, Sr.

MAE WEST worked in one project with a character actor who died on April Fool's Day.
• • In "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] the bejeweled chanteuse and brash entertainer Lady Lou (Mae West) works in the 1890s Bowery saloon of her boss and benefactor Gus Jordan (Noah Beery, Sr.), who has given her many diamonds.
• • Unbeknownst to Lady Lou, slick and sleazy Gus Jordan trafficks in white slavery (prostitution) and runs a counterfeiting ring (to help finance Lou's expensive rock collection). He also sends young women to San Francisco to be pickpockets. Gus works with two other crooked entertainer-assistants, Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rita's lover, the suave Serge Stanieff (Gilbert Roland).
• • Kansas City, Missouri native Noah Beery, Sr. [17 January 1882 — 1 April 1946] pursued a theatrical career from a young age.
• • Noah and his younger brothers William Beery and the legendary Wallace Beery all became Hollywood actors.
• • His much more successful younger brother, Academy Award winning Wallace Beery [1 April 1885 — 15 April 1949], was once wed to Gloria Swanson.
• • After a number of years touring on the stage, in 1915 Noah joined his brother Wallace in Hollywood to make motion pictures — — where he became a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the heavy.
• • Then, after years of working in silent films, he successfully made the transition to talking pictures. One film historian dubbed him "the villain's villain."
• • During a career that spanned three decades, Noah Beery, Sr. appeared in almost two hundred motion pictures.
• • In 1946, Noah Beery, Sr. died — — on his brother Wallace Beery's April 1st birthday — — in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack at age 64.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Noah Beery, Sr. on the right • • 1933 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Easy Rider

MAE WEST slipped the censor's noose in 1932 when she selected a number about an "easy rider" for her first major motion picture "She Done Him Wrong" — — because the "song police" did not understand Harlem slang. If they had, they might have realized Mae was singing about a pimp.
• • Today, on September 6th, it's a good time to toast the lyricist and composer of this song — — "I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone" — — Shelton Brooks [4 May 1886 — 6 September 1975], who published it around 1913.
• • While we're on the subject, let's pass the baton to Victoria Large, who writes for Brattle Theatre Film Notes, and who discussed the strong-willed star in this article (printed awhile back):
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Tough As Diamonds: Taboos, Censorship, and Mae West • •
• • By Victoria Large
• • • • Even today Mae West would be breaking all the rules. There she is in all her glory in 1933’s She Done Him Wrong: defiant, smart, curvy, and past forty, declaring herself “the finest woman ever to walk the streets” and suggestively yowling her appreciation for “A Guy What Takes His Time” (“I’m a fast moving girl that likes ‘em slow,” she sings with cheerful vulgarity).
• • I came to Mae West already knowing the persona — — having already gleaned the distinctive voice and the mannerisms, the outrageous diamond jewelry, and the immortal “Come up and see me sometime” from clips and impersonations — — but I still found her brassy presence galvanizing the first time I saw one of her films.
• • In her own time West made a splash with her risqué humor, but even now her brazen onscreen persona and off-screen chutzpah carry more weight than simply that. She’s the anti-ingénue, tough and worldly and unapologetic. She made a career of playing women who took care of themselves, and was one of very few classic era actresses to wield a great deal of control over her own image.
• • West had a part in writing the majority of films she appeared in and based the screenplay for She Done Him Wrong on her own stage play, Diamond Lil. She also selected She Done Him Wrong’s leading man herself — — a young and fairly inexperienced fellow named Cary Grant.
• • It’s a kick to see Cary Grant [18 January 1904 — 29 November 1986] opposite West before his own movie star image had solidified. The promise may be there, but Grant is not yet the polished and adroit comic leading man that he would be at the end of the thirties: here he’s baby-faced and no real match for West’s dominating presence.
• • Cary Grant wasn’t yet thirty the first time he starred opposite West, and his age adds another provocative element to West’s gleefully taboo-busting, sexually frank presence. “To be sexual with younger men has been, according to Hollywood, a female sin punishable by death or dishonor,” feminist film critic Kathi Maio writes in her book Popcorn and Sexual Politics. “There have only been rare exceptions. When Mae West encouraged Cary Grant, a much younger man, to come up and see her sometime, she wasn’t interested in baking him a batch of brownies. Mae was sexy, but her blatant bawdiness was never threatening because her come hither looks were played for comedy. And besides, Mae West got to break the rules governing female comportment because Mae West was a law unto herself.”
• • Maio is mostly right here — — West really does seem to be a law unto herself as she shimmies across the screen and swaps lascivious double entendres, but what Maio neglects to acknowledge is that there were a great number of people who did find West extremely threatening, and that her persona only emerged as the result of cleverness and persistence in the face of censorship.
• • Even before she hit the big screen Mae West was ruffling feathers. She and the rest of the cast of her play Sex were arrested in 1927 for corrupting the morals of youth, and, later that year, her play The Drag, “a homosexual comedy in three acts,” created such a public outcry that no theater in New York would book it [sic].
• • West made her Hollywood debut with a supporting role in the film Night After Night and put her own distinctive stamp on the role, responding to a hatcheck girl’s cry of “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds,” with a saucy, “Goodness has nothing to do with it.”
• • She made waves again with her first starring role in She Done Him Wrong. The Hays Office, responsible for the industry’s newly-instituted Production Code, used to regulate objectionable content in motion pictures in order to avoid government censorship, had already determined that Diamond Lil was unsuitable for filming when Paramount Studios and their new leading lady Mae West began conspiring to bring the ribald play to the screen. They made their way around the censors by cleaning up much of the script, still implying much but avoiding actually saying or showing it forthright. They also set about altering the names of several characters — — Lil became Lou — — and coming up with something new for the title.
• • Even with the changes, the film was severely edited in a number of states when the film was released (West’s performance of “A Guy What Takes His Time” received the brunt of the censorship, but many of her sexually charged jokes were also jettisoned in various parts of the country).
• • Similarly, West’s next film I’m No Angel sent the Hays Office to work nipping and tucking scenes, lyrics, and dialogue. Nevertheless, there was really no diluting West. She had to do little more than swagger across the screen for one to get a sense of who she was. She became a subversive success and eventually, an icon.
• • Humor isn’t a means of diffusing the potency of West’s persona so much as one of the sharpest weapons in her arsenal. She remains an intrinsically subversive figure for many of the reasons already mentioned — — her sexuality, to be sure, but more importantly her unmistakable independence, and the satiric edge of her indelicate wit. She isn’t only playing herself and her “blatant bawdiness” for laughs, but also highlighting the ridiculousness of lustful male admirers, most notably in I’m No Angel, where she plays a lion tamer who is equally adept at wrangling men. It’s telling that when searching for a title for her thinly-veiled adaptation of Diamond Lil, West rejected the suggestion He Done Her Wrong and chose to reverse the gender of the wronged party. She wanted the woman of the title to be the one performing the action, and that, ultimately, was only fitting. West was a woman who acted — — not one who was acted upon.
• • Hollywood films displayed a marked tendency to punish and vilify independent, sexualized women for years before West’s emergence and in years hence — — from the gold diggers of the 1920s to countless noir femme fatales — — but West’s Lady Lou not only escapes any form of punishment, she gets a diamond ring, and Cary Grant. More importantly, we know that she may want Grant and his diamond, but she doesn’t need either of them. She’s older, wiser, and stronger too — — Lady Lou can make it all on her own, and so could Mae West.
• • She Done Him Wrong USA, 1933. 66 minutes. Paramount
• • Source: Brattle Theatre Film Notes — — http://brattleblog.brattlefilm.org/
• • Byline: Victoria Large
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West with co-stars • • 1933 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Yes — Today!

Come up and see MAE today in Ohio.
• • Trying an experiment, the Ohio Theatre will offer its first double feature.
• • On Friday 24 August 2007, the onscreen feature is She Done Him Wrong [1933], the gay 90s Bowery-in-Hollywood replay of Mae West's beloved Broadway comedy "Diamond Lil."
• • Reprising the famous Bert Savoy line, Mae West extends an invitation to Cary Grant: "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"
• • Second on the bill is Cobra Woman [1944], one very campy flick starring the heavy-accented actress Maria Montez, who plays twins.
• • Don't miss this classic Mae West — — today at 7:30 PM.
• • Ohio Theatre [39 E. State St., Columbus, Ohio] — Tel: 614-469-0939.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1933 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: George Hurrell

George Hurrell made many memorable portraits of MAE WEST.
• • A master lensman, Hurrell is the darkroom genie responsible for many terrific photographs of Mae West (and other Hollywoodites) during the 1930s.
• • In 1933, Hurrell shot numerous publicity stills of Mae West alone – – as well as with her Paramount Pictures co-stars. Here's Mae on the set of "She Done Him Wrong" with character actor Noah Beery, who played the shady saloon-keeper Gus Jordan.
• • George Hurrell was born in the month of June in Cincinnati, Ohio: 1 June 1904. After a long and successful career, he died in 1992.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • by George Hurrell • •
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Mae West.