Mae West: Too Monotonous?

In 1934, Picture Play, piqued by a New York newcomer’s meteoric rise, pondered this: “Is MAE WEST a Fizzle? A bold discussion of an important question!” This is Part 25 of 29 segments.
• • Is Mae West a Fizzle? • •
• • Mae West: How many close-ups of the star ruin a scene • •
• • Dorothy Herzog wrote: A splendid scene is wrecked when the camera cuts from one player to a close-up of the star before that player has actually finished his scene.
• • Dorothy Herzog wrote: We may want to see the star, but we don't want to see her to the detriment of the story.

• • Dorothy Herzog wrote: If this occurs too often in a film, it becomes a monotony and a bore to the most lenient of audiences.
• • Dorothy Herzog wrote: Joan Crawford allows her supporting cast a fair break of footage.
• • Mae West: “Nobody else gets the laughs!” • • …
• • This will be continued on the next post.
• • Source: Picture Play; issue dated for May 1934.
• • On Wednesday, 21 February 1934 • •
• • It was on Wednesday evening, 21 February 1934, when the famed Mae West Jewel Robbery episode was dramatized on "Calling All Cars" over CBS Radio [without her personal participation in this traumatic drama]. Program #13 was sponsored by the Rio Grande Oil Company.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • John Miljan and John Mack Brown were arguing next summer's bathing suit trend for women, when Mae West glided in.
• • "What do girls do with their bathing suits in the winter?" queried Dorothea Wieck.
• • "Use 'em for book-marks," cracked Mae.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: “When it comes to finances, remember that there are no withholding taxes on the wages of sin.”
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A fan magazine mentioned Mae West.
• • Mae West and Dorothea Wieck wouldn't copy Hollywood and pluck their eyebrows — and now Hollywood is copying them?  …
• • Note: Dorothea Wieck [3 January 1908―19 February 1986] was a German theatre and film actress.
• • Source: Motion Picture; published in the issue dated for February 1934
• • The evolution of 2 Mae West plays that keep her memory alive • •
• • A discussion with Mae West playwright LindaAnn LoSchiavo — —
• • http://lideamagazine.com/renaissance-woman-new-york-city-interview-lindaann-loschiavo/
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 17th anniversary • • 
• • Thank you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during these past seventeen years. Not long ago, we entertained 3,497 visitors. And we reached a milestone recently when we completed 4,800 blog posts. Wow! 
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seventeen years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 4,934th 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 • • Toronto ad in 1933 • •
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Mae West: The Outcome of Income

MAE WEST, so determined to be in control of her image and her legacy, is now at the mercy of some "receivership" [ahem] that profits from selling her likeness and claims to represent "her estate." It's interesting that the actress's Will left one-third of her estate (including future earnings) to benefit the Actors Equity Fund. Several phonecalls (over time) to union headquarters in Manhattan revealed that they did not know this nor have they received one penny, as Mae had intended. Who IS raking in the green, you might wonder?
• • According to Canadian journalist Katrina Onstad, who did a fascinating article for The Globe and Mail: Technology has reshaped celebrity death. In 1997, Dirt Devil released an ad showing Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner. The press and public were appalled, and sales of the vacuum cleaner actually declined. Exhuming the dead for the purposes of shilling engendered a protective feeling in the audience. Astaire had no agency in this particular pas de deux (not to mention poor, erased Ginger Rogers) and there was something chilling about the fact that the strings animating the corpse were held by a computer.
• • “A dead person is vulnerable in ways a living person is not!” • •
• • Katrina Onstad writes: In 1981, Greil Marcus wrote with horror that Elvis Presley had become in the mere four years since his death “a T-shirt, a black velvet wall hanging, an emblem of working-class bad taste or upper-class camp.” “A dead person is vulnerable in ways a living person is not,” Marcus wrote. “A dead person can be summed up or dismissed.”
• • Katrina Onstad continues: Three decades later, dead celebrities aren’t just reduced, but regurgitated, revived, remixed and reissued, making a silk-screened T-shirt seem like a folksy little problem. Today, anyone with a computer can put herself in a room with Elvis, add a Santa hat and send a Christmas card around the world. The Dorchester campaign didn’t seem to generate any disgust at all. In the age of techno-mechanical reproduction, manipulation of the dead is a yawner.
• • Corbis acquired Mae West, now for rent (not unlike a taxi dancer) • •
• • Katrina Onstad emphasizes: And so, dead celebrities have become big business. In 2005, stock photo agency Corbis acquired a roster of “classic personalities,” including Einstein and Mae West (psst — — classic means dead). The arm where they now reside at Corbis is called GreenLight, which reportedly earned $50-million in 2009 by renting dead stars for endorsements. “The nice thing about a dead celebrity is [that] scandal is behind them,” a GreenLight VP told the Puget Sound Business Journal. Living artists should be wary of these shenanigans, at least if they believe their work is what creates value. To split a dead performer from her context for fun or profit seems like . . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Dead celebrities are big business"
• • By Katrina Onstad
• • Published by: The Globe and Mail [Canada] — — a division of CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc., 444 Front St. W., Toronto, ON Canada M5V 2S9
• • Published on: 17 December 2010
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Naked Girls Reading

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Mae West: Screened in Canada

MAE WEST was very proud of her wildly popular motion picture "She Done Him Wrong" [filmed in 1932 and released in the USA on 9 February 1933].
• • Word comes that Canadian cinema historian Reg Hartt will be screening Mae West's first starring film "She Done Him Wrong" (based on her stage play "Diamond Lil" with its Bowery setting) until July 2nd. Reg Hartt will be introducing the film.
• • Born in New Brunswick, Canada on 12 June 1946, Reg Hartt is a film archivist and collector in Toronto, Canada, who is passionate about old, important movies. In an interview, he once told a reporter about a bus trip he took to Los Angeles in the early 1970s along with a strange fellow he met at the end of it, a Charles Manson type. The oddball slipped him a elephant tranquilizer and predicted that Reg would be dead by morning. Whereupon Reg meditated — — and decided to write a letter to Mae West to pass the time.
• • The Cineforum is the unique movie emporium that Mr. Hartt operates out of his Bathurst Street living room in Canada.
• • Though the Cineforum has existed for the past four decades, it was not until 1992 that it was moved to his parlor. British painter Peter Moore described the intimate, old-fashioned Cineforum as “the most perfect place in the world to watch a motion picture.”
• • WHERE: Cineforum — — 463 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario.
• • WHEN: Since Saturday, 27 June 2009 and until Thursday, 2 July 2009 at 7 PM.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Toronto

A new exhibition in Canada will feature artwork inspired by MAE WEST.
• • "The Surrealists were the sly, decadent, mocking enemies of everything in modern culture that encouraged simplicity," writes Robert Fulford — — unintentionally (perhaps) conjuring up the Empress of Sex who was a sly, mocking pooh-pooher of everything in American culture that encouraged old-fashioned simplicity for women.
• • Until the end of August 2009, Mae and artistic mayhem are on display at the show "Surreal Things" — — Art Gallery of Ontario [Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario], 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 1G4. Toll free: 1-877-225-4246.
• • Fulford's article in Canada's National Post comes billboarded with a large, luscious photograph of the Mae West Lips Sofa. Here's a bite-size portion of his frisky essay.
• • Robert Fulford writes: It's a surprise to glimpse the worried faces of Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck flickering across a wall in the midst of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. But Surreal Things (to August 30) is a surprising show. It's an engrossing, revealing essay in what we can call Applied Surrealism, the process by which avant-garde European artists started out as revolutionaries and ended up as fashion designers, advertising artists, and all-purpose idea mongers.
• • An enemy of Surrealism could say that this far-ranging collection of outlandish objects proves that the Surrealists became handmaidens of consumerism by turning art into a comic turn. An admirer, on the other hand, could argue that they simply made themselves useful according to the standards of their (and our) time. Either way, they stretched their influence far beyond the Parisian art world where their ideas were first cobbled together.
• • In Spellbound — — Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 thriller — — Bergman and Peck play a psychiatrist and her amnesia-victim patient. Scenes from that film appear at the AGO because Hitchcock hired Salvador Dalí to design the Peck character's dreams. Dalí of course turned out Dalí-esque nightmares that Bergman decoded, saving her patient and solving a murder.
• • Dalí was the man for that job. He loved to blur the borders of art and show business and loved to play with Freud-inflected images. He emerges as the undoubted star of Surreal Things — — and deserves to, no matter what we think of his art. A large constituency has always restrained its enthusiasm for his painting. Even in his best days, each Dalí picture would begin as a sensation, develop into a curiosity, and then calcify into a bore.
• • His pictures are slick, superficial and forgettable — — less interesting by far than Max Ernst's paintings, less memorable than René Magritte's, less piquant than Man Ray's.
• • Even so, Dalí emerges as a titan in any account of how the Surrealists infiltrated the fashionable imagination. When artists rushed to the marketplace like 21st-century geeks auctioning their great ideas for computer games, Dalí led the pack. In the mid-1920s he was a newly-minted Spanish Surrealist, alive with what looked like inflammatory desires. By the mid-1930s, in New York, he was designing windows for Bonwit Teller, a high-end dress shop on Fifth Avenue. Using Surrealism as a marketing tool, he titled his first window, "She was a Surrealist Woman. She was like a Figure in a Dream."
• • Mae West's Lips • •
• • The most numerous and memorable of the things in Surreal Things are Dalí products, like the loveseat that reproduces Mae West's lips, the telephone with its receiver shaped like a lobster, and a brooch in the shape of a mouth with lips of ruby, teeth of pearls. Dalí illustrates the thesis of Ghislaine Wood, the curator who put the show together for the Victoria and Alberta Museum in London two years ago: The very themes of Surrealism lent themselves to commercialization. (The AGO gift shop gets right into the spirit by offering "Parfums Salvador Dalí.")
• • Ghislaine Wood took the show to Rotterdam and Bilbao with great success and presents it here in a somewhat altered version, with some 40 pieces from the AGO's own collection and several other North American museums, most notably the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., which became, in the 1930s, the first North American museum to take Surrealism seriously.
• • "Surréalisme," coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917 to describe his own writing, was later confiscated by André Breton for his plans to free humanity from the twin curses of capitalism and sexual repression. Ideally, Surrealism would create a culture of unfettered dreams. Humanity, granted this intellectual and spiritual liberation, would build a revolutionary society. . . .
• • Article continues at the National Post site — — and go see the Mae West Lips photo.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "You’ll want to dilly Dalí"
• • Byline: By Robert Fulford
• • Published in: Canada's National Post — — www.nationalpost.com
• • Published on: 11 May 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Sparkle Plenty

MAE WEST — — who began telling everyone "My career is diamonds" eighty years ago when her play "Diamond Lil" premiered on Broadway in 1928 — — will have her own diamonds featured as part of an award-winning display of precious gems.
• • Pieces worn by Mae West, Joan Crawford, Elton John, and other notables will be on view from 25 October 2008 at the Royal Ontario Museum.
• • Lenders to this extraordinary exhibit include Tiffany, Cartier, and Van Cleef & Arpels.
• • Beginning on 4 November 2008, screen sparklers shown will include “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), “To Catch a Thief” (1955), and “Diamonds are Forever” (1971).
• • “The Nature of Diamonds” will run from 25 October 2008 through 22 March 2009 in the Royal Ontario Museum: 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C6, Canada.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Schiap

As an excuse to dress up a pathetic list of over-priced consumer goods, a Canadian publication trotted out the names of MAE WEST and Elsa Schiaparelli. We'll repeat the sentences that refer to Mae, omitting the silly items with their inflated pricetags.
• • Rea McNamara writes: Chanel disdainfully referred to great rival Elsa Schiaparelli as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” Granted, Schiaparelli (“Schiap” to friends) wasn’t a born tailor, but with a clientele that boasted Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, she remains an innovator whose broad-shouldered form-fitting suits re­defined the fashionable silhouette. . . .
• • Rea McNamara explains: Schiaparelli gave the world “shocking pink” — — a signature shade somewhere between fuchsia and red — — that is still in use today. It was also the name of her 1936 perfume that came in a bottle inspired by Mae West’s hourglass torso (which was copied by Jean Paul Gaultier for his own torso-shaped perfume bottles). . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "That Italian artist who made clothes"
• • Byline: Rea McNamara
• • Published in: EYEWEEKLY.COM [625 Church St., Toronto, Canada M4Y 2G1]
• • Published on: 24 September 2008
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Ravenswood Ghost

A screenwriter who resided at the Ravenswood had an extraordinary encounter with MAE WEST — — an extraordinarily vague sighting. Or maybe this made-up tale is a way to promote a new movie. You decide. Here's how he attempted to explain it to SCI FI Wire's reporter Mike Szymanksi.
• • John Kamps — — who co-wrote the spooky romantic comedy "Ghost Town" with director David Koepp — — told SCI FI Wire that he had an inexplicable encounter with a famous ghost in Hollywood.
• • John Kamps . . . said that he lived in the Ravenswood Apartments in the heart of Hollywood, where Mae West kept an apartment most of her life.
• • "I knew Mae West lived there, and I was in my apartment in the Ravenswood and felt something," Kamps said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend. "To me, it's all connected to architecture. I saw something there, and, wow, it was like a momentary flash. It makes your imagination go wild. It's not like I had that experience anywhere else."
• • Even so many years later, Kamps said that he had a hard time explaining the experience. [Editor: Yeah, I'll bet!] But he added that it helped him work on the script for "Ghost Town," about a dentist (Ricky Gervais) who begins to see ghosts after a near-death experience.
• • "I consider myself a cynical person," Kamps said. "I know that people say they believe, and some have had experiences, but I thought that these are people who look for something to believe: They are looking for something more out there. This helps me give them an hour and a half of wish fulfillment."
• • Trying to detail his encounter more vividly, the writer said: "It was a moment, out of the corner of my eye, and I knew if I looked, there would be nothing there. I don't know; it was a really strong feeling I don't know how to explain. ... Even to this day I don't discount it." . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Ghost Writer Wants To Believe"
• • Byline: Mike Szymanksi
• • Published in: SCI FI Wire — — www.scifi.com
• • Published on: 9 September 2008
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Death of a Drag

Forty two years: the life of Mae West impressionist Craig Russell was short and bittersweet.
• • "Craig Russell" was the stage name of Russell Craig Eadie [10 January 1948 — 30 October 1990), a Canadian female impersonator. Craig Russell would have turned 60 during January 2008. But even though he died of AIDS-related illnesses, he lived long enough to establish himself as one of the best female impersonators of his or any other time.
• • His impersonations also included acclaimed actresses such as Carol Channing, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Midler, Anita Bryant, Peggy Lee, and Judy Garland. While performing, he always spoke and sang in the voices of the celebrities he was impersonating. Not only did he speak like them, he joked in their particular idiom. Unlike most other drag queens, Russell didn't lip-synch. He didn't need to.
• • Born on January 10th in Port Perry, Ontario, Russell Craig Eadie was fascinated by show biz glamour from an early age. When he was 13 and still in high school, he formed the Mae West International Fan Club. By the age of 15, Eadie had moved to Los Angeles to work for Mae West, a pivotal experience in his show biz education. He soon returned to Toronto to finish high school but dropped out for good, toiling as an insurance clerk before returning to California in 1967.
• • Eadie moved in with Mae West, becoming her personal secretary for seven months, assisting with her fan mail and honing his impersonations of her. In 1968 Eadie returned to Toronto, moved in with Margaret Gibson, and enrolled in hairdressing school. By day, he worked as a professional hairdresser [1969 — 1971]. By night, he pursued a career onstage.
• • By 1971, he was a regular headliner in Toronto gay clubs and had a burgeoning international following.
• • In 1977, Russell starred in Richard Benner's wonderful film "Outrageous!" — — based on a short story written by Margaret Gibson about their time as roommates. Two more films followed.
• • Hollis McLaren's character was drawn from the troubled life of Margaret Gibson, a schizophrenic Toronto author who penned The Butterfly Ward, a debut collection of stories. One of the stories in the book is "Making It," based on her relationship with her flatmate Craig Russell.
• • Cinema critic Janet Maslin was not charmed by the character of Robin nor his schizo soulmate Liza Connors (played by Hollis McLaren). But in her New York Times write-up, Maslin conceded that the characters were "more than convincing," if "a little hard to watch." Hollis McLaren, wrote Janet Maslin, "is either a brilliantly skittish performer — — or an authentic nervous wreck."
• • Though he publicly identified himself as gay rather than bisexual, Russell wed close friend Lori Jenkins in 1982. They remained married until his death at age 42 from a stroke (related to complications from AIDS) in 1990.
• • "Outrageous!" was screened 21 January 2008 in the Cinematheque Ontario lecture series.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West impressionist Craig Russell • • c.1980s • •
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