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Sir Paul McCartney wrote music that was used in "Sextette" starring MAE WEST.
• • "Honey Pie" was co-written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney [Maclen Music, Inc.]. Dom DeLuise performed their song in the motion picture "Sextette."
• • Musician Ringo Starr took a role, too, in the 1978 movie. The Beatles' drummer played Laslo Karolny, an imperious German film director who is a former husband of Mae's character — — Marlo Manners.
• • Paul McCartney was born on Thursday, 18 June 1942 in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, United Kingdom. We wish Sir Paul a very happy and healthy 73rd birthday today.
• • On Thursday, 18 June 1959 • •
• • "You'd have thought that a favorite bootlegger had come back from Atlanta," wrote drama critic Robert Garland in the New York Evening Telegram in his review of "Diamond Lil" published on 5 April 1928. "Mae West makes Miss Ethel Barrymore look like the late lamented Bert Savoy."
• • Born on 15 August 1879, actress Ethel Barrymore died in the month of June — — on Thursday, 18 June 1959. Praised for her work on the stage, Ethel was an Academy Award-winning screen actress and, of course, a member of the famous Barrymore family.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • Everything Miss Mae West wears or sponsors is immediately seized upon by Europe's smartest women.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?"
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A British newspaper mentioned Mae West.
• • Greatest Picture Programme of the Year! Two big pictures: "Goin' to Town" starring Mae West and the musical comedy "Heat Wave" with Albert Burdon, Cyril Maude, Les Allen, and Anna Lee. Screened daily . . .
• • Source: Item in Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette (England); published on Wednesday, 18 September 1935
• • PHOTO: an outake from the famous saloon scene in "Goin' to Town" [1935] starring Mae West. Her character's name was Cleo Borden in this motion picture.
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 10th anniversary • •
• • Thank
you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during this
past decade. The other day we entertained 3,497 visitors. And we reached a
milestone recently when we completed 3,200 blog posts. Wow!
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3203rd 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 • • in 1935 • •
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NYC Mae West
Which is your favorite book about MAE WEST?
• • There has been a University of Chicago doctoral dissertation by Pamela Robertson that Duke University Press published in book form under the title "Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna."
• • Another doctoral dissertation, by Princeton University grad student Marybeth Hamilton titled "When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment" was reissued as a paperback by HarperCollins.
• • Too Much of a Good Thing . . . • •• • In her book (printed by University of Minnesota Press) about the movie queen, "Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon," Ramona Curry predicted that Mae West's popularity will not fade. She wrote: "As expansive and adaptable and profitable as the image has proven over most of the 20th Century, it is likely that Mae West will continue to circulate as an emblem of what is both forbidden and accessible."
• • Tell us your favorite title(s).
• • Tres Chic: A charming Mae Tray • • 
• • This decoupage Mae tray is handcrafted by Suffolk County, New York artist, Ben Busko, who creates glass trays out of vintage maps and with endearing quotes.
• • After coloring and producing cheerful cards (designed around a motto or saying) since he was a child of eight in Setauket, Long Island, Ben Busko has branched out. The 27-year-old North Shore Long Islander currently owns Ben's Garden stores in Oyster Bay and Huntington Village, shops that sell his greeting cards and other household decor — — handmade découpage artworks he and his team create by hand.
• • Image: Ben Busko's Mae West Tray — — "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."• • In November, Let's Remember Tommy Gray [1888 — 1924] • •
• • The "Bard of Broadway" was born in New York City, Mae's hometown in the month of March — — on 22 March 1888.
• • Talented and prolific, Thomas J. Gray was a lyricist and an author who had attended Holy Cross School and was a charter member of ASCAP (1914). He served overseas during World War I, and later wrote scripts for silent movies, songs for Broadway and London revues, plus special material for Mae West, Bert Williams, Blossom Seeley, Frank Tinney, Savoy & Brennan, Trixie Friganza, and many others. His column "Gray Matters" ran in Variety and his byline appeared in the New York Dramatic Mirror as well. His chief musical collaborators included Fred Fisher and Ray Walker.
• • Booked at Hammerstein's Victoria in September 1912, Mae performed jokes and songs that she commissioned from Tommy: "Isn't She a Brazen Thing?", "It's an Awful Easy Way to Make a Living," "The International Rag Song," and "Good Night, Nurse."
• • In 1913, Variety raved: "Thanks to Tommy Gray and her own comedic ability, Miss West looks set as a big-time feature."
• • Bronchitis cut short his brilliant career. Tommy died in November — — on 30 November 1924. He was 36 years old.
• • Though Mae often did not pay his bills until a judge intervened, and she was taken to court more than once by Tommy, she attended his funeral at St. Malachy's in midtown, a standing-room-only affair.
• • 30 November 1948 in The N.Y. Times • •
• • Mae West revived "Diamond Lil" for a Montclair, New Jersey audience. Brooks Atkinson responded to her performance in The New York Times on 30 November 1948: "A fine, full-bosomed woman with lots of glitter and gaudiness, Mae is an original unclassified phenomenon . . . ."
• • 30 November 1969 • •
• • Mae West was featured in The N.Y. Times Magazine on 30 November 1969.
• • 30 November 1980 • •
• • An affectionate remembrance by Richard Meryman, "The One and Only Mae West," was printed in The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on 30 November 1980.
• • November 1994 in The Collector • •
• • An article "Sex Legend's Apartment Sale" appeared in the November 1994 issue of a magazine, The Collector.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."
• • Oscar Wilde said: "Nothing succeeds like excess." Oscar Wilde [16 October 1854 — 30 November 1900] was an Irish writer and poet. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis at the end of the eleventh month — — on 30 November 1900. Like Mae, he appeared on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper." And like the controversial Brooklynite, Mr. Wilde was hounded and dragged through courtroom trial. In Paris, the Oscar Wilde tomb at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris has traditionally been covered in lip prints left by his adoring fans. A new glass barrier has been erected, however, preventing guests from kissing the tomb and "causing damage."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • Would Mae West have been susceptible to the charms of the romantic menace from Venice, Giacomo Casanova [2 April 1725 — 4 June 1798]?
• • Book reviewer Elizabeth Benedict thinks so. Ms. Benedict wrote this: Had the great matchmaker in the sky arranged for Giacomo Casanova and Mae West to meet, they surely would have been notches on each other's holsters, reveling in West's motto: "Too much of a good thing is wonderful.'' In this fecund season of Casanova — — a dazzling new biography, "Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women,'' and the paperback of his 12-volume autobiography have just appeared — — we learn that it was not only seduction and dalliance that filled his calendar. By the time this Venetian-born Proteus died, in a castle in Bohemia in 1798, he had had a dozen careers . . . .
• • Source: Book Review: "A Real Casanova: The Man Who Gave His Name to Love Was Far, Far More than a Dashing Roue" written by Elizabeth Benedict for The Boston Globe; published on Sunday, 30 November 1997
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2131st 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 • • tray • •
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NYC
Mae West.
A fullsize figure of MAE WEST's curvaceous figure will go on sale the first day of May in 2009. Start putting aside those nickels and dimes.
• • News man Olsen Ebright informs all Mae-mavens and celebrity watchers that this unusual auction will take place.
• • Next month, the museum is auctioning nearly 200 celebrity wax sculptures at the first auction in its 44-year history.
• • Think of the possibilities. You can finally come home to Mae West or Marilyn Monroe. You could have all four Beatles join your Rock Band. You could even have Charlie Chaplin watch you sleep.
• • The Wax Auction, administered by Profiles in History, is scheduled for May 1, so there's still time to start saving up. The lots from the upcoming auction have been posted online at profilesinhistory.com.
• • A portion of the profits will go toward preserving the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
— — Source: — —
• • Article: “For Sale: Bill Clinton, Mr. T, Braveheart, Mae West, Jesus"
• • Byline: OLSEN EBRIGHT
• • Published in: NBC Los Angeles/ Around Town — — www.nbclosangeles.com/
• • Published on: 2 April 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Watch the special slideshow to see the sculptures at Hollywood Wax Museum at the web site we referenced.• • 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.
Say "The Biltmore" and Mae-mavens will recall the infamous raid in 1928 of a gay play written by MAE WEST — — "Pleasure Man." But far from Times Square, out in California, there are fond memories of when Mae West and W.C. Fields performed at the Biltmore Theatre, once located inside the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
• • Richard Guzman mentioned this connection in his enjoyable article "Big Time at the Biltmore — — Historic Downtown Hotel Celebrates 85th Birthday" for the Los Angeles Downtown News. Apparently, this landmark [built in 1923 when Mae West was 30 years old] has attracted everyone from presidents to the Beatles to the actress who came to be known as the Black Dahlia.
• • According to Guzman, this hotel was the headquarters for John F. Kennedy during the 1960 Democratic National Convention, when he was nominated for president. In 1927, the venerable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded there. And during that meeting, the Oscar was designed on a linen napkin.
• • Guzman writes: It was once the largest hotel west of Chicago. It opened with 1,000 rooms, its opulent grand ballrooms a mixture of Neoclassical, Moorish, Baroque and Renaissance styles. It was designed by Leonard Schultze and S. Fullerton Weaver, who also designed New York's Waldorf Astoria. . . .
• • The Biltmore Hotel, now known as the Millennium Biltmore — — and considered to be the most significant historic hotel in Los Angeles — — will be celebrating its 85th birthday this week. An invitation-only party on Thursday, 2 October 2008, is expected to attract 500 people.
• • Built in 1923, the Beaux Arts-style building is one of downtown's most recognizable structures. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
• • Do read his feature to learn more about its intriguing history.
— — Source: — —
• • Article: "Big Time at the Biltmore — — Historic Downtown Hotel Celebrates 85th Birthday"
• • Byline: By Richard Guzman
• • Published in: Los Angeles Downtown News — — www.downtownnews.com
• • Published on: 29 September 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • 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.
If it were not for Jann Haworth, MAE WEST would not have been on a Beatles album cover. The Fab Four chose no women but the clever American-born designer selected a few notable females. Now the artist-seamstress-sculptress is back in the spotlight in Salt Lake City.
• • Julie Checkoway interviewed the "Mom of Pop Culture" for The Salt Lake Tribune recently.
• • Julie Checkoway writes: Jann Haworth might be uncomfortable with critics using the term "domestic" to describe her art, yet gender is undoubtedly a key force in her aesthetic.
• • In a coffeehouse in downtown Salt Lake City, the artist recalls the moment when she first realized how to make her way " 'round the boys' club." After all, she said, "I knew I couldn't go through it."
• • One day in 1962, Haworth was in London "riding the No. 33 bus past Harrods" when she spotted in the window a sleeveless, ruffle-collared pink dress made of artificial silk.
• • "It was arch-feminine," she says now with a laugh over a cup of cappuccino. The dress was made of something Haworth, an excellent seamstress, knew more about than any male artist of her acquaintance: fabric. And in spying it, Haworth saw her artistic life unroll before her like yardage off an enormous colorful bolt of cloth.
• • Right then, she says, "I just knew what I was going to do next and next and next and next."
• • Soft sculpture: Next was an entirely new genre of art work termed "soft sculpture," three-dimensional pieces composed not of bronze or steel but of thread, cotton, wool, fur, and even vinyl.
• • Haworth, who had been raised in Hollywood, was inspired by the pop-culture icons of her youth. She sewed cloth doughnuts covered with fur, teacups of cotton and life-size stuffed figures of Mae West, Shirley Temple, and W.C. Fields.
• • Most significant, she flew in the face of traditional images of femininity by choosing as her signature piece an old woman slumped in a rocking chair, knees covered with an afghan — — a figure that would recur in her work throughout her life. ...
• • "POP PLASTIQUES" will be exhibited in the fourth-floor gallery of the Main Library, 210 E. 400 South, Salt Lake City, from Saturday to July 26. Jann Haworth will be the library's artist-in- residence June 16-20, and will hold workshops on June 17, 19 and 21 for 9- to 15-year-old artists. Info: 801-524-8200.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Byline: Julie Checkoway
• • Published in: The Salt Lake Tribune
• • Published on: 31 May 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: The Statue of Libido is a new illustrated title that will be released in March 2008 by Taschen, a German publisher. 
• • Book description: In terms of celebrity icons, few attained the highest levels of fame and controversy as rapidly as Mae West.
• • Labeled a "pornographer" by censorship boards, she was also one of 1930s Hollywood’s most lucrative box-office draws (causing Variety in 1933 to label the star "as hot an issue as Hitler"). Nicknamed by critic George Jean Nathan "the Statue of Libido" and paid homage to in the title song of Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes, her voluptuous image and signature platinum blond hair became recognizable worldwide and for decades beyond her prime years of fame in the 1930s. In fact, even by the 1960s when the Beatles wanted to use her image on the cover of their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, those long-haired icons of a new generation were required to deliver a handwritten plea to the icon (which they dutifully did), since Mae West herself always objected, as she said, to belonging to any "lonely hearts club."
• • Taschen's Movie Icon series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, TASCHEN shows you. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with quotes from the movies and from life.
• • More bang for your buck! "... a fast-food, high-energy fix on the topic at hand." — — The New York Times Book Review
• • Mae West: The Statue of Libido [192 pages — — ISBN 978-3-8228-2321-7]
• • Photos — — www.taschen.com/
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1932 • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST holds her own in Liverpool at the new Hard Days Night.
• • Calling 2008 "the year that Liverpool is Europe's Capital of Culture," The London Telegraph welcomed the new Beatles-themed boutique hotel in the heart of the city, which took more than two decades of planning and debate before it opened.
• • Telegraph reporter Max Davidson gushed a bit, spinning it as a place "that oozes class and sophistication. Like Malmaison properties, it offers gracious 21st-century urban living — — high ceilings, clean surfaces, all the mod cons and gizmos you could ask for — — at a price that is some way short of exorbitant. Enthusiastic staff, mostly with ripe Liverpudlian accents, are a bonus. ... Money can't buy you love, but £650 will buy a night in the Lennon Suite, ..."
• • Though the "location, in a chunky old commercial building in the Cavern Quarter, is uninspiring," wrote Davidson, he found elements to suit him.
• • According to Max Davidson: "Dinner in the Blake's restaurant is good rather than exceptional. The food is modern English with twists (with items such as Knickerbocker Glory, you wonder whether it needed a few more twists). It is another delightfully furnished space, with pride of place occupied by photographs of the celebrities who featured on the iconic Sergeant Pepper cover designed by Sir Peter Blake. What an odd, eclectic assortment they were — — from Jesus to Oscar Wilde, from Jung to Marlon Brando, from Mae West to Aldous Huxley."
• • Davidson explains: "But when you see them displayed like this, properly contextualised, you realise the richness of the cultural roots the Beatles were tapping. They were far, far more than just a group of likely lads from Liverpool."
• • Visit online or phone: The Hard Days Night Hotel [www.harddaysnighthotel.com — — 0151 236 1964].
• • Visit The London Telegraph — — www.telegraph.co.uk/ — — to learn more about Hard Days Night and see the photographs.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Beatles album cover • •
NYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST had little in common with Edgar Allan Poe [19 January 1809 — 7 October 1849], whose 200th anniversary will be commemorated by new films about his life (including one by Sylvester Stallone).
• • Nevertheless, there are undeniable links between these American icons. The best known yoking of the Brooklyn bombshell and the Boston-born master of the macabre is their appearance together on the Beatles album cover called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" [1967], a photomontage of a crowd gathered round a grave. The curious onlookers included MAE WEST, Edgar Allan Poe, Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Lawrence of Arabia, Sonny Liston, etc. along with eight Beatles.
• • Yes, there is more. Though the "Baby Vamp" was born in 1893 — — forty-four years years after the poet's demise — — she was a frequent visitor to a gay cabaret on West Third Street that was directly opposite Poe's residence in Greenwich Village where he worked on "The Raven."
• • Neither was a stranger to Tinseltown. Numerous motion pictures have been made from Poe's verse and short fiction, onscreen projects that outnumber Mae's. What is similar is that her films — — and the adaptations made from Poe's nineteenth century writing — — tell a familiar story which never goes much below the surface of what it has to tell. Still, what a surface. Bright and funny in her case — — morose and suspenseful in his — — but both definitely belong in the category of good commercial entertainment.
• • Both retreated to the past, a distant era neither one had actually lived in, when it came to story-telling. Not for them the latte-fueled pulse of the modern world.
• • Their narratives are driven by the engine of desire — — not the desire for sex. Their main characters want power and authority, sometimes money, to achieve an end. The protagonist is willful, active, goal-oriented, and an agent of change.
• • Mae West always wanted to portray a working woman who looks great and runs things. Poe depicted his heroines as great-looking beauties who are running towards the after-life.
• • Mae West often arranged a seance. Who knows? Maybe Poe even dropped in during one.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Mae West.
