Mae West: Cary -- Granted

Richard Torregrossa's new book is out on actor Cary Grant discussing the films he made that put him on the map, and also the ones in which he failed to distinguish himself — and how he woodenly received Mae West’s most famous invitation about coming up to see her, since she's always home in the evenings when they co-starred in She Done Him Wrong [1933].
• • Meet the actor who transitioned from Broadway to Hollywood, a leading man who got a great deal of attention when Mae West put him in her two of her most successful movies. Here's a brief extract from Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style by Richard Torregrossa
• • I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” That meeting — when Archie Leach, the Bristol-born son of a part-Jewish suit presser, came to be fully assimilated by his creation, Cary Grant — amounts to one of the great events in the annals of twentieth-century culture. It created what the critic David Thomson (in A Biographical Dictionary of Film, the finest reference book on the movies) flatly declares to be “the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema.” ...
• • In 1931, Archie Leach — one-time latch-key kid (when he was nine he came home from school one day to find his mother missing; his two-timing, alcoholic father had secretly committed her, despite her apparent sanity, to the Country Home for Mental Defectives; she would be lost to Grant until he was thirty-one) and erstwhile vaudevillian (from fourteen to twenty-three he’d performed as an acrobat, juggler, stilt walker, and mime; his experience in acrobatic troupes honed his phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing, and inculcated in him his universally praised generosity and team-spiritedness as a performer) — interrupted his well-paying if unremarkable Broadway career to try Hollywood. The execs at Paramount put him under contract and told him to come up with a screen name; he chose one that conjured the image of the man he wished to become. . . .
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • Cary Grant • • 1933 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Bushy

Everyone wants a piece of MAE - - and even Polish radio is willing to massage the facts.
• • Today broadcast journalist program Danusia Szafraniec was doing a close-up on the Polish district of Greenpoint in New York - - once referred to as "Little Warsaw" - - which is a neighborhood in transition. . . .
• • Danusia Szafraniec said: "Also not many of you probably know that actress MAE WEST was born in Greenpoint as was the Brooklyn accent. Apart from affordable rents, the view of the Manhattan skyline from Greenpoint's waterfront is one of the best around. ..." [Source: Polskie Radio SA - - www.polskieradio.pl]
• • TRUTH: Though MAE WEST once resided in Greenpoint (whose borders were drawn differently in the 1890s than today), the entertainer was actually born in Bushwick.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • 1918 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Oh, Calcutta!

Analyzing Aamra, which she calls "a first in Begali cinema," columnist Chandrima S. Bhattacharya meditates on MAE WEST and the SEX COMEDY genre. Is Tollywood up to the challenge? asks her essay "Let’s say it like we see it."
• • Enjoy a slice of spice from Calcutta.
• • Aamra might lack the brilliance and sophisticated self-consciousness of true sex comedy, but it is a first in Bengali cinema as it calls a spade a spade, feels columnist Chandrima S. Bhattacharya, writing from India.
• • She states: "I have watched Aamra, a new Bengali film that has been marketed as Tollywood’s first sex comedy. A sex comedy is, well, basically French. Or Italian. Sometimes Anglo-Saxon English or American. Like Irma La Douce. Where Shirley Maclaine prances about blithely in green lingerie with a matching green bow in her hair. Or Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow that had Sophia Loren imposing as ever in black lace lingerie. Or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, that has Marilyn Monroe going about in whatever. Or Mae West doing anything.
• • The best sex comedy is as wicked, contrived, playful, delightful, titillating, and light-of-touch as lingerie, and that’s why both agree so much with the French, but a sex comedy in Bengali? Literature in Bengali has achieved world class often, but Bengali as the language of mass media has a problem.
• • It cannot spell out the facts of life. Say, when it comes to the depiction of the intimate physical relationship between two individuals (I am learning), what does Bengali cinema, or Indian cinema in general, still do? It employs a few time-tested strategies: Silence (suggesting intimate physical relationship between two individuals does not happen), song/ dream sequence (involving dance that suggests intimate physical relationship between two individuals through dance, but songs seem to take place within parentheses and don’t affect the main narrative) and accident (a rainy night, when the boy and the girl did not know what they were doing).
• • Yet you know how the men and women, Mithunda included, pant with passion. Popular cinema, throbbing with intimate physical relationships between two individuals despite itself, looks as schizophrenic as Sridevi: the mind will not look at what the body is doing. ... Unlike the often tortuous plots of the classic sex comedy, Aamra has very little storyline. ...
- - excerpt - -
• • Source: The Telegraph [Calcutta, India] - - www.telegraphindia.com/
• • Byline: Chandrima S. Bhattacharya
• • Published on: 8 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • 1925 • •
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Mae West: Showing Pink

Insights on MAE WEST were revealed when West Coast reporter Vanessa Franko attended a workshop at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Saturday [6 January 2007].
• • According to a Hollywood portraitist who was one of the panelists, Mae West knew the exact light in which she wanted to be photographed.
• • Michael Childers remembered meeting Greta Garbo and Mae West at a party and asking Miss West if he could shoot her while she was filming "Myra Breckinridge."
• • Mae West agreed, said the lensman, as long as it wasn't on the set near Raquel Welch. When Childers entered her trailer, he noticed that Mae had pink spotlights lined up exactly where she wanted them.
• • "Now you can photograph me," the well-prepared actress announced.
• • These photographs are on display at the M Modern Gallery [Palm Springs, California] in the "Blow Up" show through 21 January 2007. [Information was based on current reportage by VANESSA FRANKO of The Press-Enterprise.]
• • An enormous influence on Michael Childers's career was his long-term lover John Schlesinger, an Oscar-winning director. For nearly 40 years, they were a gay couple in Hollywood from 1966 until the 77-year-old's death [in July 2003]. Naturally, they were invited everywhere together and this gave the newcomer easy access to Hollywood's best and brightest. He estimated he shot 60,000 Tinseltown photographs of cinema's most indelible icons - - including the memorable Mae West.
• • After Mae West visited the set of John Schlesinger's ill-fated The Day of the Locust, Childers screened the director's groundbreaking 1971 gay film, Sunday Bloody Sunday, for the Brooklyn bombshell. "She was in rapt attention," he observed.
• • Mae West's reaction: "Oh, my goodness, this is one of the most important breakthroughs for the gay boys I've ever seen!"
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo by Michael Childers: Mae West • • on the set of "Myra Breckinridge," Twentieth Century Fox Studios, Hollywood • • 1969 • •
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Mae West: Last Licks

Today is 9 January 2007. Welcome to the first day of issue for a new postage stamp in Great Britain - - and MAE WEST is on it.
• • The stamp came about because the iconic 1960s album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (produced by the Beatles) has been voted the best album sleeve of all time.
• • The Fab Four's 1967 album cover beat out competition from the artwork of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in the survey by CD and DVD replication service Branded-media.
• • One of the world's most recognizable record covers Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is now set to debut on a commemorative stamp throughout the UK on Tuesday 9 January 2007.
• • Concept: The artist behind the iconic work, Sir Peter Blake, was invited to design the Beatles cover, and with his wife Jann Howarth, came up with the idea of a collage of famous people standing behind Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• • Process: Then John, Paul, George, and Ringo each made a list of people they'd like featured. Blake collected photos and made life-sized cut-outs of them.
• • 88 Notables: There are 88 figures on the album cover including MAE WEST, Marilyn Monroe, Lewis Carrol, Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy, Marlon Brando, Edgar Allen Poe, Bob Dylan, Fred Astaire, wax models of the Beatles, floral arrangements, various instruments, garden gnomes, and a television set.
• • If you are near a London post office, come up and LICK Mae and Sgt. Pepper's gang.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • 1967 album cover • •
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Mae West: Dirty Sheets

MAE WEST weighed in on diaries well before bloggers would be billboarding their VERY [invariably] BORING lives online with bloated examples of navel-gazing. Scottish columnist Alison Kerr meditated on Mae West's quip on diarists when she began her column "Dear diary." Take a quick peak at a slice of her article about scribes who stockpile dirty sheets [of paper] daily:
• • MOST of us experimented with it as adolescents. A few of us liked to pose around cafés and campuses doing it when we were students. For some, it is very much a closet activity, to be done in the privacy of their own homes, when no one else is about. Others like nothing better than to circulate highlights among friends and family, maybe via letters, e-mails, or on websites. What am I talking about? Diary-keeping!
• • Over the years, many have heeded the witty advice proffered by queen of the one-liners Mae West: "Keep a diary and some day it'll keep you". It seems unlikely that Mae West followed her own advice: it is more probable that she subscribed to the view of fellow hellraiser Tallulah Bankhead that "only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time."
• • Unless, of course, the bad girls have a cunning plan. Nanny Daisy Wright sold her diary to a tabloid after it emerged that she had recorded in it details of an affair with her boss, movie star Jude Law.
• • Among those who have heeded Mae West's advice and cashed in their diaries for places on the bestsellers lists are politicians Robin Cook, Edwina Currie, Tony Benn, Jeffrey Archer, and Alan Clark. The estates of Noel Coward, comedian Kenneth Williams, and rock star Kurt Cobain have all benefited from the posthumous publication of their diaries.
• • However, it's not only the cynical who have reservations about diaries and diarists. Academics and professional therapists have expressed concern about the effect that such introspection can have on people, especially those prone to depression. ...
- - excerpt - -
• • Source: The Scotsman [UK]
• • Byline: Alison Kerr
• • Published on: 6 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • to come • •
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Mae West: Surreal

MAE WEST by way of Dali can be seen in a London museum's installation on surrealism later this year,
• • Dali the designer • • First show to examine surrealism's impact on architecture, design and the decorative arts, from Salvador Dali's Mae West sofa - shaped after her lips - to the Schiaparelli 'Tear' dress. Here: V & A (London SW7). The exhibition runs from the 29th of March until 22nd of July 2007. Info: www.vam.ac.uk
• • Source: The Observer - http://observer.guardian.co.uk/
• • Published: Sunday, 7 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • to come • •
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Mae West: 1893

MAE WEST, born in August 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, lived to be 87 years old.
• • Also born in 1893, a woman in Muncie, Indiana is celebrating her birthday this month. Bertha Fry, reportedly the eighth-oldest living person in the world, is 113 years old. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels paid her a visit Friday and awarded her the "Sagamore of the Wabash" as the eighth oldest super-centenarian in the world.
• • "Thank you," she told the young governor. "I have not done anything special - - the only thing I've done is live."
• • She's certainly done that. As the mural in the hallway where she lives at Westminster Village in Muncie attests, she was around when the first World Series was played in 1903, when the first Indianapolis 500 was run in 1911 and when the Titanic sank one year later [1912]. She cast her first vote the first time women were allowed to do so in 1920. She can tell about when the President was shot, but not Kennedy - - McKinley.
• • "I heard them say President McKinley was killed so I came back and told them and no one would believe it," she said.
• • While her eyesight and her hearing are beginning to go, her intellect remains sharp even when assessing the current events in Iraq. "What's happened now is the most terrible thing that ever happened to this country because I can't see an end to it," she said.
• • "She's a miracle. Either genetically or of good fortune...," said Daniels.
• • But for now anyone who can remember an American flag when it had 44 stars is a big deal. Fry, who was born before Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii joined the union, reflected on how she's been able to do it. What is the secret to living to 113? "I haven't the faintest idea," she said. . . .
• • A lot has happened since 1893 when Bertha Fry was born. Since 1893, researchers invented aspirin. New Zealand became the first country to allow women the right to vote. Geneva College and the New Brighton YMCA played in the first recorded college basketball game. Automobile pioneers Karl Benz in Germany and Henry Ford in the U.S. built their first cars.
• • Others born in 1893 - - in addition to MAE WEST - - include entertainer Jimmy Durante and Henry Ford's son, Edsel.
- - this text was modified from an article written by Kevin Rader - -
• • Source: World Now and WTHR - - www.wthr.com/
• • Byline: Kevin Rader - Eyewitness News
• • Published on: 5 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • circa 1908 • •
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Mae West: A Bay Hurray

It's January but he's thinking MAE.

• • San Francisco Chronicler A. Pismo Sulkis did a clever column, inspired by news items that happened during a year that ended in seven: "11 THINGS: That hint year of 7 is heaven."
• • Ten plus one items were on his list and MAE WEST hugged second place. Here are his first few entries, in case you missed the Bay Area's popular daily:
• • 1. Sept. 10, 1897: In the first recorded drunken-driving offense, London taxi driver George Smith is arrested after "having a few beers" and driving onto a sidewalk.
• • 2. Dec. 12, 1937: Mae West goes into heavy flirt mode with wooden dummy Charlie McCarthy on the radio, causing a public uproar and an FCC investigation.
• • 3. June 24, 1947: Private pilot Kenneth Arnold files the first official UFO report, describing nine unidentified flying objects he saw while flying near Mount Rainier, Wash. He's advised to zip it.
• • 4. Oct. 4, 1957: The Soviet Union kicks off the Space Age with the launch of Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite, the same day as the first episode of "Leave It to Beaver." . . . .
- - excerpt - -
• • Source: San Francisco Chronicle - - www.sfgate.com
• • Byline: A. Pismo Sulkis
• • Published on: Thursday, 4 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Illustration: Mae West • • magazine cover in 1936 • •
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Mae West: On the Wall

Though MAE WEST declined the Norma Desmond mantle, she was always ready for her close-up. This month the Brooklyn bombshell bows at an all-star photography exhibition in California. Come up and see Mae. Details follow.
• • MAE WEST is there - - as are Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Deneuve, Andy Warhol, Demi Moore, David Hockney, Natalie Wood, John Travolta, and Groucho Marx. Through the images of three generations of classic Hollywood by photographers Michael Childers, William Claxton, and Douglas Kirkland, the stars' personal and public lives are revealed in a gallery show "Blow Up" at M Modern Gallery in Palm Springs.
• • On Friday 5 January 2007, an artists' reception from 5 - 7 pm will open the installation.
• • On Saturday 6 January 2007, a seminar from 11 am - 12:30 pm at California's Annenberg Theater inside the Palm Springs Art Museum [101 N. Museum Drive] will entertain questions on the impact of these three lensmen. The seminar is sponsored by Palm Springs International Film Festival.
• • The exhibit, held in conjunction with the film festival, is open to the public.
• • The artists' choice of subject matter stems from the public's love of Hollywood. You may have already seen some of the show's images in books, magazines, and museums, noted Michael Childers, founding photographer for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine.
• • Details: M Modern Gallery [2500 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photograph: Mae West • • 1930s • •
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Mae West: a.k.a. Marie Carey

Mention MAE WEST and dusty gossip gallops to life. Mae West can kick-start any column - - and here is a Henderson, KY item that shows history on the hoof.
• • A former Kentucky jurist John Palmore, now nearly 90, has published a 211-page memoir. The octagenarian told his local newspaper that he wrote the memoir mostly for personal reasons: "I didn't write it for the purpose of making money." That's realistic because it probably won't earn much beyond the satisfaction that comes with self-publishing.
• • Most of the notables Palmore encountered during his long career are all-but-unknown outside his Kentucky precinct. In a recent interview, the reporter was able to dredge up one nationally known name: MAE WEST. The anecdote begins like this.
• • "I've had a number of interesting people and cases when I practiced law here in Henderson." ...
• • And then Trixie LaMae makes an entrance, the former vaudeville star whose dance partner was Mae West's ex-husband, and who had a long-standing feud with West because of it. [Although the article omits the name of Mae's ex-spouse, his stage name was Frank Wallace.] LaMae, a Henderson native, came back to run a nightclub in the early 1950s. Her real name was Marie Carey. He should know, he said, since he drafted her will. "I really liked her," he said. "She was just so friendly and good-natured."
• • Penned at age 89, Palmore's bio is "From Panama Canal to Elkhorn Creek" [subtitle: "A chronicle of life in the 20th Century by an old Kentucky lawyer"].
- - brief excerpt from this article in The Gleaner - -
• • Source: The Gleaner, published by The Courier Press in Kentucky
• • Byline: FRANK BOYETT, Gleaner staff - - fboyett@thegleaner.com
• • Published on: Tuesday, 2 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photograph: Mae West • • 1919 • •
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Mae West: Hotel Delmonico

One day MAE WEST's icebox over-heated in springtime. Almost immediately, a German electrician ignited a spark in his life when he met the actress in her private suite at Manhattan's Hotel Delmonico in the mid 1950s. [At the time, Mae was performing at the Latin Quarter at 200 West 48th Street. The Hotel Delmonico, located at Park Avenue and 59th Street, was built in 1929.]
• • Now retired and living in Lakeland, Florida, former electrician George Kahn has many memories to share as he plans for his 105th birthday on Wednesday January 3rd.
• • Born in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1902, Kahn worked as a clerk until he traveled to the U.S. on 10 December 1926.
• • But having returned to his homeland in the early 1930s to seek employment, Kahn said he remembers the dark days when economic hardship and political unrest descended on Germany in the years after World War I.
• • "Conditions in Germany were bad at the time, practically hopeless," Kahn said.
Kahn said his mother was Jewish and he describes himself as half-Jewish. And for Jews it was a dangerous time. . . .
• • Kahn's brother Ludwig and sister Erna were sent to concentration camps. A stroke of good fortune got Ludwig released and he emigrated to America. ...
• • Kahn became a United States citizen in 1933. He said America has been good to him over the years.
• • Kahn moved to New York in 1953. Kahn spent 12 years as a licensed electrician in New York City, including some time working at Hotel Del Monico [sic], where he once fixed actress Mae West's refrigerator. ... In 1965, when he remarried, he left New York and moved to Colombia in South America. ...
- - brief extract from this interview - -
• • Source: The Ledger, Lakeland, Florida
• • Byline: SARAH STEGALL, Special to The Ledger
• • Published on: Monday, 1 January 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photograph: Mae West • • Sub-Zero ad • •
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Mae West: Mountainous

MAE WEST, who was not attracted to bald men, may have felt differently about eagles. Mae once took rooms whose windows were eye-level with hawks, high up in the Poconos Mountains. And it seems that the former low-budget honeymoon capital of the USA is currently going gaudy.

• • According to a recent article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, these all-but-forgotten Pennsylvania hotels that once played host to MAE WEST and White House notables are currently appealing to fickle fancy food lovers by offering a "sushi pizza" and other things you'd never dreamed you'd be eating. And prices have risen well beyond what grandpa paid when he took grandma for a weekend frolic at Mount Airy Lodge.
• • Reporter Matt Blanchard of The Philadelphia Inquirer, explains that the Fauchere in "historic Milford" has gone the full phoenix, i.e., risen from the flames to an exalted rebirth.
• • Blanchard notes, "Founded in 1867 by the head chef of New York City's Delmonico's restaurant, the Fauchere played host to celebrated figures from Gen.William Tecumseh Sherman to MAE WEST and Presidents Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, before closing in 1976."
• • He adds, "Nestled at the northern gates of the Delaware Water Gap is the next hot village: a restored Victorian summering spot called Milford. It's home to the finest new hotel in the Poconos and the region's finest new eatery: the Hotel Fauchere and its Delmonico Room restaurant. ... The new Fauchere is a 16-room, ultra-luxury blend of antique and modern charms. Rooms cost from $275 to $350 a night and come with the finest furnishings, all Kiehl's bath products, a bottle of wine, artisanal chocolates, and heated towel racks. ..."
• • Oh, and then there is Fauchere's other restaurant, the casual Bar Louis, where sushi and tempura-fried rice flour dough combine for a sushi pizza ($15), the likes of which are making Neapolitan pizza-potentates scratch their heads in wonderment.
• • MAE WEST surrounded by luscious artisanal chocolates, heated towel racks, bald eagle vistas, and a slithering sushi pizza in the Poconos Mountains: picture this.
• • Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer - - www.philly.com/
• • Byline: Matt Blanchard
• • Published on: 29 December 2006
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photograph: Mae West • • 1927 • •
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Mae West: December 31

• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photograph: Mae West • • 1930 • •
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Mae West: High Def

In Canada, The Calgary Sun’s reporter Bruce Kirkland has been busy picking his favorite DVDs for the year 2006. Here is a quick peek at his mindset.
— DVD STORY OF THE YEAR — Fully loaded
BY: Bruce Kirkland, Calgary Sun Media
Send in the clowns: A war between next-generation DVD technologies broke out, confusing and/ or infuriating consumers. On one side is HD-DVD, on the other Blu-ray. Both promise startling quality. But they are incompatible and both risk going down to defeat in 2007 if the public still balks over buying new machines to play them. ...
— TOP TITLES —
• • • Franchise Collection: MAE WEST: Among many individual artists honoured this year with DVD collections, one of my faves is the box set devoted to one of the brassiest stars in Hollywood history. Among the titles is My Little Chickadee, her 1940 romp with irascible W.C. Fields.
• • Source: The Calgary Sun [Canada] - - www.calgarysun.com/
• • Byline: Bruce Kirkland
• • Published on: 30 December 2006
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Illustration: Mae West • • W.C. Fields • • 1940 • •
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Mae West: Gay Mainstay

In December, the newspaper Chicago Sun-Times offered its front page to its Controversy section with a piece titled “Decoding Icons”; the columnist gave a backward glance to various gay and lesbian cultural heroes. MAE WEST was included in this pantheon.
• • According to the essay, older gay men often take Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, and Barbra Streisand as personal representatives of the men’s own struggles: All these females had been judged by limited standards.
• • On the distaff side, lesbians see their own icons as powerful, though not necessarily butch — such as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, fantasyland's Xena, and tennis pro Martina Navratilova.
• • The scribe pointed out the obvious - - that the very nature of icons may shift and that gays want to be respected now, not just tolerated.
• • Additionally, outspoken people - - such as UK author Oscar Wilde - - are now joining the ranks of entertainers such as MAE WEST, Cher, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, Madonna, and Joan Crawford. ...
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: Mae West • • on trial for writing "Pleasure Man" • • 1928 • •
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Mae West: Keep Abreast

MAE WEST, who did more for corsets than Alexander Graham Bell did for gossip, wore foundations made by the Spirella Corset Company — — upside down. Mae custom-tailored the restrictive undergarment to give her a certain look for her starring role as "Diamond Lil."
• • A Bushwick neighbor, interviewed in 1928, commented that, when onstage at Broadway's Royale Theatre, Mae padded her bust to balance out her curvy hips. "She looked like an upholstered egg cup up-ended," recalled this Brooklynite.
• • A belle at the turn-of-the-century, such as Lillian Russell, would not have been wearing Spirella's labels, of course. It was not until 1904 that Spirella started making their made-to-measure corsets. Spirella’s first corsets were produced that year in America — — and by 1910 in Great Britain. In those days, bustiers were made by experienced specialty seamstresses who could operate the heavy-duty "industrial strength" sewing machines necessary to tackle the heavy brocades and coutils.
• • For her stage play "The Constant Sinner," Mae wanted a more modern look and she was outfitted by the Mayo Undergarment Company in 1929. The setting for Mae's character Babe Gordon was Harlem during the Prohibition Era.
• • This week, an article in The Comet asks readers: Can you tie up a corset company’s loose ends? Here is some information for the studious breast-historians out there.
• • Question: Did you work for the Spirella Corset Company in Letchworth [Great Britain]?
• • If you did, then a company supplying foundations and underwear for films, television, and theatre would like to speak to you.
• • Button-Boot and Spatterdash of Humberside is appealing for anyone with memories of the company, people who worked for Spirella Corset Company or used its service, in order to make a record of the information.
• • Dr. Geoffrey Duffield, senior partner at the company, said any information is welcomed, no matter how trivial, and stressed the importance of retaining the information while it was still in living memory.
• • His company can be contacted by letter, Freepost, Brigg, DN20 9BR; email corsetiere@corset.ndo.co.uk; phone 07973 222 767 or fax 01652 650651.
• • Spirella - - formed in England in 1910 by William Wallace Kincaid - - moved into the Spirella Building in 1920 and continued production of bespoke corsets until the 1970s when demand slowed and eventually the company closed.
• • The building was also known as Castle Corset or the Factory of Beauty.
• • The SCC was extremely important to the town's economy as one of the biggest and most influential employers, particularly during the 1920s to 1940s, said Terry Gray, public relations manager of Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation.
• • Around 2,000 people are said to have been employed there.
• • Among its customers, the company provided underwear for such film stars as MAE WEST and the Marx Brothers' staple Margaret Dumont. . . . [Spirella's claims that they outfitted Marilyn Monroe for the film "The Prince and the Showgirl" are inaccurate. Monroe did not wear this brand.]
• • As well as supplying corsets, Spirella manufactured parachutes and decoding machinery during World War II.
• • Send comments to Dr. Geoffrey Duffield: corsetiere@corset.ndo.co.uk
• • Source for portions of this text: The Comet, UK — — www.thecomet.net/
• • Published: 28 December 2006
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • • • 1928 • •
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Mae West.