Mae West: Rudolphe Daus

When she was not living in Brooklyn or Queens with her parents, MAE WEST enjoyed staying in hotels in the theatre district, which offered very convenient housing to a busy actress who would work in a show sometimes until 11 PM or midnight. After renting for years, she did purchase a townhouse rippling with French Renaissance style at 266 West End Avenue in Manhattan. Mae West occupied the house (between 72nd and 73rd Street) for a time with her sister, Beverly, who is listed there in a 1933 directory.
• • Built in 1896 with a limestone facade, the former Mae West home is 28 feet wide and six stories tall with nearly 14,000 square feet (generously designed with windows on all sides). The house was originally constructed for the importer Julius N. Jaros and designed by 42-year-old Rudolphe Daus, a prominent architect who worked in New York City. The Jaros family occupied it from 1896 —1906 only. The property remained a single-family dwelling until the early (or mid) 1940s.
• • Born in Mexico in 1854, Rudolphe Daus was edu­ca­ted in Berlin and in the United Sta­tes. He gra­dua­ted from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He de­si­gned the Hall of Re­cords, 13th Re­gi­ment Ar­mory, and Ger­man Hos­pi­tal in Brook­lyn, and the Church of Our Lady of Lour­des in New York. [One of Mae's childhood residences was a block away from the German hospital.] Daus was Se­cretary of the Com­mis­sion of 1898, an official group that framed the buil­ding laws of New York City; additionally, from 1899 — 1900 he was Sur­veyor of Buil­dings for Brook­lyn. He was a fel­low of the Ame­ri­can In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects and a mem­ber of the So­ciety of Beaux-Arts Ar­chi­tects, the At­lan­tic Yacht Club, and the Brook­lyn In­sti­tute of Arts and Sci­en­ces.
• • Rudolphe Daus died in Paris in mid-October — — on 16 October 1916. He was 62 years old.
• • On 16 October 1939 • •
• • Mae West and W. C. Fields signed legal paperwork for "My Little Chickadee" when they were collaborating. Both signatures appear on a Universal Films contract dated 16 October 1939.
• • On 16 October 1989 • •
• • A studio call for actors was printed in a Florida newspaper on 16 October 1959.
• • Writing for the Orlando Sentinel, business reporter Susan G. Strother announced: Mae West, Charlie Chaplin, and Clark Gable — — are you out there? If so, Universal Studios Florida is interested. The studio theme park is looking for actors to fill the roles of 20 or so characters who would roam the Orlando park and entertain guests. Universal plans to hold auditions later this month, though a site has not been selected. In addition to Mae West, Charlie and Clark, shoes the studio wants to fill are for the likes of Bette Davis, James Cagney, Kojak and Humphrey Bogart. ...
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • An article in an Australian paper mentioned Mae West.
• • Melanie Ball writes: I set out at an enthusiastic clip on the first day of a 145-kilometre walk between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Naturaliste in Western Australia's south-west and I'm tending towards Mae West's contrary observation: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." . . .
• • Source: Article: "The Cape crusader" written by Melanie Ball for The Brisbane Times; posted on 15 October 2011
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2085th 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 • • 1930 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
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Mae West: Flo Bert

In "The Mimic World of 1921" MAE WEST was cast as Flo Bert — — and the actor-singer Cliff Edwards was cast as Flo's husband El Brendel.
• • Born in Pennsylvania in the month of December, Flo Bert [2 December 1898 — 8 April 1981] was a popular white vaudeville headliner, touring both as a solo act and in partnership with her husband, the Swedish-dialect comedian El Brendel [1890 — 1964].
• • The team began playing the lesser New York–area vaudeville houses around 1918.
• • By the mid-1920s, these married vaudevillians were a featured act at Manhattan's Hippodrome on Sixth Avenue as well as on many other stages in the legit. They also appeared in the New York productions of "Cinderella on Broadway: A Fantasy of the Great White Way" at the Winter Garden [1920] and in "The Mimic World of 1921" at the Century Promenade near Central Park. Alas, the Internet Broadway db misspelt the actress's name as "Flo Burt."
• • Together, Flo and Elmer made one Vitaphone short in 1929.
• • Flo Bert played a showgirl in the motion picture "I'm from Arkansas" (1944).
• • Flo Bert resurfaced again in the 1950s with small character roles in such films as "Laffing Time" and "The She-Creature."
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1921 • •
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Mae West: Guinan's Gone

MAE WEST was shocked to learn that her friend Texas Guinan died on 5 November 1933.
• • In 1928 — — while chatting with reporter Sidney Skolsky — — Texas Guinan joked, "I want my funeral to be the speediest ever given. A cop on a motorcycle is to lead it."
• • Tommy Guinan went to Vancouver to sign the papers and accompany his sister home.
• • Twelve thousand turned out for a final viewing. Show business buddies filled Frank Campbell's Funeral Chapel — — then located on Broadway and West 66th Street in New York, NY — — with large floral tributes. Movie cameras recorded it all.
• • The New York Herald Tribune noted: "She was a master showman, and accomplished psychologist. . . . She had ability, too — — and would have been successful in any one of a dozen more conventional fields. To New York and the rest of the country Texas was a flaming leader of a period which was a lot of fun while it lasted. . . ."
• • Born on 12 January 1884 in Waco, Texas, she was only 49 years old when her life came to an end. Texas Guinan often said: "I would rather have a square inch of New York than all the rest of the world." Non omnis moriar.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1933 funeral • •
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Mae West: Gay City News

Gay City News reminds us that "Summer's Fresh Fruit Has Ripened" — — and Mae West will be back on Broadway on 11 July 2008.
• • The Sixth Annual Fresh Fruit Festival of queer arts is back and runs July 11-27 at venues throughout Manhattan. The festival includes both themed-evenings and shows, highlights of which follow:
• • THEMED EVENINGS • •
• • THE CAVALCADE OF FRUITS: A preview and post-view of the festival featuring comedian Kelli Dunham, jazz vocalist Nhojj, Rome Neal, and scenes from Chip Deffaa's musical comedy "Theater Boy" and LindaAnn Loschiavo's "Courting Mae West."
• • 11 July 2008 — — 7:30 p.m.; Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Center, 1972 Broadway at 66th St. Free.
• • SHOWS • •
• • All shows are presented at Kaufman Theater at the Algonquin Theater Company, 123 E 24th St., btwn. Park Ave. So. & Lexington Ave. Tickets are available at http://www.theatermania.com or 212-352-3101.

• • COURTING MAE WEST: SEX, CENSORSHIP AND SECRETS: Written by LindaAnn Loschiavo and directed by Louis Lopardi, this show is based on true events that happened in New York City between 1926 and 1932, when "Verdi worthy-villains" rose up against the tough talking, liberal minded actress/ playwright Mae West. Fighting for the freedom to talk about sex in the Prohibition era, Mae West faces off with her critics. July 19th — 22nd. Tickets are $18.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Summer's Fresh Fruit Has Ripened"
• • Published in: Gay City News — — www.gaycitynews.com/
• • Published on: 10 July 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • "COURTING MAE WEST" opens at 6 o'clock on Saturday night July 19, 2008 at the Algonquin Theatre [East 24th Street and Park Avenue South].
• • "COURTING MAE WEST" — — showtimes
• • July 19th, 2008 — — 6:00 PM
• • July 20th, 2008 — — 2:00 PM matinee
• • July 21st, 2008 — — 6:00 PM
• • July 22nd, 2008 — — 9:00 PM
• • Tickets to "COURTING MAE WEST" are $18 per adult.
• • Theatermania.com sells the tickets — — http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/144297
• • Questions? Phone 212-779-3051.
• • The play is 95 minutes.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae West, Texas Guinan, and the gang onstage in mid-July 2008.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Courting Mae West logo • •
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Mae West: Captive audience

MAE WEST was arrested on 9 February 1927 along with the cast of "Sex" and the cast of "The Captive."
• • Snooty Basil Rathbone, who died in July [on 21 July 1967 in New York, NY], was cuffed and brought downtown to Jefferson Market Police Court along with Helen Menken and their co-stars.
• • Born in South Africa on 13 June 1892, Basil Rathbone was one year older than Mae West — — but in his mind, he was worlds apart even though they were both starring on Broadway in 1927.
• • During the 1920s, most of Basil Rathbone's work was in the legitimate theater. For many of his Broadway roles he portrayed a suave, sophisticated seducer of women — — quite a change from the legendary ascetic Baker Street detective he would play later in his career.
• • Making a sensation at the Empire Theatre [on Broadway and West 40th Street] was a drama that had been highly regarded in Paris: "The Captive." Basil Rathbone was cast in the role of Jacques Virieu, a young man engaged to be married, only to discover that his fiancée [played by Helen Menken] is in love with someone else — — a woman. Since homosexuality was such a controversial topic during the Roaring Twenties, the entire cast was charged with offending public morals, and the play was closed.
• • Basil Rathbone was very angry about the censorship of his work, but even more aggrieved that show people would start whispering that he was arrested and booked — — with Mae West.
• • For years, Basil Rathbone and his wife made their home at 135 Central Park West. Mae lived in several westside locations, occasionally not far from Rathbone. But there is no record of their taking tea together to reminisce over their arrest on indecency charges in 1927.
• • Brush up on your Mae West lines right on Broadway on Friday evening 11 July 2008 when the cast of "Courting Mae West" gives a free performance at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble at 7:30 PM. Visit B&N, 1972 Broadway at West 66th Street.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West's arresting drama cohort • • Basil Rathbone • •
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Mae West: 11 July 2008

Pole-vaulted out of the ghetto of the clubby entertainment section, MAE WEST suddenly became notoriously noteworthy in national news headlines on 2 February 1927.
• • On Tuesday February 1st at 5:00 AM, the Brooklyn bombshell was arrested along with her sister and the director Edward Elsner in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
• • According to The New York Times, Edwin [sic] Elsner of New York, stage director of "The Drag," which opened here last night, and Miss Beverly West of New York, sister of Mae West, author of the play, were arrested at 5:30 o'clock this morning in Miss West's room at the Arcade Hotel and will be arraigned in the City Court on Wednesday on technical charges of breach of the peace.
• • The police allege misconduct, but both Elsner and Miss West deny there was any wrongdoing, explaining that they were in the room going over the events of the opening night and possible changes in the play.
• • Elsner, known for his work in staging "Within the Law," "Bought and Paid For," "Pygmalion," "Sex," and other plays, was released under bond of $250, as was Miss West, after spending several hours locked up at Police Headquarters following a ride from the hotel in the police patrol wagon. . . .
• • The arrest at the Arcade Hotel is dramatized in the play "Courting Mae West." Beverly's drunken antics and Mae's strategies are featured in Act I, Scene 2.
• • What did director Edward Elsner look like? During July 2008, he will look like Neal Sims, the actor who will portray him — — kitted out in a snazzy Gatsby-esque smoking jacket and this mauve and hot pink World War I "trench veteran's" fez. There will be a free performance of the spirited Arcade Hotel scene at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble — — 1972 Broadway, New York, NY 10023 — — at 7:30 PM.
• • Mae and Beverly West will be portrayed by Yvonne Sayers and Kimberly Tuttle. The angry hotel guests will be portrayed by Eileen Glenn and Steven Viola.
• • Interestingly, the bookshop is three blocks away from Daly's 63rd Street Theatre where Edward Elsner was directing Mae West in "Sex" from 1926 — 1927.
• • Still in the same place is the old Arcade Hotel — 1001 Main St, Bridgeport, CT 06604; Tel 203- 333-9376. Wonder if they remember which room was Elsner's on 1 February 1927 and which room belonged to Mae West.
• • "COURTING MAE WEST" opens at 6 o'clock on Saturday night July 19, 2008 at the Algonquin Theatre [East 24th Street and Park Avenue South].
• • "COURTING MAE WEST" — — showtimes
• • July 19th, 2008 — — 6:00 PM
• • July 20th, 2008 — — 2:00 PM matinee
• • July 21st, 2008 — — 6:00 PM
• • July 22nd, 2008 — — 9:00 PM
• • Tickets to "COURTING MAE WEST" are $18 per adult.
• • Theatermania.com sells the tickets — — http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/144297
• • Questions? Phone 212-779-3051.
• • The play is 95 minutes.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae West, Texas Guinan, and the gang onstage in mid-July 2008.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • news clip 1927 • •
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Mae West: Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center's branch of Barnes & Noble Booksellers has invited MAE WEST to come up and see them.
• • On Friday evening 11 July 2008 — — by a special invitation from B&N — — a portion of the play "Courting Mae West" will be performed FREE for book-buyers and browsers at the Lincoln Triangle branch at 7:30 PM.
• • A private Reception will follow for invited guests of the playwright and the director at a nearby restaurant.
• • Details will follow.
• • Barnes & Noble Booksellers [1972 Broadway, New York, NY 10023] is located on the northeast corner of Broadway and West 66th Street, near the 66th Street stop of the 1 subway line.
• • Interestingly, the bookshop is not far from where Daly's 63rd Street Theatre was located. And once again it can be said that Mae West is right back where she always wanted to be — — on Broadway.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1926 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Moral Turpitude

Moral turpitude is back in the news — — but this time MAE WEST had passed the scepter.
• • The New York Times, in an article called "What Moral Turpitude Looks Like" [30 March 2008], was citing a U.S. Customs spokeswoman's objections when she refused to admit "the infamously debauched writer Sebastian Horsley" to this country, citing concerns of "moral turpitude." Apparently, the Englishman celebrated his past arrests in Britain for drug possession and prostitution in his book Dandy in the Underworld [NY: Harper Perennial]. Modeling a custom-made stovepipe, Horsley posed at home for The Times opposite a row of skulls.
• • Of the dramatic black Lincoln-esque headgear, Sebastian Horsley admitted, "It makes me almost pointlessly tall." But the dandy summed it up: "Dandyism, you know, you do it for yourself, but it requires a reaction or it wouldn't exist."
• • No doubt Mae West would have agreed. When writing her plays, she was counting on a certain reaction — — and without it "Sex" would not have gone so far.
• • In April 1926, Mae West opened in "Sex," which Variety described as a "nasty red-light district show." That must have been good for some advance ticket sales.
• • During the 1920s, there was an ongoing debate about what was morally acceptable in the public venue of theater and who was responsible to arbitrate that question. This was hardly a new question in the entertainment world; theater had long been considered a cauldron of unabashed and unacceptable moral turpitude.
• • Here's what some critics said about "Sex" at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre in New York City.
• • The cheapest, most vulgar, low "show" to have dared to open in New York this year — — Billboard
• • "Sex" wins high marks for depravity, dullness — — Herald Tribune
• • "Sex" is a crude drama — — The New York Times
• • "Sex" an offensive play, a monstrosity plucked from the garbage can — — New York Daily Mirror
• • Fumigation needed — — Milwaukee Sentinel
• • A sink of moral turpitude — — Variety
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1926 • •
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Courting Mae West - July 2008

• • The event's board of directors met and approved the director's pitch — — and the compelling history play "COURTING MAE WEST" has cleared the first hurdle to be onstage this summer during their annual early July festival in a theatre in Manhattan.
• • The Fresh Fruit Festival offers over 30 live acts. Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets is one of the two plays they will produce. The 95-minute serious-minded comedy will be shown FOUR times onstage [in a theatre with approximately 80 seats].
• • Details and ticket prices will be posted when available.
• • After the 9 February 1927 performance of "SEX," Mae was hauled off to Jefferson Market Police Court on Sixth Avenue, where she spent the night locked up in Jefferson Market Jail with streetwalkers, pickpockets, and drug addicts.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Illustration: Michael DiMotta • • Mae West star of SEX • • 1927 • •
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Mae West: Sex - - Act III

"MAE WEST herself, not to be outdone by Sadie Thompson, kissed hither and yon with abandoned passion," reported the New York American [27 April 1926], reviewing the play "Sex" [then onstage at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre in New York City]. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Broadway blockbuster "Rain" also had featured military men in the plot. Early advertisements for "Sex" promised the play was "more sensational than 'Rain'!"
• • The following year, during the obscenity trial, Mae famously quipped, "People want dirt in their plays, so I give 'em dirt."
• • What Mae West never admitted to publicly, though, was the anger and resentment that motivated her to write certain scenes, such as this explosive exchange. It wasn't selling yourself that irked Mae; it was selling yourself short. And clearly Brooklyn-born Mae chafed when scrutinized by society's high hats such as Connecticut-bred Clara Stanton.
• • Listen in on ACT III, Scene 1 of SEX:
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
CLARA: I'll not listen.

MARGY: Oh, yes you will. You've got the kind of stuff in you that makes women of my type. If our positions were changed — — you in my place, and I in yours — — I'd be willing to bet that I'd make a better wife and mother than you are. Yeah, and I'll bet without this beautiful home, without money, and without any restrictions, you'd be worse than I have ever been.

CLARA: No, no — —

MARGY: Yes you would. You'd do it and like it.

CLARA: For God's sake stop it, I can't endure any more — —

MARGY: Now you're down off your pedestal. You're down where you can see — — it's just a matter of circumstances. The only difference between us is that you could afford to give it away.

• • Dialogue between Margy LaMont, a prostitute, and Clara Stanton, a wealthy woman, from Mae West's play Sex, a Comedy Drama, 1926 [NY: Routledge, 1997].
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West in SEX • • 1926 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Happy New Year

May you have an a-MAE-zing year ahead!
• • Mae West rang in her banner New York year, 1928, with a one-night stand, hosting a nightclub, a la Texas Guinan, at Club Deauville — — then located at Park Avenue and East 59th Street [the night of December 31, 1927 — January 1, 1928].
• • During the Prohibition Era, Mae West had bought a townhouse for herself — — at 266 West End Avenue — — shortly before she moved to Hollywood. She lived there with her sister Beverly, whose Russian husband had divorced her over a scandal related to the out-of-town premiere [Bridgeport, Connecticut] of Mae's gay play "The Drag." There was an arrest at the Arcade Hotel and Beverly West along with director Edward Elsner were charged with "disorderly conduct" [i.e., being drunk]. The police action made headlines. Uh-oh!
• • A happier topic would be Mae's old haunts — — the neighborhood known as the Upper West Side [stretching roughly from West 61st to West 76th Street]. This is the single-most-star-studded area in Manhattan, according to the "Star Sleuth" Larry "Wolfe" Horwitz. Within this neighborhood is an area that Larry Horwitz has labeled a Star Walk: a ten-block strip along Central Park West that contains "the greatest concentration of movie stars and other celebrities anywhere in the world," according to him.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • circa 1930 • •
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Mae West: Sex or Albatross

The Bay Area Reporter expressed their appreciation for MAE WEST, and applauded the revival of her play "Sex," now onstage at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, California.
• • Alas, no one told the paper's Arts Desk that Mae West, writing as Jane Mast, originally titled her daring manuscipt "The Albatross" in 1926 [i.e., 81 years ago]. Well, news in New York can take awhile to reach the other coast. "Following the Fleet" was the play that Jim Timony purchased for Mae and her collaborator to revise. The ladies thoroughly reworked J. J. Byrne's maritime narrative to put a full-frontal focus on the femme. Leave it to the Brooklyn bombshell to whitewash the plot of seamen and emphasize the semen in the story of Margie LaMont in Montreal.
• • Anyway, let's hear from the Castro district's news man and theatre maven Richard Dodds, who wrote this article (below):
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Margie of the red-light district;
• • Mae West's 'Sex' appeals at the Aurora Theatre

• • If Mae West had not changed the title of her play to "Sex" at the last minute, would we be talking about "Follow the Fleet" today? Maybe, because whatever the title, it was a racy affair for Broadway in 1926, and the legend that West became would warrant revisiting her early efforts at establishing that legacy. But let's face it, Sex, as a title, is about as succinct, specific, and eye-catching as you can get — — whether it's 1926 or 2007.
• • "We're having so much fun here talking about Sex workshops and Sex rehearsals, and getting a choreographer for Sex, " said Aurora Theatre's Artistic Director Tom Ross. "I'm telling people I'm preoccupied with Sex right now."
• • That preoccupation, to continue the word-play, will climax on November 6th [2007] when Sex opens at the Aurora, the small Berkeley theater that usually has a more serious bent. "This is an entertainment," Tom Ross said of his production. "I don't have to preach about the apocalypse in every play we do here."
• • Mae West wrote Sex under the pen name Jane Mast, and the role of Margie LaMont gave the 32-year-old performer her first starring role on Broadway. Margie is a prostitute working in Montreal's red-light district with a steady clientele and a tough attitude. Ready to break from her unscrupulous pimp, she takes the advice of a British naval officer to "follow the fleet," and she sets up business in Trinidad, where she meets a young blueblood from the States unaware of her background. He proposes marriage, then takes Margie to the family estate to meet his high-society folks — where many, many complications ensue.
• • The critics dismissed Sex when it opened on Broadway, but audiences came anyway for a chance to safely go slumming. It had already run for nearly a year when New York City officials shut it down [on 9 February 1927]. West herself spent eight days in prison for "public obscenity," and her plans to follow-up Sex with The Drag, a play about transvestites, were scuttled. Nevertheless, the publicity was priceless, and she wrote and starred in several more Broadway plays, including Diamond Lil, which became She Done Him Wrong and turned her into a major Hollywood star in 1933.
• • Sex, the play, was largely forgotten. And then it was lost. It turned up again in the late 1990s, and the Hourglass Group offered its first New York production in more than 70 years. Ross recalls reading the reviews, getting excited about presenting it locally, and then letting the notion drift away.
• • It was rekindled about a year ago when he talked to Aurora colleague Monica Stufft about her in-progress UC Berkeley thesis on showgirls of the 1920s. "I looked at the play again," Ross said, "and I thought, 'This is really fun, but it's really creaky.' So we decided to put a little workshop together to see how it sounded. One of the brilliant things that happened was, Delia MacDougall was here auditioning for something else, and I gave her a copy of the script. I didn't know then that she was a big Mae West fan."
• • MacDougall is one the Bay Area's busier and more versatile actresses, having worked at most of the major theaters, and helped found Word for Word and Campo Santo. Before Sex, she was playing Goneril in King Lear at Cal Shakes, and after Sex, she's headed to Marin Theatre Company for a role in said Said, a play about torture and terrorism. Playing Margie LaMont sounds like a lark for MacDougall, but it is more than that.
• • "I was looking forward to doing A Christmas Carol at ACT again this year, which is a really fun show to do, and it's a really great paycheck," MacDougall said. "But then Tom handed me this script, and I felt like I only have so many years left to play this part. And it's sort of a love letter to my mother. She would have gotten a really big kick out it."
• • Growing up in Mountain View, a familiar mother-daughter outing was to a nearby revival moviehouse where a Mae West movie was one of the special treats. "I had a lot of brothers, and early on I was aware of the differences between the sexes, the unfairness that was happening in my own household," MacDougall said. "And then I saw this Mae West person, this creature, and I had never seen another woman with that kind of power. I didn't even know what sex was, but I knew she was holding onto something really powerful."

• • • • Mae West moves • • • •

• • When Sex opened on Broadway [at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre], the full-blown Mae West persona had not yet emerged. And so MacDougall is treading the line between playing a real character while giving it a Mae West spin. "I don't intend to do an impersonation, but I'm considering it an homage to Mae West," she said. "I don't quite have her build, but I'll do what I can physically because I just love the way she moves. I am still trying to figure out what a shimmy looks like."
• • In the original script, West had written in the opportunity to shimmy and sing a few tunes during her character's visit to a nightclub in Trinidad. "The play is an odd duck," Ross said, "in that it's a three-act play and the middle act is basically this big musical show. So I thought, why not do it as a mash-up, taking straight theater actors and mixing them up with musical-theater actors."
• • Ross has turned the three acts into two, and in addition to using the songs that are cited in the original script, he brought onboard pianist-composer Billy Philadelphia to create several new songs. "He's written an opening number that sets up the world of the show," Ross explained. "It's called 'Under the Red Light,' and it's about the hard life of a prostitute in Montreal."
• • The play was originally billed as a "comedy drama," and there are moments when West, as the playwright, raises social and sexual issues that were definitely bold for their times. Ross said he is trying to preserve the seriousness of those moments, while at other times acknowledging the plot contrivances and melodramatic twists. "We need to be winking at the audience at times," the director said.
• • The original Broadway cast of Sex used 17 actors, but Ross is making do with just six. "That's part of the fun, too," he said. "Everyone except Delia plays multiple roles, so we'll have quick changes that should be fun for the audience. It is for us. We're having a good time, and as long as we're having a good time, I think we'll end up with a good show."
• • Sex will run Nov. 2nd — Dec. 9th, 2007 at the Aurora Theatre. Tel: (510) 843-4822.
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— — Source: — —
• • Publication: Bay Area Reporter
• • Byline: Richard Dodds
• • Published on: 1 November 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1926 Program • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Regis Philbin

How many remember when Regis came up to see Mae West in "Sextette"?
• • Native New Yorker Regis Philbin was born in August — — on 25 August 1931. As with Mae West, Regis claims Irish descent on his father's side.
• • From 1975 to 1983, he co-hosted "A.M. Los Angeles," a local morning talk show in California on KABC-TV with female co-hosts. Supposedly, Philbin's participation boosted the ratings and it became a top-shelf show.
• • While he was based on the West Coast, he had a cameo, playing himself in Mae West's last film when he was 47 years old. "Sextette," a 1978 Crown International comedy/ musical motion picture starring Mae West, also looped in walk-on bits featuring Hollywood gossip-vixen Rona Barrett and Mae's former lover George Raft playing themselves.
• • Regis Philbin moved to New York City to do a locally-produced morning talk show, which became nationally syndicated in September 1988 as "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee." He has an apartment on West 67th Street not far from his show's TV studios.
• • Celebrating his 76th birthday this month, Regis Philbin — — TV-talk show host, game-show host, singer, author, and TV personality — — is still going strong on the small screen.
• • 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.