Mae West: September Seance

A few years ago, two different seances were held for MAE WEST in Manhattan. One took place in 2005 on her birthday, when a female medium attached to Lily Dale had officiated. Several months later, for an episode of the TV series "Dead Famous," a longer seance was arranged (in the same eastside location) and a male medium was in charge. Dramatist LindaAnn Loschiavo, whose stage play "Courting Mae West" will be seen in January 2012 in Melbourne, Australia, organized and attended both.
• • On 15 September 2011 a rather rowdy seance will be led by psychic Char Margolis, who will be trying to tap the high-kicking spirits of the celebrity souls who once enjoyed ice cream sundaes, parfaits, macaroons, apple pie a la mode, and banana splits at Serendipity. Located a kiss stop away from Bloomingdale's, Serendipity has had a lot of A-list diners over the the past 57 years including Mae West, Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Dennis Hopper, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Andy Warhol, Jackie O, and many more. On site will be a signed contract by Mae West along with numerous personal items and autographed photos from these individuals (and other stars) to help act as a conduit to contact the dearly departed.
• • According to the owner, Mae West dined in his restaurant in June 1970 when her film "Myra Breckinridge" opened in NYC. She was escorted by a gentleman, very likely Paul Novak. Apprehensive about flying, "Mae's 1970 trip to the East Coast was only the second time the Brooklyn bombshell had been on an airplane," remarked Mae maven Damon Devine. She preferred train travel or booking a steamship passage instead whenever long distance transportation was required.
• • Founded in 1954, the landmark NYC restaurant [225 East 60th Street, NYC] has offered forkfuls of juicy celebrity gossip ever since a columnist spotted Cary Grant with Grace Kelly, who were ensconced in a booth on a romantic rendezvous, explained the owner Stephen Bruce. September 15th's channeling begins at 11:00 AM New York City time.
• • On 15 September 1937 • •
• • It was 15 September 1937 when newsstands in the Midwest carried this headline: "Michigan Sprint Star Plays Bit in Mae West Film." The reference was to the athlete Sam Stoller [1915 — 1985] who was born in Cincinnati. After winning the 100-yard championship, Sam Stoller announced that he intended to pursue a career as "a crooner Movie Star" and, subsequently, became known as "Singin' Sammy Stoller." Screen comedian Joe E. Brown was instrumental in getting Stoller bit parts in several 1937 motion pictures along with registration with the Screen Actors Guild. Stoller's first part was in a crowd scene at the legendary New York cafe Rector's in Mae West's "Every Day's a Holiday," when he was 22 years old.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said this: "Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A journalist in India mentioned Mae West in a recent column.
• • Writing for the publication Hindu Business Line, Mohan R. Lavi leads off with a quote from Mae West: The American actress Mae West once remarked “I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.” Succumbing to, or resisting such weaknesses, may now be chargeable to service tax, since the draft paper on a negative list of services issued by the Government includes a clause “obligation to refrain from an act, or to tolerate an act or a situation, or to do an act” under the definition of service. ...
• • Source: Article: "Negative list for service tax" written by Mohan R. Lavi for Hindu Business Line; posted on 12 September 2011
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2054th 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/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1937 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Smart Blondes

Born a brunette in Brooklyn, MAE WEST slowly migrated to the silver screen's more desirable honey hues (during an era when motion pictures were shot in black and white). Have you ever noticed that the Empress of Sex has not been dumped into the same unflattering "dumb blonde" category where Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield wound up?
• • Reporter Jojo Moyes writes: There is a glowing list of movie stars who have not exactly had to struggle against the dictates of their hair colour: Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, and Grace Kelly to name a few. I’d quite enjoy the spectacle of watching someone trying to tell Dame Helen Mirren that she was seen as lightweight. And I would venture that Meryl Streep’s blondeness has been an irrelevance to her stellar career. She is celebrated for what she is: a smart, talented, actress who has made wise choices. ...
• • Letters about being blonde can be sent to dtletters@telegraph.co.uk (for The Daily Telegraph).
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "What's up, blondie? Mariella Frostrup claims that blondes are subject to Fifties-style sexism. But Jojo Moyes argues it’s what you do with your hue that counts."
• • By: Jojo Moyes
• • Published on: 18 August 2010
• • Published in: The Daily Telegraph — — www.telegraph.co.uk
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: A Revered It Girl

The timeless beauty of MAE WEST was the only eye-worthy topic that threaded its way through an otherwise ho-hum heard-it-before interview with a NYC-born Brit "it girl" who is supposedly "revered" among the trendy consumers who devour the Bible of bone-thin (aka Vogue). Revered! Wow! What a hallmark of exceptional humanity.
• • Jessica Hogan explains her awe of this sublime creature: Revered for her enviable style, actress and model Sienna Miller [birthdate: 28 December 1981] is also a big hit in the beauty world and is the face of the uplifting BOSS Orange Woman fragrance. VOGUE.COM caught up with Sienna during a break in her schedule to talk through her best beauty tips, favourite famous faces, and must-have holiday essentials.
• • Jessica Hogan asks: Who are your beauty icons?
• • Sienna Miller replies: Mae West, Bridget [sic] Bardot, Grace Kelly, and Marlene Dietrich — — they are all timeless beauties.
• • Fortunately, Mae West has an easy name because the twits at Vogue.com do not know how to spell a terribly difficult French name such as Brigitte Bardot. Tch-tch.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Bristol Stomp

The British actor MAE WEST put on the map in her motion picture classic "She Done Him Wrong" [1933] was encountered at a football match in his hometown 50 years ago.
• • Born in Bristol, England, Archibald Alec Leach [18 January 1904 — 29 November 1986] was better known by his stage name Cary Grant.
• • David Foot described his encounter with the Hollywood leading man at a stadium called Ashton Gate.
• • Sharing his "brush with fame" with readers of the UK newspaper The London Guardian, Foot reminisced at length.
• • David Foot writes: Meeting the Hollywood star at Bristol City was an overwhelming experience. It has always seemed to me that one appealing reason for going to a football match, apart from dutifully watching the play, is that we never quite know who we are going to meet. Half a century ago, yes really that long, I had a fleeting unscheduled half-time encounter at Ashton Gate, home of Bristol City, with Cary Grant. He'd been invited by the club's then chairman Harry Dolman, who had an opportunistic and civilized habit of asking celebrities — — proper ones in those days — — along on a spare Saturday afternoon to view his warriors.
• • Youthful Indiscretions and a Mentally Ill Mum • •
• • Archie Leach's allegiance to Bristol was unquestioned. He had been born in the city, had gone to a local grammar school, from where he had been expelled for a minor and hushed-up felony committed near the girls' toilets, and now continued to return to the West Country from the world of glamorous celluloid to visit his mother, Elsie, who had a history of mental illness.
• • But, in truth, he had no more than a passing schoolboy's cigarette-card regard for football and it could be argued that his home had been nearer to the Rovers ground than City's. When he left school he was more seduced by the backstage smells and bustle at the Hippodrome and Empire, where he joined an acting troupe and did a stint as call-boy, than wanting to kick a ball with his chums on Horfield Common.
• • Here he was now, however, passing me on the cold, uncarpeted steps leading up to the boardroom. His appearance was impossibly elegant. He should have had Grace Kelly on his arm. I felt I should say something at this seminal moment. Cary Grant had always been a distant hero of mine. My old sports editor and mentor on my evening paper in Bristol had once been the lift boy and he was used to taking the famous film star up to the editorial floor for an interview or new picture from the roof of the Northcliffe building. And he would be asked by his handsome charge how City and Rovers were doing, even if no more than a duty-bound inquiry.
• • Now passing him on the steps at Ashton Gate, I noticed how well proportioned he was. City's physio, if only they had one with that title in those days, wouldn't have had to work too strenuously on central defender Grant. In my fledgling days on a paper, which I found bubbling with youthful zest despite declining circulation, we were encouraged to save our employer's money by being versatile.
• • What DO you say to Cary Grant? • •
• • Apart from recording Big John Atyeo's mountainous goal tally, we were asked to be always on the look‑out for contributions to the gossip column. Here, in my consternation as I confronted an idol, was surely the chance to take Bristol City's too often rather dowdy deeds on to another human plain. A snatched supposedly esoteric word from me maybe about Mae West, Mary Pickford, or Jean Harlow? Hints of Dyan Cannon as a future wife No4? Even a mischievous throwaway about Cary's shared company with Randolph Scott?
• • But all I mumbled self-consciously was: "Not a bad game so far, is it?" Hardly a conversational pearl. I've no idea how he responded to such banality. . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "How Cary Grant Made Me Fluff My Lines at Ashton Gate"
• • Byline: By David Foot
• • Published in: Guardian News & Media 2008 — — in the UK
• • Published on: 25 May 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1932 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: West End

Edith Head is one of several fashion costumers who whipped up wicked fashions for screen queen MAE WEST.
• • Soon to be opening in London's West End (and how appropriate) is the one-woman show "A Conversation With Edith Head" written by and starring Susan Claassen, who received her inspiration from a TV bio-pic about Edith Head.
• • The Oscar-winning designing woman Edith Head [28 October 1897 — 24 October 1981] once told an interviewer that "Mae West taught me everything I know about sex, clothes-wise." Claassen, as her alter-ego Head, will be dishing her Hollywood dirt at the West End’s Arts Theatre this month. Previews begin 29 July. The run is scheduled from 31 July to 30 August 2008.
• • Certainly Edith Head would have a lot to talk about since she spent six decades in Tinseltown. Over 40 years were at Paramount Pictures, where Edith Head dressed Mae West, Clara Bow, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, and others.
• • Arts Theatre: 6-7 Great Newport Street, West End, Greater London WC2H 7JB.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Edith Head's design for Mae • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Venus de Milo

MAE WEST's measurements inspired both admiration and frustration, reveals a new book on Hollywood's costume design.
• • Hollywood's leading ladies may get the best lines, but their scene-stealing outfits are the ones to watch, explains Bronwyn Cosgrave in The Age.
• • Bronwyn Cosgrave writes: THERE IS A "FIFTH character" in Sex and the City: The Movie — — the costumes for Carrie Bradshaw and her trio of well-heeled friends, Charlotte York Goldenblatt, Miranda Hobbes and Samantha Jones. Shaping this fifth character required "strategising and finessing and negotiating", akin to wooing an A-list Hollywood star to sign a film deal, says the film's star, Sarah Jessica Parker. . . .
• • By the golden age of the ' 30s, every "big five" studio, including Paramount, MGM and Warner Bros, ran sophisticated wardrobe departments presided over by highly skilled designers. Paramount's Travis Banton cut costumes from the finest textiles, including tweeds from Linton, the knitwear manufacturer in the Scottish Borders used by Chanel. He bought embellishments such as bugle beads and sequins from the Paris supplier that Elsa Schiaparelli patronized, and altered the work of the famed surrealist couturier when in 1937 she was enlisted to design for Mae West for the comedy Every Day's a Holiday. West failed to report to Schiaparelli's Place Vendome atelier and instead sent it a Venus de Milo bust that was meant to replicate her shapely proportions. It didn't quite work out that way — — the statue was evidently a little more modest in size and Schiaparelli's intricate handiwork sat too close on buxom West.
• • Hollywood became a fashion capital as major studios reproduced affordable variations of screen costumes and the most iconic became department-store bestsellers. They included a fluffy Gilbert Adrian gown Joan Crawford modelled in 1932's Letty Lynton, Walter Plunkett's Vivien Leigh antebellum-inspired frocks from 1939 blockbuster Gone with the Wind and a strapless Edith Head number Elizabeth Taylor displayed in A Place in the Sun from 1951.
• • Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, Deborah Nadoolman Landis' recently published coffee-table tome, presents myriad Hollywood looks that have influenced generations of fashion designers and movie goers over time, including the body-hugging, strapless satin gown Columbia's Jean Louis created to enhance curvaceous Rita Hayworth's seductive number in Gilda, Taylor's bejewelled decadence and Grace Kelly's glacial glamour, as well as Theadora Van Runkle's late-'60s handiwork for Faye Dunaway. . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: A star is worn
• • Written by: Bronwyn Cosgrave
• • Published in: The Age — — www.theage.com.au/
• • Published on: 17 May 2008
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Head for Fashion

MAE WEST influenced Hollywood's wardrobe wiz Edith Head [born 28 October 1897 – – died 24 October 1981], whose impressive screen career earned her 34 Academy Awards nominations. "Mae taught me all I know about sex," quipped the gown guru, "clothes-wise." Head won an Oscar eight times – – all for helping MAE WEST and others don their gay apparel for memorable scenes in big-budget movies.
• • How many fans knew what Mae's costumes looked like in COLOR?
• • As costume designer at Paramount Pictures, Edith Head took on a side chore: the custodian of a score of costumes that had been sentimentally preserved because they contributed to movie history.
• • In November 1960, an article in The New York Times discussed the final appearance of these glamourous gowns. "I'm only managing to hold them together with emergency sewing now. This will be about their last time out," said Edith Head. The collection, referred to as a "million dollar" affair, included Mae West's emerald green, jewel-encrusted come-up-and-see-me-sometime gown from "She Done Him Wrong," Texas Guinan and Clara Bow outfits, and Ginger Rogers's mink dress from "Lady in the Dark." . . . [excerpt, N.Y. Times 29 November 1960]
• • Co-starring Cary Grant as a Salvation Army Officer, "She Done Him Wrong" was the only Mae West film that was considered for an Academy Award. Nominated for "Best Picture" in 1933, it lost out to the winner: "Cavalcade." [The trophy-winning motion picture dramatized a cavalcade of English life from New Year's Eve 1899 until 1933 seen through the eyes of well-to-do Londoners Jane and Robert Marryot.] For her portrayal of the wealthy Mrs. Marryot, actress Diana Wynyard received a "Best Actress" nomination but did not go home with the statuette.
• • The Oscar – – that should have gone to Mae West – – was awarded that year to Claudette Colbert, another headliner dressed from time to time by Edith Head. Colbert may have won over the Academy but she never captured the admiration of Ms. Head, who barely concealed her dislike.
• • In contrast, this designing woman had enormous affection for Mae West and other glamour girls such as Barbara Stanwyck and Grace Kelly.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's friend • • designing woman Edith Head • •
NYC
Mae West.