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An article mentioned MAE WEST — — and her relationship with "Handsome Hal" Clarendon.
• • In 1907, when Hal Clarendon accepted Mae into his Brooklyn stock company [incorporated by 15 April 1907 when Mae was 13 years old], it was because he "respected Mae's connections" to a handsome mobster who would be brutally gunned down by a crime boss five years later on West 43rd Street (just east of Broadway).
• • Church Socials Launched Mae West on Her Amazing Theatrical Career • •
• • Mae West, Filmland's Latest Idol, Looks Back to the Days She was a Little Imp • •
• • Note: Mae was 13 years old when she joined Hal Clarendon in 1907 — — though she tells the interviewer she was only 6.
• • Hal Clarendon, therefore, signed her to what film producers today would call "a long term contract," not as an intermission entertainer but as a full fledged member of his company. But don't think of little Mae, then six years old, as a cute, curly-headed, darling little child actress. She was just as different then from the average girl of her years.
• • He billed himself as "Handsome Hal" and Mae remembered him as something of a premium ham, an aging juvenile with a mane and a bass voice. He preferred the classics, but he used enough hokum to keep Brooklyn buying tickets.
• • Her first professional appearance took place with the Clarendon Stock Company at the Gotham Theatre in East New York. The young teen was the little daughter who cried out "Father, dear father, come home with me now," in "Ten Nights in a Bar Room."
• • As Little Eva she often took the piano-wire route to heaven in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," playing, as a matter of fact, a large repertoire of child roles in the good old days — "Little Lord Fauntleroy," "The Moonshiner's Daughter," "East Lynne" and "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch."
• • As a member of the stock company, when there were no child parts in the plays, she was called upon to take part in what are known in old-fashioned plays as "olios," or vaudeville acts in between the scenes of the plays. She sang popular songs and gave her imitations, being what was known on the billboards as a "coon shouter."
• • Mae's Own Description • •
• • Mae concedes that she was a willful, temperamental young spitfire. She got her own way or else. I was a brazen little imp, Mae reminisces, and could never keep out of trouble. My professional career almost came to an untimely end during the first week I went to work. Hal Clarendon was the idol of the neighborhood, and acted just about that way backstage. He had a rigid rule that nobody could enter his dressing room. He declared that would bring bad luck. One day Clarendon came back to the theater after a tough night out, and was taking a nap on a couch In his dressing room. I heard him snoring in there, making a racket. I sneaked into his room and, as he slept, I painted a red nose and mustache on his face with grease paint. You have never seen such a commotion as when he woke up. You'd think I had broken The Ten Commandments to hear the bawling out I got.
• • "A Way" Even Then • •
• • That even back then Mae seemed to have a way with men, and the temperamental Clarendon forgave her and Mae was permitted to remain with the troupe. . . .
• • Source: Article: "Church Socials Launched Mae West" rpt in Urbana Daily Courier; published on Saturday, 9 December 1933.
• • On Wednesday, 9 December 1936 • •
• • The Evening News printed an article about the legal proceedings between Mae West and her former husband Frank Wallace on 9 December 1936.
• • In December 1957 • •
• • In December 1957, Mae West announced she was working on her autobiography "Queen of Sex." The movie queen hinted that it would be full of stories about Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay. (Spoiler alert: it was not.)
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • The nickname for one popular breed was “bronze Mae West,” according to Modern Farmer, but the industry eventually agreed on calling them broad breasted bronze.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "I didn't want to tell Hal Clarendon I'd done this all just for old times. I hated to let anybody know I was that mushy."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • Deadline mentioned Mae West one year ago.
• • On Monday, 9 December 2013, Deadline reported that Bette Midler was slated to play Mae West for HBO.
• • HBO Films has put in development "Mae West," a movie about the Hollywood icon, with Bette Midler attached to star and executive produce. William Friedkin will direct and executive produce. ...
• • Source: Item in Deadline; published on Monday, 9 December 2013
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 10th anniversary • •
• • Thank
you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during this
past decade. Yesterday we entertained 1,430 visitors.
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3066th 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 • • in 1915 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC Mae West
The headline read "MAE WEST in Roads of Romance." There's a lot of interesting tidbits mixed up with the hokum. And Mae talks about playing the mother roles in popular tear-jerkers. See what you think.
• • Clark wrote: "I had always said I'd never do this kind of work for any man." In the good old summertime Handsome Hal Clarendon carted big theatrical trunks over to Brighton Beach to do their stuff.
• • Mae went along — —and with her came her beloved Mamma Mathilda, sister Bev and brother Jack. Pop rolled In whenever bouts and bouncings permitted, and the Wests again made quite a fine showing on the boardwalk. Mae, beside her cavortings on the stage, kicked up quite a commotion with her high dives and fancy strokes. Her bright-colored beach umbrella became a popular retreat for the husky young sheiks of the Brighton Beach arcades. Mae was thrilled to see her name stencilled in huge black letters on her hefty theatrical trunk. It stared down at her from a high-piled truckload of them, being trundled by a Red Cap to the train bound for Washington, D.C., where the Clarendon cohorts were to appear In repertory.
• • Mathilda West decided, at the last moment, to go along and see the sights, Mae being the biggest sight to her.
• • Washingtonians were properly wooed by Mae West In the role of the big-hearted, fiery, mothering lovey Mary of "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," with tiny Tommy and his pet duck. In her wake. "The Fatal Wedding" provided Mae with another tear-jerker as the Little Mother but she was Itching to cut the sob stuff and make 'em roll In the aisles and guffaw. . . .
• • Big Jack finally agreed that his daughter had the talents needed for vaudeville. The question was up for discussion, though he had hoped to see young Jack follow his own noble art like John L. Sullivan and Gentleman Jim Corbett — — the other two ring heroes of tho day, besides himself. Mathilda was enthusiastic about the decision that Beverly and Jack like Mae were to go on the stage. Her dreams were coming true.
• • See what happens Monday.
• • Source: Article "Roads of Romance" by Harry Lee and Winfield Meggs (illustrated with charming pen and ink drawings of Mae on page 31) in The Winnipeg Evening Tribune; published on Saturday, 26 May 1934.
• • On Sunday, 26 May 1889 • •
• • Another wedding in the Jacob Delker family; Delker was Mae's maternal grandfather. Matilda West's brother Carl Delker married Miss Mathilde Misdorn on Sunday, 26 May 1889.
• • Earlier that year Miss Matilda Delker had wed John West in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on Saturday, 19 January 1889.
• • On Wednesday, 26 May 1999 • •
• • Wednesday, 26 May 1999, TV viewers and Mae mavens were able to watch Intimate Portrait, Season 5, Episode 28: "Mae West." This was the original air date and it was shown on LIFE.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • "Goin' to Town," with Mae West, is held over at Keith's in Baltimore, Maryland.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "The wages of sin are sables and a film contract."
• • Mae West said: "Love means one thing to one person and something else to another. It's a more or less powerful emotion beyond ordinary human control. Try it yourself, sometime, and you'll get what I mean."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A Singapore paper mentioned Mae West.
• • The Straits Times wrote: The Girl with the Hour-glass figure that makes every second count! MAE WEST in 'BELLE of the NINETIES' — A Paramount Picture! At the CAPITOL Next Week.
• • Source: The Straits Times; published on Sunday, 26 May 1935
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started nine years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2921st 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 • • in 1932 and as a child actress • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC Mae West
When MAE WEST was writing her autobiography, she did not reveal much about her parents' carefully cultivated underworld connections. 
• • In truth, both Matilda and Jack West had on-gong dealings with gangsters, fixers, con men, murderers, bootleggers, thugs, and ward heelers — — shady associates who could also be helpful in furthering "Baby Mae's" vaudeville career. In 1907, when Hal Clarendon accepted Mae into his Brooklyn stock company [incorporated by 15 April 1907 when Mae was 13 years old], it was because he "respected Mae's connections" to a handsome mobster who would be brutally gunned down by a crime boss five years later on West 43rd Street (just east of Broadway).
• • Did Mae West's recollections surf the names of racketeers and other rough spots when she and friends were taking tea on North Rossmore? Did the actress reveal how much of her Bowery drama "Diamond Lil" [filmed as "She Done Him Wrong"] was inspired by the jailbirds and career criminals her Dad clubbed around with?
• • The blue-eyed writer-actress was already comfortable with convicts when she moved into shoot-out central, the mob-controlled hotel on West 54th Street where she wrote the play in 1927. Persistent efforts to kill Legs Diamond were afoot when Mae was in residence, a few floors above Texas Guinan's speakeasy in the cellar.
• • On August 16th you can walk in the footsteps of two of the 1920s "gaudy gals" — — Texas Guinan and Mae West — — and win special prizes. Discover the shady secrets as well as the glamourous highlights shared by two energetic risk-takers who partied with gin, guns, gangsters, and sinners when they weren't busy onstage.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's pal Texas Guinan • • December 1928 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
On 10 July 1927, The New York Times announced that MAE WEST had written a new play, "The Wicked Age."
• • During her imprisonment in the Women's Workhouse, Mae had claimed she was thinking about corruption — — and how a system of institutionalized corruption affected women. She felt she could set forth her ideas effectively in a play about the dirty politics of beauty pageants.
• • During the entire summer of 1927, Mae was revising and reworking the manuscript, which was set in Bridgetown [Cumberland County], New Jersey. 
• • Mae's character was the beautiful and willful Evelyn "Babe" Carson. To keep the production on a tight budget, Mae hired a lot of no-name talent, former vaudevillians looking for work, and her aging mentor Hal Clarendon to play her uncle/ guardian Robert Carson.
• • During the 1920s, a common real estate ploy to increase land values and publicize the area was the community sponsored beauty contest. In "The Wicked Age," the shady, money-grubbing politicians who run Bridgetown decide to stage a leg show despite negative public opinion about such an enterprise. One landowner insists: "The basis of any industry . . . for success today is based on the exploitation of the female form." The influential rascal Alec Ferguson shouts down objections: "Which plays get over and make money for their producers? Those that try to uplift the public and teach it better ways of living — — don't make me laugh — — those plays go over that exhibit the women's body in some way or another."
• • Robert Carson is one of many who will protest that the competition to be the first "Miss Bridgetown" will degrade females, since it forces half-undressed young ladies to be paraded "on exhibition like prize cattle."
• • The usual suspects financed Mae's play — — Jim Timony, Owney Madden, et al. For over two months, Mae burned up the investors' funding with on-going revisions and frantically long rehearsing.
• • The incomplete and somewhat inaccurate Internet Broadway Database [IBD] notes that the Carson clan was played by these actors:
• • Mae West — — Evelyn "Babe" Carson
• • Hal Clarendon — — Robert Carson
• • Augusta Perry — — Mrs. Martha Carson
• • Doris Haslett — — Ruth Carson
• • Ruth Hunter — — Gloria Carson
• • However, in the play, Gloria is neither a Carson nor a relative; she is actually Babe's best friend who is murdered.
• • Yet other sources indicate that vaudevillian Marjorie Main, born on 24 February 1890 in Indiana, was really the actress who played the role of Martha Carson, Mae's mother — — despite Marjorie's being only three years older. Perhaps silent film actress Augusta Perry had taken the Martha Carson role on opening night or she was credited for a performance from which the IDB records were compiled. Marjorie Main's name could have been mentioned in the publicity leading up to the premiere; maybe she was rehearsing until her ungovernable fear of germs got the better of her.
• • In the autumn, "The Wicked Age" opened at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre [debut: 4 November 1927]. Critics sneezed at the enterprise.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • Augusta Perry played Babe Carson's mother in 1927 • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
