Mae West: Honolulu Glow

MAE WEST is a character in a rollicking new project afoot in Honolulu. Maybe she'll sing her wonderful "Hula Lou," a tune by Jack Yellen and Milton Ager.
• • According to Brian Lee Sackett, Producing Artistic Director of Kaua‘i Repertory Theatre Company, they will offer a complimentary concert reading of “Hawaii’s Comic History,” a 90-minute comedy that will feature over five dozen historical figures performed by three actors. These characters include President Obama, who was born in Honolulu, along with Mae West, The Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, FDR, Don Ho, Elvis ["Blue Hawaii"] Presley, the goddess Pele, Queen Lili‘uokalani, Ozzie and Harriet, Bob Fosse, Gilligan, Captain Cook, and a boatload of notable names. The characters will offer an entertaining trip through 1,700 years of Hawaiian history. A formal production of this musical comedy will be staged this coming autumn. Reservations required.
• • WHEN: Wednesday evening, 8 June 2011 at 6:30.
• • WHERE: Aston Aloha Beach Hotel in the Historic Ali‘i Theater.
• • Mae West's Hawaiian Eyes • •
• • During her marriage to handsome Guido Deiro — — a popular accordionist also in demand as a recording artist — — Mae became aware of the financial rainbows that brightened the lives of the top singers and musicians. But as her own career prospects continued to sink during 1923 and 1924, and since no record companies pursued her, Mae gamely trouped on and continued to entertain the southwestern wheel of the vaudeville circuit — — trying to sell sheet music with her picture on the front cover. Which swings the conversation around to "Hula Lou."
• • Holy Honolulu! Not for Mae the gooey romantic yearning numbers such as "My Hawaiian Melody" nor "Honolulu Eyes." Nor would she have ever chosen a lightweight love ballad such as "Honolulu Honey" nor a harmless hula tempo such as "Hawaiian Sandman." The girl had gumption and looked for lyrics suitable for a flirt, a self-confident seductress who could put across a sultry kootch onstage. Could any chart-topper be as suitable for the singing comedienne as this come-hither bragging and posing?
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • The date was 8 June 1979. Vincent Canby, then the film critic of The New York Times, pursed his lips and gave "Sextette" starring Mae West a sound spanking.
• • Vincent Canby wrote: The story, based on a play written some years ago by Miss West, is about a world-famous movie star and her attempts to consummate her sixth marriage to Sir Michael Barrington (Timothy Dalton) despite repeated interruptions by former husbands, lovers, dress designers, secret agents, publicity people and delegates attending an international peace conference just upstairs. It's a plot that Miss West has often favored, and it freely reprises a lot of lines from earlier pictures. The movie was directed by Ken Hughes ("The Small World of Sammy Lee," "Cromwell," and so on), a fellow you might think had better things to do than to prop up the Tower of Pisa. In addition to Mr. Dalton, "Sextette" features a number of other people who, in happier circumstances, are decent actors. These include Tony Curtis, George Hamilton, Ringo Starr, George Raft, and the incomparable Dom DeLuise. There are some original songs and some old ones, a couple of which sound as if they'd been lip-synched by Miss West to old recordings . . . .
• • Source: Film Review, The N.Y. Times; published on 8 June 1979
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 1955th blog post. Unlike many blogs, which draw upon reprinted content from a newspaper or a magazine and/ or summaries, links, or photos, the mainstay of this blog is its fresh material focused on the life and career of Mae West, herself an American original.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1924 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Milton Ager

It was during the autumn of 1924 that MAE WEST attached herself to the subversive song sheet for "Big Boy," a run-away hit by the lyricist Jack Yellen [1892 — 1991] and the composer Milton Ager. "Big Boy," with explicit lyrics about a darktown sheik who drives both pale and brown-skinned women wild in bed, was offered first by Advanced Music Corp., and then republished by Ager-Yellen-Bernstein Music Company on a song sheet disguised with artwork depicting a jaunty white male.
• • On 17 April 1924 "Big Boy" was copyrighted by Ager and his frequent collaborator Yellen. It was picked up soon after and recorded by Scott Black's Hot Horns and also Bix Beiderbecke [1903 — 1931]. Perhaps it was a record or live performance that attracted Mae's attention.
• • Born in Chicago, Milton Ager [6 October 1893 — 6 May 1979] was a self-taught composer and pianist. After holding a few jobs as an accompanist to silent movies, he moved to New York to write music for vaudevillians.
• • in 1927, Mae's former boyfriend Joe Schenck (half of the variety act known as Van and Schenck) starred in a short film focused on Gus and Joe's singing and comedy bits. In this footage, they performed Ager's music: "Hard-To-Get Gertie" and "She Knows Her Onions."
• • In 1920, "I'm Nobody's Baby" became Milton Ager's first pop hit. Many chart-toppers followed such as "Hard Hearted Hannah (The Vamp Of Savannah)" [1924], "Ain't She Sweet" [1927], and "Happy Days Are Here Again" [1929].
• • Backed by big successes, Ager moved to Hollywood and earned his bread by writing songs for the silver screen. Ager was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1979.
• • Milton Ager was 85 when he died in Los Angeles in May — — on 6 May 1979. He was interred there in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • Jack Black and Angelina Jolie, promoting a laughable animated feature "Kung Fu Panda 2," gave this cutesy-poo interview to USA Today. Scott Bowles writes: Jack Black's ears perk up as Angelina Jolie talks about her early auditions for voice-over work. Jolie says she was so nervous about getting jobs that she brought dozens of zany voices she plucked from thin air, including a crude Mae West imitation.
• • "You mean like, 'Come up and see me sometime?' " Black asks in a husky breath.
• • "That sounds more like Bogart doing Mae West," Jolie says. ...
• • Source: Article: "Jolie, Black perfect for 'Kung Fu Panda 2'" written by Scott Bowles for USA Today; posted on 5 May 2011
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 1922nd blog post. Unlike many blogs, which draw upon reprinted content from a newspaper or a magazine and/ or summaries, links, or photos, the mainstay of this blog is its fresh material focused on the life and career of Mae West, herself an American original.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1923 • •
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Mae West: Twelve Men

It was during 1924 that MAE WEST attached herself to the subversive song "Big Boy," a run-away hit by the lyricist Jack Yellen [1892 — 1991] and the composer Milton Ager [1893 — 1979]. "Big Boy," with explicit lyrics about a darktown sheik who drives both pale and brown-skinned women wild in bed, was offered by Advanced Music Corp. on a song sheet disguised with artwork depicting a jaunty white male.
• • On 17 April 1924 "Big Boy" was copyrighted by Ager, Yellen, & Bornstein, Inc., 1595 Broadway, New York City. By the time the Wolverines recorded this number a few months later (in October 1924), it had already become a runaway chart-topper.
• • Born in Poland on 6 July 1892, Jack Selig Yellen was a year older than Mae. At five years old, little Jackie emigrated with his parents to the United States; he was raised in Buffalo, New York and started to write songs in high school.
• • Jack Yellen [6 July 1892 — 17 April 1991] is best remembered for his collaboration with composer Milton Ager. In 1924, Mae appeared on their song sheet for "Hula Lou"; so did Sophie Tucker and other singers. Jack Yellen also worked with the composers Harold Arlen and Sammy Fain. [Sammy Fain created a number of songs Mae performed while under contract for Paramount Pictures such as "He's a Bad Man" and "Now I'm a Lady," part of the "Goin' to Town" soundtrack.]
• • Jack Yellen was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 1996. After enjoying a full life with many career high points, he died in Concord, New York, aged 98, during the month of April — — on 17 April 1991.
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • The "Pleasure Man" trial, and the fear of being remanded to jail, took its toll on Mae West. These suspenseful events are dramatized in the play "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets." In Act 2, Texas Guinan tries to joke about it: "How can twelve men hold you, Mae, when one never could?" But faced with imprisonment again, Mae is not taking it lightly. And though she often did put a good face on it in public, candid photographs of the actress-playwright solemnly entering the revolving door at the Criminal Courts Building show her on the verge of tears. After much expense, and the best efforts of her well-connected lawyer Nathan Burkan, the case was officially closed by a letter sent to the New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt that included signatures of all the members of the jury. The jurors were not in favor of cases involving theatrical censorship being elevated to the level of criminal judicial proceedings.
• • Their letter emphasized this point: "The failure to agree tends to demonstrate that censorship of plays by criminal litigation is not the most effective and reliable means of assuring to the play-going public of New York that no play will be presented that tends to corrupt the morals of the young. Our disagreement tends to demonstrate the unreliability, if not the futility of criminal litigation as a means of censoring plays. The impracticality of faithfully portraying by court testimony the performance as it was actually presented onstage with all the gestures, actions, expressions, intonation of voice, and accuracy of dialogue, tends strongly to defeat the conviction of the guilty by a criminal court procedure. ..."
• • Source: Article: "Jury Sends Letter to the Governor" excerpted in The New York Times; printed in the newspaper on 16 April 1930.
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 1902nd blog post. Unlike many blogs, which draw upon reprinted content from a newspaper or a magazine and/ or summaries, links, or photos, the mainstay of this blog is its fresh material focused on the life and career of Mae West, herself an American original.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Mae West: Big Boy

For her cleverness alone, MAE WEST deserves to be number one, applauds Daily Venus Diva [or DVD] in an annotated feature "Movies Starring Plus Size Women" posted for their online readership on 29 October 2010.
• • Discussing "She Done Him Wrong," DVD heartily appreciates the movie queen: "Mae West, the original zaftig superstar, stole the show in this early talkie that she adapted from a racy hit play she had written called Diamond Lil" — — and the editors also salute a number of generously upholstered screen stars. Read more at dailyvenusdiva.com about curvy cuties.
• • Big Girls and a Big Boy • •
• • It was during October 1924 that Mae West attached herself to the subversive song sheet for "Big Boy," a run-away hit by the lyricist Jack Yellen [1892 — 1991] and the composer Milton Ager who was born in October [6 October 1893], a few months after Mae. "Big Boy," with explicit lyrics about a darktown sheik who drives both pale and brown-skinned women wild in bed, was offered by Advanced Music Corp. on a song sheet disguised with artwork depicting a jaunty white male.
• • When the Wolverines recorded "Big Boy" in October 1924, this number had already become hugely popular.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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Mae West.