Mae West: Dressing Table

The artist who helped create the cover for the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — — the icon album front-side that featured MAE WEST — — is having an exhibition of additional works inspired by The Empress of Sex.
• • Once based in London (while married to the painter Peter Blake), and now a resident of Sundance, Utah, Jann Haworth returned to England two years ago for a gallery show at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in December 2009. This week Ms. Haworth will give a talk that's billed as "Mae West Dressing Table." This is supposed to include work from the museum's collection.
• • When: 11:30 AM on Wednesday, 26 October 2011
• • Where: Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.
• • On 24 October 1935 • •
• • Mae West's pal Texas Guinan got on the wrong side of Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as "Dutch Schultz" [6 August 1902 — 24 October 1935], the NYC-born mobster slaughtered at age 33 by a rival's gunmen in The Garden State. Briefly, during the late 1920s, all three were regularly in the same premises on West 54th and Seventh Avenue. Bad feelings began to brew and dangerous Dutch was actively pursuing Texas Guinan for awhile (until she died after a performance in Vancouver, Canada in November 1933).
• • Gunned down: The Calabrian immigrant Albert Anastasia was ordered to arrange Schultz's assassination and assigned Jewish mobster Louis Buchalter to take care of it. At 10:15 PM on 23 October 1935, Schultz was shot at the Palace Chophouse at 12 East Park Street in Newark, New Jersey, an eatery that he was using as his new headquarters. Two bodyguards and Schultz's accountant were also killed. Schultz was in the men's room when he was shot.
• • Extreme Unction: Before Schultz was taken into surgery, he received Last Rites from a Roman Catholic priest at his request. Schultz lingered for 22 hours, speaking in various states of lucidity with his wife, mother, a priest, policemen, and hospital staff, before dying of peritonitis. The career criminal was only 33.
• • On 24 October 1942 • •
• • Short-tempered policemen, court officers, and judges were not some of the Brooklyn bombshell's favorite folks. But James C. Morton had been cast as all of them during his long silver screen career. In his modest role as an 1890s bartender, James C. Morton had appeared with Mae in "Every Day's a Holiday" [released in the USA on 18 December 1937]
• • Born in Helena, Montana on 25 August 1884, the balding character actor often worked for Hal Roach and, typically, he was the the butt of shenanigans by such comics as The Little Rascals, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, The Three Stooges. As Mae did, he had worked with W.C. Fields.
• • James C. Morton died in Reseda, California in the month of October — — on 24 October 1942. He was 58 years old.
• • In October, Let's Remember John Kenley [1906 — 2009] • •
• • Fifty Years Ago: In 1961, the Kenley Players featured Mae West in a play billed as "Sex-Tette" and staged in Warren, Ohio. That happened half-a-century ago.
• • John's group, the Kenley Players, was a summer stock circuit that had its beginnings in 1957 in Dayton, Ohio. Over time, this theatre company would feature a galaxy of stars: Mae West, Arthur Godfrey, Ethel Merman, Burt Reynolds, Billy Crystal, Gypsy Rose Lee, Tommy Tune, William Shatner, and Robert Goulet.
• • According to The New York Times, John Kenley was born John Kremchek in Denver on 20 February 1906. His parents were saloon keepers who later moved the family to Cleveland. In the 1920s he made his way to New York, hoping to break into show business.
• • The vibrant Midwestern impresario was celebrated for his producing clout, casting coups, and a passion for live entertainment that brought pleasure and glamor to hundreds of thousands of hard-working coal miners and Ohio residents.
• • John Kenley died at the Cleveland Clinic from complications of pneumonia in the month of October — — on 23 October 2009. He was 103.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "I don't like myself — — I'm crazy about myself."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A book chapter on another actress mentioned Mae West.
• • Brian Kellow writes: Tired of having her achievements overlooked, Ethel got a little testy with the Hollywood press when it was suggested that her performing style owed something to Mae West's. Although they occupied different floors of the Ravenswood, West had not been particularly friendly, and Ethel got even by telling reporters that it was she who had started the Mae West vogue, not the other way around. "I was singing 'Eadie Was a Lady' all dressed up with the wiggly hips an' everything before Mae West's first picture, Night After Night, came out," Ethel said, ". . . so I shall always claim Mae sailed to glory on my vogue." In fact, West's style was fully evolved by the time of her big stage successes of the 1920s, long before she hit Hollywood. But Ethel's rewriting of history was a good indication of her defensiveness over her treatment in Hollywood. ...
• • Source: Biography: "Ethel Merman: A Life" written by Brian Kellow (Chapter 5)
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2093rd 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: Wolverhampton

The artist who helped create the cover for the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — — which featured MAE WEST — — is having an exhibition of additional works inspired by The Empress of Sex.
• • Once based in London (while married to the painter Peter Blake), and now a resident of Sundance, Utah, Jann Haworth has a show currently at Wolverhampton Art Gallery — — her first in the UK since 1972. On display are her creations from back in the 1960s as well as more recent work.
• • According to British-based Terry Grimley, her father’s work in Hollywood must have been a direct influence on Haworth, as was the 1960s taste for old-fashioned glamour, often characterised as kitsch. These threads (literally) come together in pieces like Mae West Dressing Table (1965) and the triple portrait relief of Mae West, Shirley Temple and W C Fields (1967). ...
• • Grimley writes: Actually there is not always a great deal that immediately distinguishes the early work from the latest. Jann Haworth’s figures and objects are stitched together from a range of materials including canvas, kapok, and vinyl, and the introduction to the exhibition makes much of the feminine character of her materials and techniques. Her Cowboy from 1963-64 — — a life-size figure in white, leaning against the wall with his hat pulled down over his eyes — — is about as realistic and life-like as her figures get. When the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi saw it he suggested she cast it in bronze, but she preferred to stick to “a female language to which the male students didn’t have access.” Haworth has described the domestic media adopted by some female artists as having a “B-movie” relationship to the traditional media of fine art. ...
• • The full title of Grimley's art review is below to help you find out more about the exhibit in England at Wolverhampton Art Gallery until 10 April 2010.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Birmingham Art: Jann Hawarth's unique view of the world at Wolverhampton Art Gallery"
• • BY: Terry Grimley | Life & Leisure columnist
• • Published by: The Birmingham Post — — www.birminghampost.net
• • Published on: 24 December 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Salt Lake City

If it were not for Jann Haworth, MAE WEST would not have been on a Beatles album cover. The Fab Four chose no women but the clever American-born designer selected a few notable females. Now the artist-seamstress-sculptress is back in the spotlight in Salt Lake City.
• • Julie Checkoway interviewed the "Mom of Pop Culture" for The Salt Lake Tribune recently.
• • Julie Checkoway writes: Jann Haworth might be uncomfortable with critics using the term "domestic" to describe her art, yet gender is undoubtedly a key force in her aesthetic.
• • In a coffeehouse in downtown Salt Lake City, the artist recalls the moment when she first realized how to make her way " 'round the boys' club." After all, she said, "I knew I couldn't go through it."
• • One day in 1962, Haworth was in London "riding the No. 33 bus past Harrods" when she spotted in the window a sleeveless, ruffle-collared pink dress made of artificial silk.
• • "It was arch-feminine," she says now with a laugh over a cup of cappuccino. The dress was made of something Haworth, an excellent seamstress, knew more about than any male artist of her acquaintance: fabric. And in spying it, Haworth saw her artistic life unroll before her like yardage off an enormous colorful bolt of cloth.
• • Right then, she says, "I just knew what I was going to do next and next and next and next."
• • Soft sculpture: Next was an entirely new genre of art work termed "soft sculpture," three-dimensional pieces composed not of bronze or steel but of thread, cotton, wool, fur, and even vinyl.
• • Haworth, who had been raised in Hollywood, was inspired by the pop-culture icons of her youth. She sewed cloth doughnuts covered with fur, teacups of cotton and life-size stuffed figures of Mae West, Shirley Temple, and W.C. Fields.
• • Most significant, she flew in the face of traditional images of femininity by choosing as her signature piece an old woman slumped in a rocking chair, knees covered with an afghan — — a figure that would recur in her work throughout her life. ...
• • "POP PLASTIQUES" will be exhibited in the fourth-floor gallery of the Main Library, 210 E. 400 South, Salt Lake City, from Saturday to July 26. Jann Haworth will be the library's artist-in- residence June 16-20, and will hold workshops on June 17, 19 and 21 for 9- to 15-year-old artists. Info: 801-524-8200.
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Byline: Julie Checkoway
• • Published in: The Salt Lake Tribune
• • Published on: 31 May 2008
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West: Jann Haworth

Perhaps Jann Haworth was inspired to create her collage of MAE WEST, W.C. Fields, and Shirley Temple after working on the male-dominated album cover for The Beatles.
• • Clearly, we must thank Jann Haworth [born in 1942 in Hollywood] and Peter Blake [born in 1932 in the UK] for any female figures that appeared on the iconic "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967.
• • Jann Haworth, Peter Blake's American wife and an artist in her own right confirmed: "To be perfectly honest, Peter and I chose about 60 percent of what's there because they didn't come up with enough. So we're to blame for some of the inequalities that were there. But having said that, the Beatles chose no women. The only women chosen were by Peter and I."
• • During 1967, Jann's father, the Oscar-winning art director and production designer Ted Haworth [1917—1993], was in London, working on the film "Half a Sixpence." When she visited him on the movie set, he advised her not to make a background piece for the album. He thought the idea was too Hollywood and too expensive for the budget. Consequently, Jann Haworth selected a simple blue paper for the sky and used black-and-white cut-out photographs for the heads and bodies.
• • The three-dimensional artist created an intriguing mixed media piece the same year fashioned out of fabric, wood, and plastic.
• • White-gloved Mae West makes an unlikely (and disinterested looking) mother to the moppet that dances on her lap: a white-socked Shirley Temple. Similarly white-gloved, W.C Fields looks stiff and sullen in his commanding paterfamilias pose. The piece is 50 inches high, 31 inches wide, and over 4 inches deep. The Mayor Gallery said that this work is still available for sale.
• • The Mayor Gallery: 22A Cork Street; London, W1S 3NA [UK].
• • Jann Haworth currently resides in the USA [in Sundance, Utah].
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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