Mae West: Supreme Court

MAE WEST told the court they couldn't put anything over her — — including an umbrella.
• • It was November 1936 when Supreme Court Justice Joseph M. Callahan ordered Frank Wallace to supply further information concerning his alleged life with the buxom actress. Callahan gave Wallace, who sought a judgment declaring him to be Miss West's husband, until 27 November 1936 to serve and file an affidavit saying: Whether the plaintiff claimed he and the defendant actually lived together as husband and wife in the state of New York since 1911 . . . and, if so, to specify the times and places where such residences occurred.
• • The justice's order for additional information resulted from Miss West's refusal to appear in the New York court which, she said, had no jurisdiction over her.
• • In November, Let's Remember Eugene O'Neill [1888 — 1953] • •
• • At a time when City Hall was monitoring "dirt plays" and policing the ever present threat of theatrical innovations, both Eugene O'Neill and Mae West aroused the finger shakers in the New York City mayor's office. Joab Banton, N.Y.'s District Attorney, was especially severe on both playwrights. "Desire under the Elms" [produced in 1924] really got Banton's knickers in a knot. This drama was "too thoroughly bad to be purified by blue pen," said Banton.
• • Eugene O'Neill was born in New York, NY on 16 October 1888 and introduced to the theatre world via the Provincetown Playhouse during the 1920s. The Pulitzer-winning "Beyond the Horizon" [published in 1920] was O'Neill's first important play.
• • Though Mae found O'Neill's outlook depressing, she was well aware of his enormous popularity and made sure to go and see his plays. In 1922, she rehearsed the song "Eugene O'Neill, You've Put a Curse on Broadway" for "Ginger Box Review."
• • "Mae West was better suited to writing gritty realism than Eugene O'Neill," explains Frank Cullen in the book "Vaudeville, Old and New" [2007].
• • It was during the eleventh month that the prize-winning dramatist died — — on 27 November 1953. He was 65 years old.
• • On 27 November 1932 in Hollywood • •
• • Jon Tuska, writing about "She Done Him Wrong," notes that production commenced on 27 November 1932, and concluded in December of that year.
• • 27 November 2007 • •
• • Released by the U.K. publisher St. Martin's Griffin on 27 November 2007 was "Mae West: It Ain't No Sin" by the biographer Simon Louvish. The paperback edition had 491 pages.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "I don't read. Never have and guess I never will. I write in my books what I learned myself, from life."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A review of "The Heat's On" mentioned that Mae West was "nearly crowded out."
• • The N.Y. Times noted: Even so, the sumptuous siren — — and Victor Moore and William Gaxton, as well — — is nearly crowded out of her own picture by a series of dull production numbers. Miss West, you see, is the turbulent musical comedy star caught in the intrigues of two rival crooked producers, and the plot has been used as little more than an excuse to place Hazel Scott, Xavier Cugat and some lesser folk through their paces — — none of which are particularly startling. ...
• • Source: Film Review written by T.S. for The N.Y. Times; published on 26 November 1943
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2128th 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 • • 1936 • •
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Mae West: Queen of the Third Sex

Many people think of MAE WEST as a movie queen. But she was also a writer who worked hard honing her witticisms and comic comebacks. The Brooklyn bombshell discussed her habits with Dick Cavett on "Backlot USA" [1976], revealing that she did not know how to type and she always wrote longhand in bed. Mae also confessed that, since she knew the censors would want to red pencil her manuscripts, she would deliberately put extra material in.
• • In preparation for the walking tour at 3:00 pm on Sunday, 14 August 2011, here's some background on Mae's battles with the purity police during her Broadway career in the 1920s. Instead of pursuing gun-toting bootleggers, City Hall kept the city safe and sanitized by jailing individuals like Mae and some lesbian novelists (like Eve Addams), and also giving O'Neill legal grief over minutiae such as Sunday performances of his plays. Dramatist and resident of "Bohemia" LindaAnn Loschiavo has prepared this look back in time.
• • The artwork, drawn by Michael Di Motta, is taken from his preliminary sketches for The Courting Mae West Comic Book.
• • • • "Mae West in Bohemia — — Gin, Sin, Censorship, and Eugene O'Neill" • • • •
• • The Jazz Age in Greenwich Village might seem like one big party. In spite of the weighty Eighteenth Amendment, which enacted the Prohibition Era in the USA on 16 January 1919, speakeasies were all the rage. The “pansy craze” made drag balls a hot ticket not only for gays but also heterosexuals. And more publishers were renting storefronts in Washington Square and printing left-wing journals, radical essays, little magazines, and controversial plays.
• • Despite the appearance of a free-wheeling society, censorship was ever present. The Catholic Church found a champion in New York’s Gov. Alfred E. Smith [elected governor in 1922, 1924, and 1926]. And The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV or SSV), founded in 1873 by Anthony Comstock, was a leading force in banning books by James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, and lodging complaints about “dirt” plays on Broadway. [After his death in 1915, Comstock was succeeded by John S. Sumner, who headed the NYSSV until 1950.]
• • • • MAE WEST & CENSORSHIP • • • •
• • In February 1927 Mae was arrested and jailed shortly after her gay play The Drag had a midnight performance on 31 January 1927. Her play Sex (which had been doing good box office at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre for 10 months) was raided and padlocked. After a jury found her guilty, she served a short sentence in the Women’s Workhouse in April 1927.
• • In October 1928, Mae was arrested again when her gay play Pleasure Man opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway. Though her well-connected lawyer Nathan Burkan kept her out of jail, the trial in 1930 bankrupted her.
• • • • EUGENE O’NEILL & CENSORSHIP • • • •
• • Throughout his career, Eugene G. O'Neill faced protests and efforts at censorship over material that some found objectionable and scandalous — — or immoral such as The Hairy Ape in 1922.
• • May 15, 1924 After a newspaper noted a "white Actress to kiss Negro's hand" in O'Neill's play All God's Chillun Got Wings [starring Paul Robeson], a member of the Salvation Army and the Society for the Suppression of Vice called for the production to cease. During rehearsal, the Provincetown Players got threatening letters from the Ku Klux Klan. Under a bomb threat, the play opened with a large police presence at the Provincetown Playhouse [15 May 1924]. The Mayor’s office showed their disapproval, too. The directors of the theater had applied for a permit to use a group of children in the first scene and the permit had been refused, no explanation being offered.
• • With its depiction of a passionate relationship between a young man and his stepmother, O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms outraged New York District Attorney Joab Banton after it opened on Broadway in 1924. Banton had also targeted other productions at the time. . . . But Desire, he said, was "too thoroughly bad to be purified by blue pen," and he threatened to convene a grand jury if the play was not shut down. After the producer refused, Banton created a citizen jury to evaluate the morality of Broadway productions. Upon seeing Desire, the play jury reached a verdict that it was not obscene, and the show went on. O'Neill bemoaned the final result. "We got a large audience, but of the wrong kind of people," O’Neill said. "They came for dirt and found it in everything.”
• • • • Greenwich Village's "queen of the third sex" • • • •
• • Eva Kotchever, a Jewish Polish emigre, took the name Eve Addams and proclaimed herself to be "queen of the third sex." At Eve's Hang-out on MacDougal St., social activities included poetry readings, salons, and discussions focused on sexual topics. A few newspapers raised an alarm about this cafe "where ladies prefer each other" and a sign on her door that announced MEN ARE ADMITTED BUT NOT WELCOME. Tipped off, an under-cover policewoman stopped by, and began to drop in and flirt with Eve, who shared some of her writing with the newcomer, a book titled Lesbian Love. The police raided the premises in June 1926. Charged with obscenity, Eve was sent to the Women’s Workhouse, then deported at the end of the year.
• • Mae West & Eugene O'Neill: Off-beat Links • •
• • Eugene O'Neill loved to watch boxing as much as Mae West did. Anyone who went to take in the fights at Madison Square Garden during the 1920s or early 1930s might have spotted Gene or Mae in a good seat. Of course the Brooklynite had an advantage here in that she could also date the prizefighters after the bout.
• • On Sunday afternoon, 14 August 2011 • •
• • "Mae West in Bohemia — — Gin, Sin, Censorship, and Eugene O'Neill"
• • Mae West's birthday is August 17th. Join us at 3:00 pm on Sunday afternoon, 14 August 2011. The title of this illustrated historical theme walk is "Mae West in Bohemia — — Gin, Sin, Censorship, and Eugene O'Neill." Rare vintage illustrations will show you how the buildings and blocks looked as these two theatre people saw them.
• • Where: This illustrated walking tour begins at 62 West Ninth Street, NYC (near Sixth Avenue). Join us and take a walk on the wild side this weekend on August 14th.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West told this to a reporter (but maybe it was said tongue-in-cheek): "Right now I think censorship is necessary. The things they're doing and saying in films right now just shouldn't be allowed. There's no dignity anymore and I think that's very important."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • Celia Walden writes: Mr. Chow had pulled off every restaurateur’s dream: transposing a restaurant and its atmosphere from one city to another. Not that the idiosyncrasies of the Sixties Brit Pack could rival this lot. Chow can still remember Mae West being given a standing ovation for finishing her meal and scrawling “for food that’s best, ask Mae West” in the visitor’s book. ...
• • Source: Interview: "Mr. Chow — — How the world's starriest restaurateur turned feeding the famous into an art" written by Celia Walden for The Telegraph (UK); posted on Monday, 08 August 2011
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2017th 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 • • 1927 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Wicked

MAE WEST could not have been thrilled during November 1927. The New York Times planted a bitter raspberry with their review of her latest play (published on Saturday the 5th of November 1927). Written by Mae West, age 34, and her long-time collaborator, the production opened on Friday evening 4 November 1927 — — and lasted for merely nineteen performances. Mae West appeared in a bathing suit, a sight which brought out the spite and malice in her longtime detractors. In other words, this project was a turkey that never made it as far as Thanksgiving.
• • "THE WICKED AGE" TAME — —
• • Mae West Wins a Bathing Beauty Contest in Her New Play.
• • Although it is milder than "Sex" and will probably not cause Mr. Banton and the gendarmes to come on the run, Mae West's newest contribution to dramatic art, staged last night at Daly's Sixty-third Street Theatre, will doubtless stand as the low point of the theatrical season of 1927-28.
• • "The Wicked Age" is the name Miss West has given it, and according to its own admission it is a satirical comedy, in which case "Bringing Up Father" is simply mordant and biting irony. [Ouch!]
• • Dragging through the evening until nearly midnight, "The Wicked Age" seemed at its first New York performance incredible cheap and vulgar trash, with only such minor amusement as was to be derived from watching the exhibitionistic antics of Miss West as a faintly redeeming feature.
• • The bathing beauty contest as practiced along the Jersey Coast was the pressing sociological matter upon which the author-actress had her say.
• • This permitted her to introduce a contest scene in the second act in which, a blithe spirit of the younger generation, she captured first honors. The third act, up to 11:35, was devoted to . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Drama Review: "The Wicked Age" Tame
• • Published in: The New York Times
• • Published on: 5 November 1927 — — Saturday
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1927 • •
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Mae West.