Mae West: Ever-present Chocolates

“I first went to interview MAE WEST after the collapse of ‘Myra Breckinridge’ [1970]. Like almost everyone else, I was in awe of the woman,” wrote Jacoba Atlas. Let’s read her fascinating first-hand account from 1974. This is Part 10 of 19 segments.
• • Image from a Cracked Mirror • •
• • the omnipresence of the past in Mae’s apartment • •
• • Jacoba Atlas wrote: To enter her small, all-white apartment, one must pass two security checks.
• • the ever-present heart-shaped chocolate box • •
• • Jacoba Atlas wrote: Once inside the apartment, the omnipresence of the past becomes immediately evident. The only color relieving the whiteness is flaked gold and occasional touches of pale pink satin. A white piano dominates one corner of the living room, complete with a famous nude statue of Mae West and the ever-present heart-shaped chocolate box, filled with goodies.
• • Jacoba Atlas wrote: The flowers are fake, and the blinds are drawn against the sun. The furniture is covered with plastic, as if it were left over from some Molly Goldberg set.
• • Jacoba Atlas wrote: Mae West herself made an entrance, tottering on small feet, taking tiny little steps as if she were made of porcelain and one false move would send her shattering to the floor.
• • Mae West banned the tape recorder • • …
• • This long profile by Jacoba Atlas will be continued on the next post.  
• • Source: Los Angeles Free Press, Volume 11, issue 517; published on Friday, 14 June 1974.
• • On Saturday, 5 May 1928 in The New Yorker • •

• • When John Huston [1906 — 1987] watched Mae West in the 1928 stage production of "Diamond Lil," the 22-year-old son of actor Walter Huston could not stop thinking about it. John saved his copy of The New Yorker [issue dated for 5 May 1928] because he especially admired the illustration of a corseted, glittering, winsome Mae by the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Soon after, the men collaborated on Huston's fascinating book "Frankie and Johnny."
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • Mae West, in a trailing satin dress, with make-up thick on her features and a huge bunch of orchids clutched in a heavily jeweled hand, gave a mob of fans a smile and was taken off to the Ritz-Carlton.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • An article on sassy, witty broads mentioned Mae West.
• • "Broads Don’t Blog, Especially in Haiku" • •
• • Vox Pop Columnist Meta Wagner muses: It’s amazing to me how the quips Mae West famously uttered still serve as quotable quotes today: “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” “A man in the house is worth two in the street.” Now, that’s a broad! . . .
• • Meta Wagner adds: Currently back on Broadway is "South Pacific," the World War II-themed musical that immortalized a catchy number "There Is Nothing Like a Dame." Mae West was a swell dame (not to mention a triple A-all-right broad).   . . .
• • Source: PopMatters; posted on Tuesday, 29 April 2008
• • The evolution of 2 Mae West plays that keep her memory alive • •
• • A discussion with Mae West playwright LindaAnn LoSchiavo — —
• • http://lideamagazine.com/renaissance-woman-new-york-city-interview-lindaann-loschiavo/
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 15th anniversary • • 
• • Thank you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during these past fifteen years. Not long ago, we entertained 3,497 visitors. And we reached a milestone recently when we completed 4,400 blog posts. Wow! 
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started fifteen years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 4,467th 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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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • drawing in 1928 • •
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Mae West: 20 Room Mansion

MAE WEST had a successful return to the nighteries, thanks to her sold-out show tour with "The Mae West Revue."  James Timony had died and her new steady companion was Paul Novak. Mae decided it was time to buy a stunning beach house in Santa Monica to entertain her friends in and this new development was announced n May 1955.
• • Hedda Hopper wrote:  Mae West is back in Hollywood for her night club act at Ciro's beginning Thursday.  She's bought herself a new home in Santa Monica — — 20 rooms, eight bedrooms and eight baths.  
• • Hedda Hopper's syndicated Hollywood column rpt in Chicago Tribune; published on Tuesday, 10 May 1955.
• • On Saturday, 5 May 1928 in The New Yorker • •

• • When John Huston [1906 — 1987] watched Mae West in the 1928 stage production of "Diamond Lil," the 22-year-old son of actor Walter Huston could not stop thinking about it. John saved his copy of The New Yorker [issue dated 5 May 1928] because he especially admired the illustration of a corseted, glittering, winsome Mae by the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. 
• • Soon after, the two men collaborated on Huston's fascinating book "Frankie and Johnny." Huston traced the origins of this American folk song — — even the versions that follow Frankie to the gallows — — and he wrote a new play about it. The Covarrubias sketches add a lot of charm.
• • On Saturday, 5 May 1934 • •
• • "Mae West Arrives" was the headline on page 11 in Queensland's Morning Bulletin on Saturday, 5 May 1934.  A host of compliments ran, like a elegant train, behind her.
• • Morning Bulletin wrote: Mae West makes you greedy. When you see "She Done Him Wrong" you want more and more of Mae. She is like the most thrilling serial story in the world.  ...
• • On Saturday, 5 May 1934 in Iowa • •
• • The Mason City Globe-Gazette (Iowa) readers saw this enticing headline on Saturday, 5  May 1934: "Mae West says: 'Hail to all Mason City!'"
• • "I'm coming Back to Show at a Local Theater in My First Starring Picture." 3 BIG DAYS — — TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY "Come up and see me sometime! Hear me sing "Frankie and Johnny" and other songs. See me strut my stuff.  ...
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • Mae West, upon finishing her starring role in Paramount's "She Done Him Wrong," leaves for personal appearances in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, and other eastern spots.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said:  "The prison doors closed behind me. That's my story."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • An article on a British painter mentioned Mae West.
• • I seem to remember a vintage Mae West movie in which the redoubtable old send-up sways up a staircase, in her usual dignified and derisive manner, behind a genuinely stately butler. 'What are these?' she mutters, rolling those cunning eyes at a series of dark oil paintings.
 • • 'These, madam, are the old masters,' says the butler. 'They look like a bunch of old mistresses to me,' says Miss West, the facial muscles scarcely moving.   . . .
• • Source: Article (P. 19) in the London Spectator; published on Thursday,  5 May 1966 
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 10th anniversary • •    
• • Thank you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during this past decade. The other day we entertained 3,497 visitors. And we reached a milestone recently when we completed 3,100 blog posts. Wow! 
• • By the Numbers • • 
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3171st 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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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • in May 1928 • •
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Mae West: Buy a Swan Bed

The swan bed MAE WEST used in "Diamond Lil" made such an impression on the audience that several artists used the image in sketches of the costumed actress in 1928, for instance, Irving Hoffman and Miguel Covarrubias. 
• • Formerly, the gilded swan-shaped furniture belonged to the turn-of-the-century actress Amelia Bingham [1869 — 1927]. Mae said she purchased it from the estate of Diamond Jim Brady [1856 — 1917].
• • Time Magazine's theatre critic, admitting Lil had his heart at hello, felt her big-hearted bountifulness was on a scale with this golden bird: "Propped up under the armpits by a dress that might have been designed by the stage carpenter, Mae West played the role that she had written about a bygone queen of Manhattan's underworld. Diamond Lil was a harlot whose heart was as big and golden as the enormous swan shaped bed that stood in her elaborate cubicle above Gus Jordan's saloon and brothel. ..."
• • A different swan bed was seen in the play's cinema version filmed in 1932 as "She Done Him Wrong." One hilarious scene shows Lady Lou perusing The National Police Gazette while reclining on her swan divan.
• • Children's Swan Bed • •
• • A hand-painted wooden Children's Swan Bed is available from Little Treasures [47 Bolton Street, Ramsbottom, Bury, Lancashire, BL0 9HU]. Maybe your little prince or princess would like to sleep in this swan? No ordinary youth bed is this. What dreams will come to the lucky one who lies down between enchanted wings, carefully carved by a British craftsperson, we can only imagine.
• • In December, Let's Remember Raymond Hubbell [1879 — 1954] • •
• • Mae West was cast in "A Winsome Widow," a musical comedy farce that was produced on Broadway from 11 April 1912 — 7 September 1912. The music was by Raymond Hubbell.
• • Born in Urbana, Ohio on 1 June 1879, Raymond Hubbell attended local schools but earned serious musical training in Chicago. Like most young men at the time, he formed a dance band in Chicago. Ready for serious employment, he accepted a position as a staff arranger and pianist with the influential firm Charles K. Harris Publishers.
• • By 1902, the 23-year-old began composing for theatrical musicals in The Windy City. And, fortunately, his very first show then transferred to New York City.
• • By 1905, he was regularly being pulled in to Broadway projects. In a short time, Raymond Hubbell was composing light fare for productions starring Nora Bayes. By 1911 he was assigned to the Ziegfeld Follies, which kept him on for later editions.
• • In 1912 he was hired to do the score for "A Winsome Widow." Following up these successes, he would write for Bessie McCoy, Will Rogers, Julian Eltinge, Irene Dunne, Leon Errol, and others.
• • After he worked on "Three Cheers" in 1928, he returned to Miami, Florida. Raymond Hubbell died there in the month of December — — on 13 December 1954.
• • In December 1933 • •
• • Hollywood trend-setters and East Coast clothes horses were enlightened by Mae West's article "Clothes and Me" when it was published in the November — December issue of Mode Magazine on page 44.
• • Costume designer Edith Head used to say, "Mae West taught me all I know about sex, clothes-wise."
• • In December 1934 • •
• • Motion Picture, the popular fan magazine, carried this cover line in their issue for December 1934: "'Don't Get Me Wrong' — — Mae West" and the article carried Mark Dowling's byline [pages 32 — 33, 68] and showed wonderful studio shots of the star of Paramount Pictures.
• • In December 1974 in Hollywood • •
• • "Mae West: The Queen at Home in Hollywood" appeared in the December 1974 issue of Interview Magazine (published in NYC by Andy Warhol) on page 12. Journalist Peter Lester and actress Angelica Huston worked on this together.
• • Angelica's father John Huston [1906 — 1987], who was featured in "Myra Breckinridge" with Mae, had admired her since 1928, when he saw her in "Diamond Lil" on Broadway, then took off across America to research the folk roots of a song she sang called "Frankie and Johnny."
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "Come up sometime. I'll tell your fortune."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • A holiday event in Manhattan at the Merchant's House Museum will include a bit of Mae West.
• • According to The Villager: For 75 years, the Merchant’s House Museum has preserved domestic life as lived from 1835 — 1865. This holiday season, they’re making room for some compelling curiosities from a very different era. “From Candlelight to Bubble Light: A 1950s Christmas in an 1850s House” is a visionary mash-up of times and traditions. Through January 9, the halls will be retro-decked with conceptual stylist (and East Village icon) Deb O’Nair’s collection of 1950s/60s holiday decorations and Americana. Mae West Christmas albums and molded-plastic lit-from-within Frostys might seem like a jarring contrast to the original furnishings and personal possessions of the Tredwell family — — but taken as a whole, the place just plain feels like home. ...
• • Source: Article: "Your Holiday To-Do List" written by the editors of The Villager; posted on 10 December 2011 
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2144th 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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 • • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1928 • • 

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Mae West: Inspired by Aimee

MAE WEST and Texas Guinan first met Sister Aimee in 1927 at an illegal but posh speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. All three women had Irish heritage and each one loved to commandeer the spotlight. Between the two world wars, Aimee Semple McPherson made herself into the most controversial and flamboyant minister in the United States.
• • Born in Ontario, Canada on 9 October 1890, Aimee Semple McPherson, also known as "Sister Aimee" or simply "Sister," was an evangelist and a media sensation in the 1920s and 1930s; she was also the founder of the Foursquare Church.
• • McPherson had started out as a Salvation Army worker. [One year later, Mae West would be featuring a Salvation Army worker Captain Cummings in her 1890s Bowery play "Diamond Lil" [Broadway debut April 1928]. Diamond Lil discovers that this handsome man is really "the Hawk" and doing detective work undercover. In the film "She Done Him Wrong," Captain Cummings is played by Cary Grant.]
• • Aimee McPherson spent four years [1918 –– 1922] as an itinerant Pentecostal preacher, finally settling with her mother in Los Angeles, California, and founding the Foursquare Gospel Church. She supervised construction of a large, domed ecclesiastical building in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, and it was completed in June 1923. Named Angelus Temple, it had a seating capacity of over 5,000.
• • When Aimee Semple McPherson, the famous Evangelist (with the marcel-waved hair) from Los Angeles visited New York on 19 February 1927, she insisted on visiting Texas Guinan's club. Mae West was there to meet Aimee, too.
• • As Texas Guinan prepared to welcome McPherson, she surely realized this was an exceptional promotional opportunity.
• • By mid-February 1927, Mae had already been arrested. No doubt she was paying attention to all the stagecraft and image-building at work as Aimee kept her name in the headlines.
• • Eight years later, Mae West would be playing an evangelist in Nome, Alaska in her film "Klondike Annie" — — a motion picture released in February 1936 after a lengthy hold-up by the censors who refused to let Mae West appear as a preacher or religious worker onscreen.
• • It was in Oakland, California that Aimee Semple McPherson was found dead of an overdose of prescription barbiturates in September — — on 27 September 1944. Was it a suicide or an accident? She was only 53 years old.
• • Although it would be nice to have had an illustration of Mae West and Texas Guinan socializing with Sister Aimee in 1927, at least we have this amusing extremely-unlikely-to-have-happened sketch by Miguel Covarrubias.
• • In September, we remember Lloyd Nolan • •
In 1937, Paramount Pictures spent a record one million dollars on its Mae West vehicle "Every Day's a Holiday" [released in the USA as holiday fare on 18 December 1937]. Actor Lloyd Nolan, age 35, was cast as John Quade.
• • Born in San Francisco, California on 11 August 1902, Lloyd Benedict Nolan was a film, radio and television actor.
• • On 27 September 1985, Lloyd Nolan died in Los Angeles of lung cancer. He was 83.
• • Mae West and MoSex on 27 September 2002 • •
• • The Museum of Sex was about to welcome its first visitors with a Mae West exhibition and British reporter Oliver Burkeman wrote a piece for London's newspaper, The Guardian.
• • Oliver Burkeman explained: The country's first sex museum, which opens to the public on Saturday in an area of New York City once renowned for its brothels and licentious saloons, is being touted as "the Smithsonian of Sex". . . . The idea came to Dan Gluck, a 34-year-old former software entrepreneur, in "a casual conversation that turned serious. "I mean, it's not like as a child all I ever wanted to do was open a sex museum."
• • Oliver Burkeman continued: Five years later MoSex opens with a historical exhibit called NYCSex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America. Visitors — — over-18s only — — are led through galleries bathed in pink light portraying everything from America's earliest legal condoms (made from sausage casings), past Mae West and early 20th-century gay lesbian pornography to puritanical crusaders against obscenity and the sexual revolution, before abruptly turning to a sombre exhibit on AIDS. It finishes with a computer installation where visitors can record their sexual experiences and fantasies — — and read those of others, although presumably somebody is going to have to go first. . . .
• • Source: Article: "Manhattan sends sex to the museum — — New York opts for a scholarly approach to its bawdy history" written by Oliver Burkeman for The Guardian [UK]; published on Friday, 27 September 2002
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said this: "I'd rather be looked over than overlooked."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • An article about the book "Holy Mackerel!," which discusses aspects of the Amos 'N' Andy story (by Bart Andrews and Ahrgus Julliard) has mentioned Mae West.
• • Reporter Robert J. Booker writes: Nick Stewart, who played "Lightnin," the slow-moving janitor in the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge Hall on the show "Amos 'n' Andy," was born in New York City and had performed in more than 50 films before joining the show. He had also done Broadway shows as a song-and-dance man. Mae West caught one of his acts and asked him to be in one of her movies, "Go West Young Man" in 1936. He also appeared in three of my favorite black films, "Cabin in the Sky" (1943), "Stormy Weather" (1943) and "Carmen Jones" (1954).
• • Robert J. Booker adds: One News Sentinel reader, Martin Gebrow, whose father was involved in theatrical productions, says he remembers seeing Stewart on stage in New York, where he often did a Stepin Fetchit-like routine with Vitrola. According to the "Holy Mackerel!" book, Stewart had been a chorus boy at Lincoln Theater and the Cotton Club and said, "Chorus boys were supposed to be handsome. I didn't fit those qualifications. So when they were picking choruses, they began to (exclude) me." ...
• • Source: Article: "Actors enjoyed abundant careers" written by Robert J. Booker for Knox News; posted on 20 September 2011
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seven years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2066th 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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• • Photo: • • Mae West's friend Texas Guinan • • 1927 • •
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Mae West: Miguel Covarrubias

Miguel Covarrubias drew MAE WEST so memorably — — and so many times. And he died on 4 February 1957.
• • Born in Mexico City to a prominent and wealthy Mexican family, Miguel Covarrubias was a popular artist in the early 20th century. He drew the era's most notable figures like MAE WEST — — whom he sketched for The New Yorker [dated 5 May 1928] — — along with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Josef Stalin, Charlie Chaplin, and other VIPs all hilariously re-imagined via his exaggerated sketches.
• • José Miguel Covarrubias [22 November 1904 — 4 February 1957] was a painter and caricaturist, ethnologist, and art historian. Dissatisfied with his career in his hometown, the painter moved to New York City in 1924, illustrating actors and prominent figures for several top magazines.
• • Actor John Huston, mesmerized by Mae West's song "Frankie and Johnny" in her Broadway hit Diamond Lil, spent a year traveling the USA, collecting versions of the song. Huston partnered with Covarrubias on his 1930 book "Frankie and Johnny"; Covarrubias drew the mulatto prostitute Frankie Baker as a Caucasian woman who looked like Mae West.
• • Miguel Covarrubias married the dancer Rosa Rolando and the couple resided in Manhattan until 1932, when they took a trip to Southeast Asia (Java, Bali, India, Vietnam), Africa, and Europe on his Guggenheim Fellowship.
• • Covarrubias returned to Mexico City where he taught ethnology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
• • He contributed to the fields of caricature, book illustration, painting, museography, collecting, set design, and writing.
• • Covarrubias died in a Mexico City hospital from complications due to diabetes. [Mae West was a diabetic, too.]
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West drawn by Covarrubias for Paramount • • 1932 • •
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Mae West: Stark Young

Born in Mississippi in the month of October was a drama critic who wrote about MAE WEST.
• • Stark Young [11 October 1881 — 6 January 1963] was an American teacher, playwright, novelist, painter, literary critic, and essayist.
• • In her book Mae West: An Icon in Black and White [2001], author Jill Watts discusses Stark Young's reaction to Mae West onstage.
• • According to Jill Watts, critic Stark Young viewed Diamond Lil and Mae West as a riddle: Here is a stage figure who is not one of those players, however admirable, with whom we can feel at home, knowing that they are the same sort of human beings as we are, save for a desire to imitate or to exhibit themselves, or both. You watch Miss West without this easy understanding and also without falling asleep. Whatever ideas or conceptions she may or may not have, she is alive on the stage as no one is in life, she shines, she astonishes — — shocks, if you like — — engages and puzzles you.
• • Jill Watts includes another remark about Mae West's portrayal of Diamond Lil by Stark Young: "You may watch her performance and take it any way you like," Stark Young wrote. "The theatre, you perceive is a place for your pleasure."
• • Stark Young compared the gritty realism of "Sex" [in 1926-1927] with the more nostalgic theatricality of the Suicide Hall setting of "Diamond Lil" [1928]. He writes: "Diamond Lil" is as daring in the end [as "Sex"], the same sexy morsels, embraces, and interventions of the law with rank suspenses, frank speeches, underworld, and so on. But it is more covered, continuous, and studied than the other production, and the crowd of characters, the costuming and vaudevillistic intervals, pull the whole of this later play into a more familiar style, less crudely, and sheerly singular than "Sex" appeared to be. ...
— — excerpt — —
• • "Diamond Lil" by Stark Young, drama critic [New Republic, 27 June 1928]
• • In 1959, a stroke derailled his life. Stark Young died in 1963 at age 81.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Drawing: • • Mae West • • Miguel Covarrubias • • 1928 • •
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