Thursday, September 18, 2014

Mae West: Bushwick Style

It was Sunday, 17 September 1933 and MAE WEST was sprawled across an entire page in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. This is the second half of a long article by Susan Shattuck.
• • "Beware!! Dangerous Curves!!" [Part 2] • •
• • "Go (Mae) West! Young Woman" Say the Fashion Dictators as Big Busts and Hefty Hips Again Fill Landscape!! • •
• • According to Edna Woolman Chase, now all that is changed. We have become very modest, so far as the length of our skirts is concerned. The era of the hour-glass figure has been restored to its pedestal, and the "fine figger of a woman" is again fashionable.  Thank you, Mae West! 
• • Shades of the Police Gazette and set 'em up again for the boys in the back room. Harry the Governor's Lady and Judy O'Grady are going to be sisters under the corsets again.  And a little girl from Brooklyn — — not so little, maybe, but from Bushwick — — is the cause of it all.
• • Mae West, the same little tyke that used to take bows on amateur nights in Bushwick playhouses, the gal that helped Walter Winchell, Al Seigel, Jack Whiting, and a number of other Broadway celebrities get where they are today via the vaudeville route, the same blond and curved Mae West who brought "Sex," her popular play to the Great White Way and has more recently won a place in the cinema hall of fame with "She Done Him Wrong," she is responsible. They are saying in Paris that she is the first movie queen, the first American woman, to be truthful, who has ever influenced the French modistes.  . . .
• • Source: Article and photo spread in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York); published on Sunday, 17 September 1933.
• • On Sunday, 18 September 1932 • •
• • After facing down the man who robbed her in Hollywood on mid-September 1932 in a Los Angeles courtroom, Mae was shocked and horrified to learn that stick-up-artist Harry Voiler [1891 — 1974] was released on bail in Miami during February 1934.
• • Details about Mae's recent testimony had been published in several weekend editions across the USA on Sunday, 18 September 1932. Harry Voiler, parolee. Yikes.
• • On Thursday, 18 September 1980 • •
• • It was September when Mae West was in the hospital and not doing well.  On Thursday, 18 September 1980, the Hollywood icon suffered a second stroke, and this left her right side paralyzed.  Dreadful.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • By the way, Mae is now working on her new contract by the terms of which she gets $100,000 a picture. They also say that the curvaceous one also gets about half that amount again for providing her own story and, be it known, Mae won't stand for anybody's writing stories for her pictures but Mae.
• • Well, it's quite an achievement, and you must hand it to Mae.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "lt is hard to see why people who will wear next to nothing on public beaches object to nudity on the screen."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • The Pottstown Mercury mentioned Mae West.
• • "Mae West 'Cm Up ’n See Me' Lass Is Acclaimed Angel” By Captain Mabel Murray • •
• • NEW YORK, March 16 (U.R) — — Mae West was acclaimed today by the Salvation Army as an “Angel” to the unemployed.  Captain Mabel Murray, head of the Army’s free employment bureau, did not exactly voice approval of the voluptuous film star’s pictures, but she did attribute a definite pick-up in work to Miss West.
• • “It’s the Mae West influence in styles,” Captain Murray said. “The corset industry appears to be enjoying a boom. We’ve placed every experienced corset worker on our rolls and we can find work for all who will apply to us.”
• • The heavy demand for corset workers resulted in “a phenomenal increase” in work placements by the Salvation Army bureau, Captain Murray said.
• • Source: Article rpt on page 2 of in Pottstown Mercury (Pottstown, PA); published on Saturday, 17 March  1934    
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 10th anniversary • •    
• • Thank you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during this past decade. 
• • By the Numbers • • 
• • The Mae West Blog was started ten years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 3007th 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 onscreen in 1933

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