Courting Mae West

The play "COURTING MAE WEST: Sex, Censorship & Secrets" is based on true events during the 1920s when actress MAE WEST was arrested and jailed in New York City for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway. Maybe she broke the law - - but the LAW couldn't break HER!

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Naked Ambition

Even MAE WEST would have been astonished to see women auditioning to portray the Brooklyn bombshell bringing out the “Birthday Suit” during a New York talent search.
• • No cameras were rolling in an Astor Place audition room in lower Manhattan when a New York City director was conducting a talent search [in 2005] for the starring role of Mae in the play “Courting Mae West— — but the dare-to-bare urge was in the air. The casting crew and the stage manager were astonished to see how many aspiring actresses interpreted the director’s suggestion to “have fun with Mae’s bawdy dialogue and be bold” as a green light to go blue.
• • Actor Richard Kent-Green, while playing a waiter in the opening scene, found himself adrift in fishnet hosiery and female garments as an Australian actress tossed her black apparel around. Ever the improv expert, Kent-Green anchored these cast-aways on a folding chair and stayed in character. Is Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction becoming a trend? Kent-Green admitted to a roving reporter that he had seen, in one night, more curves than a coastal highway.
• • Comedienne Louise [“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”] Lasser said it’s unfortunate when an actress puts her faith in the casting couch instead of her talent. Being bold during an audition, observed Lasser, used to mean you showed some sass. Mae West may have had the two biggest props in Hollywood but she’s remembered because her wit titillated not her . . . well, you know.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Photo: Courting Mae West
• • Maebill • •

Mae West.

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Harnessing excitement on East 24th

She was born on a cool night in a hot month in Bushwick (Brooklyn, NY) — — August 1893.
• • Her hard-working father, formerly a bare-knuckle boxer whose arena-name was "Battling Jack," muscled his way into a growing business centered on the horse and harness. For years his trade was bridle-maker. In between jobs, Jack West would rent a horse and wagon and sell fruit in his neighborhood. As a kid, his daughter would go to Rockaway Avenue to pick up the horse and cart.
• • That was the lucrative "carriage trade" era when master harness makers headed to New York City. In 1907, Mayer Miller launched his business, setting up his own harness shop in Manhattan near Madison Square Park, in the center of what was then the horsemarket of the east, an area devoted primarily to stables, the workhorse, and the busy horse auction market. In 1917, Mayer Miller established The Miller Harness Company, Inc., which moved in 1939 to its commodious headquarters at 117-123 East 24th Street. When he died n 1962, Miller's Harness Company, by then managed by his son, was considered the largest horse emporium in the world. The cavernous basement space, with its high ceilings, was used for decades as their chic selling space. Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein were regular customers, stocking up on refined horse haberdashery and developing their own fashion concepts from the expensive equestrian apparel sold by Miller's.
• • East 24th Street in Manhattan • •
• • For over 130 years, New Yorkers who ride headed to East 24th Street, which held its own as the equine epicenter, the location for emporiums such as Manhattan Saddlery (formerly known as Miller's Harness Company) and H. Kauffman & Sons Saddlery.
• • A portion of the old Miller Harness Company is now a New York City-funded non-profit theatre complex.
• • The Algonquin Theatre (at 123 East 24th Street, NYC 10010) houses two air-conditioned performance spaces: the 99-seat "Kaufman" and the 40-seat "Parker." The Kaufman features a proscenium stage that is 21 feet wide and 23 feet deep.
• • The larger playhouse is named in honor of George S. Kaufman [16 November 1889 — 2 June 1961], an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. The petite playing space honors another Algonquin Round Table member: author Dorothy Parker [22 August 1893 — 7 June 1967]. Both writers attended performances of Mae West's plays during the 1920s and critiqued them.
• • During July 9th-20th, 2008, the history play, "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" will be staged at the Algonquin Theatre, as part of the Annual Fresh Fruit Festival, announced NYC director Louis Lopardi, who capably helms A Company Of Players. Established in 1979 by Founding Director Ken Bachtold, A Company Of Players is dedicated to developing the skills of actors and others in the performing arts community, and to presenting plays that reflect the social, political, and human issues of our time. Their motto: "Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer to shape it." — — Vladimir Mayakovsky.
• • Set during the Prohibition Era, when actress-playwright Mae West was arrested and jailed for staging two gay plays on Broadway, "Courting Mae West" will shortly begin a workshop under the direction of Mr. Lopardi, who will oversee the casting of the play and the rehearsals, an exciting process that will shepherd the 95-minute serious-minded comedy into readiness for a July production at The Algonquin.
• • This summer, Mae West will be back onstage, enjoying the limelight. The theatre of excitement is about to raise its curtain and harness its audience's expectations.
• • Algonquin Theatre 123 East 24th Street [between Park Avenue South & Lexington Avenue], New York, NY 10010
• • Subways: #6 Train to East 23rd or 28th Street @ Park Avenue; the N, R or W train to West 23rd Street @ Broadway
• • Parking at 111 East 24th Street, NYC
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Photo: Courting Mae West
• • Maebill • •
• • Photo: The Algonquin Theatre2007 • •

Mae West.

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Act I, Scene 2: Arrest at the Arcade

It was late January 1927 and MAE WEST was en route to Bridgeport, Connecticut.

• • By Monday January 31st, Bridgeport, Connecticut's main street was decorated with a banner that read: "The Drag by the author of SEX, more sensational than Rain or The Captive."
• • That Monday evening
after intense arguments with the local police the curtain rose and theatre-goers (and Mae West watchers) saw the first public performance of The Drag written by "Jane Mast" (the pen name of Mae West) at Poli's Theatre.
• • Rush from Variety Magazine was in the audience as well. In his column published on 2 February 1927 Rush complained that Mae's production was "a deliberate play for morbid interest," and a "jazzed-up revel in the garbage heap." Ouch!
• • In The Drag, the drag queen Winnie has an interesting line: "So glad to have you meet me. Come up sometime and I'll bake you a pan of biscuits." That was Mae West's intentional echo of the very well-known line of the late great female impersonator Bert Savoy, who used to say, "Oh, Margie! You must come over!"
• • Jill Watts writes: "New Yorkers lured by gossip surrounding West's latest undertaking paid premium prices for reserved seats. West claimed it drew fans from Boston to Philadelphia. It also brought out the New York City Police Department's James Sinnott. ..."
• • How ironic is it that one of NYC's vice over-lords was named SIN NOT!
• • On Tuesday February 1st at 5:00 AM, Mae West was arrested along with her sister and the director Edward Elsner. That would not be the end of her headaches. It would, however, be the start of Mae's headlines in the newspapers. Pole-vaulted out of the ghetto of the clubby entertainment section, the Brooklyn bombshell suddenly became national news.
• • Sergei Treshatny, the husband of Beverly West, immediately began divorce proceedings due to this arrest. He used the Bridgeport trial transcripts as evidence against his wife.
• • The arrest at the Arcade Hotel is dramatized in the play "Courting Mae West." Beverly's drunken antics and Mae's strategies are featured in Act I, Scene 2.
• • Arcade Hotel 1001 Main St, Bridgeport, CT 06604; Tel (203) 333-9376
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Photo: Mae West
• • 1927 • •
• • Photo: Arcade Hotel1925 • •

Mae West.

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

A Sister Act Forms the Sub-Plot

A 95-minute serious-minded comedy, "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" — — based on true events when actress-author MAE WEST was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway (New York City) — — combines real-life people and fictional personae. The story begins in December 1926, when Mae West is celebrating the 300th performance of her play "Sex" at a Greenwich Village speakeasy where she has hired some gay males and drag-queens to star in her upcoming production "The Drag." The final scene, set in December 1932, shows Mae West in her Hollywood dressing room, preparing to shoot a scene for a Paramount Pictures motion picture called "She Done Him Wrong" — — a screenplay based on her 1928 Broadway smash "Diamond Lil."
• • The cast of "Courting Mae West" includes some colorful characters. Meet Mildreth Katharina "Beverly" West [1898-1982], called "Beverly West" in the play.
• • In reality, Beverly had career aspirations, too, if not an industrial strength drive for success. A childhood battle with polio left Beverly with one shrunken leg and a limp, so Matilda West did not push her younger daughter into dance lessons nor groom her in the same way she harnessed and drove Mae's talents. Beverly found another way to command attention, though. In 1927, when "The Drag" debuted in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Beverly attracted media coverage by cavorting drunkenly in the lobby of Poli's Theatre. A few days later, because of her intoxicated antics at the Arcade Hotel, she was arrested at 5 AM for disorderly conduct along with director Edward Elsner. Beverly's husband Sergei Treshatny took advantage of the scandal, using the Bridgeport trial testimony as his grounds for a speedy divorce. Their marriage was dissolved the same year. Biographers have emphasized that Mae never forgave her sister's alcoholism and lassitude. Despite that, Mae gave her sister ample financial support for her entire life. How cordial (or ambivalent) their kinship was we may never know.
• • Learn about her: MaeWest.blogspot.com
• • In "Courting Mae West," Beverly West's fictional counterpart BEVERLY WEST is Mae's less ambitious, underrated younger sister; as MAE WEST complains, "She has the mental acuity of gravel." An actress, Beverly resents being Mae's under-study because she never gets to go on; her rocky relationship with Mae is one of the play's poignant sub-plots. In her late twenties and early thirties during the play, BEVERLY WEST provides the audience with a new viewpoint about Mae, who cannot whitewash the truth in front of her sibling. And when the chips are down, after 1930's "Pleasure Man" trial, it is Beverly whose hidden talents and sisterly devotion will save the day.

• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets"
• • Cast size: seven [4 females, 3 males play rotating roles — — except for the MAE WEST role]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • SYNOPSIS [100 words] • •

• • Based on true events during the Prohibition Era, this 95-minute play follows a vaudeville veteran whose frustrations with the rules of male-dominated Broadway have led her to write her own material and cast her own shows. Is the Gay White Way ready for love stories that feature New York City drag queens instead of card-carrying members of the union? Is the legitimate theatre ripe for racially integrated melodramas set in Harlem? Is the Rialto raring to reward a working-class heroine determined to sin and win?
• • Come up and see Mae West as she challenges bigotry, fights City Hall, and climbs the ladder of success wrong by wrong.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Photo: Mae West and Beverly
• • 1930 • •

Mae West.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Starr Faithfull Inspired Sara Starr

A 95-minute serious-minded comedy, "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" — — based on true events when actress-author MAE WEST was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway (New York City) — — combines real-life people and fictional personae. The story begins in December 1926, when Mae West is celebrating the 300th performance of her play "Sex" at a Greenwich Village speakeasy where she has hired some gay males and drag-queens to star in her upcoming production "The Drag." The final scene, set in December 1932, shows Mae West in her Hollywood dressing room, preparing to shoot a scene for a Paramount Pictures motion picture called "She Done Him Wrong" — a screenplay based on her 1928 Broadway smash "Diamond Lil."
• • The cast of "Courting Mae West" includes some colorful characters. Meet Starr Faithfull [1906-1931], called "Sara Starr" in the play.
• • STARR FAITHFULL was a blue-eyed, red-haired beauty who lived in Greenwich Village with her mother, step-father, and younger sister, and kept a diary (bound in faded red silk) of her sexual escapades. The 5' 6" high-kicker, who died in an expensive silk dress purchased at Lord and Taylor, knew how to shop and party but did not hold a sunny view of the human condition. Reporter John O'Hara, who had observed the 25-year-old flapper at literary soirees, laced her into his Upper East Side novel, Butterfield 8, where she is renamed Gloria Wandrous.
• • Learn about her: StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com
• • In "Courting Mae West," Starr Faithfull's counterpart SARA STARR is stylish and greyhound sleek; as MAE WEST says, "Any skinnier, she could be cellophane." A diarist, she envies professional writers but is more interested in selling tips than manuscripts. In her early twenties, SARA STARR provides a novel sexual awakening for ELIZA ROURKE, a sheltered housemaid, and turns over her diary to MARIO "Shortie" de ANGELIS, an action that sparks several consequences.

• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets"
• • Cast size: seven [4 females, 3 males play rotating roles — — except for the MAE WEST role]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • SYNOPSIS [100 words] • •

• • Based on true events during the Prohibition Era, this 95-minute play follows a vaudeville veteran whose frustrations with the rules of male-dominated Broadway have led her to write her own material and cast her own shows. Is the Gay White Way ready for love stories that feature New York City drag queens instead of card-carrying members of the union? Is the legitimate theatre ripe for racially integrated melodramas set in Harlem? Is the Rialto raring to reward a working-class heroine determined to sin and win?
• • Come up and see Mae West as she challenges bigotry, fights City Hall, and climbs the ladder of success wrong by wrong.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Illustration:
Starr Faithfull • • artist: Rudolph Haybrook • •

Mae West.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Mae West: Court Taught

Mae West got to know the Jefferson Market Courthouse in 1927.
• • During the 1920s, the first step towards bringing a play to Broadway was an obligatory stop at the NYC Police Department. In 1926, before Mae West's play "Sex" could be staged at Edward Elsner's Westside playhouse — — Daly's 63rd Street Theatre — — the manuscript had to be approved by a special Police Department Play Jury. [Since 268 plays were produced on Broadway in 1927, squeezed into 70+ theatres, imagine how busy this kept New York City's Play Juries, and think of how much income City Hall raked in from this lucrative licensing arrangement.]
• • Once approved, the text for "Sex" was given a license. Only then could a drama or a comedy be taken forward
— — and was it ever!
• • Mae West [1893-1980], who starred as a prostitute in the production, managed to arouse so much interest in her performance in "Sex" that, even though it was dismissed and disparaged by drama critics, her show was a big box office bonanza. In the opening act of "Sex," set in a Montreal brothel, Mae played a song on the piano: "Honey, Let Yo' Drawers Hang Low." In the cabaret scene, she sang two Harlem favorites: "Sweet Man" and "Shake that Thing." Muscle-mamboing Mae also did a sensual belly dance to the "St. Louis Blues."
• • In early April 1926, out-of-town previews had begun in Stamford, Connecticut, then "Sex" went on to Waterbury and then New London, a town on Long Island Sound. Financial backing was supplied by the Morals Production Company, a group of investors organized by Mae's lawyer and lover Jim Timony. Backers included Matilda West, Mae's mother, and the gangster Owney Madden, who also owned the Cotton Club.
• • On April 26, 1926, after those Connecticut try-outs, "Sex" opened on Broadway.
• • Mae West was the draw — — not the play. Nevertheless, the public poured in.
• • By its third week, "Sex" was raking in $10,000 a week.
• • In its seventh week, "Sex" hit the $16,500 mark, then leveled off at a steady $8,000.
• • [In contast, the blockbuster "Broadway" pulled in $31,000 in a single week during 1926.]
• • A steady line of limousines had been pulling up to Daly's entrance. Certain socialites returned to see "Sex" again and again.
• • This interested the District Attorney, who convened a volunteer Play Jury that included one woman, one physician, two Brooklynites, and eight men from Manhattan, and asked them to review the manuscripts of four crowd-pleasing plays once again. In June 1926, this new Play Jury cleared "Sex" of any suspicion of indecency by a vote of 8 to 4.
• • Ask yourself this:
Why would a play like "Sex," which passed the scrutiny of the Play Jury TWICE [in March and again in June 1926], be raided by the police after ten months of enormous attendance and great publicity — — on Wednesday February 9th, 1927?
• • There are several reasons:
• • • • New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a fan of Miss West, did not interfere when he heard that the actress was in the midst of planning to stage "The Drag," a play with a homosexual theme that was selecting actors after auditions in gay bars, and planning an out-of-town try-out; and
• • • • On 8 February 1927, Mae had staged a midnight "sneak preview" of "The Drag" at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre, reported Variety Magazine; invited attendees included city officials and several respected physicians, who had been expected to give the play an endorsement; and
• • • • Forty-one weeks into a sellout run of "Sex," Jimmy Walker happened to be out of town and the acting Hizzoner, holier-than-thou Joseph V. McKee, decided to send in the cops. Because of "holy Joe" getting her arrested, and brought to Jefferson Market's Police Court, Mae West wound up spending the night of February 9th in Jefferson Market Jail.
• • After a trial in the Jefferson Market Courthouse during March 1927, Mae West wound up convicted of "corrupting the morals of youth." She was sentenced to ten days in the Women's Workhouse on Welfare Island.
• • "I expect it will be the making of me," she told reporters, and it was: it made her a household name.
• • But "The Drag" died in Mae's dreams and did not open. Via fines, an expensive court battle, and dreadful jail cells, the censors and politicians made their point: there would be no gays on Broadway.
• • The play "Courting Mae West" by Greenwich Village dramatist LindaAnn Loschiavo, set in NYC during 1926
1932, explores Mae West's legal woes. Using fictional elements, the text is anchored by true events and has several characters who are based on real people: actress Mae West; Beverly West; Jim Timony; Texas Guinan; Mr. Isidore, a news seller on Sixth Avenue and West 9th Street; and Sara Starr, based on the Greenwich Village flapper Starr Faithfull, whose death inspired John O'Hara's novel "Butterfield 8" and a dozen other books.
• • The project began as a way to keep the Jefferson Market Courthouse's history alive in an entertaining way, so that people could understand more about its significance. And more folks are hearing about it since The New York Law Journal and a few dozen publications have already written about the play. In January 2005, The Jefferson Market Library devoted a month-long art exhibition to sixteen panels that depicted scenes from "Courting Mae West" drawn from archival photos from 1927.
• • The playwright is looking forward to seeing a production of "Courting Mae West" onstage during July 2008 as part of the Annual Fresh Fruit Festival in Manhattan.
• • Mae West had, Colette noted in 1938, an impudent, solitary presence like Chaplin's. Truman Capote once wryly described her curves as "the Big Ben of hour-glass figures," and in the 1920s, when she was starring in her own plays on Broadway, George Jean Nathan wrote that she was "the Statue of Libido." Playfully suggesting that she was less notorious than institutional, Salvador Dali painted a portrait of her face in which the features are pieces of furniture.
• • Mae West still stands alone. Though Mae West wrote her own plays and the dialogue for five Paramount Pictures films, no other actress has written her own dialogue ever. No other actress is quite so quotable nor are there gas pumps, a bend in a road, and a flotation device named for any other actress. You can't escape Mae West. Admit it. You might as well come up and see Mae in "Courting Mae West" this summer.
— — — —
Native New Yorker LindaAnn Loschiavo is a journalist and dramatist as well as a member of the West 9th Street Block Association. In their January 5th, 2005 issue, The Villager did an article about how she discovered four P.A.T.H. exits for the West 9th Street station that Port Authority had "forgotten." Read it online: www.TheVillager.com
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Illustration:
Mae West • • artist ALVARO • •

Mae West.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Mae West: A Sneaky Preview

West Ninth Street, Manhattan, is only one block long, from Fifth Avenue at one end to Sixth Avenue at the other, east to west. It was at the west end, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, where another West, a lady named Mae, spent one night in jail in 1927 in what is now the historic old Jefferson Market Library but was then the Jefferson Market Courthouse, wrote Jerry Tallmer in his article for The Villager about the play "Courting Mae West."
• • Jerry Tallmer continued: The full title of this serious-minded comedy is “Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets,” and the based-on-real-life characters in it include the pre-Hollywood Mae West; Mae's sister Beverly; Mae's lawyer-manager Jim Timony; night club queen Texas Guinan; gorgeous, doomed Starr Faithfull, a Greenwich Village good-time girl — the Gloria Wandrous of John O’Hara’s blazing “Butterfield 8” — whose corpse rattled many of the rich and powerful when it washed up on a Long Island beach; and a news dealer named Mr. Isidore who was the last person in Manhattan, from his stand under the El at Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street, to see Starr Faithfull alive as she disappeared into the PATH station on her way to the L.I.R.R.

• • There are also a number of fictional characters, notably Eliza Rourke, a repressed, glamour-worshipping, working-class Irish-American girl who slaves without pay in her parents’ boarding house on Ninth Street, and Mario “Shortie” DeAngelis, a young, over-eager New York newspaper reporter who dashes frantically between such headline events as the jailing of Mae West and the discovery of Starr Faithfull’s body on Long Island (which actually happened in 1931). Eliza is sweet on him; her mother is not happy about this budding romance.
• • Veteran news man Jerry Tallmer, who founded the Obie Award in the mid-1950s, is one of the few who realized the truth: that Mae West's arrest for obscenity was provoked by the midnight performance of her new homosexual play "The Drag." Variety Magazine reported that this "sneak preview" occurred in Daly's 63rd Street Theatre and, hours later, the vice squad showed up to raid Mae's performance in "Sex."
• • Headline-hungry tabloids rushed to photograph the new felon on 9 February 1927 at Jefferson Market Police Court on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Understandably, Mae West was upset that night. Little did she know what would happen to her in the near future because of her police record.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
________________________________________________________________
Source:http://CourtingMaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Illustration:
Mae West • • artist Michael DiMotta • •

Mae West.

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Mae West: From Page to Stage

Mae_siblings_1930
• • During the infamous "Pleasure Man" trial [1930] at Criminal Court in Manhattan, Mae West attended the proceedings with her brother John and sister Beverly. Their mother had just died and they were in mourning.
• • As the narrative arc of the play "COURTING MAE WEST" was shaped, the dramatist had to eliminate John West and focus on the fractious relationship between the two sisters.
• • You can follow the process from PAGE to STAGE on the Mae West blog
— MaeWest.blogspot.com. If you ever wondered how a play gets on its feet, here's an inside look behind the world of the red velvet curtain.
• • "Courting Mae West" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway.
• • Details and ticket prices will be posted when available.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Photo:
Mae West • • with her siblings 1930 • •

Mae West.

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Friday, January 11, 2008

Courting Mae West - Onstage

comic-1st-panel
____________________________
• • The event's board of directors met and approved my director's pitch
and my play "COURTING MAE WEST" has cleared the first hurdle to be onstage during their annual early July festival in a theatre in Manhattan.
• • The festival offers over 30 live acts. Mine is one of the two plays they will produce. My 95-minute serious-minded comedy will be shown FOUR times onstage [in a theatre with fewer than 99 seats].
• • After the 9 February 1927 performance of "SEX," Mae was hauled off to Jefferson Market Police Court on Sixth Avenue and Greenwich, where she spent the night locked up with streetwalkers and drug addicts.
• • "Courting Mae West" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway.
• • Details and ticket prices will be posted when available.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
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• • Illustration:
Mae West • • artist Michael DiMotta • •

Mae West.

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