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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 Newark, New Jersey. Briefly, during the 1920s, all three were regularly in the same premises on West 54th.
• • Indeed some New Yorkers still recall meeting Dutch Schultz. Nevertheless, if they were to read a script about the gangster, it might be startling how little it resembles memory. But, after all, fiction and plays are concerned with other things — — such as conflict, tension, balance, and how most women must wobble and wiggle to live, wearing youth and beauty as a suit of armor for close fighting.
• • Born during the month of August, Dutch Schultz pops up in a well-financed play set during the lawless decade. His enemy Texas Guinan is not in it. However, actress Jennifer Swiderski portrays Mae West in the critically razzed "Scandalous People: A Sizzling Jazzical," a musical that got on the wrong side of a number of New York reviewers, who lodged complaints about being forced to sit through a lavishly produced but poorly written two hour mess at this year's Fringe Fest. [Heck, no wonder so many call this annual noise-making "The Cringe."]
• • Created for a cast of 21 actors/ dancers, and set in an era juicy with mayhem and dramatic potential, this show found enough Benjamins to float on. Reviewer Matthew Murray offered this detailed autopsy of the slaughter he witnessed onstage in Minetta Lane that left ticket-bearers with post-dramatic stress disorder.
• • "Low-impact theatre of the most disappointing kind" • •
• • Lamenting the misfired sparkplugs in this limousine of a spectacle, Matthew Murray writes: When a musical has everything going for it except spark, you may find yourself wishing it were instead a colossal flop — — that way, you could at least delight in its destiny of nowhere. Unfortunately, no such reassurance is possible with Scandalous People: A Sizzling Jazzical. This show at the Minetta Lane Theatre, by Benny Russell (music) and Myla Churchill (libretto), must be one of the most professional, elaborately realized, and luxuriously appointed musicals ever seen at the New York International Fringe Festival. But its terrific cast and exquisite trappings cannot disguise the fact that it is low-impact theatre of the most disappointing kind.
• • According to Matthew Murray: Churchill's story follows the progression of Prohibition-era Harlem performing artists to legit stages in the run up to the Great Depression. Dewey Demarkov (Eugene Fleming) is the Ziegfeld-lite impresario behind the Do Drop Inn, an uptown speakeasy whose floor acts are filled with attractive chorus girls (that Dewey has personally, uh, hand-picked); two sisters, Desiree (Nicole Hill) and Cindy (Nirine S. Brown), the former a smoky vocalist and Dewey's wife, the latter a lithe and gifted hoofer who has long loved Dewey from afar; and enough talent and variety to attract the come-hither regular Mae West (Jennifer Swiderski). So popular is the club that it's also attracted the notice of a Bronx gangster, Dutch (Ryan Clardy), who wants to move the whole show to Broadway — — with, of course, a few small changes.
• • Matthew Murray observes: This is a premise rife with possibilities, and Russell and Churchill bypass none. Scandal, adultery, and depression play key roles in the characters' lives. The harsh realities of show business, both devastating and elevating, with individualism and working together both of paramount importance, receive their just due. The ensemble women are appropriately eye-popping, all frantic legs and perpetual shimmy as they pound through Obediah Wright's remarkable choreography, which cannily demonstrates the fusion of black (tap) and white (ballet) styles that was soon to revolutionize mainstream American musical theatre.
• • Topping the 21-person cast is a roaring nine-piece band. . . .
• • "A desperate, educational feel that prevents any part of it from catching fire" • •
• • Matthew Murray concludes: But despite everyone's best efforts, the show is plagued by a desperate, educational feel that prevents any part of it from catching fire for more than 10 consecutive seconds. It seems that Russell and Churchill were more interested in capturing the look, the sound, and the politics of the era than they were in bringing it to life theatrically. The inclusion of so many identifying features of 1929, from a Jolson-style blackface specialty to police raids for not just alcohol but also mixed-race dancing onstage to even Mae West's presence, does not so much immerse you in the time as ham-handedly point at it. That the songs — — sometimes torchy, sometimes steamy, sometimes vaudevillian, but always evanescently pleasant — — recall a raft of period styles without providing much originality of their own, also does not help.
• • If Russell and Churchill are looking for a model, they could examine Michael John LaChiusa's version of "The Wild Party," which is set around the same time and treats roughly the same subject, if from a very different perspective. In that show, LaChiusa melded the sounds of the late 1920s with his own distinct musical aesthetic, creating a score that sounded as fresh as it did familiar. When Russell and Churchill similarly learn that way they bring to their examination of pre-Depression black entertainment is every bit as important as what it did for America, chances are they'll find a way to grant "Scandalous People" the scorch its subtitle promises.
• • Right now, however, it is too chilly to cause anyone but the hard-working dancers to even break a sweat.
• • Scandalous People — — part of The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC)
— — Source: — —
• • Review: "Scandalous People"
• • BY: Matthew Murray | Theatre Critic
• • Published in: Talking Broadway.com — — http://www.talkinbroadway.com
• • Published in: August 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
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Mae West.
There was sufficient enthusiasm over a new musical featuring MAE WEST and Duke Ellington to lure trendy Harlemites haloed by extravagant hats down to Greenwich Village a few night ago, where they galivanted past the stage door entrance, gad-zooking red nails and filtered smokes aloft, austerity pinched away and outweighed by the demands of glamour. We approve of adults who not only attend the theatre but also take pains with their evening attire. A swelling crowd of supporters, impressive bling, bejeweled cigarette lighters — — along with eye-catching garments onstage and in the audience — — alas, do not a stage hit make.
• • Here's one assessment by Talking Broadway's drama critic Matthew Murray:
— — http://maewest.blogspot.com/2009/08/mae-west-dutch-ducked.html — —• • Though Mae West has a pivotal role in "Scandalous People," which is part of the NY Fringe, the reviewer from Backstage left holding his nose.
• • Utter Ineptitude Quoth the Critic • •
• • Sparing no sparks when it comes to flaming outlandish folly, critic Erik Haagensen wrote this: The only thing scandalous about the musical "Scandalous People" is that the utter ineptitude of its writing didn't prevent someone from wildly overproducing it in the Fringe Festival.
• • Erik Haagensen elaborated: Myra Churchill's book attempts to tell the story of Dewey, proprietor, and star of Harlem's Do Drop Inn nightclub in the 1920s, who longs to present an interracial musical revue at a time when racial mixing on nightclub stages was forbidden by law. Mae West, Duke Ellington, and the gangster Dutch Schultz all figure into it, but the plotting is ludicrously obvious, the characterizations one-dimensional, the scene construction ragged, and the dialogue trite, particularly when lapsing into rhymed couplets for no discernible reason. Churchill's lyrics are even worse, so badly misaccented and rhymed that at times they sound like gibberish. Composer Benny Russell is clearly acquainted with the sounds of the period, but he has no sense of how to structure a song nor much of a gift for melody.
• • Erik Haagensen added: The talented cast includes Eugene Fleming as Dewey, but only Nicole Hill as his wife and star manages to rise above the authors' incompetence, which ultimately trivializes the important issues they raise.
• • Between August 19th — 29th, this musical will be offered by MyChurch Productions as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at the Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane, NYC 10011. Dress to impress. You might, at least, meet an attractive ticket-holder posing by the bar.
— — Source: — —
• • Review: "Scandalous People"
• • BY: Erik Haagensen | Theatre Critic
• • Published in: Backstage — — www.backstage.com
• • Published on: Monday, 24 August 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWestNYC
Mae West.
MAE WEST enjoyed browsing from her car window.
• • Mae West would relax in her limo — as salesclerks from Bullocks Wilshire department store brought a selection of designer dresses for Mae's inspection.
• • Joan Mitchell, 78, who worked there as a model and salesclerk from 1947 to1971, hand-delivered gowns to West's penthouse at the nearby Ravenwood apartments, she said in a recent interview.
• • A dwindling number of former buyers, salesclerks, and models will return to the 78-year-old Art Deco landmark on 28 July 2007 for two rare public tours and a trip down the aisles of mercantile memory.
• • The retail emporium was built in the 1920s by John Gillespie Bullock and Percy Glen Winnett, both Canadian immigrants and owners of the original Bullock's in downtown Los Angeles. The site at Westmoreland Avenue and Wilshire, about three miles from downtown, was considered the suburbs but was conveniently close to wealthy Hancock Park. Architects John and Donald Parkinson, a father-son team who designed City Hall and Union Station, were commissioned to create a style that appealed to affluent shoppers.
• • L.A. Times Staff Writer Cecilia Rasmussen has written an intriguing backward glance, peppered with Hollywood's notables, that is, the biggest names and the deepest pockets.
• • Enjoy the entire Los Angeles Times article online • • www.latimes.com
• • Section: L.A. THEN AND NOW
• • Title: "A shrine to style and sophistication"
• • Byline: Cecilia Rasmussen
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.
On the birthday of Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington - - born 29 April 1899 in Washington, D.C. - - it's interesting to recall how hard MAE WEST had to fight with Paramount Pictures to get the musician into her film "Belle of the Nineties."
• • Always the champion of the African-American talents she met, Mae insisted that the studio hire him to play and also appear in the movie. The studio didn't want to hire Ellington, at first, because they said the famed Cotton Club headliner would be "too expensive." When Paramount finally gave in to Mae, they agreed to let Ellington and his orchestra play - - however, they insisting on having all white musicians on the set.
• • Mae West marched into the head office at Paramount and said, "White men can't play black music in my picture!" And it was done. Ellington and his band were used and shown onscreen, thanks to Mae (who refused to budge on this).
• • Hollywood's censors did have the final say, though; they refused to let Mae appear next to the musicians in the same scene.
• • "Belle of the Nineties" was in production from 19 March 1934 until June 1934.• • During the 1920s, Mae West met Duke Ellington at Owney Madden's speakeasy. An autographed photo of Mae given to the "Duke" was among his most cherished possessions.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xmlMae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •NYC
Mae West.
