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Inside Mae West's relationship with the man who launched her career and stole her heart. An untold story of torrid romance, l5 year marriage, and entwined show business careers of the Italian nobleman and Vaudeville headliner "Deiro" and the show business legend and icon of sexual freedom; "the Queen of Camp" is intimately and elegantly exposed.
"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and author is still regarded as the pop archetype of sexual wantonness and ribald humor. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of film legend? Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, and follows her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen's most popular--and colorful--stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed heavily from African American culture, music, dance and humor, creating a subversive voice for herself by which she artfully challenged society and its assumptions regarding race, class and gender. Viewing West as a trickster, Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black tradition of double-speak and "signifying," West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the phenomenon of a black woman passing for white. This absolutely fascinating study is the first comprehensive, interpretive account of Mae West's life and work. It reveals a beloved icon as a radically subversive artist consciously creating her own complex image.
Sex goddess Mae West is responsible for some of the most quoted lines in film history: * 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. * It's not the men in my life that counts - it's the life in my men. She was a performer from childhood and debuted on Broadway in a play she wrote entitled "Sex" which was a success until it was raided for immorality and Mae was jailed for ten days. This book is packed with stars from George Raft to Cary Grant and W.C. Fields, with whom she made "My Little Chickadee", the most successful film of Fields' career. Charlotte Chandler recorded Mae West over a period of roughly a month towards the end of the star's life. She was still as vital and lively as ever, and this book will convey all of Mae West's legendary attitude.
Mae West, wise-cracking vaudeville performer, was one of the most controversial figures of her era. Rarely, however, do people think of Mae West as a writer. In Three Plays By Mae West, Lillian Schlissel brings this underexplored part of West's career to the fore by offering for the first time in book form, three of the plays West wrote in the 1920s--Sex (1926), The Drag (1927) and Pleasure Man (1928). With an insightful introduction by Schlissel, this book offers a unique look into to the life and early career of this legendary stage and screen actress.
Count Guido Deiro (1886-1950), Italian-born composer and accordion virtuoso. Deiro was a major force in the popularization of the accordion in the early 20th century. Concert accordionist and scholar Henry Doktorski has transcribed and edited all of Deiro's original music for accordion-45 pieces including waltzes, rags, marches, polkas, fox trots, tangos, and popular Deiro favorites: My Florence Waltz, Egypto Fantasia, Sharpshooter's March, and the Broadway hit, Kismet.A lengthy essay and rare photos from the Deiro family archive complete the 192-page book.
Learn how Charles Pierce achieved stardom and became one of the most famous female impersonators of all time! Charles Pierce (1926--1999) was an internationally known and highly successful female impersonator, known for his vivid portrayals of Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, and Mae West. This book offers a candid look at a career that spanned over fifty years--from his humble start at the Pasadena Playhouse, to his sold-out shows in San Francisco. From Drags to Riches provides a rich and colorful history of Charles Pierce. In this insightful and moving volume, Pierce’s friend John Wallraff offers valuable insights about the little-known man behind the makeup and captures the essence of what drag stardom is really like. This informative, imaginative, and sexually provocative book contains: stories of how famous Hollywood icons shaped Charles Pierce’s life and his act Pierce’s history, from his humble beginnings at the Pasadena Playhouse to his sold-out shows in San Francisco and beyond a look at Pierce’s private life an examination of the price of fame--how successes and failures shape any performer Using the words of Charles Pierce himself, adding a dash of humor, mixing in fascinating insights, and sprinkling in juicy stories of love, lust, and sex, this book is a melting pot of information about a well-loved but sometimes misunderstood man.
Before Madonna, before Marilyn, there was Mae. The impact of Mae West - through her films, attitude, and aphorisms ("Too much of a good thing can be wonderful"; "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?") - continues to reverberate through American popular culture more than fifteen years after her death. In Too Much of a Good Thing, Ramona Curry examines the interplay between West's bawdy, worldly persona and twentieth-century gender and media politics. Although West has remained an important figure, her image has fulfilled varied cultural functions. In the thirties, she was a lightning rod for debates over morality and censorship. In the seventies, the complexity of her portrayal of gender made her a controversial figure for both the gay rights and feminist movements. Curry not only analyzes the symbolic roles West has occupied, arguing that the entertainer represents a carefully orchestrated transgression of race, class, and gender expectations, she also illustrates how icons of pop culture often distill contested social issues, serving diverse and even contradictory political functions. A pithy and innovative look at what Mae West means, Too Much of a Good Thing is must reading for fans, film buffs, and anyone interested in how popular culture evolves and circulates in the United States.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
Accordion Revolution is about more than an instrument: it's a living, breathing restoration of the squeezebox to its rightful place at the roots of North America's popular music.Before the dawn of rock 'n' roll, the accordion ranked among North America's most popular instruments. Arriving in the arms of immigrants, nearly every ethnicity on the continent played the squeezebox: Irish, Scottish, French, German, Eastern European, Latino, Jewish. The instrument packed barn dances, jazz clubs, and recital halls, and was heard in norteño groups on the Mexican frontier; Creole string bands in New Orleans, and Inuit square dances above the Arctic Circle. Portable, cheap, and loud, accordions became the soundtrack for modernity as the music industry exploited them on records, radio, film, and television.Millions of people played accordions until a disastrous combination of economics, demographics, and electronic instruments nearly erased them from mainstream culture. Emerging from exile with a new generation of followers, this book invites beginner or seasoned accordionists and music fans in general to rediscover a forgotten legion of little-known artists. With an eye for colorful characters and a sharp sense of humor, accordion historian Bruce Triggs uncovers the hidden back-story of the squeezebox in everyone's closet.
Known as the “Psychic to the Stars,” Richard Ireland counseled celebrities including Mae West, Amanda Blake, and Glenn Ford. Twelve years after Ireland’s death in 1992, his son Mark was sent this manuscript, written in 1973. Recently, as Mark Ireland recounts in the foreword, two psychic-mediums with no prior knowledge of the project have received messages suggesting that his father deliberately delayed the book’s release until now, when it would reach an audience more receptive to developing their psychic talents. Your Psychic Potential includes a description of the four spheres/levels of psychic activity, an exploration of the relationship between artistic talents and the psychic, tests and experiments to help unleash psychic ability, a psychic’s diet and meditative exercises that support the freer flow of abilities, and tools to counter inhibitory fears. Anyone interested in discovering their extrasensory talents and achieving conscious control over them is sure to find this an indispensable guide.