Texas Guinan: Wilda Bennett

In 1927  Wilda Bennett and Pepy de Albreau were assisting Brooke Johns and his banjo at TEXAS GUINAN'S 300 Club, 151 West 54th Street.
• • They had celebrated their wedding reception in January 1926 at Texas Guinan's as well. Curfew shall not ring tonight.
• • "Wilda Bennett Weds a Cabaret Dancer; Broadway Surprised" • •
• • NEW YORK. Jan. 20 (A. P.) The New York Herald Tribune today says that Wilda Bennett, actress, has been married to Pepy De Albreau, cabaret dancer, and will star with him in professional engagements. 
• • News of the marriage was a surprise to Broadway inasmuch as a verdict of $37,500 has been obtained against Miss Bennett for alienating the affections of Charles C. Frey, turfman, formerly of Louisville, Ky.   Mrs. Katherine Frey, socially prominent, won the verdict recently after charging the actress with pursuing her husband.
• • The Herald Tribune says that Miss Bennett and De Albreau Pere married in Greenwich, Conn., Monday. Confirmation was obtained through Miss Bennett's sister, Kay, who said: "I don't know many of the details of the marriage, but I do know that Wilda and Pepy were married."

• • Source:  Item on page 2 of The Scranton Republican (Scranton, Pennsylvania); published on 21 January 1926
• • 201 West 52nd Street changes hands • •
• • Tommy Guinan's Playground, a partnership between Texas Guinan and her brother, was the site of a celebrity-studded party in July 1926 for Rudolph Valentino. 
• • By July 28, 1928, the Guinans were out and a buddy of theirs, cabaret dancer Pepy De Albreau, had taken it over. 
• • The Jungle Club (201 West 52nd Street) featured a “Spanish patio bar.”  
• • In 1932, John Perona in partnership with his friend Pepy De Albreau (now known as "a former professional dancer"),  transformed the shuttered Jungle Club into Place Pigalle. The new club was decorated to resemble Montmartre and featured a quartet of can-can dancers and a Maitre d’ named Maraschino.    
• • The Great Depression had a negative impact on places of entertainment and supper clubs. By 1937, Mario's Mirador ["Village Glamour on Broadway"] was advertising itself as an event space for weddings and parties.  
• • By 1939, the Jewish Music Alliance had moved into the generously proportioned space with high ceilings. Originally designed as a concert hall, it became a place to print music books.
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• • The legal battles fought by Mae West and Jim Timony are dramatized in the play "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets," set during the Prohibition Era. Texas Guinan is in some scenes, too. Watch a scene on YouTube.
• • Website for all things Mae West — http://MaeWest.blogspot.com 

• • Exciting Texas Guinan news is on the horizon. More anon.
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Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • at the 300 Club in January 1926 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan Fans and Mae-Mavens

Many publications announced the Texas Guinan and Mae West walking tour and also saluted the August 17th birthday of Mae.
• • Playbill, marking "this date in theatre history," has managed to get her birth year wrong (again) and also tripped up on the stage plays in which she appeared. No, Mr. Playbill, Mae West wrote The Drag but did not star in this 1927 production since she was still appearing in her play Sex at the time.
• • Other news outlets recognized the writer and comedienne as "an actress from the 1930s," erasing her long career in vaudeville and on Broadway, which preceded her 1932 Paramount debut when Mae was an "overnight sensation" at 39 years old.
• • A more faithful close-up was offered on Sunday in the Brooklyn blonde's hometown when a group of Mae-mavens gathered along Shubert Alley to learn how she forged her dreams of deliverance in Times Square along with her diamond-draped colleague Texas Guinan.
• • Attendees posed for pictures in the same spot where the graceful, well-groomed Bucephala, Texas Guinan's horse, was mounted 82 years ago — — that magnificent creature who carried the queen of the night scene up the center aisle of the Shubert Theatre and deposited her onstage as the red velvet curtain was raised for Padlocks of 1927.
• • Ah, Longacre Square, the legitimate theatres, those expensive playhouses built to look like a palazzo, a Tuscan hillside hideaway, a marble mansion, a Venetian villa, a Georgian fantasy — — where little Mae held her mother's hand as they waited for an usher to seat them, lavishly spending each moment of a matinee, drinking in the illusion of the drama in which the mountain of self might have no top, and each encounter might be a reckoning with fleet-footed fate.
• • On Sunday August 16th, the patient assemblage viewed vintage news clippings that decorated the disappointments of another century — — front page humiliations, the raids, the padlocks, the prison sentences, and the losses of a $200,000 advance for Pleasure Man after the purity police shuttered the show on 1 October 1928. They genuflected and strolled down the aisle of St. Malachy's, the church where Texas Guinan and Mae West examined Rudolph Valentino's coffin in August 1926 and mutually agreed the hardy 31-year-old must have been poisoned.
• • On West 54th Street, thanks to a gracious doorman, the tour takers paused in the same vestibule where Mae West entered and exited in 1927 as she was writing Diamond Lil and getting better acquainted with Owney Madden and others who bulleted the headlines.• • Perhaps West 54th recalls the roll calls of absent names, first kisses, the confetti victory parades in an era when Mae West's latest show was billed as "hotter than the Armistice."• • • • Prizes • • • •• • And the group has something else to remember as well — — a handful of raffle prizes. A number of individuals each won a colorful Mae West magnet, a few screened with film posters, stage plays, or her one-liners. Two lovely ladies — — Denise from Manhattan and Karen from Pittsburgh — — each won a "Gaudy Girls" CD, courtesy of Maggie Worsdale and Anne Marie Finnie, who perform live as Sophie Tucker and Mae West. Everyone received a "Gaudy Girls" flyer announcing their next racy performance at Monticello Raceway and Casino on 21 October 2009. And two lucky lasses won a treasured set of Texas Guinan's silent films — — fashion model Gwen Bucci from Manhattan and art curator Frédérique Joseph-Lowery from Fairlawn, New Jersey — — courtesy of an avid Texas Guinan archivist.
• • Exciting news is on the horizon. More anon.
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Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan fans • • tour group on 16 August 2009 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Speaking to Souls

When she was 42 years old, Texas Guinan met Rudolph Valentino [6 May 1895 — 23 August 1926] at her brother's nightspot.
• • It was Sunday 25 July 1926 when Texas Guinan met Valentino at Tommy Guinan's speakeasy. Larger than the average ginmill, The Playground was on West 52nd Street (east of Broadway). Its generous square footage made it ideal for events and James R. Quirk, editor-publisher of Photoplay, hosted a Reception in honor of Valentino's new silent movie "Son of the Sheik" there. When Photoplay first began publication, Quirk's staff had included handsome Julian Johnson, Texas's lover.
• • Mae West and Texas Guinan were there to greet the Apulian heartthrob. No doubt Texas fancied Jadaan, a superb Arabian stallion Valentino had ridden in this melodrama. An expert equestrienne herself, the following year Texas would ride an Arabian stallion into the Shubert Theatre at the start of "Padlocks of 1927."
• • Maybe Mae West was charmed more by the Italian stallion himself — — and piqued by the abrupt end to his life that occurred one month later when the actor was only 31. Something about Rudy impressed Mae, encouraging her to think that he could link her to the unquiet dead up and down Times Square.
• • According to Whitney Bolton, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a week after the Italian-born actor Rudolph Valentino died [1895-1926], Mae West and her friend Texas Guinan arranged for a séance in a Manhattan loft. Suspicious that the 31-year-old heartthrob was secretly poisoned by a rival, Mae summoned an Italian Medium to officiate. At the table sitting opposite Mae were Texas, her brother Tommy Guinan, and the gangster Owney Madden who owned The Cotton Club, a man remembered more for violence than his spiritual side.
• • And the rendezvous with Rudolph in 1926 must have been memorable because two years later Mae was holding séances in the smoking room of the Royale Theatre to communicate again with him. Visiting New York to see “Diamond Lil” on Broadway, the actor Jean Hersholt was invited backstage and yanked into a darkened room where a Medium was channeling Caruso and Valentino. Hersholt recalled that Rudy called upon Mae and said: “Mae, you have a lot of enemies and don’t trust any of them.”
• • During the 1920s, Texas Guinan continued to host séances in her nightspots — — especially in Club Abbey on West 54th Street. It was easy for Mae West to attend these sessions, too, since she lived right upstairs.
• • Walk in the footsteps of Texas Guinan and Mae West next month. See below.
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• • Join us for a lively afternoon focused on Mae West & Texas Guinan!
• • On 16 August 2009, come up and enjoy an a-MAE-zing experience — — a walking tour of historical sights in the Times Square area. This year the Annual Mae West Birthday Tour also commemorates speakeasy hostess Texas Guinan, the generous friend who backed all of Mae’s Broadway shows during the 1920s.
• • During April 1929, the Feds padlocked the CIub Intime at the Hotel Harding, where Texas Guinan was the principal attraction. On August 16th, attendees will visit this speakeasy, which is doing brisk business these days.
• • Walking Tour: "Gaudy Girls on The Gay White Way: Mae West & Texas Guinan in the Theatre District"
• • When: 4:00 PM on Sunday — — 16 August 2008 — — rain or shine
• • Meet: Shubert Alley, 44th Street, West of Broadway, New York, NY 10036
• • Price: $10 [this walking tour lasts about 90 minutes]
• • Subway: N or R [BMT] train to West 42nd Street; 1 [IRT] train to Times Square
• • Attire: why not wear a Mae West-inspired hat?
• • Info: T. 212-614-9683 — — or post your RSVP or tour question here
• • Online: MaeWest.blogspot.com — — TexasGuinan.blogspot.com
• • Who: Playwright LindaAnn Loschiavo makes the tour educational and entertaining.
• • LindaAnn Loschiavo's history play "Courting Mae West" was onstage in July 2008 at the Fresh Fruit Festival. She is working on a biographical travel guide "Mae West's New York, 1899—1959" and will show some of her unusual theatre memorabilia and vintage photos during the tour and reveal secret addresses tied to Mae West that have not been disclosed before. These rare pictures show the area as it looked during the 1920s when Mae West and Texas Guinan had their name on several marquees.
• • Surprises: Prizes and other nice things are part of the fun
• • Members of the press may attend on August 16th as our guest. RSVP required.
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Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • images from 1926 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Eileen Glenn portrays Texas Guinan

MAE WEST had a good friend (and a bankroll for her shows) in Texas Guinan. In "Courting Mae West," Eileen Glenn will portray "The Queen of the Night Clubs" herself.
• • Born in New Jersey, Eileen Glenn was raised in East Tennessee. A trailblazer since childhood, she produced her first show, Cinderella, on her front porch while still in grammar school. She discovered her passion for Prokofiev’s "Peter & The Wolf" and Herb Albert's Tijuana Brass; soundtracks of "The Sound of Music," "Jesus Christ Superstar," and "Godspell" became bliss-driven engines that transported her soul straight to Broadway.
• • Ms Glenn graduated from the University of Tennessee with a BA in theatre. Three years later she discovered improvisational theatre and — — over the course of 4 days — — she flew to Chicago to audition for The Second City, returned home, packed her bags, and set up digs at The Hotel Lincoln (former home of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd).
• • Ms Glenn’s post-graduate instruction was working. She performed in everything: musicals, improv reviews, Shakespeare, Chekov, Greater Tuna, Caligula, The Mikado. Her experience in Chicago culminated with a summer trip to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Upon returning, she produced and starred in her one-person show, Margaret Atwood’s Good Bones and Simple Murders — — which earned rave reviews and has since been produced in New York City, Texas, and Arkansas.
• • Ms Glenn has performed regionally at Mill Mountain Theatre, VA; Arkansas Repertory; Shadowlawn Theater, NJ; and several seasons with Texas Shakespeare Festival. In New York she was a company member with Jean Cocteau Repertory and Lightning Strikes Theatre Company. She performs frequently with The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble and has appeared on many occasions with Judith Shakespeare Company and Actors Stock Company.
• • Inspired at an early age by the likes of Annie Oakley, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Amelia Earhart, and strong independent women everywhere, not to mention her mother, she is not surprised her journey has led her here. It seems Ms Glenn was almost destined to play an independent, gun toting, cowgirl with a heart of gold, living life by her rules and running her own empire.
• • In the immortal words of Texas Guinan, "I would rather have a square inch of New York than all the rest of the world.”

• • Here is a Texas Guinan clip you can watch online — — http://www.efootage.com/stock-footage/13056/john-willis-narration-twenties-1920s-1927-black

• • "COURTING MAE WEST" opens at 6 o'clock on Saturday night July 19, 2008 at the Algonquin Theatre [East 24th Street and Park Avenue South].
• • "COURTING MAE WEST" — — showtimes
• • July 19th, 2008 — — 6:00 PM
• • July 20th, 2008 — — 2:00 PM matinee
• • July 21st, 2008 — — 6:00 PM
• • July 22nd, 2008 — — 9:00 PM
• • Tickets to COURTING MAE WEST are $18 per adult.
• • Theatermania.com sells the tickets — — http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/144297
• • Questions? Phone 212-779-3051.
• • The play is 95 minutes.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae West and Texas Guinan and the gang onstage in mid-July 2008.
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Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan actress • • Eileen Glenn • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Mae & Money

The past is another country — — and Texas Guinan's friend MAE WEST was most comfortable there.
• • However, in her Broadway blockbuster "Diamond Lil" [1928] Mae's aim was not to resurrect the naughty nineties — — but to present that bygone decade's sins in shifty soft focus. The world of Diamond Lil, restrained by Victorian morality despite a certain cheeky daring, was a backwards glance to a time of innocence, picturesque entertainment, well-behaved wildness, corset-clad temptresses, The Police Gazette's seductions, and 5-cent beer.
• • Drama critic Stark Young [1881—1963] analyzed Mae's clever maneuvers in his article for The New Republic:
• • "Diamond Lil" is as daring in the end [as 1926's "Sex"], the same sexy morsels, embraces, 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 from The New Republic — 27 June 1928].
• • Louis Lopardi, who will direct "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship and Secrets" in July at the Algonquin Theatre, also feels enriched by the past. His own production — — The Purgatory Project, Part 2 — — reimagined the lives led by four famous historical figures: Sigmund Freud, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Lee Harvey Oswald.
• • A history buff as well as a thespian, Lopardi especially enjoys plays with a classical echo, texts rooted to a mythic past. For instance, he found "Metamorphoses," a play based on the Greek poem Metamorphoses by Ovid, fascinating and he relished the modernized adaptation written by Mary Zimmerman a few years ago. Ovid works onstage because those depictions of yearning and confused desires are timeless, feels Lopardi.
• • Since he has frequently decanted Ovid's ancient songs, he noticed right away the mythic skin underneath "Courting Mae West" — — the Brooklyn bombshell's story reimagined as the metamorphosis of King Midas. How you get the golden touch is one of the subtle sub-plots here. As Mae's career goals recalibrate her box office appeal, she will earn her hard cold slice of success — — but at a cost.
• • "I like a multi-layered comedy," admits Lopardi. "The best shows make you laugh for an hour and a half — — and then, untethered from your Playbill, you mull it over at home."
• • Bringing "Courting Mae West" to an audience requires funding. To support A Company Of Players, a non-profit theatre group established in 1979 to present meaningful theatre, please click on this link — — http://www.companyofplayers.com/support.htm
• • A Company Of Players is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)3 type organization, and donations to the group are considered a charitable, tax-deductible contribution.
• • Contribute through "Pay Pal" or you can mail a check to: A Company Of Players, 545 Eighth Avenue, #401, New York NY 10018-4307.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" — — which features Texas Guinan in the cast — — will be onstage at the Algonquin Theatre [123 East 24th Street, New York, NY 10010] from July 19th — 22nd, 2008.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae West and Texas Guinan onstage in mid-July 2008.
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Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Mae West and Texas Guinan • • 1930 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Drena Beach

In March 1929 audiences were getting used to a new form of entertainment: a "dramatic dialogue picture" also known as a "talkie." Since people were used to seeing a live stage show, theatre owners would book a picture and arrange for an extravaganza on stage.
• • Drena Beach, a protege of Texas Guinan, was getting a lot of work. The live segments ran continuously from noon to midnight, alternating with the featured first-run picture.
• • On 10 March 1929, the acrobatic dancer performed her "Sensational Dance of the Leopard" on the stage of B.S. Moss's Colony Theatre [Broadway and 53rd Street].
• • Always supportive of her "little girls," Texas Guinan would be in the audience, attracting more press coverage to the event to make sure her performer was noticed. And how could you not notice Drena Beach with her thrillingly long tigerish fingernails?
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Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan protege Drena Beach • • 1926 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan & the Undead

Since October 31st is All Hallows Eve, it is the season to highlight Texas Guinan's fascination with the occult, the unseen, and the undead. When she was 42 years old, Texas Guinan met Rudolph Valentino [6 May 1895 — 23 August 1926] at her brother's nightspot.

• • It was Sunday 25 July 1926 when Texas Guinan met Valentino at Tommy Guinan's speakeasy. Larger than the average ginmill, The Playground was on West 52nd Street (east of Broadway). Its generous square footage made it ideal for events and James R. Quirk, editor-publisher of Photoplay, hosted a Reception in honor of Valentino's new silent movie "Son of the Sheik" there. When Photoplay first began publication, Quirk's staff had included handsome Julian Johnson, Texas's lover.
• • Mae West and Texas Guinan were there to greet the Apulian heartthrob. No doubt Texas fancied Jadaan, a superb Arabian stallion Valentino had ridden in this melodrama. An expert equestrienne herself, the following year Texas would ride an Arabian stallion into the Shubert Theatre at the start of "Padlocks of 1927."

• • Maybe Mae West was charmed more by the Italian stallion himself — — and piqued by the abrupt end to his life that occurred one month later when the actor was only 31. Something about Rudy impressed Mae, encouraging her to think that he could link her to the unquiet dead up and down Times Square.
• • According to Whitney Bolton, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a week after the Italian-born actor Rudolph Valentino died [1895-1926], Mae West and her friend Texas Guinan arranged for a séance in a Manhattan loft. Suspicious that the 31-year-old heartthrob was secretly poisoned by a rival, Mae summoned an Italian Medium to officiate. At the table sitting opposite Mae were Texas, her brother Tommy Guinan, and the gangster Owney Madden who owned The Cotton Club, a man remembered more for violence than his spiritual side.
• • And the rendezvous with Rudolph in 1926 must have been memorable because two years later Mae was holding séances in the smoking room of the Royale Theatre to communicate again with him. Visiting New York to see “Diamond Lil” on Broadway, the actor Jean Hersholt was invited backstage and yanked into a darkened room where a Medium was channeling Caruso and Valentino. Hersholt recalled that Rudy called upon Mae and said: “Mae, you have a lot of enemies and don’t trust any of them.”
• • During the 1920s, Texas Guinan continued to host séances in her nightspots — — especially in Club Abbey on West 54th Street. It was easy for Mae West to attend these sessions, too, since she lived right upstairs.
• • To stay in touch with the other side, Texas Guinan also regularly attended St. Joseph's, a Roman Catholic Church on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village.
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Texas Guinan
• • Illustration: Valentino and "Son of the Sheik" • • 1926 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.