Texas Guinan: Feets Edson

Hyman Edson worked with TEXAS GUINAN at most of her nightspots.  When she opened a world-class whoopee rousing club in Valley Stream in 1932, it was arranged that Edson would guard the terrain by opening a roadhouse directly across Merrick Road. For entertainment, Edson engaged a talented impressionist who often dressed in an evening gown but who was skilled enough to do both female and male impersonations.
• • Jackie Maye Booked at Showplace • •
• • Hyman "Feets" Edson [1894 —1964] will reopen Long Island's Showplace, and will feature Jackie Maye, just to prove to the waiting hordes that there is still a market for female impersonators (flatterer! Ed.).
• • And just guess who'll open the La Casa, at Valley Stream? Give up? Texas Guinan! Surprise! Texas Guinan, who just tootled overseas long enough to Okay Paris, and who has been announced as opening everything but Grant's Tomb, to date, will settle down at La Casa, and make sleeping tough in Valley Stream.
• • Announced on Saturday, 28 May 1932:  Frank Winegar [1901 — 1988] booked at Texas Guinan's La Casa.
• • Source: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, NY); published on Wednesday, 18 May 1932

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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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Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • news clip from 1965 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Clarence Robinson

Oh those days when TEXAS GUINAN offered world-class whoopee at the Valley Stream nightspot on Merrick Road that she named La Casa Guinan.
• • "Racket Dears" Revue at La Casa Guinan • •
• • Before the pick of metropolitan critics, Texas Guinan opened, what she says is the finest floor show she has ever presented, at the La Casa Guinan roadhouse in Valley Stream, Long Island on Friday night. With an enviable record as producer of a number of The Cotton Club  and Follies Bergere floor shows, Clarence Robinson had full charge in the staging of this extravaganza for Texas Guinan and her Racket-Dears .  . . .
• • Source:  The Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh, PA); published on Saturday, 4 June 1932.
• • But a fortnight later, the Racket-Dears heard a door slam.  Robinson, the African-American clarinetist with Broadway cred, high-tailed it back to Harlem after Guinan got cheap with his cast.
• • "Clarence Robinson's Revue Quits La Casa Guinan" • •
• • Texas Guinan's new revue with her "Racket-Dears," which was staged by Clarence Robinson and opening at the La Casa Guinan roadhouse, Valley Stream, Long Island, two weeks ago, walked out Saturday . . .
• • The trouble started when the management tried to cheapen the revue by firing two of Texas's girls, Gretchen Kimmel and Texas Rayne . . . Texas Guinan plans a new a review . .  .

• • Source: The Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh, PA); published on Saturday, 18 June 1932.
• • Clarence Robinson • •
• • The versatile song-and-dance man Clarence Robinson created dances for his wife Hyacinth Curtis, who appeared at The Cotton Club and the Apollo.  Robinson choreographed the 1943 film “Stormy Weather.”  Film buffs will recall the joyful finale with Harold and Fayard Nicholas dancing to Calloway’s “Jumpin’ Jive” that will never fail to leave you breathless.
• • Penniless at the end of his life and residing on the top floor of a decrepit Harlem rooming house, Clarence Robinson was interviewed by author Jim Haskins. "As I was leaving, he called me back to his bed. He said, 'There's three scrapbooks in the closet. You take 'em. But if you use 'em, tell the truth."
• • Jim Haskins recalled, "Clarence Robinson gave me a marvelous archive, without which my book and the movie 'The Cotton Club,' never would have happened."
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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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Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • news from 1932 • •
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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Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan actress • • Eileen Glenn • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.