Meet Mae West August 2016

Meet the real Mae West: New Yorker, vaudevillian, upstart, and jailbird
The Annual Mae West Event Revisits the Brooklyn Bombshell’s Struggles and Trial That Made Her Famous

• • New York, NY, July 1, 2016  — Born in Brooklyn, NY on August 17, 1893, MAE WEST began performing at age 6. By 1925, the 32-year-old knew her career had capsized; she was cast only in minor roles, she had numerous negative reviews, and she’d been fired. A trip to Greenwich Village and an appearance at Jefferson Market Court (now Jefferson Market Library) — — along with an overnight stay at Jefferson Jail — — changed her life, making the controversial vaudevillian an overnight sensation.
• • Vintage NYC images punctuate this fascinating but little-known story about the legendary entertainer, some of which played out at 425 Sixth Avenue when it was the Third Judicial Courthouse.
• • Join us at 6:00 on Wednesday evening, August 17, 2016 to celebrate Mae’s birthday with a talk and slide-show by Greenwich Village historian LindaAnn Loschiavo featuring rare photos of the young variety artist, who toured as a “specialty dancer” before becoming a writer and going to Hollywood in 1932 for a small role in Paramount's “Night After Night.” Archival images of NYC vaudeville theatres, Greenwich Village, and Jefferson Market will be screened as you’ll be introduced to the company Mae kept such as Owney Madden, George Raft, Jack Dempsey, West 8th Street resident Texas Guinan, etc. • • About our speaker: Greenwich Villager LindaAnn Loschiavo, a historian and dramatist, drew inspiration from trials at Jefferson Market Court for her play “Courting Mae West.” Her latest projects are a documentary film, “In the Footsteps of Texas Guinan,” and a new biography on the queen of the night clubs, who lived at 72 Washington Square South and 17 West 8th Street until her death in 1933.
• • Come up and see Mae on her birthday for a festive occasion filled with fun, refreshments, prizes.   

    
— — — — Who, What, When, Where — — — —
• • What: Meet the real Mae West: New Yorker, vaudevillian, upstart, jailbird
• • When: Wednesday, 17 August 2016 — — from 6:00—8:00pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
• • Where: Jefferson Market Library, 425 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10011 (at West 10th  St.)
• • Fee: FREE — — but reservations are suggested
• • Phone: 212- 243-4334
• • Who: Our speaker is LindaAnn Loschiavo, dramatist, historian, Greenwich Villager
• • Subway: IND line to West Fourth Street; PATH train to West 9th Street
• • Extra: refreshments and a Mae West raffle
• • Website for all things Mae West:  http://MaeWest.blogspot.com
• • Mae West said: "I enjoyed the court room as any other stage."
• • Mae West (to jail matron): "Whaddya mean strip? I thought this was a respectable place!" 
• • Feel free to share this post.

• • Mae West: New Yorker, Vaudevillian, Upstart, and Jailbird — a Birthday Celebration!
• • https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2016/08/17/mae-west-new-yorker-vaudevillian-upstart-and-jailbird-birthday

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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 • • Mae West on trial, 1927 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Licensing Fees

"In the Footsteps of Texas Guinan" is a documentary film, now in production, about (who else?) TEXAS GUINAN.
• • As documentary filmmakers try to bring a topic to the screen, some of the challenges involve all those licensing fees. What brings a story alive is the rare archival footage as well as those "rights managed" photos (from Getty Images, Bettman Archive, etc.) — — and, yes, predictably that means paying a full licensing fee. Warner Brothers, for instance, is not about to let us use vintage Texas Guinan film footage for free.

• • Other expenses include traveling to interview people, paying the camera crew (boom operators, lighting staff, etc.), music rights, editing the footage, and more.

• • Thank you to all the wonderful individuals who have already contributed.
• • We're hoping to reach more people before June 16th. Please share this message.
• • During the 1920s, night club was always two words as in "Queen of the Night Clubs."
• • There's more to the story so come back to see us and please support our campaign. Thank you.
• • Visit "In the Footsteps of Texas Guinan"

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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 • • a friend of hers • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Night Club — 2 words

Here's the untold story behind the noun "night club," a term coined by TEXAS GUINAN.  She was not the first individual, however, to open a nightspot where men and women could dance, drink, socialize, and be entertained.
• • For instance, in 1917 (during pre-wartime Prohibition) in Greenwich Village, Paula "Polly" Holliday and Bernard "Barney" Gallant were running the Greenwich Village Inn on Sheridan Square. This was considered to be the first place in New York City where drinks were served at a customer's table by a waiter or waitress and there was live entertainment onstage.
• • This kind of avant-garde nightspot was known as "a concert saloon" or "a cabaret" in 1917.
• • Let's move ahead seven years to 1924, when Texas Guinan and Larry Fay opened their El Fey Club in midtown Manhattan. To extract more cash from the attendees and also to have a ready alibi for the cops, Texas instructed her doorman to sell a club membership card to anyone trying to gain admission. Later on, when the police would show up, Texas explained that this was a private party — — and all the adults inside were "club members."  Clever, huh?

• • During the 1920s, night club was always two words as in "Queen of the Night Clubs."
• • There's more to the story so come back to see us and please support our campaign.
• • Visit "In the Footsteps of Texas Guinan"
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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.
_________________________________________________________
Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • page in Variety, 1926 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Hyman Edson

Oh those days when TEXAS GUINAN offered world-class whoopee at Club Intime and her gallant gun-toting "galahad" was ever on call.
• • Born in Manhattan and raised on the Bowery, Hyman H. Edson [1894 —1964] was a career criminal but retained the after-glow of being associated with Texas Guinan and the affection of gossip columnists.
• • During the speakeasy era, the gun-toting Hyman “Feets” Edson was described in newspaper articles as Guinan’s “manager,” a “broker,” her “faithful henchman,” or (in 1926) “a tired business man, alleged to have had liquor on his person.”  
• • When Guinan opened a Merrick Road speakeasy, it was noted that “Feets” Edson was operating the club directly opposite hers.
• • Last Sucker at Club Intime, 205 West 54th Street • •
• • New York, April 28, 1929 — — Texas Guinan's Club Intime was evicted from the Hotel Harding on West 54th st., Saturday afternoon by City Marshal Michael J. Kennedy, jr., who acted on an order obtained from municipal court by Mrs. Tillie Landauer, landlord of the hotel. 
• • Kennedy and his assistants piled the pianos. chairs, tables, draperies and other furnishings of the club on the sidewalk, as Tommy Guinan, brother of Texas, and Hyman Edson, her faithful henchman, looked mournfully on. The belongings were not long on the sidewalk. The draperies were taken away by a cleaning concern and the other stuff went to a warehouse. 

• • Tommy Guinan and Edson were discussing the prospects of the club's reopening when Marshal Kennedy arrived. "Who are you?" they asked. 
• • "I'm probably the last sucker to step in here," said Kennedy. "I'm the city marshal and I'm going to give the little girl a great big hand."
• • In December 1964, Edson was killed in a car accident. On January 26, 1965, Broadway columnist Leonard Lyon wrote: "Feets Edson, the colorful Texas Guinan character who was killed in an auto accident last month, was suing George Raft for libel."
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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.
_________________________________________________________
Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • 205 West 54th Street • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: 1819 Broadway

Oh those days when TEXAS GUINAN offered world-class whoopee onscreen and leased a film office at 1819 Broadway (at the N.W. corner of 59th Street, overlooking Central Park).  She rented Suite # 712.  
• • The silent screen star had made dozens of Westerns for the Frohman Amusement Company, Merit Films (130 West 46th St.), and others. It was time to show the world she could do it better. Here is her announcement in August 1921.
• • Despite an ambitious volley of ads in the trade publications (such as this one below), TGP would only release two titles. These two were "Texas of the Mounted" (in which she played a male and female role) and "The Code of the West" in 1921. These would be her last two silent films.
• • Texas Guinan in Two-Reelers  Produced by Her Own Company • •
• • The Texas Guinan Productions recently organized, announces it will produce a series of twelve two-reel Western dramas of an original nature, starring Miss Guinan, to be released on the state-right market, commencing September 15.  The productions will be adaptations from authors of prominence who have specialized in Western characterization and it is said will portray the true Western character, supported by themes embracing heart interest and pathos. It is understood that a prominent state-right producer will supervise the production, exploitation and distribution. In addition, Miss Guinan will also produce two five-reel or six-reel Western Specials and has already secured an option on a popular Western novel.
• • The Eastern executive offices are located in New York. Production work will be on the West Coast. The first six stories have already been acquired. Two of them call for locations in Montana and Arizona and the producing company will photograph these attractions at the exact locale named by the authors of the stories.

• • An extensive advertising campaign will be inaugurated.
• • Marion Kohn, of the Federated  Film Exchange of California, has already closed California, Arizona,  and Nevada, and three other exchanges have wired in offers on their territories.
• • It is also planned that for a period of eight weeks after the completion of the first series of twelve releases to have Miss Guinan make a personal tour throughout the United States, appearing in an act having been written for her in which she will employ her favorite broncho "Honey Dew," presented to her by the citizens of Waco, Texas, her home town.

• • Miss Guinan is not a  novice in the making of two-reel Western productions, having starred in two other series.
• • Source:   The Moving Picture World (page 610); published on 6 August 1921 
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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.
_________________________________________________________
Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • Texas Guinan Productions, 1921 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Daniel Frohman

Silent film actress TEXAS GUINAN met Daniel Frohman when she was in her mid-30s and remembered the encounter as a "great day" in her life.
• • Daniel Frohman honored • •
• • At the testimonial dinner to Daniel Frohman, on Sunday night, Texas Guinan was among those who were there to pay tribute to Mr. Frohman, who was celebrating his fiftieth year in theatricals.
• • "There are two great days in my life," Miss Guinan said emotionally, "the day I met Daniel Frohman. And the day . . ."
• • lnterrupted a heckler, "And the day that you saddled Paul Revere's horse before rumble seats were invented . . .!" came a very loud shout.
• • Source:  Item rpt in The Scranton Republican (Scranton, Pennsylvania); published on 3 December 1930.
• • Daniel Frohman [22 August 1851 — 26 December 1940] was an American theatrical producer and manager, and an early film producer.
• • Texas made numerous silent films with his company,  Frohman Amusement Corp. in 1919 such as "The She Wolf" co-starring  George Chesebro.

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

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • in 1919 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: 0. 0. McIntyre

The media people kissed TEXAS GUINAN and she kissed and cooed right back. One of the faithful scribes who often serenaded her in print was 0. 0. McIntyre, who was born in the same year as the Waco cowgirl: 1884. 
• • For a quarter of a century, his daily column, “New York Day by Day,” was published in more than 500 newspapers. Texas Guinan does not rebuke an annoying customer with "Hello, Sucker!" She now cries. "You are just a cover charge to me," he noted in his column dated  Sunday, 17 August 1930.   "Texas Guinan made $700,000 in the most prosperous year of her night club reign," he revealed to his readers on Sunday, 10 December 1933.
• • Oscar Odd McIntyre [18 February 1884 — 14 February 1938] • • 
• • Hedda Hopper wrote: Any newspaper man knows names make news. No one recognized this better than the gentleman who was probably the daddy of the personality news column way back in the roaring '20s. That would be 0. 0. McIntyre.
• • Texas Guinan's name was often sandwiched into his delicious buffet of a column. Lionized by the columnist often during her speakeasy hostess era, Texas seemed to be no less alive to him and worthy of praise after 1933. Here is one example.

• • New York, NY — —  April 16th — — The most popular night club hostess New York has ever known was, of course, Texas Guinan, with Helen Morgan a runner-up.  . . .
• • Source:  "New York Day by Day" by 0. 0. Mclntyre, syndicated column rpt in Herald-Journal; published on Friday, 17 April 1936
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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.
_________________________________________________________
Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • in the 1930s • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Sister Aimee

In 1932, when a Broadway producer read Nancy Barr Mativy's biography, "Sister Aimee," he heard cash register bells ringing — — and realized that no one was better qualified to play the title role than TEXAS GUINAN. 
• • The night club queen, known for her famous comebacks, once said to a huckster: "Listen, sucker, you take them by the sun. I take them by the moon. Now don't let's interfere with each other's business." Though she didn't say this to Aimee, it would have been apt, yes?  
• • The New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, speaking to Guinan about this stage play, asked if she was worried Aimee might sue producer Charles Hopkins. "Well, it's no skin off my ass," was her candid reply.
• • "Texas Guinan to Act" • •
• • Charles Hopkins has a plan which should attract a lot of attention. He is arranging to produce a stage version of Nancy Barr Mativy's book, "Sister Aimee," and our old night club friend, Texas Guinan, will be seen as Aimee, the adult.
• • Texas should be ideal, for such a role, although it may cause many a smile to see the radiant Tex playing the part of an evangelist. Naturally, as I have forgotten to state, the play will deal with the life of Aimee Semple McPherson. Helen Rowland will be Aimee, the child; Edith Barrett Aimee, the girl; and then along will come Texas Guinan as the Sister Aimee of the present.
• • Source:  Syndicated show biz column rpt in The Indianapolis Star (Indiana); published on Sunday, 6 March 1932.

• • Aimee Semple McPherson [9 October 1890 –– 27 September 1944], also known as "Sister Aimee" or simply "Sister," was an evangelist and media sensation in the 1920s and 1930s; she was also the founder of the Foursquare Church.
• • Aimee McPherson had founded the Foursquare Gospel church. She supervised the construction of a large, domed church building in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, and it was completed in June 1923. Named Angelus Temple, it had a seating capacity of over 5,000.
• • When Aimee Semple McPherson, the famous West Coast evangelist (with an expensive marcel-waved hair-do) visited New York in 1927, she insisted on visiting Texas Guinan's speakeasy on West Fifty-fourth Street.
• • Naturally, Texas welcomed McPherson and the two formed somewhat of a mutual admiration society. It was a promotional dream — — two gals of Irish descent in different types of show business. Aimee thanked Texas and invited her to her Glad Tidings Tabernacle the next day. Texas and her chorus girls showed up (before going to work), to the astonishment of everyone.
• • At the time, women in the pulpit ministry were rare — — those who wore makeup and jewelry in the pulpit, nonexistent. McPherson's uniqueness in this respect, her flamboyance and her unashamed use of low-key sex appeal to attract converts, endeared her to her crowd of followers in Los Angeles. She would invariably appear before parishioners in a white gown, carrying a bouquet of flowers.
• • On 27 September 1944 she was found dead of an overdose of prescription barbiturates.
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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.
_________________________________________________________
Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • news clip in 1933 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Belle Livingston

Oh those days when TEXAS GUINAN offered world-class whoopee along with her rival hostess, Belle Livingston, who ran a four-story speak at 158-160 East Fifty-Eighth Street.
• • "Men are nicer to the women they don't marry." — Belle Livingston
• • "I looked always outside of myself to see what I could make the world give me, instead of looking within myself to see what was there."  — Belle Livingston
• • "Belle Out of Order" by Belle Livingston [NY: Holt, 341  pages]
• • Reviewed by William Leonard
• • Belle Livingston was a showgirl in the 199Os, an international courtesan in the Edwardian era, proprietress of a gilded and exclusive speakeasy in the 1920s, a jailbird for 30 days in the 1930s, and a penniless "has been" for many years before her death in 1957.
• • All those stages in her career except the final one glitter entertainingly in her autobiography, written in 1948 but unpublished until now because she wasn't satisfied with it.
• • Belle knew the magnetism of mystery, and seldom fretted too much about the facts. She claimed to have started life as a foundling discovered under a sunflower, and liked to call herself the "sunflower girl." She consorted with kings and millionaires, statesmen, and bartenders, but no one ever knew whether she was fabulously wealthy or flat broke. The element of uncertainty that pervaded her life pervades her book.

From: TexasGuinan.blogspot.com

• •  It's a lighthearted, singing life story, full of color as well as fibs. As a member of the champagne and lobster set in the days before World War I, Belle seems to recall that she was an intimate buddy of every important male from Kitchener to Theodore Roosevelt, from Edward VII of England to King Leopold of Belgium. She went through four husbands and spent many years intimating that if the right man came along he might be the lucky fifth.
• • From 1927 to 1931, the period in her life when she won most fame, Belle was a friendly rival of Texas Guinan in the operation of fancy illegal saloons. But, whereas Tex greeted the patrons with "Hello, sucker!" Belle described her joints as salons of literature and the arts.
• • "Texas had the masses while I had the classes," Belle writes. "There was enough for both of us in New York.  Texas and l were two women who passed vigorously rather than happily through prohibition. Although temporary figures, we were clearly visible."
• • When Belle's fanciest Manhattan speakeasy was raided in January 1931, she fled across the rooftops in flashy red pajamas but was captured and given 30 days. Strangely, her description of that month in the old Harlem jail is sympathetic. And that was just about the end of Belle's career [sic], for she outlived her time.
• • She was a hell raiser in a genteel fashion, and her book manages to be scandalous without being vulgar.
• • [Ed.: No, that was not the end of her career. After she served time in NYC, Belle went to Reno, Nevada and opened a speakeasy there.]  
• • Source: "Belle Out of Order" reviewed by  Chicago Tribune; published on 2  August 1959 
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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.
_________________________________________________________
Source:http://texasguinan.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • rival hostess • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

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

Texas Guinan
• • Photo: Texas Guinan • • at the 300 Club in January 1926 • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan: Louis Sobol

The Manhattan press agent Louis Sobol recalled his relationship with TEXAS GUINAN in his memoir.
• • Louis Sobol wrote: Texas Guinan was another of Earl Carroll's friends. She was an outstanding figure during the Prohibition era, a night club queen who addressed her patrons as "suckers" and exploited her entertainers with the words, "Give this little girl a hand."
• • Texas grew to know me so well that when my father and mother came to New York, she entertained them at her club. Characteristically, Texas directed all the attention toward mother. Every time that anything would happen, Texas would cry, "How did you like that, mother? How was that, mother? Did that please you, mother?"
• • The attention, though very flattering, was to have its repercussions.  A week after, when mother and I went to see "Carmen" at the Metropolitan Opera House, we made the customary lobby promenade, during the first intermission.  All of a sudden we saw a woman rush up to a man, grab him by the arm and cry, "Look, Charlie, there's mother from Texas Guinan's."
• • The incident struck me as so funny that I wrote it up and sent it  to the old Life Magazine, which straightway published it and sent me a five-dollar check.
• • The story of Texas Guinan has been told, I believe, in songs and films, but my own delight on her career partakes of the incongruous. Though she spent practically most of her time in the denatured atmosphere of a night club, when her work was over, I have heard that she sank into a bed covered with multiple pillows, amid heavy hangings, perfumed dolls and bric-a-brac. Doubtless, too, the windows were closed for fear that a gust of fresh air would contaminate the odor of greasepaint.

• • Fresh air was what Earl Carroll and I sought when the day's work was over.  . . .
• • Belle Livingston, idol of the noctambulists • •
• • Among the queens of this almost forgotten time was Belle Livingston, once the idol of the noctambulists. She is, now in her eighties, a large woman, self-assured, with red hair and a flushed skin. She indicated that her past was distinguished and went in for literature. Her night club introduced the informal idea of having guests sit on the floor, a floor made comfortable with voluptuous pillows which flanked the walls, walls made equally comfortable with satin upholstery. Outside the police hovered regularly about the place and created that illicit atmosphere which made those days continuously exciting.
• • Belle was the first woman in New York to run a speakeasy. She was dubbed the Belle of Prohibition. She once remarked to Texas Guinan:  "My place won't seem like home if I'm not raided." She was jailed at one time for four weeks in a Harlem prison.  . . .
• • Source:  Book: "Broadway Heartbeat: Memoirs of a Press Agent" by Louis Sobol (NY: Hermitage House, 1953] 
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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 • • in the 1920s • •
NYC
Texas Guinan.