The classy Countess Luann de Lesseps is a big fan of the old bump and grind.
“I love burlesque!” Ms. de Lesseps confessed to the Daily Transom on Wednesday night, May 27, during intermission at former Roxy and Palladium promoter Lee Chappell‘s risque weekly Foreign Affairs show in the dimly lit lounge at Vikram Read More
She Always Knew How: Mae West—A Personal Biography
By Charlotte Chandler
Simon & Schuster, 317 pages, $26
It’s hard to think of any of today’s shiny and carefully coddled stars who could hold their own when it comes to the utter cool that was Mae West. Seriously! Just try to imagine an Read More
The exhibition called Endless Love , which the painter Mark Greenwold has organized at the DC Moore Gallery, is not to be mistaken for a show about sex or romance, even though the painting illustrated on the cover of its announcement-Hilary Harkness’ Gallic Beauties of Yesteryear (2001)-depicts a bevy of seductive, semi-clad girls strewn about Read More
Mae West: An Icon in Black and White , by Jill Watts. Oxford University Press, 362 pages, $35.
Poor Mae West! First, struggling up the hard way-the not-quite-savory background, burlesque, vaudeville; notoriety (well, she enjoyed that); sneered at by the classy side of Broadway and later of Hollywood (Miriam Hopkins huffed of her own Read More
Rona Barrett gave good Hedda. All through the 60′s, 70′s and into the early 80′s, Rona Barrett bestrode the world of celeb tittle-tattle like an elegantly coiffed Colossus. Then she disappeared in a puff of hair spray … but now she’s back! Yes, the celebrity pooper-scooper with the frosted and feathered Mount Etna coiffure est Read More
A concerned letter has flooded into my mailbox. “I read you every week and I love you,” it goes. “But why didn’t you adore Dirty Blonde , and what’s so terrible about cross-dressing anyway? Yours Sincerely, Raymond Boot, Brooklyn.”
I had mentioned last week that we must all give ourselves a well-deserved rest from worrying Read More
As I was saying about Tom Stoppard: Few people would deny he’s a clever sausage, including Tom Stoppard. Cleverness is the calling card of Mr. Stoppard’s alter ego, Henry, portrayed brilliantly by Stephen Dillane in the champagne revival of The Real Thing at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway. I enjoyed the play immensely; I Read More
Three Plays by Mae West: ‘Sex,’ ‘The Drag’ and ‘The Pleasure Man,’ edited by Lillian Schlissel. Routledge, 246 pages, $16.99.
Mae West was thrown into jail in New York on Feb. 9, 1927, for having written and starred in a play called Sex , the content of which a grand jury deemed “wicked, lewd, Read More
