17 August: Mae West

The actress Mae West was born on this date in 1893. Here are 10 things you might not know about her.

1. Her real name was Mary Jane West and she was born in New York. Her father was a prizefighter known as "Battlin' Jack West", who later ran a private detective agency.
2. Mae West's first performance was at a church social when she was five, and by the age of seven she was appearing in stage shows. At 14, she was a vaudeville stage actress using the name Baby Mae.
3. She was more than just an actress. She wrote, directed and produced plays as well, using the name Jane Mast. In her 20s, she wrote and produced a play called Sex, which did well on Broadway but religious groups didn't like it and complained. The theatre was raided and Mae West was arrested.
4. She could have simply paid a fine, but she chose to go to prison for ten days, because she would get more publicity for that. In the end, she served eight days (two days off for good behaviour) and while she was in there, she dined with the warden and his wife and continued to wear silk underwear.
5. She didn't get a film contract until she was 38. Her first film role was a small part in Night After Night. She didn't like the part at first, but she was allowed to re-write her scenes, which stole the show. She went on to write nine of the thirteen films she starred in.
6. She was married at the age of 17 to Frank Szatkus, a fellow vaudevillian. They only lived together for a few weeks. Mae tried to keep the marriage secret from the press, but a filing clerk discovered the marriage certificate in 1935 and told the press. She didn't divorce him until 1942.
7. In 1935, she was the highest paid star in Hollywood and the highest paid person in the USA. The only person with a bigger salary than her was the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
8. She was a recording star as well. The songs from her films were released on 78rpm records in the 1930s. In 1955, she recorded her first album, The Fabulous Mae West. Her songs included Am I Too Young and He's Good For Me. In 1966 she released a Christmas song, Santa, Come Up to See Me.
9. When The Beatles asked if they could include her picture on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, she quipped, "What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?” Nevertheless, she did give her permission and appears on the cover.
10. She inspired several designers and artists. Elsa Schiaparelli released a perfume in 1937 called Shocking that came in a bottle shaped like West's torso. Talking of bottles, the Coca Cola bottle is rumoured to have been based on her figure as well. Salvador Dali painted a picture, Il volto di Mae West, in which he turns her face into a room in an apartment. Her Lips are the sofa, and he later designed the sofa for real, naming it Mae West Lips.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle