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The familiar Mae We*t of today, nonchalant and wise in Belle of the Nineties, her newest picture
<•*
WEST of
B
roadway
A REMINISCENCE OF MAE'S EARLY DAYS
by HARRY RICHMAN
as told to RUTH GERI
As Mae appeared
in 1915, the period
of which Harry
Richman write*
M
iss West, may I present Mr. Harry Richman."
The speaker: James Timoney, New York theatrical attorney. The place: The office of the William K. Harris Music Publishing company. The time: 1915. All the details of my first meeting with Mae West are stamped indelibly in my mind, after all those years.
I had just returned from the Panama-Pacific exposition in San Francisco where, as a member of the Jewel City Trio, I had been appearing in fourteen shows a day. Take it from me, there are very few things you can do fourteen times a day without getting pretty tired of it all, and when I returned to New York, for once in my life I did not mind being out of work. Sleep seemed a lot more important than eating regularly. Before long, though, I began to think that perhaps eating fourteen times a day was something I wouldn't get tired of.
You can understand, then, why I wasted no time when I
Harry Richman when he was
a virtually unknown vaude
villian appearing with Mae in
a variety skit
received a call from the Keith offices to get in touch with Mr. Timoney. He told me he had a client who was seeking a vaudeville partner, and we arranged a meeting in one of the Harris studios. I arrived right on the minute, and Timoney performed the introduction.
• It is hard to believe how like the Mae West of today the Mae West of 1915 appeared when I met her then. The same curves, bustles, curly blond hair, floppy picture hat and all. To see Miss West today one who knew her then might imagine that here was a present-day-female Rip Van Winkle, fresh from a twenty -year nap.
Her acknowledgment of Timoney's introduction was typical, and I must admit left me slightly ill at ease. She did not speak; did not even smile. Instead, her eyes swept me from head to foot, a long, appraising stare. I felt an
Please torn to unge sixty-three
A revealing portrait by Mae's one-time piano player, now a noted stage star
OCTOBER, 1934
17