Wishing upon a Starr

How many actresses would like to portray MAE WEST? When director Louis Lopardi placed the official casting call for the play "Courting Mae West" in Actors' Access, within 48 hours 690 responses had flooded his mailbox.
• • Since "Courting Mae West" — — a serious-minded comedy based on true events during the Prohibition Era — — has a cast of seven, not every resume was intended for the "diamonds is my career" gal. Another actress will portray Beverly West and Texas Guinan, for instance.
• • But the largest number of replies, according to Mr. Lopardi, was for the role of Starr Faithfull [called Sara Starr in the play]. He received 270 headshots and cvs from actresses eager to play the fatal flapper. Starr's role calls for a very thin, stylish woman in her mid-twenties. As written, Sara Starr is a complex creature with a generous store of nervous discontent, harsh in her judgments of others, and quick to see individuals as defective because they are not enough like her. When John O'Hara wrote about the beautiful party girl, who met death at age 25, he renamed her Gloria Wandrous and made her the centerpiece of Butterfield 8.
• • As Mr. Lopardi heads for his first round of auditions on Friday and Saturday [April 25th — 26th, 2008] at The Producers Club in Manhattan, what will he look for in the next Mae West? "Her vitality was legendary," said the director. "And Mae West had industrial strength charisma."
• • What helps a stage director select the right individual? The first step is "typing-out by headshots plus experience," he explained, "and then short screening auditions."
• • What are some red flags? Showing up totally costumed for the role is a warning sign Mr. Lopardi is aware of. "An actress can suggest Mae West by wearing a boa — — but if she shows up decked out like Diamond Lil, I would be leery."
• • The casting and the elimination rounds begin today. Later there will be callbacks. Check this blog again to see who will play Mae in "Courting Mae West" in mid-July at the Algonquin Theatre in New York City.
• • No cameras were rolling in an Astor Place audition room in Manhattan (back in June 2005) when a New York City director was then conducting a talent search for MAE WEST for a short excerpt of "Courting Mae West” timed for The Annual Mae West Gala on 17 August 2005. But the dare-to-bare urge was in the air.
• • The playwright, the casting crew, and the director's personal assistant were astonished to see how many aspiring actresses interpreted the director's suggestion to "have fun with Mae's bawdy dialogue and be bold” as a green light to go blue.
• • Actor Richard Kent-Green, while playing a waiter in the opening scene, found himself adrift in fishnet hosiery and female garments as an Australian actress tossed her black apparel around. Ever the improv expert, Kent-Green anchored these cast-aways on a folding chair and stayed in character.
• • Is Janet Jacksons wardrobe malfunction becoming a trend? Richard Kent-Green admitted to a roving reporter that he had seen, in one night, more curves than a coastal highway.
• • Comedienne Louise ["Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”] Lasser said it is unfortunate when an actress puts her faith in the casting couch instead of her talent. Being bold during an audition, observed Miss Lasser, used to mean you showed some sass. Mae West may have had the two biggest props in Hollywood but she is remembered because her wit titillated. [That talent search took place in the summer of 2005. Marta Reiman was cast in the leading role and Taylor Treadwell took the role of Sara Starr.]
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" — — based on true events when Mae West was tried at the Jefferson Market Police Court on Sixth Avenue — — will be onstage at the Algonquin Theatre [123 East 24th Street, New York, NY 10010] July 19th — 22nd, 2008.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae West and Starr Faithfull onstage in mid-July 2008.
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/
See also: http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/

Jefferson Market
• • Photo: Mae West • • 1927
• • Photo: Starr Faithfull • • circa 1920
NYC
Starr Faithfull
Starr Faithfull.

Starr Faithfull Takes the Stage

The past is another country — — and MAE WEST was most comfortable there.
• • However, in her Broadway blockbuster "Diamond Lil" [1928] Mae's aim was not to resurrect the naughty nineties — — but to present that bygone decade's sins in shifty soft focus. The world of Diamond Lil, restrained by Victorian morality despite a certain cheeky daring, was a backwards glance to a time of innocence, picturesque entertainment, well-behaved wildness, corset-clad temptresses, The Police Gazette's seductions, and 5-cent beer.
• • Drama critic Stark Young [1881—1963] analyzed Mae's clever maneuvers in his article for The New Republic:
• • "Diamond Lil" is as daring in the end [as 1926's "Sex"], the same sexy morsels, embraces, interventions of the law with rank suspenses, frank speeches, underworld, and so on. But it is more covered, continuous, and studied than the other production, and the crowd of characters, the costuming and vaudevillistic intervals, pull the whole of this later play into a more familiar style, less crudely, and sheerly singular than "Sex" appeared to be [excerpt from The New Republic — 27 June 1928].
• • Louis Lopardi, who will direct "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship and Secrets" in July at the Algonquin Theatre, also feels enriched by the past. His own production — — The Purgatory Project, Part 2 — — reimagined the lives led by four famous historical figures: Sigmund Freud, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Lee Harvey Oswald.
• • A history buff as well as a thespian, Lopardi especially enjoys plays with a classical echo, texts rooted to a mythic past. For instance, he found "Metamorphoses," a play based on the Greek poem Metamorphoses by Ovid, fascinating and he relished the modernized adaptation written by Mary Zimmerman a few years ago. Ovid works onstage because those depictions of yearning and confused desires are timeless, feels Lopardi.
• • Since he has frequently decanted Ovid's ancient songs, he noticed right away the mythic skin underneath "Courting Mae West" — — the Brooklyn bombshell's story reimagined as the metamorphosis of King Midas. How you get the golden touch is one of the subtle sub-plots here. As Mae's career goals recalibrate her box office appeal, she will earn her hard cold slice of success — — but at a cost.
• • "I like a multi-layered comedy," admits Lopardi. "The best shows make you laugh for an hour and a half — — and then, untethered from your Playbill, you mull it over at home."
• • Bringing "Courting Mae West" to an audience requires funding. To support A Company Of Players, a non-profit theatre group established in 1979 to present meaningful theatre, please click on this link — — http://www.companyofplayers.com/support.htm
• • A Company Of Players is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)3 type organization, and donations to the group are considered a charitable, tax-deductible contribution.
• • Contribute through "Pay Pal" or you can mail a check to: A Company Of Players, 545 Eighth Avenue, #401, New York NY 10018-4307.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" — — based on true events and featuring people from the Roaring 20s such as Starr Faithfull and Texas Guinan — — will be onstage at the Algonquin Theatre [123 East 24th Street, New York, NY 10010] from July 19th — July 22nd, 2008.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae West and Starr Faithfull onstage in mid-July 2008.
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/
See also: http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/

Jefferson Market
• • Photo: Mae West • • 9 February 1927
NYC
Starr Faithfull
Starr Faithfull.

Starr Faithfull: January 26th

How many have been faithful to the memory of Starr Faithfull, whose name was once a tabloid staple?
• • STARR FAITHFULL — — born on 26 January 1906 in Evanston, Illinois, Starr died in early June 1931 after a Long Island boat party.
• • The intersection near Jefferson Market Court, under the Sixth Avenue Elevated, is one of the last things she saw in Greenwich Village. Here is exactly where she bought a newspaper from Mr. Isidore, a sidewalk vendor. When the police questioned him, his detailed description of her stylish clothing and jewelry helped investigators identify her badly bruised corpse.
• • This is the newsstand — — the last familiar site she saw in Greenwich Village. Mr. Isidore sold her a paper, as usual, and she vanished into the adjacent tube station with a wave of her hand.
• • On January 26th, Starr Faithfull, we commemorate your life. We remember your sad fate. Look homeward, angel.
• • http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Jefferson Market
• • Photo: 1930s — — Starr Faithfull's favorite newsstand
NYC
New York Public Library
Starr Faithfull
Starr Faithfull.

Starr Faithfull: 1906 - 1931

How many have been faithful to the memory of Starr Faithfull, whose name was once a tabloid staple?
• • STARR FAITHFULL — — born on 26 January 1906 in Evanston, Illinois, Starr died in early June 1931 after a Long Island boat party.
• • The intersection by Jefferson Market Court, under the Sixth Avenue Elevated, is one of the last things she saw in Greenwich Village. A few steps away, she bought a paper from Mr. Isidore, a news vendor. When the police questioned him, his detailed description of her stylish clothing and jewelry helped investigators identify her corpse.
• • TIME Magazine wrote: Most news readers remember Starr Faithfull, if they bother to remember her at all, as a pretty young girl whose bruised body, with veronal in the liver, was washed ashore at Long Beach, N. Y. one day in June four years ago [TIME, 29 June 1931]. Partly because of her incredible name, partly because of her spectacular sex life, the Press quickly picked up all that was left of Starr Faithfull and gave it to the nation as a hot weather sensation. With the mystery of the girl's death still unsolved, the story eventually collapsed. But newspaper publishers had not heard the last of Starr Faithfull. Her stepfather, Stanley Faithfull. lean, gimlet-eyed, red-whiskered and eccentric, started libel actions against every newspaper in Manhattan.
• • Father Faithfull began with criminal actions alleging libel against himself and against the memory of his dead daughter, tried to have Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson of the New York Daily News arrested, but a magistrate refused to issue a warrant. Last month the first of these went to trial against the News. Father Faithfull asked $350,000 damages because, he claimed: 1) the News had intimated that he murdered his daughter; 2) the News had said he concealed evidence in the case, hampering the authorities; 3) the News had said he and his wife lived on his late daughter's earnings as a prostitute; 4) the News had called him a blackmailer; 5) the News had said that Father and Mother Faithfull married, each with the expectation that the other was wealthy. On some points the News denied it had said anything of the sort.
• • The trial went on for more than three weeks. Last week a Staten Island jury found the New York Daily News innocent of libel.
• • Source: TIME Magazine Monday, 11 March 1935
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • In May 1933, TIME Magazine interviewed Dr. Gettler, who did her autopsy. The question that made the inquest linger so long at Jefferson Market Court was this: was it a murder, an accident, or a suicide that ended the life of the 25-year-old Greenwich Villager?
• • Dr. Gettler insisted Starr Faithfull — — cruelly labeled "a sexually distraught, neurotic young woman" — — had been murdered.

• • According to TIME's reporter: One of the few cities with an official toxicologist is New York, which has Dr. Alexander Oscar Gettler, a hard-bitten professor who teaches chemistry at New York University when he is not sleuthing for the city with his test-tubes. Last week Dr. Gettler. taking with him a grim array of bones, knives, vials and photographs, went before the American Institute in Manhattan to deliver a public lecture on his specialty. He has shared in some 30,000 autopsies, "which gave me a training and experience unobtainable at the present time in any other city in the world." He told about some of the better known autopsies.
• • Starr Faithfull, a sexually distraught, neurotic young woman whose death excited the nation (TIME. June 29. 1931, et seq.). died by drowning after she had been drugged with luminal and thrown from a boat, declared Dr. Gettler. A difference of saltiness between the bloods in the right and left cavities of her heart, ''the only positive test of death by submersion." showed that the young woman had actually died in that manner.
• • As for Starr Faithfull being drugged, analysis of her organs showed that she had had about twelve grains of luminal in her body. Two grains make a person sleep, twelve grains may kill but will certainly keep one unconscious for a long period. Someone must have heaved Starr Faithfull over a ship's rail. That someone has not yet been arrested.
• • Source: TIME Magazine Monday, 15 May 1933
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway. The character Sara Starr is based on Starr Faithfull.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/
See also: http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/

Jefferson Market
• • Photo: Jefferson Market Court • • circa 1937
• • Photo: Starr Faithfull [1906-1931] • • circa 1931
NYC

Starr Faithful: Greenwich Village gal

West Ninth Street, Manhattan, is only one block long, from Fifth Avenue at one end to Sixth Avenue at the other, east to west. It was at the west end, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, where another West, a lady named Mae, spent one night in jail in 1927 in what is now the historic old Jefferson Market Library but was then the Jefferson Market Courthouse, wrote Jerry Tallmer in his article for The Villager about the play "Courting Mae West."
• • Jerry Tallmer continued: The full title of this serious-minded comedy is “Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets,” and the based-on-real-life characters in it include the pre-Hollywood Mae West; Mae's sister Beverly; Mae's lawyer-manager Jim Timony; night club queen Texas Guinan; gorgeous, doomed Starr Faithfull [1906-1931], a Greenwich Village good-time girl — the Gloria Wandrous of John O’Hara’s blazing “Butterfield 8” — whose corpse rattled many of the rich and powerful when it washed up on a Long Island beach; and a news dealer named Mr. Isidore who was the last person in Manhattan, from his stand under the El at Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street, to see Starr Faithfull alive as she disappeared into the PATH station on her way to the L.I.R.R.

• • There are also a number of fictional characters, notably Eliza Rourke, a repressed, glamour-worshipping, working-class Irish-American girl who slaves without pay in her parents’ boarding house on Ninth Street, and Mario “Shortie” DeAngelis, a young, over-eager New York newspaper reporter who dashes frantically between such headline events as the jailing of Mae West and the discovery of Starr Faithfull’s body on Long Island (which actually happened in 1931). Eliza is sweet on him; her mother is not happy about this budding romance.
• • Veteran news man Jerry Tallmer, who founded the Obie Award in the mid-1950s, is one of the few who realized the truth: that Mae West's arrest for obscenity was provoked by the midnight performance of her new homosexual play "The Drag." Variety Magazine reported that this "sneak preview" occurred in Daly's 63rd Street Theatre and, hours later, the vice squad showed up to raid Mae's performance in "Sex."
• • Headline-hungry tabloids rushed to photograph the new felon on 9 February 1927 at Jefferson Market Police Court on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Understandably, Mae West was upset that night. Little did she know what would happen to her in the near future because of her police record.
• • Get ready to come up and see Mae onstage during July 2008.
• • "Courting Mae West: Sex, Censorship, and Secrets" is based on true events during 1926-1932 when Mae West was arrested and jailed for trying to stage two gay plays on Broadway. The character Sara Starr is based on Starr Faithfull.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/
See also: http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/

Jefferson Market
• • Photo: Mae West • • 9 February 1927
• • Photo: Starr Faithfull [1906-1931] • • circa 1924
NYC

Starr Faithfull: 75th Anniversary

Early June 1931 - - 75 years ago. The body of STARR FAITHFULL was slumped over a bed of seaweed on a deserted stretch of sand. Her corpse had washed up in Long Beach, and five Nassau County detectives arrived to inspect the crime scene and decide: murder or mischance? On the morning of 8 June 1931, The Nassau Daily Review had much to say. So did The New York Times and most other papers.

• • Occasionally on Ebay, buyers can spot an old headline about STARR FAITHFULL buzzing through an archival publication. An inquest at Jefferson Market Courthouse put her in the news after her death, although her short lifetime in Greenwich Village was unremarkable.
• • Riders passing through the P.A.T.H. station, where 25-year-old Starr was noticed on the last day of her life, occasionally report seeing a brunette with shingled hair, apparently hennaed, wearing a fancy silk party dress and carrying a light spring coat with a fur collar. And she's in a hurry, a terrible hurry.
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Jefferson Market
• • Photo:
NYC

Starr: Despondent Correspondence

Starr Faithfull's despondent correspondence created a publishing opportunity. [Now we know why relatives burn diaries after a funeral, eh?]

• • Moreover, since book publishers have demonstrated that a dollar is more prized than the truth, it seems pointless to note that Starr was NOT killed. Her death was an accident. For all that, here's proof that a title doesn't have to telegraph ahead that the Morgue, in fact, ruled out mayhem. How long can Starr's short life be milked to death? Amazing . . . .
• • POSTS-MORTEM: The Correspondence of Murder
by Jonathan Goodman
[UK: David and Charles, 1971, hardcover, 164 pages with index, bibliography, and illustrations]
• • Thesis: the role of correspondence in motivating and planning murder. Chapters are devoted to Starr Faithfull along with the "Lonely Hearts Killers," Sacco and Vanzetti - - executed by the State of Massachusetts, not "murdered" - - and also the Red Barn case, Edith Thompson, etc.
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Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Jefferson Market
• • Photo: bookcover
NYC