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GO WEST YOUNG MAN, GO WEST...and so I did!

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Sat, 01/21/2023 - 7:00am by Harlady

GO WEST YOUNG MAN, GO WEST...and so I did!

By Howard A. Ellis

Moreno Valley, Ca.

 

Way back in the 1800s Horatio Alger told a curious youth inquiring of directions to a future, ‘Go West Young Man, Go West.’ Alger was, of course, speaking of California, the golden west.

 

I’ve no idea whether the curious youth took the advice, but ever so many years later there was a golden West of a different nature...Mae West, most durable star of stage, silver screen and radio, also singer, playwright and all around (very around) celebrity of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

 

She was a scandalously controversial and adored actress who flaunted sensuality as though it were a bosom buddy...Indeed, for those fortunate to have seen her on or off screen she was the early mint edition of a combined Jane Russell/Marilyn Monroe persona.

 

At the risk of being labeled a name dropper (which I am), I (sort of) knew Mae west for a precious moment in time. She who allegedly invited actor Cary Grant to C’m up n see me sometime apparently just got me instead.

 

Among other things I remember, she couldn’t sing very well but she did well anyhow in a throaty, whispery. chirpy way similar to the voice of the also now late Marlene Dietrich. And when Mae swung her hips in lilt with the band, the Richter Earthquake Intensity Scale inked a solid 10. There were mothers at the movies who covered their children’s eyes when Mae slunk (?) across the screen.

 

I have to intrude on me here to comment that some day I’ll be sittin’ on my rockin’ chair on the porch at an old soldiers nursing home regaling my fellow seniles with reminiscences of the days when I traveled the planet and breathed the same air as a host of famous and infamous people in a 40-year civilian and military career. As I hobble off to take my afternoon nap, inevitably one of the guys will ask our buddies, ‘Do you think Ellis did all that stuff or does he just think he did?’

 

I can’t boast of an affair with Mae West but I did come up and see her for a time at the Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, in 1953. I’ve got a picture of us together to prove it.

 

Mae then was of an age (63 or so) somewhat out of her film career but she was still a star doing the nationwide nightclub circuit with a cast of Schwarzenegger-type Mr. America musclemen (barely) costumed in leopardskin posing straps.

 

At the time I was a U.S. Air Force technical sergeant assigned to the Stead AFB public relations office. Occasionally I’d be tabbed to be an assistant (go-fer) to some famous personality deigning to honor us with the luminous presence. On this occasion, Mae was appearing at the Mapes Hotel and was hostessing there a reception honoring military personnel who’d used a Mae West life preserver in an emergency situation. The preserver designed during World War II, was a slip-on-like-a-sweater device with two enormous frontal pouches filled with flotation material and strongly resembled the rather ample West bosom...hence the name.

 

Since I’d never been in a military plane downed at sea and forced to rely on one of the preservers to save my life, I wasn’t on the guest list. However, as a P.R. sergeant, I was assigned as a reception flunky to line up the two dozen drooling airmen who claimed eligibility and siphon ‘em one by one to her side to pose for hometown newspaper photo releases. Great recruiting publicity for the USAF.

 

The photo ops took place between speeches, martinis and beer and other refreshments and a musical trill by Miss West to the accompaniment of a satin-clad pianist guy. I guess it all lasted about 90 minutes. As the last G.I. thanked her for the photo session and the party waned, Mae West looked toward me and said, Sergeant, don’t you want a picture with me? I must say she had the sweetest, lowest conversational voice I’d ever heard, not at all like that of the brashy, trashy bimbo I’d seen on the screen trading verbal barbs with foils like W.C. Fields and Grant.

 

Regretfully I explained I was part of the air force which hadn’t used a Mae West. She smiled and commented, ‘A man who HASN’T used a Mae West? Oh, come here darling and get to know me.’ I tell ya, that lady had personality. She actually took my hand and led me to the camera and set up the pose. I noticed she was wearing a diamond necklace (she always boasted she never wore fakes). I couldn’t help stare at it while the camera guy focused, wondering about the cost of those beads compared to the cost of a house for the wife and me and our recently born son. I guess she thought I was checking out the bosom cause she kinda giggled and said, ‘No, no, sergeant, you must look into my eyes.’

 

Afterward, as she had to the other guys, she gave me a hug and said it’d been so nice to see me and strolled away. The party was over.

 

Our photo lab techs made two of each picture. One set was for the public relations releases to the hometown newspapers and the other was a souvenir for the guys themselves...ourselves. I had to take the personal pictures to the hotel the next day for Mae to autograph. She was there with a flock of aides and admirers, even a young dude who seemed to have nothing more to do than to keep the hem of her floor-length gown from getting caught in the high heels of her shoes.

 

She sat at a desk signing the pictures as I handed ‘em to her and then looked up and said, ‘This one is yours, dearie. How shall I sign it?’ I suggested and she over-ruled, signing platonically, TSgt. Howard Ellis, sincerely Mae West. Ah, well...

 

You know, I kept the picture on my desk at the public information office until my wife came by and made me put it in the drawer. That AWFUL woman, my little woman said, motivated by the Stars on-screen image. But now we’re both more liberal minded and retired senior citizens. Mae West has long since departed and that picture sits proudly on display in my den, sadly overlooked even by my grandkids...but once in a while some visitor old enough to remember WHO Mae West was sees it, double-takes and asks, YOU knew HER?

 

WELL, NOT EXACTLY.

 

By Howard A. Ellis

 

U S Legacies Magazine April 2006

 

Wartime Memories
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