SHIRLINGTON, Va.--Probably the most poignant moments in Signature Theater’s Dirty Blonde, an astute, dark little tribute to Mae West, involve the two central characters, who, as modern-day fans of their beloved Mae West, meet by chance at the star’s Cypress Hill Abbey grave in Brooklyn to celebrate her birthday on August 17, (I shall not provide her birth year—as Ms. West would have preferred).
They are both city-dwelling lonely hearts, society outcasts—obscure people who accept Gotham’s mean streets, their drab apartments, their small jobs and go on, even with shameful secrets and never-to-be-resolved family problems. Yet, they are grounded almost singularly by their connection to the early film star, whereby they regale each other (or reflect to themselves) with stories of her wit, her rise to fame, her good heart. For heaven’s sake, they compare her to Venice, “How else can you describe Venice, there is nothing like it?”
With Mae as topic of conversation, they are at once calm and confident thanks to their Brooklyn-born “tough girl,” and she helps them laugh thanks to her great, irreverent insights: “I don’t care if it’s a bad name as long as it’s my name.” All of this is fleshed out in dialogues between Jo (Emily Skinner) and Charlie Conner (Hugh Nees), who along with J.Fred Shiffman cover key characters in West’s life (Shiffman plays West’s only husband, FrankWallace, and her companion Joe Frisco, among others). Skinner commands the two central roles, moving beautifully between silly contemporary Jo and the downright beautiful and crushingly funny-- I am a fan like Charlie and Jo—Mae West.
Dirty Blonde, written by Claudia Shear, is running in Signature’s ARK Theater from August 11 through October 4, 2009 in Arlington, Va. The hour and 45 minute play runs straight through and takes us back and forth between bleak commuter New York of 2009, where Jo and Charlie are getting to know each other through their mutual love of West, and 1911, in which a young Mae is exploring how far she can push the limits on stage without getting fired or arrested, while Shiffman and Nees serve up many colorful show biz types and lovers in the star’s life as she rises to fame.
Charlie, a film library archivist, tells Jo that he went to Los Angeles as a teenager to meet West—and we see the awkward encounter. Skinner treats the audience to West at many points in her life, including the young, bawdy and brunette Mae, to the established star as platinum blonde, to aging platinum blonde, and, when she can barely walk, a glittering, sweet caricature of herself, albeit eerie, shortly before she finally dies. We are reminded that only two people attended her New York burial.
Most recall West as being an older “star”, because she reached the pinnacles of success at that time. Her eyes, as Skinner achieves so magnificently, begin to close with age, so that you get only her penciled eyelids that set off the angles of her face and the famous porcelain skin. With the long tangled blonde tresses topped by a crazy hat, the rest of her is covered to the floor in sequins and jewels—this, perhaps, being the image we remember best, when she was around 50.
Dirty Blonde is a Hollywood history lesson, and a Los Angeles blast from the past—two things dear to me as a native Angelino. When young Charlie is unexpectedly taken to dinner with the aging West and her companion, they are headed to Man Fook Low, a Chinese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, near the meat packing and produce district—and a restaurant my father always frequented, as a young stock broker working downtown. As a child, we would make our Sunday pilgrimage from West Los Angeles downtown just for the foil wrapped beef.
Hilariously, the story also touches on one of West’s great, albeit weird, hygienic rituals--her use of colonics. I would hear this from my parents now and then (they are well-versed in Hollywood lore), and puzzle over what on earth they were talking about, and alas, it was meaningful enough for Shears to verify here. And, the fun Hollywood nuggets, such as her meticulousness about her beautiful costumes, made by Edith Head, among others. We learn she chose Cary Grant to be in her first film, She Done Him Wrong, a move that helped catapult Grant to fame. We see West in court after being arrested during the Broadway run of her play Sex. For its suggestiveness, she went to jail for ten days and paid a fine of $500. Later, she tired to open another play called The Drag, dealing with homosexuality, but, hard as she tried, the play never opened, having been blocked by such groups as the Society for the Prevention of Vice . She hated W.C. “Bill” Fields for his drinking and lack of professionalism. And, she probably resented that she rose to fame at a ripe age, rather than in her youth. Consequently, she was adamant about concealing her real age. At one point, West gets a phone call from Billy Wilder asking her if she would consider the lead for the film Sunset Boulevard “about a washed up movie star,” and she refuses on the spot. Hanging up the phone, she asks her housekeeper to draw the drapes to protect her skin from the light. It feels too close to home for all us.
But what is best is Skinner’s work, her mastery of Mae’s voice, so that the brilliant, burlesque one-liners ring with perfect pitch—
“You don’t appeal to my finer instincts.”
“What are they?”
“I dunno, but I must have them.”
--and, they way Skinner’s character manages to pull her big pretty lips back over her teeth in such a way that she achieves West’s sincere, sexy and, to my eye, infectious smile. At West’s peak, when her trusted friend, Mr. Edwards, played by Shiffman, is dolling her up and introducing her to a platinum wig—and so too is Charlie, dressing Jo up for a Halloween party—the double-play scene culminates in Jo/Mae turning around before us, her first go with the now-famous hair topped with a huge marabou hat, and she, wrapped in a boa and covered in fuscia sequins. The audience takes her in, gasps and claps.
“A boa,” says West. “A boa covers a multitude of sins.”
By the end, when Jo and Charlie discover they can overcome each others’ oddities, we understand the play is also a tribute to why we like to love glamour, things that sparkle and things that make us laugh—and that is why we love those who have the guts to facilitate these images for us. West, who we learn “was not a piker” and “always took care of everyone” and who made a fortune on wise real estate investments, kept going until the end—even through horrid decisions like the 1978 movie Sextette, and to her Vegas stage performances where muscle men gently volleyed her back and forth like an antique doll.
In 2000, Shear’s Dirty Blonde was nominated for five Tony Awards, and Signature’s artistic director, Eric Schaeffer felt it was a good way to kick off the Arlington theater’s 20th anniversary celebration. www. Signature-theatre.org.
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