Friday, September 27, 2019

Four For Friday - Old Hollywood - Mr. X

When this permanent A-list actress/comedienne/sex symbol said she would take a few secrets to the grave, she was not kidding around. No it's not the rumor you think (yes she was born a woman), the big secret was that she was illiterate. She never got past her freshman year of high school, so she said, but her educational career was spotty at best probably because she was dyslexic and ashamed of it. Yes, she even had people write letters and sign autographs for her. An actual autograph from her is extremely rare, because she also used auto-pen. Even though she took credit for all of the play and movie scripts she wrote, she had other people write them for her. One of the people who helped her create her works and develop her persona was the man who was briefly married to her at the beginning of her career. She kept him on her payroll for decades. Even though she had the marriage annulled, the husband didn't contest the divorce and technically remained married to her until this secret marriage was exposed during the height of her popularity in the mid 1930s and the marriage was dissolved not too long after. Between then, he helped write her scripts and develop some of her classic one liners. When he died in the mid 1960s, she paid all of his funeral bills as a kind of thank you

61 comments:

Tricia13 said...

Mae West

Tricia13 said...

Guido/Diuro

Tricia13 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tricia13 said...

And Franck Szatzkus

Sd Auntie said...

Mae's voice was rather masculine and lived her old movies as a kid. her 70's movie with bodybuilders is so campy! nice of her to take care of her ex

Brayson87 said...

https://www.fondationalphabetisation.org/en/causes-of-illiteracy/mistaken-beliefs/

In fact, 19% of Quebecers are illiterate (literacy levels -1 and 1), and 34.3% have serious reading difficulties, often placing on literacy level 2. The latter will often be described as functionally illiterate. These figures are not invented, they are quite real. Illiteracy affects all countries, whether they are industrialized or not. Quebec is no exception to the rule.

Source:

Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD), October 2013.

J said...

She's dead, though... and not posting on this site nowadays?

DavidHowesCREBroker said...

I think Mae West, too!

Anonymous said...

That was very nice of him

Brayson87 said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

The United States government does not often publish an overall literacy rate. Instead, numbers are periodically released about the percentage of adults who cannot read a newspaper or complete an ordinary job application, which amounts to about 19%, according to one publication;[6] however, that 19% may still be literate enough to read less than a newspaper article.

Mooney said...

Mae West. Come up and write for me sometime. Man she was a beaut.

Anonymous said...

wthhh are you serious? I cant believe their illiteracy rates are higher than in the bible belt, maybe because i would expect more from canadians? Are 20 % of quebecers working as trashmen/farmers/plumers? How are their streets not ridden with crime?

La Morena said...

Mae West and I still love her !! Dont shame her lovely memories because of a learning disability. I too struggled in school. Anyway she laughed all the way to the bank and lived life on her own terms !

AuntBee said...

I have a friend who lived in Mae West's apartment at The Ravenswood. He always felt her presence!

Don said...

I bet most "bible belters, trashmen, farmers, and plumers [sic]" know there's a "b" in plumber and the difference between "ridden" and "riddled"...

Unknown said...

Lol, this astounding ignorance. I'm speechless. So farmers, sanitation workers, and plumbers are illiterate, and illiteracy is what causes crime.. Right. You know why their streets may not be full of crime? Because illiteracy is not the cause of crime: RACE is. The more you know...stupid.

Unknown said...

Exactly. What an offensively retarded comment.

Anonymous said...

Im sorry, mistakes happen after you know 5 languages and English isnt even the main one 💁😊 if only you knew from experience.

Anonymous said...

@Don @Unknown im terribly sorry that I offended your profession, it must be hard colecting trash/touching feces and other excrements every day. I can see its affecting you already

Don said...

Should have stopped typing after the second word.
Have a good weekend.

Weekittylass said...

Wow. As someone with a master’s degree, I am very grateful to have these blue collar people in my life. My son worked HVAC before he went back to college. By the way, he is an officer in the US Navy as a CTI and also speaks five languages. The one thing he is not is a snob. I hope your sewer backs up leaving five inches of other people’s fecal matter and urine all over your floors and no one will come out for a week and your sanitation department goes on strike for a month. Perhaps, then, you will see how important their jobs are. What a completely déclassé, pretentious and condescending post.

Brayson87 said...

@rosemary, I haven't talked to any trash men, but modern farmers and plumbers certainly need to be literate, plus have good math skills. Especially if they're running their own farm or business.

Maybe it's different in other countries, but in the US sh!tting on blue collar workers and farmers just kind of makes you look like a b!tch.

Janet296 said...

Mae west came of age in a different time. School was less important that helping out the family. She was probably encourage to quit school to go earn a living. Lots of people during that time have very little education.

Brayson87 said...

Don't need to read on your back.

Anonymous said...

Ive met illiterate farmers and plumbers, then again they do not run their own businesses, where i live there are no huge farms like in the US but a few, but the owners do not work there and instead hire less educated people to work the field. I didnt even shit on these professions, just stated a simple well known fact that people who work such jobs dont usually have a higher education. Unlike people here who like to blame black people for everything and no one in tbe thread seemed to have a problem with.
And oh well, I can argue with you that I am a bitch.

J said...

O. N. G!!!!!

veee said...

My goodness people! Being unable to read/write is not a reflection of intelligence and/or creativity.

Brayson87 said...

Well like I said modern farmers and plumbers, like the type who use tractors or work with water systems in multifloor buildings with electricity. If you're talking basically plantations and outhouses in some third world country then yeah they could definitely be illiterate.

MountainMama said...

I live in Maine and actually know several illiterate folks but they are extremely intelligent people. Those that can read and write cannot spell at all, which makes me truly wonder if they have reading skills above the 3rd grade level. Of course this isn't the entire population but enough of them that you notice. Facebook has outed a lot of people in that regard. My thing is why, oh why did they never embrace spell check?

shakey said...

Yeah, Quebec isn't the best place to get an education. They have abysmal (imo) high school dropout rates, and nothing is done to try and stop that problem. A lot of people go to adult education centres once they realize they won't make a decent wage without some kind of diploma. I don't know what it's like where you live, but here it's seems like you need some kind of attestation to say you can wipe your own ass.

Rosemary, a lot of illiterate people go on welfare. I live in farm country and most farmers have diplomas in agricultural science. Plumbers make great money. Trashmen work for the city, so they make a decent wage. As for crime, lots of break-ins and illegal grow ops. Not necessarily done by illiterate people.

hhstarr said...

1. She loved back when it was ok to have your daughter pulled from school in 5th grade to take care of the house because mom gets migraines. I know, as my husbands grandma had that happen to her. She wasnt the best educated but she was so smart! Had she been a kid 50 years later she would have run a company.
2. As a special ed teacher, reading ability does not show intelligence. There are many components to ability yo read and write and have had kids who could solve complicated math problems in their heads but struggled with decoding. And don't get me started on dyslexia.
3. While this isnt the case for Canada, I rarely trust data that compares one country to another. Many countries (such as China) hide or underrepresent low achievers and don't count them on their data. It is often apples and oranges.

4. We need to stop thinking everyone needs to go to college. Some kids are wasting away time and too much money doing something they shouldn't. We need more trade schools. Some people are "hands on" or tactile people. You can make more as a diesel mechanic than most college graduates. And garbage men and custodians do a job I wouldn't want to, so they deserve my praise. Tgif all!

Honey Bunny said...

@Rosemary Thank you for saying and realizing how prejudice this site has become. I use to enjoy it here but now I think it's time for a change.

veee said...

@rosemary - I choose not to engage (I'm WOC.) But yes, plenty of hate on this site for blacks, MM, etc. I had begun to type a response re: white domestic terrorists but chose not because, being an old, I don't give a fuck about what someone comments on this bootleg site. But you are right - I have noticed it as well.

Vita said...

Mae West-- I think this is fascinating, I had no clue. Interesting lady, and I love the tale of loyalty between her and her ex.

Whatever said...

Glad to see that Rosemary realizes that she is a bitch. The bible belt would like for you to kindly kiss it's ass.

Whatever said...

Rosemary, your grammar is shit. You might want to quit while you are way behind.

molly said...

Farming is not easy.....you have to know a lot of stuff to make money at it........under jimmy carter, farmers were encouraged to take out loans for new equipment due to low interest rates. Then they went at high as 18%. Then the gas shortage , then city people waited in line for gas while farmers watched their crops rot in the fields. Then big corporations bought up the farms for pennies on the dollar.Then we as a country got sick and fat. Family farms were healthier for the growing of food and those of us who eat it. Watch audiences of old videos of 70s music for the difference in the way we look now. Steroids in our meat supply has caused mild cushings disease ......big bellies, smaller extremities, thinner hair and round faces...the hair of kids in the 70s and currently is the most telling aspect of Frankenfood.Re. intelligence, farmers have to know a lot of different kinds of things and it is not easy..........sad we don't know where our food comes from and who the farmers are who are growing it.If we did,there would be more respect.

Sd Auntie said...

operating a garbage truck or any other blue collsr job is not easy. and they are nicely compensated by City govt. union + benefits. i respect all walks of life and being a PHD can make u crazy. can never hold a job and have no peole skills. IMO

BobbyOrrsKnees said...

Take a look at a map of Quebec. It is huge. And it is rural. Think of upstate NY, except about ten times bigger.

- said...

Dat ass tho.

Boo Kitty said...

+1 Mae

Disgusting people suggest she was born a man. Why, because she wasn't a preemie-sized boyish-looking creature? (Oxymoronic, I know) People are so ugly inside sometimes.

Boo Kitty said...

I disagree on the masculine voice. Not all women are fluffy Barbie dolls. Doesn't take away from their femininity.

Boo Kitty said...

The cause of crime is desperation, selfishness, not underatanding that even though "The (White) Man" has trashed you, that doean't define you.

Racism is ugly.

Boo Kitty said...

Seeing as that's Trumpsterfire's base, I'm kind od amazed they get dissed "officially."

That, and the fact that there's a definite movement to make "Idiocracy" the standard... Stupidity is king, these days. Ask any stand-up comic whining that their freedom of speech is being violated because people are calling them out on their utter hackness.

Astra Worthington said...

The crime statistics back up Unknown. Facts are racist but 13% of the population commits over half of the crime. That 13% is at the bottom of every metric, and that’s not the fault of racist whitey. Pretending it isn’t so isn’t polite, nor does it make you a “good person”, it just makes you a dumb ass that can’t, or won’t, face facts. Most racists would prefer that blacks and whomever else WERE “ just like us”. Hating people for their skin color is dumb but it’s even dumber to ignore reality to pretend to be woke or whatever.

Boo Kitty said...

Actually, yeah, you do, seeing as most men are so pathetically inept in the sack and any ho worth her price would need to entertain heraelf somehow.

Boo Kitty said...

Prejudiced and disgustingly sexist. Ban J and Count Jerkoff, I say. They're narcissistic sadists who haven't evolved past the anal stage. They would derive pleasure from fornicating defecation.

Astra Worthington said...

It’s also very easy to sneer at plumbers, farmers and trashmen, but consider what your life would be like without any, or all, of them. I’m pretty sure society would get along just fine without another white collar office worker, or honestly, most of the so called “educated class”. Or at the least, the useful ones would be useless after they dropped dead from lack of food, or a medieval disease from lack of plumbing and sanitation. Isn’t the latter already happening in California, where people shit in the streets and throw trash everywhere?

GentleBreeze said...

Love Mae West. Took herself too seriously, though in her later years. Some movie hired her and they wanted her to parody herself, but they realized she didn't think of herself as a parody.
Kinda like Madonna is heading?

Unknown said...

How did Québec get dragged into This?

Erin said...

Very proud to be a native bible-belt chick, where being taught to be gracious, appreciative, kind and generous - and to overlook others "perceived shortcomings" - is valued more than what may be hanging on a wall.

It is quite evident, that your "enlightened" country failed in teaching its citizens basic manners.

May I suggest you purchase Emily Post's Etiquette book. You will discover how easy it is to embrace polite society and live peacefully among others.

Goodau said...

I have written and deleted a number of replies to Rosemary, deleted because they were emotive, knee jerk reactions to an expression of an ideology that I personally find repugnant. I'm now running late for an outing and I'm not becoming zen enough, quickly enough to achieve a calm, thoughtful, balanced reply, so, bundle me in with the people who found Rosemary's beliefs about literacy false and pretentious, especially the replies of Brayson87, hhstarr and Erin. Whatever had me nodding & smiling.
I had to say something.

Studio54 said...

Trump is a functional illiterate. He's a bully to compensate. His tweets that he writes are a disaster. Noel Casler, who worked with him on the Apprentice said that he could barely read the cue cards and abused Adderall.

gabes_human said...

Studio 54. What’s the difference in using/taking Adderalmand abusing it?

Anonymous said...

It's sad to see bias based on job occupation. Rosemary you have my sympathy that you are so small minded as to determine a person's worth merely by their occupation. That's an ugly preconception that needs to change.

gauloise said...

Learning a trade and getting "blue" collar work is smarter these. No lifelong debt and in-demand jobs. Most college grads I know are overworked and underpaid, and very few working in their degree field

Monkeyweather said...

I don't view it as shaming Mae West - just a really interesting tidbit of info!

Anonymous said...

"Rosemary"??... uh huh.
So many phony troll bots....
so little time for me to be triggered.
Love and light to you, "Rosemary"... from a successful Dyslexic

Unknown said...

There was an old woman called Booker
Who most wish that ISIS had took her
What made her this way?
No one can say
But my guess is that no one would fuck her.

Unknown said...

@Brayson87 - my phone keeps landing on my face when I do.

Unknown said...

I wrote her a limerick.

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