'Mae West' visits Shorewood

A “Tribute to Mae West,” will be presented by singer and actress Mary Anne Burkhalter at 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 15, at The Timbers of Shorewood retirement community, 1100 N. River Rd., Shorewood.

Mae West was the screen legend that set Hollywood on its ear. Notorious for her snappy wit and controversial characters, she rose from vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood, where she became an international celebrity and established a legacy for which she was named one of the top 15 actresses of the century and the "most quoted woman in history."

In an industry dominated by men, West wrote her own plays and screenplays, in which she never let a man put anything over on her "except an umbrella," and for which she waged infamous battles with the censors.

Actress Mary Anne Burkhalter takes great pride in keeping the great comedienne's work alive in her "Tribute to Mae West." She has portrayed West across the country fornine years and brings rare songs and material to the show. Burkhalter performs her unique brand of walk-around humor with patrons and even involves them in on-stage comedic skits.

Burkhalter has staged her Mae West tribute show at the Chicago Cultural
Center and the White Pines State Park and Dinner Theatre as well as for numerous
organizations.

She performed for years on the dramatic stages of New York, Chicago and Houston before establishing her own company, Characters To Go, which provides celebrity impersonations. She has appeared across the country as West, Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Dolly Parton, Sophia Loren, Carmen Miranda and numerous other specialty characters. Burkhalter appeared weekly for nine years Mae West at Hollywood Casino in Aurora.

Will the real Mae West stand up?

Mae West was born Aug. 17, 1893, in working-class Brooklyn, New York, the
first child of a boxer and a corset model. Her mother, Matilda, exerted a profound influence on her daughter and instilled generous amounts of self-confidence and ambition.

In fact, Matilda pushed Mae onto the vaudeville stage at the age of seven. West quit school after the third grade and for the next two decades lived the rough-and-tumble life of a stage performer, appearing on Broadway, vaudeville and burlesque stages across the country.

West finally gained national notoriety in 1928 for writing and staging her play "Sex" in New York which led to her widely publicized trial on obscenity charges. She was put in jail for one week which provided her a lifetime of. After several more controversial plays, West was signed by Paramount Pictures in 1932, where her success is credited with keeping the studio solvent.

With the Hayes decency code in effect, West, who insisted on writing her own
screenplays, was forced to couch her risqué material in innuendoes and double
entendres. These became the famous trademarks of her comedic style.

By the mid-1940s, West's films and popularity were so compromised after her bouts with censorship that she could no longer find work in Hollywood. However, in the next decades, she returned to the stage with several original plays and a wildly successful nightclub act. She wrote a bestselling autobiography in 1954 and made appearances on records, radio and television

West returned after a 34-year absence to star in two motion pictures during the 1970s. After a series of strokes, she died in 1980, a true Hollywood legend.

The Timbers of Shorewood is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay - a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is open to the public and admission is free. Call Shelly Goggins at 815-609-0669 or visit http://www.timbersofshorewood.com.