Power the Mae West-Way

 

Mae West (1893-1980)

I've never read this 1944-play by Mae West or seen it performed, but I've read about it and the literary ambitions of West. People of today who even remember who Mae West was, most likely don't know that she went on the stage as none less than the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in a play she herself wrote, but she did. Allegedly, the play, which ran for 191performances, was inspired by at least one psychic message from the actual - but very dead - empress.

Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-1796)

The actual Empress - also known as Catherine II - started out as a very young and naive German princess. She was chosen as the wife of an immensely childish, immature and non-impressive Grand Duke, Peter, by the then current sovereign Empress, Elizabeth, who was the daughter of the Emperor Peter the Great and his wife, The Empress Catherine I. Of course the marriage of the German princess and the Russian milksop, the Grand Duke Peter, wasn't a success. However, that led to the coup by which she established her power as the new Empress, Catherine the Great.

When I see stage performances of Mae West it's obvious to me that she, in everything she does, is a proponent of what she understands as FEMALE POWER. Of course, she would be a Catherine the Great-fan as this specific empress exercised power over men in a very spectacular manner, just as the stage-queen Mae West proposed to do: A very important stage "prop" in the West-shows were the loads of muscular and good-looking men who sort of were her "backdrop". What her message was, having this special "backdrop", is "I rule, the strongest and best-looking men bow to me". She did what countless men have done, walking around with an extremely pretty woman as the symbol of their power and potency. 

Her shows were very sexual in a special female manner which I see as some sort of "a symbolic, subdued aggression". Interesting enough, several actresses before WWII appeared in what Mae West had wanted to be, but never did: Catherine the Great-movies.

However, the most famous one of these movies was the one with Marlene Dietrich, which came at almost the same time as the one with Elizabeth Bergner, namely 1934. The Catherine-market at that time was full, so to speak, and the attempts by Mae West to make her own movie about the Empress in 1938-39 was not met with enthusiasm.

The Catherine-play by Mae West was didn't bring her any acclaim. It was called "boring" by critics, and she even had legal problems as she was sued for "plagiarism". She may have had dreams of turning her career, but this play didn't bring her what she wanted.  

Her shows with extremely muscled and good-looking, half-naked men were a success, but also something which targeted her as "immoral". Not that that seems to have bothered her, but still, she might have deserved better. Anyway, her choice of Catherine the Great looks to me as her way of signalling the use of female power: How to move from pawn to the ultimate power as a sovereign empress. In real life she had to contend with the stage power over men.  

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/catherine-was-great-1318

 

 

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g32404699/catherine-the-great-movies-tv-series/ 

 

 

https://www.tiktok.com/@timeflowinglikeariver/video/7312795964220165419?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc 

 

 

Wikipedia 

Poem by Else Cederborg: "Scooped Out"

 

 

Scooped Out

Sometimes what is, pretends not to be

disowning itself a feeling turns painful, even torturous

maybe you survive, but your heart was scooped out

empty heart-shells abound where certain people are

blocking the sight of the ones which are still alive

All rights reserved © Else Cederborg

 

WHY Did She Have To Rape Him????? What About SEDUCING HIM INSTEAD????

In 1977 she was an American beauty-queen, and he was a Mormon missionary in England, where she met him. OK, OK, maybe a bit unusual, but still, that might work out if both were for the union. However, Joyce McKinney, as was the name of the beauty queen, couldn't wait for Kirk Anderson to make the move. With the help of a male friend she went into action, kidnapping the kind of "milksop-looking" young man at gunpoint, chaining him to a bed in Devon, England, and raping him for three days.

When he got free, he talked to the police, and she was arrested. That meant that she served three months on remand at Holloway Women's Prison in London. However, she skipped bail and fled England to return to her native country, America. And HOW did she do that? Well, she disguised herself as a deaf-mute mime, and that disguise worked so well, that she wasn't bothered by anyone. Not being held accountable for her crime - and a crime it was - she went scot-free as a non-convicted rapist.

 

Years later she sort of resurfaced in South Korea, after having had her dead dog cloned. 

 

https://eehe.org.uk/28321/mormonkidnapping/ 

 

Wikipedia 

 

 

Murder-Satisfaction

 

All right, Pedro Alonso Lopez (1948-probably still alive) did have a difficult childhood, but that was not the fault of those young girls - mere children - he murdered. It wasn't even the fault of the mother he hated, the poor widow who had to turn prostitute to feed the 13 kids she gave birth to, most of them after the murder of her husband. I suspect that Pedro may have worshiped this dead father whom he never met, as he died some months before his birth. One thing is sure, the childhood home of young Pedro was steeped into violence and sexual sceneries of various art.

When you look into the face of Pedro he doesn't strike one as either dumb, nor violent, but it can't be denied that he did commit many dumb and violent crimes. Why did he "have to" murder more than 100 girls of 8-15 years of age? According to himself it was for his sexual fulfillment: He "needed" something like that to feel good.  

 

Rape was his game, but he himself was also raped at an early age. At that time he had run away from home, only 8 years old. Having to fend for himself in a poor and brutal world he may have been easy to get lured by a stranger, pretending to be his friend. This man was not the only one who abused him, as it happened several times. When he, in what looks like a miracle, was adopted by an American family it only lasted for a year or so. After stealing from them his excuse was that a male teacher had been harassing him sexually. When he was arrested for auto-theft he was raped in prison by four men, but killed three of them with a makeshift knife. Still, not even those continuous rapes are an excuse for what he did to those girls he killed for his own sexual satisfaction. According to himself he had killed many more than 100 girls over a couple of years after being released from prison. The exact number is not known, but there is no doubt about him being one of the worst serial killers at this time. If one takes his words as the truth, he killed 350 girls of 8-13 years.

He was arrested more than once, but when he was sentenced to 16 years of prison he was released two years before time. I find it very strange that he wasn't held in custody for the rest of his life, but somehow the police didn't quite trust his confessions. One of the reasons for that was that he sometimes said that not he, but someone else had committed the murders, and that he only was his helper. Something which hasn't been proven neither then nor now.

https://www.benthamscience.com/chapter/6940

Wikipedia

Don't Fence In this Tigress

 

I admit it: I like Eleanor Jarman (1901-???) although she was a criminal and did something I don't like. 

Eleanor was born into a large family of German descent. She had 9 surviving siblings, and, as might be expected, the family was poor. After dropping out of school because of the poverty of the family, she started to work as a waitress at the tender age of 12. When she married and had two children her husband left her after some years to live a life as the sole bread-winner. Maybe that was the reason why she let the criminal George Dale move in with her and her children. As it is, he did what he could to support the family, which unfortunately meant that Eleanor and her children now had to rely on his robbing small shop owners. 

In 1933, Eleanor took part in a robbery which led to the death of a shop owner who was shot by George Dale. Even though she didn't kill the unfortunate victim of George Dale and their associate, Leo Minneci, she was sentenced to 199 years in prison. 

 

I find that much too much, and so did she obviously as she only served 7 years before she, climbing a prison fence, escaped and vanished for good. This successful escape earned her a reputation as extremely devious and dangerous, something which I think is ridiculous. Yes, she took part in a robbery with a fatal outcome, and yes, she escaped, but she wasn't the "tigress" - or "superwoman" - that some newspapers dubbed her.  

For 35 years Eleanor let her family know that she was all right "somewhere out there" by posting coded messages in newspapers, but nobody knows for sure how she lived after her escape, and how she died. However, in 1975, when she was 74 years old, she had a secret meeting with her son, Leroy, one of her brothers and his wife, but after that she disappeared once more, never to be heard of again, except by her coded newspaper-messages, which didn't taper off until mid-1990s.

 

https://murderpedia.org/female.J/j/jarman-eleanor.htm 

 

Wikipedia

 

Forty Four Lives for One

 

When young, stupid Jack Gilbert Graham 1932-1957) decided to do something radical about his money situation, he obviously forgot to think - or he just didn't care because he was what Jeffrey Epstein said about Donald tRump: "He has no moral compass." 

Without a moral compass the death, not only of one's mother, but also of 43 strangers who had neither offended nor harmed him in any way. They were totally innocent in something like that, but still, he didn't stop to think that by killing his mother for money, he also robbed these people of their lives. No moral compass really is a serious "affliction" which turns some people positively dangerous. When one thinks about it, it's obvious that moral is a necessity in all human societies. I, for one, would rely more upon morals in my neighbors and anyone else than e.g. religion ....

As to his relationship with his mother, it was strained after she left him at an orphanage for several years. This was in The Depression, and the money was low after the death of Jack's father. At that time she was a poor widow who was to be married to husband No. 3. When he also died, she became a successful businesswoman and may have struck Jack as very rich. After being separated for several years they didn't really know each other. Not that that is an excuse, but still it may explain some of his callousness. 

Jack, who was married and the father of two young children, was only 23 years old when he was sentenced to, and met his well-deserved death, in the gas chamber. Most of his victims were older than that, but all of them had a life they were robbed of because of his greed and resentment of his mother.

https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?

 

Wikipedia 

Poem by Else Cederborg: "Beef For Der Kaiser" (WWI)

 

Somehow everyone hailed the news of blood and honor
each of them convinced of victory
many of them didn't live to see how it went

The philosophy of World War I was a stinker
it turned living men into mourning shadows
debris in muddy trenches
boneless, lifeless, broken robots
a war the factory way
all of them machines to Der Kaiser
soldiers to him
sons or lovers to loving souls being robbed of their love

Victory the war way means blood
blood like rivulets in debris of human bodies

Whoever threw the first stone in the world?
Adam or the Stone Age monkey-man?
Maybe it all can be blamed on the snake?
Or maybe Eve?

Culprits or victims alike may bleed out their soul
sad blood run faster, drowning the world in red

 

ALL rights reserved © Else Cederborg

 

And yes, as you may have guessed I was thinking of tRump when I decided to post this "old" poem of mine ....