Loew's Royal Theatre

Nice picture I love LOEWS old signs.Too bad that they don,t make them like that anymore!!!!

Mae herself again mention the Royal in the new Charlotte Chandler interview-type bio of Mae: “She Always Knew How.” Mae also mentions the Gorham. Anyone know about that one ?

According to Emily Leider in her re For what it’s worth, my grandally good “Becoming Mae West” (Farrar Straus Giroux,1997), “Baby Mae” mad eher debut at the age of seven (1900) at “The Royal, on Willoughby Street, near Fulton” (p. 32). Leider goes on to describe it: “The theater … was no great shakes, though large. It seated about seven hundred people. One vaudevillian characterized it as a ‘dingy spot,’ but Mae upgraded it in her fond recollection to a well-appointed house with two balconiues, boxes, and its own twelve-piece orchestra” (pp. 32-33). Leider’s source is John E. Di Meglio, “Vaudeville USA” (Bowling Green Univ Press, 1973), p. 132. For what it’s worth, my maternal grandfather claimed to have worked with La West in Coney Island before WW I (he bartended at a cabaret there). Another frienend of mine interviewed La West in the 1970s — and claimed she was the real thing!