The Helen Morgan Page

TCM has cheekily named Mae West its star of the month for May 2025.

In honor of Mae’s days, here is a bit of ephemera:

In 1928, Texas Guinan wrote a wryly comic poem about the three raid-prone queens of New York. Morgan and Guinan were among those raided an arrested in the June 1928 prohibition raids. Mae ran into trouble on October 2, 1928, when her latest play, Pleasure Man, was raided and shut down by police following its second performance on Broadway. Mae’s previous scandalous plays, Sex and The Drag were also raided and shut down to protect the morals of New Yorkers. Mae’s depiction of gay men in general, and a drag ball in particular, in The Drag and its reworked iteration, Pleasure Man particularly incensed the morality police.

Some time in the fall of 1928, Walter Winchell gave his daily column in the New York Evening Graphic over to Texas. The Graphic was known for its sensational tabloid content and was often derided as the Pornographic.

Anyway, here’s the poem:

This site serves as a companion to the book Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld’s Last Star.