The Mysterious Mitzi: Internet Sleuthing in Realtime

Early New Yorker magazines are absolutely AWASH with advertisements for Lux Toilet Soap. You can't turn a page without running across an enormous Lux centerfold spread, in which some famous Broadway actress describes how Lux manages to keep both her complexion AND her stockings clean. It's a miracle!

I read all the Lux advertisements because I'm hoping to spot early photos of up-and-coming actresses, but in the issue from May 25, 1929 my attention was caught by...Mitzi.

There's nothing particularly fascinating about her appearance or her run-of-the-mill testimonial, but I'm a sucker for women named "Mitzi," and yet I'd never heard of one who was known ONLY as "Mitzi."

Sure there was Mitzi Gaynor, and Mitzi Green, and Mitzi DuBois, but they all came later and I'm beginning to wonder if they were named AFTER this woman. I'd like to prove this hypothesis but the strange thing is...

...there's virtually nothing about her on the internet at all. How strange is that?

Part of the problem is that she shares the same first (and only) name with a bunch of more famous Mitzis. Another problem is that she apparently never made a movie, so the Internet Movie Database is unusually useless. In addition, the "Lovely Lady" play has been totally forgotten, closing on Broadway after only five months and then relegated to the sticks.

The only handle I've managed to get on the mysterious Mitzi is through a piece of sheet music that was released from "Lovely Lady," a song called "One Step To Heaven" (with ukulele accompaniment, natch). Through this I stumbled on "Scientific Commons" (of all places) and a list of four pieces of sheet music that Mitzi was credited with.

Along with a brief contemporary review of "Lovely Lady" from another magazine, I have been able to piece together that Mitzi was a comedienne who was performing at least by 1918, singing "Every Bee Has a Bud."

When I looked at another of her songs ("Ha-za-zaa" from an operetta called "Sari") I had my final breakthrough. A few more searches along those lines brought me to a 2005 master's thesis by Jessie Wright Martin, in which Mitzi's true identity is finally revealed:

The show's title role on Broadway was assumed by Hungarian soubrette, Mizzi Hajos, who won instant fame; so much so that she changed her name to simply Mitzi, claiming that American audiences wouldn't know how to pronounce either of her Hungarian names.

I don't know about the claim that she changed her name AFTER "Sari" -- considering she was apparently billed as "Mitzi" as far back as 1918 -- but otherwise the mystery has been solved. And if you plug "Mizzi Hajos" into Google you get a respectable amount of information, and even a link to her only known recordings.

Now I can stop caring.

Transcript of a Night of Pain

Ten o'clock. Good puss. Yeah, she's a good puss. Goodnight, puss.

Groan. Try the left side. Oh, that's pretty good, if I bend my elbow and put my right hand up near my chin. Hmmm. Still okay.

OH! Ouch, no, try the right side. That's not working. Ouch! Maybe if I...OUCH! Okay no. If I put my hand on the pillow...okay...whew! That's a bit better. Not hurting. Hmmm. Still okay. Hmmm. Zzzzzzzz...

Ouch! Ow, what is it? Ow. Eleven-thirty. That really sucks. If I lie here on my back and just put my right hand in my left hand that feels...okay, that's better.

I must have pulled a muscle. YEAH! GREAT! Aw jeez, yeah, hello puss. How're you? How's my puss? Pretty girl! Goodnight, puss!

Maybe if I...OW! All locked up. Just to the right a bit...a bit more...sigh. Doesn't hurt much. I should be able to...zzzzzzzz...

OUCH! Ouch, my shoulder. What time is it? Two o'clock. Oooh, I'll just lie here, ow. K-9 and Princess Astra. Princess Strella. "Just to break-a-my fah...ah-ah-ah, ah-ah." Astra. "People tell me it's gonna get bet-tah, gonna get bet-tah." Hmm. Left side maybe. OW! Oh, that's better. Zzzzzzz.

OW-OW-OW! This is the bad--OW! Gotta get...OW! Four o'clock. Oooo, get lost puss, need an ice pack, why don't I put all this crap away...ahh, that's better. Ice ice ice. I wonder if Zsa Zsa will get sick from licking the ice pack. I wonder if she'll wreck it. Rough tongue. Ahhh. High blood sugar. Gotta sleep, this is a really awful sleep tonight. Hmmm. Princess Strella. No, Astra. "Just to break-a-my fah...ah-ah-ah..." Maybe if I... "I've never loved nobody fully..." Hmmm.

OW! Roll over. OW! Okay, if I really push my shoulder down. If I grab my shoulder and push it DOWN. Aha. Can I sleep like this? Hmmm. K-9. "Yes, master." Good puss. Zzzzzzz.

Wha...huh...five o'clock, what? Low blood sugar, eat some...OW! Jeez. Eat some candy. Ice pack is warm. Maybe if I lie here. That's okay. Don't look at the clock. Don't think about it. Hmmm. Zzzzzzz...

"The Man Who Will Come"

I didn't know at the time that the hotel clerk was Rob's messenger. If I'd realized I would have paid more attention to him, gotten a better look at him, but when he gave me the letter I thought he was just doing his job. I was living a different life back then.

In my room I took out the letter and read it. It was a short thing, written on stationary from a more expensive hotel than I had been placed in. "Dear Laurie," it said, "I have to talk to you about something important. Meet me at the cafe at six o'clock."

I went to the cafe and he didn't show up, so the next day I went back to the convention hall where we'd met and I drank water in the foyer and expected to see him walk past. Maybe the crowd was too large. I missed both of my seminars and I was angry.

I didn't understand what had happened until I saw the police cars outside his hotel. I thought he'd been arrested, but there was nothing about him in the paper the next day. If they'd caught him they would have reported it. I knew then that he was still alive.

The conference was over and my return flight was booked, so I left a message with the maid and rode the shuttle bus to the airport. I hoped to see Rob on the street or hear about him on the radio. Rob wasn't at the airport; I didn't know if he lived in the city or if he was just there for the conference, or if the conference itself was just a secret way for him to meet people in an unlikely setting.

At home I unpacked my bags and I couldn't find his letter. Either I'd forgotten to pack it or the airport security had removed it.

I pretended to live my old life because there was nothing to do but wait. I had the children on the weekends and they'd either sit in front of the TV or go out with their friends. When Chad wrestled Dino and Dino's wrist got broken I knew for sure that my old life had been a mistake.

The nurse at the hospital said I had pretty fingernails.

Rob was unable to contact me again. He'd taken a chance by telling me about his secret life in the convention hall. Obviously he'd found no other way to meet me since then. I didn't feel angry anymore, I understood his problem.

I pieced together his travels by reading the newspaper. He'd escaped a house fire. He'd witnessed a miraculous rescue, though in the article he claimed to have no CPR training, which must have been a lie. He may have been in the crowd at the opening of a highway. His pictures were blurry and his last name always changed, but Rob was still doing his secret job. I was thrilled.

Now, in my new life, I sit on the apartment steps and look out at the world that Rob still lives in. I don't do anything else because I don't know what to do. I know he'll come eventually, when he's able.

GQE Drag Show!

Also coming up, also in Guelph, also in March, another wonderful event from Guelph Queer Equality! Here's their promo material:

Guelph Queer Equality is throwing its annual drag show! There will be drag performances and other musical acts, including:

-The all-too-fabulous Muffy St. Bernard, drag queen extraordinaire! She's performed with us before, and now she's back again! Don't miss a chance to see her in action.

-The equally all-too-fabulous Nigel Gough, who wowed the crowd with a scandalously spiritual interpretation of Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl at last semester's Queer Antics.

-You can also catch the musical stylings of Amy Bronson, folky Lethbridge-native and current temporary Guelphite.
http://www.myspace.com/amybronson

-And you can be witness to the musical stylishness (and also stylings) of the charming Kay Pettigrew, who can lately be found being awesome at venues all over.
http://www.myspace.com/kaypettigrew

Aaaaaand more! Check back here often as the facebook event will be updated with more performers!

If you yourself are a performer who would like to participate or know of one, feel free to contact us at gqe@uoguelph.ca!

Five dollars or pay what you can. Proceeds from the show will be going to support Out on the Shelf and Our Place

Coming Up: Gender Martini Party!

One of the upcoming spate of Guelph shows I'll be performing at, come to the "Gender Martini Party" at Guelph's eBar on Wednesday, March 25. From their advert:

PINCH THIS PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

GENDER MARTINI
A thrilling performance night celebrating a variety of gender expressions

Join us for an evening of dancing, observing and interacting.

Performances include:

DRAG
We'll make you lick your lips for the gender bending stylings of our local artists, including the delicious Muffy St. Bernard

SPOKEN WORD
Prepare to have your appetite whetted with controversial topics accompanied by hip popping beats

LOCAL DANCERS
You will have your taste buds tantalized with choreographed routines by some KW boys that will leave you shaken AND stirred

BURLESQUE
Finally, quench your thirst with Violet Wand and her sinful troop who will add that twist to your night that you've been craving. You know you love it.

DOORS OPEN AT 9, DJS AND DANCING TIL CLOSE
Including the tasty beats of Junglecat

Proceeds to Out on The Shelf

I performed at the eBar many years ago and it's a WONDERFUL space, though one of us managed to lock the keys in the dressingroom. This time they'll probably make us change behind a table in the corner.

I was asked to provide and name a representative martini, so I gave them the recipe for "The Hopped-Up Dustymuff," basically a dry light vodka martini with a live seal in it.

Appreciating the Chorus Girl

The New Yorker, May 12, 1929.

The artist was John Reynolds. He created a real flurry of cartoons for the magazine between 1928 and 1930, but appears to have been subsequently forgotten.

Facebook Faux Pas

I have mellowed with a lot of my earlier criticisms of Facebook use, but I still consider these four commandments to be self-evident and inviolate:

Thou Shalt Not Post a Dozen Items Each Day

If you've found an interesting news article or you'd like everyone to read your latest blog post, go ahead and post it! But please don't spam me with your ideology by posting several of them a day. This amounts to advertising and becomes no better than a usenet newsgroup, and is one of the main reasons why I don't go to usenet newsgroups anymore.

Thou Shalt Not Write Obnoxious Status Updates

There's nothing more off-putting than getting a bunch of status updates written for the sole purpose of offending you or shocking you.

Thou Shalt Not Invite Others To Join Fanclubs Devoted to Thyself

If you actually have an organization, business, or band that you think people might be interested in, that's fine. But it's SO cheesy to receive an invitation from Mr. X to join the "We Love Mr. X Fanclub," and I think such invitations say a lot of unflattering things about the senders.

Thou Shalt Not Send Dramatic Emails About The Level of Drama in Facebook

It's PARTICULARLY annoying when the emails say "...and I'm LEAVING, and my REAL friends will know where to find me," and then two months later the person has started a new account and is asking everybody to be friends again.

Beautiful Clarissa

Here's a cautionary tale from the pages of The New Yorker (March 18, 1929). It doesn't go in quite the direction I thought it would...

Mais non--Egbert didn't want Percy and Percy didn't want Egbert but the beautiful Clarissa got her dates mixed! Wisely she suggested a ride to cool off the two Lotharios!

But on the way home--

Nobody sang "Just a Kiss in the Dark"--nobody sang at all! Out in the cold the lonely but beautiful Clarissa realized the futility of pinning one's faith to a temporary deodorant!

Yup, it's good old Odorono again, telling flippant flappers everywhere that if they use the wrong deodorant, they might end up in the rumble seat.

Oglb: War of the Worlds

When I was six years old, a family friend gave me Jeff Wayne's double-album "War of the Worlds" for my birthday. It was a bizarre gift totally out of left field, but I must have listened to that album a hundred times.

Scary as hell. I'll never forget Richard Burton describing a Martian's mouth as "quivering and slavering like wet liver." It contained gruesome airbrushed artwork in a huge booklet. But most importantly, the music was dense, brilliant, driving, beautiful...though I was too young to recognize that it was essentially disco.

So yes, a DISCO version of "War of the Worlds," which left a lasting impression on children all over the world. It's hardly surprising that in 2006 they actually took the album ON TOUR, performing a note-by-note recreation complete with a virtual Richard Burton. Whenever I hear these drums, those keyboards, that fuzz guitar, that voice...well, I literally MELT as though I were exposed to a heat-ray...the same way that sides two and three of the album melted when I put a meatpie on them.*

Much to my chagrin I have never seen the 2006 tour DVD, so I'm forced to experience it through YouTube. Here's the first section ("The Eve of the War") with Justin Hayward reprising his original role, and Richard Burton saying the words which I chose for this blog's tagline.



Ulllllaaaah! Ulllllaaaaaah!

PS: That's Julia Thornton on percussion, who I absolutely love to death.

* Sometimes, vinyl double albums came with sides one and four on one disc, and sides two and three on a second. This was meant to make it easier to play the records on machines with auto-drop mechanisms; you could put record one on top of record two, with sides one and two cued respectively, and then -- afterwards -- put records two and one back up there with sides three and four cued.

The "War of the Worlds" double-album was like that, allowing you to listen all the way through with a minimum of record-changing. But people stopped doing this when they realized that auto-drop mechanisms wrecked your vinyl.

The Boys Who Follow

I have previously mentioned the boys who explode, but I find that I'm increasingly needing to deal with The Boys Who Follow.

These are the guys who sort of latch onto me in a straight setting, and then insist on following me around all night. Sometimes they'll try to grab me on the way to or from the bathroom, or they'll just keep asking me for my phone number. Tonight was the first night that a boy ran after me and tried to follow me home, no matter how many times I told him it was awful and creepy. "I'm not trying to pick you up!" he kept shouting, grabbing my shoulder until I finally ran back and had to wait for an eventual cab. "Why are you acting like this?" was his (hopefully) final comment.

I don't believe that most men behave this way. Whenever I decide to walk home from Club Abstract, I always check carefully to make sure I'm not being stalked by some little possie with baseball bats. But tonight was the first time that I've been grabbed repeatedly and followed even while I protested, and I wondered why this is happening now and not ten years ago.

Maybe it's because I'm better and more confident at drag than I used to, but I really think that it's a double-edged sword of acceptance; once upon a time that sort of man would be too frightened to be a nuisance, but now that it's sort of "okay" for him to be attracted to me, he feels more confident about treating me (perhaps) like he'd treat some other girl. Which makes me, as always, appreciate in some small way what women deal with in bars.

What I find most interesting was his shout of "Why are you being like this?" I'm trying to decode what he was thinking when he said it. He obviously was accusing me of being suspicious and of over-reacting, and yet the guy was aggressively grabbing my shoulder and trying to pull me away. I wonder: would he REALLY do this to a girl? Or is it only okay because it's me? And if that's the case, is it okay because he can pretend he's just "a guy walking with a guy," or because my sexuality is largely unimportant, or because he was so repressed that he believed that he honestly, really, TRULY wouldn't do anything awful once we turned the corner?

It's a weird situation: cut-and-dried for me ("Get lost!") but muddy in its motivation.