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Mae West’s Secret Italian Husband
by LindAnn Lo Schiavo
Behind
every successful man, it’s often said, there’s a devoted woman.
Before she was a successful
Hollywood
star, actress Mae West [1892/3 – 1980] knew how to
partner with the right men in order to further her career.
In 1913, this brunette vaudeville gypsy was still struggling to
find the spotlight when she met a dashing Italian who was already an
established headliner. This
talented and charismatic musician was Guido Pietro Deiro [1886 –
1950]. Born
in the
village
of
Salto Canavese
,
Italy
on
September 1, 1886
, Deiro quickly became a famous star on the variety
circuit as well as an international recording artist, a composer, and a
teacher. He was the first
accordionist to play big-time vaudeville, booked by the top showcases
and earning top dollar. When
they were in their mid-twenties, handsome Guido and his younger brother
Pietro were among the highest paid entertainers in
America
.
Perhaps his photograph and marquee caption caught Mae’s eye when The
New York Star newspaper ran advertisements for Deiro’s debut at
"The New York Palace" during the week of
April 21, 1913
. Eager
to get ahead in her own career, this
Brooklyn
native would pay attention to stars who were getting
booked into the best local theaters.
At last, in August 1913, these two passionate performers did meet in
Detroit
when they both appeared on the same stage and Guido
had top billing. Though his
musicianship was praised by many
Michigan
critics, Mae’s second-string act was too
insignificant to be mentioned in reviews.
Feeling frustrated, Mae confided in her friends that she was
hoping the Italian would notice her and help boost her career.
Within a week of their first meeting, they were locked in a
steamy affair and Guido gave Mae a diamond ring.
He enclosed a note with it: "This ring is not a family jewel.
It cost me real money. Please
wear it." The
twenty-year-old
Brooklyn
gal wore it like a trophy.
There was a problem, though, and her name was Julia Tatro, a teenage
pianist who had only recently married Guido.
He had to file for divorce. Meanwhile
Mae, who had remained detached from previous lovers, found herself
consumed by Guido. She
confessed that she fell passionately for the charming accordionist.
She wrote: "I couldn't help myself – [Guido] was an
amazing lover. The sex thing was terrific with this guy.
I wanted to do it [with Guido] morning,
noon
and night – and that’s all I wanted to do."
For
the first time, Mae West was in love and physical desire met its match
in heart-tugging intensity. According
to Mae, her affair went “very deep, hittin' on all the emotions.
You can't get too hot over anybody unless there's somethin' that
goes along with the sex act, can you?”
Conditioned by the physical demands of playing and supporting a heavy
accordion, Guido was powerfully built, with heavily muscled shoulders
and bulging biceps. His big
hands gave him an octave and a half reach on the keyboard.
He had bold features, large eyes, wavy black hair, and he was
able to project a sensual charisma across the footlights.
Mae might easily have coined her expression “tall, dark 'n'
handsome” to describe him. He
had everything she demanded in a lover.
Guido
was equally infatuated with Mae and arranged to be booked with her the
following week in
Rochester
,
New York
. Over
the next two seasons, Mae and Guido attempted to be together as much as
possible. Whenever Guido’s
agent could not book them together, Guido canceled his own bookings to
travel with Mae. Even if it
meant accepting a less prestigious and lower-paying position as the
conductor for the theater pit orchestras during her performances, Guido
decided that love came first. When
Mae asked her audience, “How do you like my leader?” Guido always
got a big hand.
As
she had hoped, Guido also provided increased stature in vaudeville.
He signed a new contract that specified joint bookings with Mae,
so that way he could be with her and also continue his high-paying work
– $600 a week – as a headliner accordionist.
After Guido proposed many times,
Mae finally agreed to marry him (though perhaps not until the summer of
1914, after his divorce from Julia Tatro was finalized) under an assumed
name, Catherine Mae Belle West, and with the stipulation that their
marriage be kept a secret. Their business associates guessed the truth,
however. And when Guido took
Mae to meet his family members in
Cle Elum
,
Washington
, despite his promise, he confided to them that the
two were, indeed, man and wife. A
young lady who met Guido’s bride at a family gathering remarked
decades later, “She had the largest breasts I had ever seen.”
Throughout
1914 and into the early part of the next year Mae West and Guido
traveled together and appeared all over the country on the same stages.
In December 1914 Mae and Guido took out an ad in Variety with a
big photograph of each:
Frank
Bohm Presents
Deiro
The Master of the Accordion
Mae West The Original Brinkley Girl
The Incomparable In His Line
A Style All Her Own
Engaged
jointly as headline features
40
weeks
Loew's
Circuit Season 1914-1915
Wishing
the Entire World a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Between
July 1914 and February 1915, Mae and Guido appeared on the same bill in
theaters throughout the Loew’s Circuit.
Mae worked the accordion into her act, pretending to play a waltz
as Guido stood in the wings supplying the real music.
As the waltz ended, Guido would poke his head out so that the
audience could see him with his own accordion on.
While
on the road in
Hamilton
,
Ontario
, Mae contracted the flu and Guido helped nurse her
back to health. Recalling these incidents, she commented in her
autobiography, “I spent the entire week in bed. . . [Guido] D. used to
sit by my side and curl my hair with iron curlers while I was in bed.
I loved being rubbed with cocoa oil after a hot bath.
I used it every night. Once [Guido] D. brought cocoa butter by
mistake and I smelled like a jungle monkey colony for weeks.” She
continued, “[Later,] in
Newark
,
NJ
, every night I was late coming home. Generally, it
was about
3 o’clock
in the morning when I opened my door.
[Guido] D. would lie in bed with his door open, and listen for
the elevator to stop on that landing.”
But
infidelity (real or suspected) caused their relationship to unravel. Mae
was attracted to other men and secretly carried on affairs; Guido
responded by becoming more possessive and violent. He bribed the phone
operators to report her phone calls to him.
And Guido once confronted a suitor in his office and pounded on
the glass-topped desk until it broke. Afterwards, Guido took out a
$50,000 insurance policy with the Hartford Insurance Company “to
protect his fingers.”
One
night Guido accidentally discovered a note that had been passed to Mae
at Giolito’s, an Italian restaurant in
New York
. He read the note aloud: “I love you so much I
can’t stand it any more. I must meet you and talk to you. I don’t
care if that man is your husband.”
Understandably, Guido was outraged.
Mae
tried to pacify him, claiming the note was meant for another woman.
However, under the excuse of visiting the powder room, Mae privately met
her would-be lover and warned him, “Look, there would be a murder if
Guido knew you meant the note for me.” In
1916, while visiting Mae’s parents in
Brooklyn
, Guido threatened, “I kill the next man that tries
to take her away from me!” Mae’s
parents did not know she was married to this man. Her father warned him,
“None of those Italian knife tricks!”
Mae’s close confidant was her mother Mathilda, who said that
Guido’s violent side was making her miserable; she asked her daughter
to break up with him. That’s
how things came to an abrupt end. That
year, Mae took off for
Chicago
without telling her husband where she was going.
Four years later, on
July 14, 1920
, Mae filed for divorce from Guido Deiro on the
grounds of adultery. The
divorce was granted on November 9th of that year. Guido did not appear
at the hearings. The two did not
see each other again from that day in 1916 when Mae abandoned him until
1943, when Guido searched out Mae in
Los Angeles
after she had become a famous film star. He showed
her an article he had written -- “Mae
West and Me” -- which he planned to sell to Look Magazine. When Mae
showed that she was very displeased, Guido proved to be a true
gentleman. Despite the financial losses he had suffered during the years
after the Great Depression, and despite the fact that he really needed
the money that this article would have fetched, he surrendered the
article to Mae and they became friends again.
Guido would sometimes visit her at her penthouse at the
Ravenswood Apartments in
Hollywood
. And Mae, now a millionaire, helped him financially
from time to time.
But the reversal of fortune ruined his health. By 1947, the collapse of
his career and his fourth marriage, the hardship of the war years, the
waning popularity of the accordion, and his failing health combined to
put the former vaudeville and recording star into a deep depression from
which he never recovered. Invalided
and destitute, Guido Deiro died, at the age of 63, of congestive heart
failure and depression, alone and forgotten, in Loma Linda Sanitarium on
July 26, 1950
. Six
people attended his funeral.
A son Guido had with his fourth wife, however, has resuscitated and
preserved his reputation and organized his late father’s archives.
Moreover, this month (January 2004) the American Concert
Accordionist Henry Doktorski has released a double-CD anthology:
“Vaudeville Accordion Classics: The Complete Works of Guido
Deiro.” Count Guido Deiro (an Italian-American composer and an
accordion virtuoso) along with his brother Pietro were a major force in
popularizing the accordion in the early 20th century.
A vaudeville star by 1910, he was the first piano accordionist to
make sound recordings and solo radio broadcasts -- more than 100
recordings on the
Columbia
label. Doktorski has recorded all of Deiro’s music
-- 47 new recordings including waltzes, rags, marches, polkas, and Deiro
favorites: “My Florence Waltz, Egypto Fantasia, Sharpshooter’s March,”
and the Broadway hit “Kismet.” Listening
to Doktorski’s energetic performances of Deiro’s music, you quickly
understand the reason for Guido’s immense popularity.
Doktorski’s 20-page liner notes focus on his relationship with
Mae West, and photographs and newspaper clippings from Deiro’s own
scrapbooks are included in this two-CD set [2 hours and 25 minutes of
music].
Maybe
it’s time you met him…
IDEA
MARZO 2004
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