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Page 24 The Antique Shoppe November, 2018
MAE WEST RADIO for sale by Emerson Radio and Phonograph Corporation of New York, giving it
one of the greatest pedigrees of any Art Deco radio, which explains its immense
Outstanding Example of popularity with collectors today.
Emerson also sold a “half Mae West” (BW-231) radio
Art Deco Design in 1938. The single conical dial helped give the radio its
popular “half” nickname.
By Larry LeMasters Not everyone loved the Mae West’s unusual shape.
LeMasters’ Antique News Service Robert Hawes, in Radio Art, described the Mae West
Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky is famous for making as “a grotesque table radio in bent plywood.” This
curvy cars and Art Deco radios during the 1930s. One of description seems unkind since, if it wasn’t for the
his most sought after radios is the 1938 BD-197 “Mae nickname attached to it, the Mae West would be a
West” short-wave radio. futuristic-looking example of Art Deco design, and
The BD-197 was a six-tube, AM/SW superheterodyne a restored, working model would look good in any
1938 Emerson BW231 “Half Mae West”
receiver with a walnut cabinet, and it sold new in 1938 radio that was offered on eBay for $800. collection or room.
for $39.95. Still, it is difficult to look at this outstanding radio and
Legend has it that de Sakhnoffsky was so taken by not remember Mae West’s famous line, “Why don’t you
the “Brooklyn Bombshell, “actress Mae West, come up and see me sometime -- when I’ve got nothing on
that he designed a radio cabinet as a memorial but the radio?”
to her famous build. However, many Original Mae West
historians believe the radio was designed in radio offered by
the highest Art Deco fashion, and, only after Emerson Radio
its production, was the nickname “Mae West” and Phonograph in
attached to it. There is little doubt, however, of 1939.
the striking similarity between the radio’s two
cones and the bra Mae West, the epitome of
sexuality in the 1930s, wore in the 1935 movie
“Goin’ to Town.” One thing is apparent; the Mae Beautifully restored Mae
West radio’s unusual design and cone projection was West radio by Emerson.
radical in an era of rectangular “tombstone” radios. One look at this stylish
Not only was the Mae West radio designed by de radio’s profile and
Sakhnoffsky, it was manufactured by Ingraham & you can tell why it was
Company of Bristol, Connecticut, and distributed named the “Mae West.” Early Emerson advertisement, circa 1939, showing
a Mae West radio on sale for $39.95.

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