BELLE LA MARR
The fabled
MADAM VARNISH
Belle La
Marr, the fabled Madam Varnish comes from her
employment at the Palais in St, Louis to the west. She wants more from
life
then the "Arsenic road" that awaits most faded dance-hall girls. A
notice in the paper, stating that the mining towns in New
Mexico are in need of women, strikes her fancy.
Sensing that this could be the chance to be something more than what
she is,
she heads west with her sidekick Lil Rogers --apparently as respectable
ladies.
White Oaks, New Mexico
is a small mining town at the foot of Baxter
Mountain where gold is
mined. It is
in White Oaks that a card shark from St. Louis
recognizes them. So once more back in harness, she becomes the
proprietor of
the Little Casino Saloon. It is with her slick slippery ways, she parts
the miners
from their gold, The miners say she is as slick as vanish.
This one act performance is presented by Ruth Birdsong, an
historian, writer, editor, publisher and former member of the Carrizozo
Little
Theater. She researched and wrote the script from information she found
in the
area's local history and a book: Madam Varnish and the Golden Era,
a
rousing
novel of the American West during the gold rush days that was written
by Henry
James.
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Page created February 19, 2005
Last update February 19, 2005