Meet Layla Lowe Wilcox - Heiress, Modern Woman, Femme Fatale

Layla Lowe Wilcox is wealthy, fearlessly independent, and wildly misunderstood. A columnist for the LA Herald, she writes under a pen name, so no one is the wiser. Layla Lowe earns ger living, but most people believe she's never lifted a dainty, well-manicured finger in her life.  The truth is, between what her father and her ex-husband left Layla in their will, she's got enough cush (money) to fall back on for ten life times.

As a child, Layla Lowe got a taste of the gangtails (horseraces). She and her pals would put on their glad rags (fancy clothes) every Saturday and go to the gangtails (horseraces) and then to the casino on Sunday. You can still find Layla there every weekend. Around the tracks, she's known as “Lady Luck,” cause she never could bet on a losing horse.

Even when Layla was married to Herbert Wilcox, she enjoyed a certain independence. Herbert was a shyster (lawyer) worked long hours, never cared too much about her comings and goings. They got along swell. Until one night, not so long ago, Layla found him in his study with a shiv in his back. Police still haven’t figured out who killed him. They figure it was some droppers (hired killers) with a grudge, repaying her husband for a three spot (three years in jail) their boss was doing in the slammer.

Layla Lowe Wilcox at the "Gangtails"
with local jockey.

Two weeks later, the croaker (doctor) declared Layla's father dead after a couple of troubled boys (gangsters) robbed the rattler (train) he was on and put the screws on (questioned him) him about where he hiding his scratch (money) and ice (diamonds).  Cornelius Lowe was a proud, self-made man, a little too proud, if you ask just about anyone. He wouldn’t talk and it landed him in the back of the meat wagon (ambulance). Now Layla Lowe Wilcox is alone, and on the hunt for her next husband. She says she won’t be too quick to jump into anything though; she enjoys her freedom too much.

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Meet Jane Doe, Intrepid, Unrelenting Girl Reporter

Newshawk Jane Doe 

Jane Doe is an intrepid, unrelenting REPORTER - a fact seeker, GUNNING for stories at all times. Everyone's business is HER business. She has been on the staff of the local newspaper The Town Tattler ever since a "major publishing house" failed to take notice of her debut literary fiction because, as they said, she was a GIRL.

It was a sweeping tale of intrigue, an opus of delight. A tad bitter over that rejection but emboldened enough to not care, Jane sought refuge in the FACTS, WORDS, the language of the TRUTH. Sure, by writing her novel she bared her weary soul, committing acts of literary grace with lyrical and haunting metaphors. But what did the editors of publishing houses really know of talent?

"A DAME wrote this?!" marvels local newsie Rusty Nail

She'll show them. Maybe with a PULITZER!

She lives alone with a Murphy Bed and two raggedy stuffed toys, from her childhood Muffin and Teddy. It was a solitary time growing up, the only child of a mother who was often institutionalized for various ills and, a father who went out for cigarettes one night and never came back. 

Bitter "Career Gal"

Miss Doe has never married but was engaged once for a very brief time. The groom to be was the son of the local newspaper editor-in-chief. Realizing she had dreams of success she threw the fiance over for a job offer from his father to be the paper's first female cub reporter. 

Ever since then she has flourished and is now... 
A REPORTER!

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Meet Norah Diamond, Washed-Up Never-Was

Norah Diamond and "Associates" at Tym's Place

Norah Diamond was born Eunice Elvira Bloch  on March 27, 1899 in Newark, NJ. Her parents were Martha and Harry Bloch. Harry was an army private stationed at Fort Dix. When she was six, the Bloch family moved to Fort Lee, NJ. 

One day, as a very young child, Norah wandered on to the set of "Rescued from Eagles" starring DW Griffith. Looking predatory and starved, she was naturally cast as an extra, "chick #5." Pretty soon, due to very loose child labor laws, Norah dropped out of school and was under contract with Champion Film Company, making as many as nine films a day. In 1918, with many important bit roles under her belt (Urchin #3 in "The Perils of Pauline," the consumptive friend of the "Littlest Key Stone Cop," Pretty Pauper #2 in "Robin Hood"), she made her move to Hollywood. First though, the future Mrs. Diamond had a husband to get rid of. When she was 16, Norah Diamond met and married Marvin Diamante, a film cutter with the Edison Company. Horrified, Norah's parents had that marriage quietly annulled. The union produced one child, Tiffany Diamante, who was later "donated" to the Edison Company in a basket left outside the casting office.

"Rescued From Eagles" (1905)

Martha Bloch vowed to chaperone her daughter to her new Hollywood life. By this time, Martha was a widow, Harry having died of tetanus during WWI. (He stepped on a nail while getting off the boat in Calais.) Unfortunately, Mrs. Bloch never made it to Hollywood. Having never had a formal education, herself, she got on a boat that she thought was headed to California - she did not have a strong grasp of geography - and was never heard from again.

Miss Diamond, however, took the train cross country. While on the train, she met, married and divorced fellow would-be actor Walter Alehouse. He would be the second of her 7 1/2 husbands. The 1/2 was due to having accidentally married actress Norma Shearer in the Divorcee (1930) when she was a lighting stand-in for Robert Montgomery during a wedding scene that used an actual priest. The scene was eventually cut from the film.

While in Hollywood, Norah Diamond continued her torrid pace of constantly being cast in largely unsuccessful, overlooked or just cheap rip offs of more successful Hollywood films, including "The Pullman Broad" (1919), "The Shifty Beard" (1920), and "You Should Change your Husband's Pants" (1925). By the middle of the 1920s, Norah Diamond was the most averagely paid "lead actress" in films no one ever cared to see. In the 1930s when the sound revolution hit, no one wondered if she'd adapt.

Norah and "wife" Norma Shearer

Slowly, as the bit roles died out, Norah was left earning money as a stunt double (despite a clear lack of any formal training whatsoever) for Sonja Henie (she couldn't skate) and Norma Shearer (her former husband) - Very few people to this day remember that early Norma Shearer films featured lengthy and vicious fight sequences. (Irving Thalberg demanded it). However, many of these sequences were to be later left on the cutting room floor..

During the fall of 1942, in a fit of desperation, Norah Diamond got very drunk at a party she crashed at the Chateau Marmont and ended up married the next morning to Louis Costello, the half brother of mobster Frank Costello - not, as she had mistakenly thought, half of the comedy duo Abbot and Costello. The poor sap, however, was deeply in love with her and bought Norah her first car (the 1941 Cadillac Convertible she currently still drives) and a house in the Hills. Sadly, Louis committed suicide by shooting himself in the back nine times outside the Flamingo Resort in Las Vegas. With the money he left her (and the ties to certain associates), Norah Diamond bought in to Tym's Place, becoming a "not so silent" partner. 

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Notorious Goon Fitted for "Chicago Overcoat"

By Izzy Church

Late last night, there was a disturbance down at the docks and the notorious gangster, Gil Weeze was found dead. Now everyone is a suspect. Who could it be? Read all about it!

Perhaps, it’s the former  washed up black and white movie star, Norah Diamond?  Did she go off the deep end for good? Did she think Gil Weez was a thug in an old black and white movie and murder him?  

Maybe, it’s the nosey reporter down at the Herald, Jane Doe?  Was she so hard up for a story that she set one in motion? 

Maybe it’s Layla Lowe Wilcox, the rich and glamorous widow of the shyster, Herbert Wilcox, known for putting away disreputable thugs and drifters. Could she be seeking revenge for the death of her husband?

Perhaps, it’s the newspaper boy, Rusty Nail? He looks sweet and innocent, but perhaps there is a much darker side to this paperboy that we’ve yet to discover?

Best Dick on the Case:
Detective Philip Cannon

The story will unfold differently every night, with a different murder, so be prepared for foolhardiness as Detective Philip Cannon presses his suspects for information about the mysterious death(s) in this not so sleepy town.  

It won’t be all Murder She Wrote; there will be a musical guest. Tym Moss will be playing down at Tym’s Place, so be sure to book your tickets in advance. 

You don’t want to miss IRTE Noir!  Directed by Curtis Dixon.

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment