A 1973 cocktail party comes to life in Wes Wheadon's When Bette Met Mae.
By Brandon Voss
Back in the fall of 1973, Wes Wheadon bartended an intimate Hollywood cocktail party where the guests of honor were Bette Davis and Mae West, screen legends who had never met. He was wise enough to bring a cassette recorder.
“It was just for fun, and it was just for me,” says Wheadon of the two-hour recording. “I had it for 40 years before I decided to do anything with it.” You’re now cordially invited to be a fly on the wall of that party when Wheadon’s film When Bette Met Mae premieres October 27 on iTunes. An optometrist by day, Wheadon spent the last five years restoring and bringing that audiotape to life, casting noted impersonators Karen Teliha and Victoria Mills to reenact the action and lip-synch the late icons’ voices.
At one point in the evening, the women discussed their mixed feelings about impersonations; West once took legal action against a drag queen who ripped off her act. So what would those grande dames think of When Bette Met Mae? “I worked on this movie with Bette on one shoulder and Mae on the other,” Wheadon says. “I think they’d get a kick out of it.”
Next, October 2015.