Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American
actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol.
Famous for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in
vaudeville and on the legitimate stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become
a comedian, actress and writer in the motion picture industry.
One of the most controversial stars of her day, West encountered many problems including
censorship.
When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas,
in the United Kingdom, on radio and
television, and recorded Rock and
Roll albums.
Biography
Early life
Born Mary Jane West in Woodhaven, a middle class section of Queens, New York City, her childhood was moved on to various parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. She was the daughter
of John Patrick West (1865–1935) and Matilda "Tillie" Delker-Doelger (1870–1930). Her sister and brother were Mildred Katherine
"Beverly" West (1898–1982) and John Edwin West (1900–1964).
Her father was a prizefighter known as "Battlin' Jack West" who later worked as a
police officer. He was later a detective
who ran his own agency. Her mother was a former corset and fashion model.
The family was Protestant, despite her Jewish
mother,[1] who was a Bavarian German immigrant, her Roman
Catholic paternal grandmother, who was Irish, as well as other relations who were Roman
Catholic and made their disapproval of her career obvious, including the woman who helped deliver West.
Career
Mae West was only 5 years old when she started appearing in amateur shows and many times she won prizes for her performances.
West began performing professionally in vaudeville in 1905 at the age of twelve. She performed at that time under the name The
Baby Vamp, after trying out various personas as a Sis Hopkins and blackface coon shouter unsuccessfully. Though she had not yet matured, the
slinky, dark-haired Mae was already performing a lascivious "shimmy" dance in 1913 and was
photographed for a song-sheet for the song "Everybody Shimmies Now." She was encouraged as a performer by her mother, who,
according to West, always thought that whatever her daughter did was fantastic.
Her famous walk was said to have originated in her early years as a stage actress after she saw female impersonator
Bert Savoy perform. West had special eight-inch platforms attached to her shoes to increase her
height and enhance her stage presence.
Eventually, she began writing her own risqué plays using the pen
name "Jane Mast." Her first starring role on Broadway was in a play she titled
Sex, which she also wrote, produced and directed. Though critics hated the show,
ticket sales were good. The notorious production did not go over well with city officials and the theater was raided with West
arrested along with the cast.
She was prosecuted on morals charges and, on April 19, 1927,
was sentenced to 10 days in jail for public obscenity. While
incarcerated on Roosevelt Island, she was allowed to wear her silk underpants instead
of the scratchy prison issue and the warden reportedly took her to dinner every night. She served eight days with two days off
for good behavior. Media attention to the case enhanced her career.
Her next play, The Drag, was about homosexuality
and alluded to the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrich's. It was a box office success but it played in
New Jersey because it was banned from Broadway. West regarded talking about sex as a basic
human rights issue and was also an early advocate of gay and trans gender rights.
She famously told policemen who were raiding a gay bar, "Don't you know you're hitting a woman in a man's body?", a daring
statement at a time when homosexuality was not accepted. During her entire lifetime she
surrounded herself with gay men and stood up for gay rights at any and every opportunity.
She continued to write plays including The Wicked Age, Pleasure Man and The Constant Sinner. Her productions were plagued
by controversy and other problems. The controversy insured that Mae stayed in the news and most of the time resulted in packed
performances.
"Diamond Lil" returning to New York from Hollywood, 1933
Her 1928 play, Diamond Lil, about a racy, easygoing lady of the 1890s,
became a Broadway hit. This show enjoyed an enduring popularity and West would successfully revive it many times throughout the
course of her career.
Motion pictures
In 1932, West was offered a motion picture contract by
Paramount. She signed and went to Hollywood to appear in Night After
Night starring George Raft. Upon her arrival, she moved into an apartment in the
Ravenswood at 570 North Rossmore Avenue, not far from the studio on Melrose. She maintained
a residence at the Ravenswood, her preferred abode, for the rest of her life, although she also owned a beach house and a ranch
in the San Fernando Valley.
At first, she did not like her small role in Night After Night, but was appeased when she was allowed to rewrite her
scenes. In West's first scene, a hat check girl exclaimed, "Goodness, what lovely diamonds." West replied, "Goodness had nothing
to do with it, dearie."
She brought her Diamond Lil character, now renamed Lady Lou, to the screen in She Done Him Wrong (1933). The film is also notable for one of Cary
Grant's first major roles, which boosted his career. West had spotted Grant at the studio and insisted that he be cast as
the male lead. The movie was a financial success, and earned an Academy Award nomination
for Best Picture.
Her next release, I'm No Angel, paired her with Grant again. "I'm No Angel" was
nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Picture." It was a tremendous financial blockbuster and, along with She Done Him
Wrong, saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Mae West was the largest box office draw in the United States at the time. However,
the frank sexuality and seamy settings of her films aroused the wrath of moralists. On July 1, 1934, the censorship of the
Production Code began to be seriously and meticulously enforced, and her
scripts began to be heavily edited. Her tactical response was to increase the number of
double entendres in her films, expecting the censors to delete the obvious lines and overlook the subtle ones.
West's next movie was Belle of the Nineties (1934). It was originally
titled It Ain't No Sin, but the title was changed due to the censor's objection. Other tentative working titles included
That St. Louis Woman, Belle of St. Louis and Belle of New Orleans. The same could be said for her following
film, Goin' To Town (1935), which was originally titled How Am I Doin'? In
1936, she adapted for the screen Lawrence Riley's
Broadway hit Personal Appearance.
The film, directed by Henry Hathaway, was one of the rare times when West starred in a
role not originally conceived for her. In it she played opposite Randolph Scott. West
starred in two other movies for Paramount before their association came to an end.
Five years later, she starred opposite W.C. Fields in My Little Chickadee (1940) at Universal. West and
Fields, who were both accustomed to working with supporting players and not as co-stars, did not get along and she would not
tolerate his drinking. According to legend, the only way Fields and West could be in the same scene was to film them separately
and then splice the film together. My Little Chickadee was a huge box office success and outgrossed all other W.C. Fields
movies. Universal was delighted with its success and offered West two more movies to star with Fields, but she refused, citing
the difficulty of working with Fields.
Quips
The famous Mae West quip "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?", often varied to "Is that a banana
in your pocket . . .", is accurately attributed to her. She made this remark in February 1936, at the train station in
Los Angeles upon her return from Chicago, when a Los Angeles police officer was
assigned to escort her home.[2] She first delivered the
line on film in My Little Chickadee, and again to George Hamilton in her last movie, Sextette. It is one of the
most quoted lines in movie history.
Other famous West quips include:
- "A hard man is good to find."
- "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
- [To the question "Have you ever met a man that could make you happy?":] "Several times."
- "Why don't you come on up and see me sometime, when I got nothin' on but the radio?"
- "Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls get to go everywhere."
- "Sex is like bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand."
- "My left leg is Christmas and my right leg is New Year's. Why don't you visit me between the holidays?"
- [To the remark, "Goodness, what a beautiful diamond!":] "Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie."
Radio
On December 12, 1937, West appeared in two separate
sketches on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's
radio show that surprised both the listening audience and NBC executives. She appeared as herself, flirting excitedly with Charlie McCarthy, Bergen's dummy, utilizing her
usual brand of sexy wit and risqué sexual references. Her line, "Charles, I remember our date and have the splinters to prove it"
drove the NBC censors and the FCC into panic.[citation needed]
Even more outrageous was a sketch earlier in the show, written by Arch Oboler, that
starred West and Don Ameche as Adam and Eve in the
Garden Of Eden. She told Ameche in the show to "get me a big one...I feel like doing a
big apple!" The conversation between the two was considered so risqué, bordering on blasphemous, she was banned from being
featured, or even mentioned, on the NBC network. She did not perform again on radio until 1949.
Marriage and divorce
West was married on April 11, 1911, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Frank Wallace, a fellow vaudevillian whom she first met in 1909. She was
17, he was 21. In 1935, Wallace showed up in Hollywood with a marriage certificate seeking a share of "their" community property. An affidavit was also uncovered that West gave in 1927, during the Sex
trial, in which she had declared herself married.
West at first denied ever marrying Wallace. She finally admitted in July 1937, in reply to a legal interrogatory, that they
had been married. Even though the marriage was a reality, she never lived with Wallace as man and wife. She insisted they have
separate bedrooms and she soon sent him away in a show of his own in order to get rid of him. She obtained a legal divorce on
July 21, 1942, during which Wallace withdrew his request for
separate maintenance, and West testified that she and Wallace had lived together for only "several weeks." The final divorce
decree was granted on May 7, 1943.
Middle years
West appeared in her last movie during the studio age with The Heat's On (1943) for
Columbia. She remained active during the ensuing years. Among her stage performances
was the title role in Catherine Was Great (1944) on Broadway, in which she spoofed the
story of Catherine the Great of Russia,
surrounding herself with an "imperial guard" of muscular young actors, all over six feet tall. The play was produced by
Mike Todd and went on a long national tour in 1945.
She also starred in her own Las Vegas stage show, singing while surrounded by
bodybuilders. Many celebrities attended West's show, including Judy Garland,
Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong, Liberace, and Jayne Mansfield (who met, and later married, one of
West's muscle men, Mickey Hargitay, after which he was dismissed).
When Billy Wilder offered West the role of Norma
Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, she refused and pronounced herself
offended at being asked to play a "has-been," similar to the responses he received from Mary
Pickford, Greta Garbo, and Pola Negri. Ultimately
the more amenable Gloria Swanson was cast in the role.
In 1958, West appeared at the Academy Awards and performed the song "Baby, It's Cold
Outside" with Rock Hudson.
Her autobiography, titled Goodness Had Nothing To Do With
It, was published by Prentice-Hall in 1959, and was published again in an updated version in the 1970's. It was again a
financial success.
Later career
West also made some rare appearances on television, including The Red Skelton Show in 1960. She did a comedy sketch with Skelton regarding her recently
published autobiography. Viewers reported astonishment at her youthful appearance and energy. In 1964, she guest starred as
herself on the popular sitcom Mister Ed. The
episode's ratings were well above usual for the series.
In order to keep her appeal fresh with younger generations, she recorded two Rock and Roll albums, Way Out West and Wild Christmas in the late 1960s.
The single "Treat Him Right," from Way Out West, made the album a financial success. She also recorded a number of parody
songs including "Santa, Come Up and See Me Sometime," on the album Wild Christmas.
After a 26-year absence from motion pictures, she appeared in the role as Leticia Van Allen in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970) with
John Huston, Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, and Tom
Selleck in a small part. This movie failed at the box office, despite popular excitement. It became a camp classic, however, due to its sex change theme. It
has since been re-released several times doing much better than originally and has also had successful multiple releases on DVD
and VHS.
West made many personal appearances to an enthusiastic audience. In New York, fans were
held back by a large number of policemen, including those on horseback, who were there to control the crowd. One fan was led away
by police who proclaimed, "I touched Mae West...I touched Mae West!" College students held up signs saying "Mae West fan
club."
West recorded another album in the 1970s on MGM Records titled Great Balls of
Fire, which covered songs by Elvis Presley, The
Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, among others, and her autobiography,
Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, was updated in a new version and republished.
In 1976, she appeared on the The Dick Cavett Show and gave an exclusive
interview about her life and career along with insights into her proclivity toward vulgar humor and her battle with censorship.
Her appearance on the Dick Cavett special generated great excitement and led to her next movie Sextette. Dick Cavett said Mae was
so fantastic that she only had to extend her hand, "to give you a jolt that could be felt in the floorboards. She is the eighth
wonder of the world!" This was a statement that Rona Barrett also attributed to Miss West in her widely popular magazines in the
1970s.
At age 85, she returned to the screen for a final time as Marlo Manners in Sextette
(1978) with an all-star cast including a cameo by George
Raft which provided an odd symmetry to both their long careers. Sextette premiered in Los Angeles and San Franciso
(Mae attended both to packed houses) and the film did quite well initially. After a while the box-office fell off, however Crown
International Pictures picked "Sextette" up and released it domestically in the United States. New World Pictures released the
film internationally. Ringo Starr, her co-star in the movie said that "Mae is so fan-bloody-tastic that she just wipes us out,"
referring to the rest of the actors in the movie. TV Guide magazine quoted Tony Curtis as saying that "Mae never missed a
beat."
Although the movie was not received well by some critics or the general public, After Dark magazine awarded West the
"Star of the World" award for her performance in what became her final screen appearance. Sextette has become a
cult classic and has done well on cable movie channels as well as VHS and DVD releases. In
fact, Time magazine proclaimed Sextette an "instant classic, sure to be loved by her many fans."
It is a fact that at the premiere of Sextette some fans crawled up telephone poles in order to get a better view of the star.
Many drag queens also came to the premiere dressed as Mae West and it was pandemonium.
Final years
Near the end of her life, she was known for maintaining a surprisingly youthful appearance. She stated in her autobiography
that she spent two hours every day massaging cold cream into her breasts to keep them
youthful. West continued to surround herself with virile men for the rest of her life, employing companions, bodyguards and
chauffeurs.
In the 1970s she was the only star in Hollywood who would allow reporters to search through her hair for signs of cosmetic
surgery. They found no signs of this and this forever put to rest rumors of wigs and plastic surgery.[citation needed]
After making Sextette, West did some radio commercials for Poland Springs Drinking Water saying she had been drinking
Poland Springs water for 20 years, "...ever since I was six!"
Miss West continued seeing personally to her fan mail and actually corresponded with many of her fans. She listed her phone
number in the Los Angeles directory and "Rona Barrett's Hollywood" magazine published her number so her fans could "call her up
and see her sometime!"
In the late summer of 1980, she tripped on a rug after getting out of bed, falling and hitting her head. She had a concussion
and stroke. Doctors were evenly divided on whether the concussion caused the stroke or she had a stroke which caused her to
suffer the fall and concussion. She was rushed to the hospital and rallied. Later Mae would claim she "fell out of bed dreaming
about Burt Reynolds." In November, she suffered yet another stroke. The prognosis was not good and she was sent home. She died at
her apartment on North Rossmore Avenue in Hollywood at age 87. Many of her fans cried openly and one was quoted as saying, "if
she died, it is the end of the world."[citation needed]
Mae West is entombed with her family in Cypress Hills Cemetery,
Brooklyn, New York. She has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street in Hollywood.
Name applied
During WWII, Allied soldiers called their yellow
inflatable, vest-like life preserver jackets
"Mae Wests" because of the resemblance to her curvaceous torso. A "Mae West"
is also a type of round parachute malfunction which contorts the shape of the canopy into the
appearance of an extraordinarily large brassiere, presumably one suitable for a woman of Mae West's proportions.[3]
West is referenced in the title song of Cole Porter's Broadway musical Anything
Goes.
- If old hymns you like,
- If bare limbs you like,
- If Mae West you like
- Or me undressed you like,
- Why, nobody will oppose!
In the PC game Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, in which the
protagonist searches for an ancient sarcophagus which frequently switches hands, one character, a Nosferatu who was a movie star
in life, remarks that the sarcophagus "gets around more than Mae West".
A Mae West slot canyon is one that is too narrow at the bottom to traverse on foot. Instead, one uses chimneying techniques to
negotiate above the floor.
"Not feeling the Mae West" is Cockney rhyming slang for "not feeling the
best".
In nuclear physics, the graph of nuclear fission nuclide production versus atomic weight is called a Mae West diagram. The
graph has two peaks, one near atomic weight 90 and the other near atomic weight 130, with a valley in between.
In Quebec, a May West (by Vachon) is a popular round dessert cake with cream filling and a thin shell of dark chocolate.
- A Mae West Hold is a term used to describe a U.S. Senatorial procedure that in
effect stops a bill dead in its tracks, usually in secret. The Mae West version of the Senate hold occurs when the senator behind
the objection is open to negotiation, inviting the author to “come up and see me sometime.”
Trivia
- MAE-West was also the name of the Metropolitan Area Exchange West, one of the first
Internet tier-one hubs to connect all the major TCP/IP networks that made up the Internet back in 1992. It is unknown whether the
founders of MAE-West named this early Internet Exchange after the actress.
- Mae West is one of the people to appear on the famous cover of the
Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band. When permission to use her likeness was requested, she refused. "No, I won't be on it. What would I be doing in
a lonely hearts club?" In response, the Beatles personally wrote a letter asking her to reconsider. She changed her mind.
- In her later years, Mae West would occasionally make appearances at Hollywood parties. At one such party West astonished
guests when she got up and performed a belly dance. At another, a student said "Oh, Miss West, we saw one of your films at our
art museum." She said "WHAT? Me — in a museum?"[citation needed]
- In an episode of Seinfeld, Jerry likens Elaine to Mae West because she asked
the dentist Tim Watley if he wanted to go upstairs, without offering an explanation as to why they should go upstairs.
Filmography
Plays By Mae West
- The Ruby Ring (1921), The Hussy (1922), The Chick (1924) These were registered for copyright but never
produced.
- Sex (1926)
- The Wicked Age (1927)
- The Drag (1927)
- The Pleasure Man (1928)
- Diamond Lil (1928, revised 1964)
- Frisco Kate (1930)
- The Constant Sinner (1931)
- Catherine Was Great (1944)
- Come On Over (1946)
- Sextette (1952, revised 1961)
Books By Mae West
- Babe Gordon (1930) (novelization of The Constant Sinner)
- Diamond Lil (1932) (novelization of play)
- Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It (1959, revised 1970)
- Mae West On Sex, Health and ESP (1975)
- "Pleasure Man" (1975)
Notes
- ^ [1]
- ^ John Kobal, "Mae West," Films and Filming, September 1983, pp.
21-25.
- ^ [2]
External links
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