Mae West
She
was every man's greatest fantasy and every woman's worst nightmare.
She draped her trademark hourglass figure with tight dresses over tighter
corsets and set them off with diamond necklaces, bangles, and baubles.
A natural comic known for her irreverent style, incomparable wit, and sultry
voice, for more than half a century Mae West remained the quintessential
Hollywood sex symbol upon which all future divas would base their personas.
Born on August 17, 1893, in Brooklyn, N. Y.,
West was the first child of a boxer and a corset model. Her mother,
Matilda, exerted a profound influence on her, instilling generous amounts of
self-confidence and ambition and pushing her daughter onto the vaudeville stage by
the age of seven.
West
quit school after the third grade and for the next two decades lived the
rough-and-tumble life of a stage performer, appearing on Broadway, in
vaudeville, and on burlesque stages across the country. She was the first
performer to do a dance called "The Shimmy" on stage, |
"Any time you got nothing to do--and lots of time
to do it--come on up." |
creating an international
sensation. Her first Broadway role was in A la Bradway and Hello,
Paris and was quickly followed by a starring role with Al Jolson in
Vera Violetta in 1911. She soon built a reputation for adding
spicy asides to her scripts and was often censored by producers.
Her introduction
to national notoriety eluded her until 1928, when she wrote and staged her
own play, Sex, in New York. That led to her arrest and a widely
publicized trial on obscenity charges, culminating in one week of
incarceration and a lifetime of fame. The charges against West were "corrupting the morals of
youth," and the arresting officer testified that she had not only revealed
her navel in public, but also moved it up and down and side to side.
The resulting controversy made her a star.
The
following year, her next play, Drag, was banned on Broadway because
its
subject matter was homosexuality. With Diamond Lil (1928), West became
the toast of Broadway. After several more
controversial plays, she was signed by Paramount Pictures in
1932, where her phenomenal success is credited with keeping the studio
solvent. To get around the Hayes decency code then in effect, West,
who wrote nearly all of her own screenplays, began disguising her risqué
material in innuendoes and double entendres, which became a trademark of her
comedic style. "I'm no angel, but I've spread my wings a bit," she
once said, and "I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it." Still, by the mid-1940s, her films and popularity were
so compromised after her bouts with censorship that she could no longer find
work in Hollywood.
During her long and varied career,
West
wrote and starred in numerous plays, including Diamond Lil
(1928) and The Constant Sinner (1931); and she starred in suggestive
movies such as I'm No Angel (1933) and She Done Him Wrong
(1933). As a comedic actress, she was the magnificent foil opposite W. C. Fields in My
Little Chickadee. Mae West once said, "When choosing between two evils, I
always like to pick the one I never tried before" and "When I'm bad, I'm
better." Mae West died in 1980 following a series of several strokes.
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