About Me
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 renowned as a comedienne, 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 England, on radio and television, and recorded Rock and Roll albums.
Born Mary Jane West in Woodhaven, a wealthy section of Queens, New York, 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, 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.
Mae West was only 5 years old when she started appearing in amatuer 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. 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. 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 theatre 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 panties 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 Ulrichs. 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 transgender 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, 1933Her next play, Diamond Lil, about a racy, easygoing lady of the 1890s, became a Broadway hit in 1928. This show enjoyed an enduring popularity and West would successfully revive it many times throughout the course of her career.
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 displayed her wit, replying, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."
She brought Diamond Lil, now Lady Lou, to the screen in She Done Him Wrong (1933), personally selecting Cary Grant for the male lead, a role that greatly influenced his career. The movie was a success and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
Her next release was I'm No Angel, which paired her with Grant again. "I'm No Angel" was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Picture." It was a tremendous financial success 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 answer 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'? West starred in three other movies for Paramount before their association came to an end.
Two 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.
The famous West quip "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" is accurately attributed to her. She made it 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 in her last movie Sextette to George Hamilton. It is one of the most quoted lines in movie history.
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. 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.
West was married on April 11, 1911, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Frank Wallace, a fellow vaudevillian whom she first met in 1909. She was 18, 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.
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, though she later said she regretted the decision.
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.
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 Cavette special generated great excitement and led to her next movie Sextette. Dick Cavette 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."
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 was another box office failure.
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.
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 1970's 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. This is a known fact and one only has to research magazines and articles from the 70's to prove this.
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!"
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."
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.
