Mae West
Mary Jane "Mae" West was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned more than seven decades. Recognized as a prominent sex symbol of her time, she was known for portraying sexually confident characters and for her use of double entendres, often delivering her lines in a distinctive contralto voice. West began performing in vaudeville and on stage in New York City before moving on to film in Los Angeles.
She was frequently associated with controversies over censorship and once stated, "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it." As her film career declined, she remained active by writing books and plays, performing in Las Vegas and London, and appearing on radio and television. In later years, she also released rock and roll recordings. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her 15th among the greatest female screen legends of classic American cinema.
Early life
Mary Jane West was born on August 17, 1893, in either the Greenpoint or Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, before the consolidation of New York City. She was delivered at home by her aunt, a midwife.She was the eldest surviving child of Mathilde Delker West, a corset and fashion model, and John Patrick "Battlin' Jack" West, a former prizefighter who later worked as a "special policeman" and founded a private investigation agency.
Her mother, known as "Tillie" or "Matilda", was a German immigrant from Bavaria, who arrived in 1886 with her siblings and parents, Christiana and Jakob Doelger. West's paternal grandmother, Mary Jane, was of Irish descent, and her paternal grandfather, John Edwin West, was of English and Scottish ancestry.
Her parents married in Brooklyn on January 18, 1889. According to reports, the groom's parents approved of the union, while the bride's family opposed it. They raised their children in the Protestant faith.
West's eldest sister, Katie, died in infancy. Her surviving siblings were Mildred Katherine "Beverly" West and John Edwin West II. During her childhood, the family lived in various areas of Woodhaven, Queens and the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
West may have first performed publicly at Neir's Social Hall in Woodhaven.
Career
Beginning of stage career
West was five when she first entertained a crowd at a church social, and she began appearing in amateur shows at the age of seven. She frequently won prizes at local talent contests. She began performing professionally in vaudeville in the Hal Clarendon Stock Company in 1907, at the age of 14. As a child performer, West used the stage name "Baby Mae", and later tried various personas, including a male impersonator.Early in her career, she sometimes used the alias "Jane Mast". Her distinctive walk was said to have been inspired or influenced by female impersonators Bert Savoy and Julian Eltinge, who were prominent during the Pansy Craze.
West made her first appearance in a Broadway show in 1911, at age 18, in a revue titled A La Broadway staged by her former dancing teacher, Ned Wayburn. The show closed after only eight performances, but West was praised in a New York Times review, which noted that "a girl named Mae West, hitherto unknown, pleased by her grotesquerie and snappy way of singing and dancing." She next appeared in Vera Violetta, which also featured Al Jolson, and in 1912, she played La Petite Daffy, a "baby vamp", in A Winsome Widow.
West continued to build her career in vaudeville, appearing in circuits such as that run by Gus Sun of Ohio. She credited her mother as a constant supporter who believed everything Mae did was "fantastic", though other family members—including an aunt and her paternal grandmother—disapproved of her performing career. In 1918, West gained significant attention in the Shubert Brothers revue Sometime, starring opposite Ed Wynn. Her character, Mayme, danced the shimmy, and her photograph was featured on the sheet music for the popular number "Ev'rybody Shimmies Now".
Broadway stardom and jail
Eventually, West began writing her own risqué plays using the pen name Jane Mast. Her first starring role on Broadway was in the 1926 play Sex, which she wrote, produced, and directed. Although conservative critics panned the show, ticket sales were strong. The production did not go over well with city officials, who had received complaints from religious groups, and the theater was raided and West arrested along with the cast. She was taken to the Jefferson Market Court House, where she was prosecuted on morals charges, and on April 19, 1927, she was sentenced to 10 days for "corrupting the morals of youth". Though West could have paid a fine and been released, she chose the jail sentence for the publicity it would garner. While incarcerated on Welfare Island, she dined with the warden and his wife and told reporters she had worn her silk panties while serving time, instead of the "burlap" issued to other inmates. She served eight days, with two days off for good behavior, and afterward told reporters that her play was "a work of art". Media attention surrounding the incident enhanced her career, with reporters dubbing her a "bad girl" who "had climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong."Her next play, The Drag, dealt with homosexuality and was what West called one of her "comedy-dramas of life." After a series of try-outs in Connecticut and New Jersey, West announced she would open the play in New York. However, The Drag never opened on Broadway, owing to efforts by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to ban any attempt by West to stage it. West explained, "The city fathers begged me not to bring the show to New York because they were not equipped to handle the commotion it would cause." West was an early supporter of the women's liberation movement, though she said she was not a "burn your bra" type of feminist. Since the 1920s, she also supported gay rights and spoke publicly against police brutality toward gay men. She expressed the then-modern belief that gay men were women's souls in men's bodies, and said that hitting a gay man was akin to hitting a woman.
In her 1959 autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, ghostwritten by Stephen Longstreet, West condemned hypocrisy while also voicing concerns about homosexuality:
This perspective seems at odds with her later statements, such as in her 1975 book Mae West: Sex, Health, and ESP, in which she wrote:
Between the late 1920s and early 1930s, West continued to write plays, including The Wicked Age, Pleasure Man, and The Constant Sinner. These productions stirred controversy, which helped keep West in the headlines and filled seats at performances. Her 1928 play Diamond Lil, a story about a racy but clever lady of the 1890s, became a Broadway hit. West revived it many times throughout her career.
Three years later, she played Babe Gordon in The Constant Sinner, which opened at the Royale Theatre on September 14, 1931. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson gave the show a scathing review:
Other critics similarly dismissed the play as "clumsy", "deliberately outlandish", and referred to West as an "atrocious playwright". The play closed after 64 performances. Compared to Diamond Lil, which ran for 323 performances, The Constant Sinner was a disappointment. Still, its notoriety enhanced West's public image as a daring and provocative performer. Soon afterward, she accepted a contract from Paramount Pictures to begin her Hollywood film career.
Motion pictures and censorship
In June 1932, after signing a two-month contract with Paramount that provided her a weekly salary of $5,000, West left New York by train for California. The veteran stage performer was by then nearly 40 years old, yet managed to keep her age ambiguous for some time. She made her film debut in the role of Maudie Triplett in Night After Night starring George Raft, who had suggested West for the part. She did not like her small supporting role in the drama at first, but was appeased when she was allowed to rewrite portions of her character's dialogue. One of several revisions she made is in her first scene in Night After Night, when a hat-check girl exclaims, "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds", and West replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie." Reflecting on the overall result of her rewritten scenes, Raft is reported to have said, "She stole everything but the cameras."For her next role for Paramount, West brought her Diamond Lil character, now renamed "Lady Lou", to the screen in She Done Him Wrong. The film was one of Cary Grant's early major roles, which boosted his career. West claimed she spotted Grant at the studio and insisted that he be cast as the male lead. She claimed to have told a Paramount director, "If he can talk, I'll take him!" The film was a box office hit and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. The success of the film saved Paramount from bankruptcy, grossing over $2 million, the equivalent of $46 million in 2023. Paramount recognizes that debt of gratitude today, with a building on the lot named after West.
Her next release, I'm No Angel, teamed her again with Grant. The film was also a box-office hit and was the most successful of her entire screen career. In the months after its release, references to West could be found almost everywhere, from the song lyrics of Cole Porter, to a Works Progress Administration mural of San Francisco's newly built Coit Tower, to She Done Him Right, a Pooch the Pup cartoon, to My Dress Hangs There, a painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera, paid his own tribute: "West is the most wonderful machine for living I have ever known—unfortunately on the screen only." To F. Scott Fitzgerald, West was especially unique: "The only Hollywood actress with both an ironic edge and a comic spark." As Variety put it, "Mae West's films have made her the biggest conversation-provoker, free-space grabber, and all-around box office bet in the country. She's as hot an issue as Hitler."
By 1933, West was one of the largest box-office draws in the United States and, by 1935, she was also the highest paid woman and the second-highest paid person in the United States. Hearst invited West to Hearst Castle, his massive estate in San Simeon, California, where Hollywood celebrities and prominent political and business figures frequently gathered to socialize. "I could'a married him," West later commented, "but I got no time for parties. I don't like those big crowds." On July 1, 1934, the censorship guidelines of the film industry's Production Code began to be meticulously enforced. As a result, West's scripts were subjected to more editing. She, in turn, would often intentionally place extremely risqué lines in her scripts, knowing they would be cut by the censors. She hoped they would then not object as much to her other less suggestive lines. Her next film was Belle of the Nineties. The original title, It Ain't No Sin, was changed because of censors' objections. Despite Paramount's early objections regarding costs, West insisted the studio hire Duke Ellington and his orchestra to accompany her in the film's musical numbers. Their collaboration was a success; the classic "My Old Flame" was introduced in this film. Her next film, Goin' to Town, received mixed reviews, as censorship continued to take its toll by preventing West from including her best lines.
Her following effort, Klondike Annie, dealt, as best it could given the heavy censorship, with religion and hypocrisy. Some critics called the film her magnum opus, but not everyone agreed. Press baron William Randolph Hearst, offended by a remark West made about his mistress Marion Davies, sent a private memo to his editors stating: "That Mae West picture Klondike Annie is a filthy picture... DO NOT ACCEPT ANY ADVERTISING OF THIS PICTURE." Paramount executives felt they had to tone down West's characterization. "I was the first liberated woman, you know. No guy was going to get the best of me. That's what I wrote all my scripts about."
Around the same time, West played opposite Randolph Scott in Go West, Young Man, adapting Lawrence Riley's Broadway hit Personal Appearance. Directed by Henry Hathaway, it is considered one of West's weaker films of the era due to censor cuts.
West next starred in Every Day's a Holiday for Paramount before their association ended. Censorship had increasingly made West's sexually suggestive humor difficult to sustain on screen. She was included in the "Box Office Poison" list published by the Independent Theatre Owners Association. This did not stop producer David O. Selznick from offering her the role of Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind, but West declined, saying it was too small and would need rewriting.
In 1939, Universal Studios approached West to star opposite W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee. Although West and Fields had a combative relationship, the film was a box office success. Religious leaders condemned West's on-screen persona, taking offense at lines such as: "When I'm caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried."
West's final film of the period was The Heat's On, produced by Columbia Pictures. She only agreed to star as a personal favor to director Gregory Ratoff. It was the only film where she was not allowed to write her own dialogue. The result was poorly received, and West later cited her frustration with censorship as a key reason for her departure from filmmaking. Instead, she found continued success in nightclubs, stage shows, and Broadway revivals where she retained creative control over her performances.