Mae West

Background

Mae West was born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, New York. She was a prominent actress who portrayed a sensual, alluring woman in numerous great films and plays. Unfortunately, her sexuality and unconventional remarks frequently made her films and performances bowdlerized. She also wrote, produced, and recorded several plays and albums. Her father, John West, worked as a livery stableman, a detective, a salesperson, and a prizefighter, among many engagements. Matilda Doelger, her mother, was a model and a dressmaker.

West started singing and dancing in amateur concerts and winning local talent contests by age seven. Hence, she abandoned her formal education quickly to join Hal Clarendon’s professional stock company, where she acted as Little Nell in a lengthy melodrama. West began her career in 1901 with a Brooklyn stock company. By 1907, she had established herself as a national vaudeville performer in the vaudeville company she joined in her early teens. Franck Wallace became her song and dance partner when they met there, and she married Wallace in 1911 when she was only 16 and went unreported for more than 30 years. The marriage and the stage collaboration ended early, but they were not divorced until 1942. She spent the following 15 years alternating between vaudeville and Broadway plays and performing in nightclubs.

West began writing, producing, and starring in her own Broadway plays in 1926. Her act as a prostitute in the first of them, “Sex” in 1926, caused a storm. She was charged with “Corrupting the morals of youth” due to the play, and she was subjected to a 10-day jail sentence. She rose to national prominence as a result of this occurrence. “Diamond Lil” was a hit in1928, and “The Constant Sinner” was a hit in 1931. West’s ironic, languorous demeanor and capacity to riddle society attitudes were persistent factors in her scripts.

West relocated to Hollywood in 1932 with the release of “Night After Night” as her first film, which featured the humorous tone that would characterize her later films. “She Done Him Wrong,” a movie version of “Diamond Lil,” was released in1933 and remembered for her humorous ability to charge phrases like “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” with a suggestive undertone. West’s reputation soared after she wrote and co-starred in “I’m No Angel” in 1933, “Belle of the Nineties” in 1934, and “Klondike Annie” in 1936. Following two films, she was featured alongside W.C. Fields in the 1940 comedy “My Little Chickadee,” which she co-wrote with him. Allied soldiers nicknamed their inflatable life jackets “Mae Wests” during World War II in honor of her hourglass figure. She frequently appeared on stage in the 1940s and 1950s, including on Broadway in 1944 in “Catherine Was Great,” flanked by young musclemen. In the 1960s, her films were revived, and she featured in “Myra Breckinridge,” a 1970 adaptation of a Gore Vida novel, and “Sextette,” a 1978 film based on a play she authored. “Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It,” her autobiography published in 1959, was a reaction to the remark, “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!” made by one of her characters.