Mae West - Biography
Mae West was an all-around entertainer — singer, actress of stage and screen, playwright, screen writer, producer, director, and songwriter — but her fame was based largely on her voluptuous body and her witty innuendo-drenched one-liners, delivered both in her films and in person. Quips like “A hard man is good to find,” “Between two evils, I always pick the one I’ve never tried before,” and “Come up and see me sometime” might seem tame today, but her delivery and come hither looks made every line she delivered in the 1930s and 1940s sizzle.
Mary Jane West was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1893. Her father was a private eye and her mother worked as a corset model. Young Mary Jane won an amateur talent contest as a singer when she was seven, and by the age of 14 she was on stage in the Hal Clarendon Stock Company. The famous female impersonators Bert Savoy and Julian Eltinge influenced her sense of style and sexual delivery. Her big break came at the age of 26 when she was cast in the Shubert Brothers revue Sometime opposite Ed Wynn. She danced the shimmy, a suggestive dance at the time, and brought down the house. Under the pen name of Jane Mast, she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the comedy Sex. Critics panned it, but sales were good and people were outraged. The NYPD closed down the production and West was sentenced to ten days for outraging public morality, but the arrest only enhanced her career. Her next play, The Drag, a dramedy about drag queens, never opened on Broadway; it was banned for being indecent, but again it raised West’s profile. She wrote and produced three more plays — The Wicked Age, Pleasure Man, and The Constant Sinner — that were each censored. In 1928, she scored her first Broadway success with Diamond Lil.
Paramount Pictures signed West to a contract in 1932, even though she was 38 and a bit older than the usual new star. Her film debut was opposite George Raft in Night After Night (1932). She didn’t like her lines and the studio let her rewrite her dialogue. In her first scene, a hatcheck girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds.” West smirks and says, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.” She only had a few scenes, but the movie made her a star. Raft famously remarked, “She stole everything but the cameras.” Her next film, She Done Him Wrong (1932), was a new version of Diamond Lil and co-stared Cary Grant. It was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and made Grant a star. I'm No Angel (1933), got another Best Picture nomination. By 1935, William Randolph Hearst was the only American making more money than West.
Klondike Annie (1936) dealt with religion and hypocrisy, and is considered Wests best film. 1936’s Go West, Young Man, her adaptation of Lawrence Riley's Broadway hit Personal Appearance, was another hit. In 1937, West appeared on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's NBC radio show, flirting with Charlie McCarthy and saying he was “all wood and a yard long.” In another sketch, playing Adam and Eve with Don Ameche, she was offered an apple. She replied “get me a big one...I feel like doin' a big apple!” The Roman Catholic Legion of Decency was outraged and NBC banned West from all their stations. In 1940, she starred with W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee, another smash film. Universal had two more West/Fields projects in mind, but she refused to work with Fields. She never drank and his binge drinking bothered her. After Columbia Pictures’ The Heat's On flopped in 1943, West retired from the movies.
West went back to Broadway for her adaptation of Catherine was Great, which was a hit in 1944. In the ‘50s, she had a long-running Las Vegas review and turned down the role of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. In 1955, she launched her recording career with The Fabulous Mae West (1955 Decca, 2006 Rev-Ola), a collection of 12 double-entendre soaked rock and roll tunes. She continued in 1966 with Way Out West (Tower) on which she is backed by the rock quartet Somebody’s Chyldren. The songs include “You Turn Me On” and “Twist and Shout.” On 1964’s Wild Christmas (Dragonet), she demolishes a dozen holiday favorites with her understated delivery.
In 1970, West appeared in Gore Vidal's film Myra Breckinridge with Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, and Tom Selleck. It was another flop, but has played regularly on the midnight movie circuit ever since. In 1972, she released Great Balls of Fire (MGM), produced by Ian Whitcomb, for which she covers “Light My Fire” and “Rock Around the Clock,” and sings a few Whitcomb originals including “How Miss West Won World Peace.” She wrote and produced her last film, Sextet, in 1978. The production was a failure, due in part to her age and advancing Alzheimer’s, which made filming difficult. In early 1980, she had a stroke and went into a diabetic coma. West died on November 20, 1980. Several posthumous collections have been released including Come Up and See Me Sometime (AVS Living Era), released in 2006. Come Up and See Me Sometime collects tunes taken from the soundtracks of her movies of the ‘30s including “My Old Flame” with the Duke Ellington Band, “They Call Me Sister Honky Tonk,” and “I’m in the Mood for Love.”
