| Mae West  AKA Mary Jane West
Born: 17-Aug-1893
Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY
Died: 22-Nov-1980
Location of death: Hollywood, CA
Cause of death: Stroke
Remains: Buried, Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY
Gender: Female
Religion: Protestant
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Go up and see her sometime Mae West was an American screen legend and erotic icon famous for her voluptuous figure, sexy innuendos, and irrepressible wit. A free thinking and independent woman far ahead of her time, West expressed herself boldly, both sexually and creatively. She famously surrounded herself with handsome muscle men, both onscreen and off, and accrued a long list of famous and powerful lovers. Notably, West was one of the first female American playwrights, and actresses, to demand and receive creative control over her work. West's creative expression encompassed nearly every facet of the entertainment spectrum including theatre and screenwriting, film, radio, television, and audio recording. And with a career spanning some 80+ years, she holds the further distinction of having performed both vaudeville and rock and roll. As a cultural icon she is immortalized by imitators, biographers, and even an assortment of snacks and devices bearing her name. Her trademark phrases have been translated into numerous languages, including Mandarin, Mongolian, Norwegian, and Lithuanian.
She was born Mary Jane West on August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, the bare knuckles prizefighter Battlin' Jack West, was a native New Yorker from the lower east side. A heavy smoker and drinker, he turned to violence when thwarted. Her mother, "Tillie", was a former corset and fashion model, and frustrated actress, who had immigrated to America from Germany with her parents. Although Mae West always claimed that Tillie was Jewish, records show that the family listed their religion as Lutheran upon arrival in America. West's paternal grandmother had also immigrated as a child -- an Irish Catholic, she married Mae's paternal grandfather, John Edwin, while only 12 years old. Edwin's own ancestry remains enigmatic. But according to West biographer Jill Watts, he may have been a light-skinned African American who passed for white.
Arising from this milieu of adversity, Mae learned early on that her unusual talent and good looks were an advantage that just might leverage her into a better life -- if she played it smart. Encouraged by her mother, she used her sexuality to build alliances with, or dominate, nearly every man who crossed her path. And she learned to view marriage as a double edged institution – one that offered legal protection and social acceptance, but which robbed women of their independence and sexual freedom. According to most sources she took refuge in marriage just once, with fellow actor and lover Frank Wallace. When she tired of Wallace, and discovered she was not pregnant as feared, she ended the relationship. She neglected to file for divorce however, and Wallace showed up years later, in 1937, with marriage certificate in hand to receive a share of West's ample earnings. She may have been simultaneously married to musician Guido Deiro, divorcing him in 1920. West allegedly used the alias Catherine Mae Belle West when marrying Deiro to avoid bigamy charges.
While West's attitudes toward men were heavily influenced by her mother so was her choice of career. Tillie West had once longed to follow in the footsteps of idol Lillian Russell, even having her portrait painted in such way as to highlight a certain resemblance. She started Mae off in show business as early as age 5, according to some reports, and by age 7 Mae had won the gold medal in a talent show, with Tillie billing her as "Baby Mae." By age 12 she was appearing on the vaudeville circuit and was soon performing as the sexy "Baby Vamp." At 18 she introduced vaudeville to the "shimmy", a sexy full body undulation that she had first observed in the blues bars of Chicago.
In the 1920s she had moved on to playwriting. A shameless self promoter, she is said to have single billed herself on works that were in fact jointly authored. Nonetheless both on the stage and later in film she showed tremendous wit and intelligence for writing dialogue, especially for those parts she played herself. But while West is chiefly remembered for her clever dialogue and powerhouse sensuality, much of her work dealt also with spiritual matters and West was herself a deeply and eclectically spiritual person for most of her life. Not surprisingly, her tendency toward frankness and maverick free thinking, on all subjects, often put her at odds with moralists and hard line religious leaders.
Her first major run in with censorship laws came in 1926 when she was jailed for the play Sex, which she both wrote and starred in. West was sentenced to 10 days in jail on obscenity charges. However she allegedly received star treatment in prison, dining each night with the warden and getting two days off for good behavior. Despite this fact she was sympathetic to those less fortunate, and upon her release she penned an article about the women she had met behind bars. Putting her money where her mouth was, she also made a donation on their behalf to fund a prison library.
In 1927 West was back in trouble again. Her new play Drag, about a homosexual party, was a big hit in New Jersey. But it was banned from Broadway and was soon bogged down in extensive legal battles. She bounced back the following year with her naughty, but more acceptable Diamond Lil. Not only was it a big hit on Broadway, but it more significantly catapulted her toward Hollywood stardom. West debuted on film in 1932 with what was supposed to be a small part in Night After Night, starring George Raft. However West insisted on rewriting all her lines, and the result was pure gold -- for West and for the film. Building on this success West was able to translate her Broadway play Diamond Lil to the big screen as She Done Him Wrong in 1933. Audiences went wild, and the film was a huge success, garnering an Academy Award nomination and catapulting male lead Cary Grant, to stardom. The picture saved its studio, Paramount Pictures, from bankruptcy.
West's next film, I'm No Angel, was also a big hit with moviegoers. But her empowered sexuality and ribald wit, that so entranced movie goers, incensed religious leaders and moralists. The Catholic Church in particular launched a campaign to put an end to the "filth" churned out by West, and to an extent, by the studios in general. By July of 1934 Hollywood was being squeezed toward more exact compliance with the strict Motion Picture Production Code. Since West was not one to give in easily and she managed for a while to pull a clever bait and switch with the censors. She laded scripts with obvious material for them to cut, while slipping in more subtle elements they would overlook. Most famous of these were her sly double entendres, lines she rolled out with such droll understatement that fans were never quite sure what was a straight line and what was intentional innuendo.
But censors could not be duped indefinitely, not with more clever moralists writing them outraged letters. And so West found her work in Hollywood more and more constrained. She churned out several more films, including My Little Chickadee, in which she starred alongside nemesis W. C. Fields (1940). But 1943's The Heat's On proved to be her last offering, until her film rebirth in the 1970s.
For the next few decades she returned her attention to writing and performing for the more liberal environment of the stage. One of West's favorite roles was her 1944 Broadway production of Catherine Was Great. West's version of the famed Russian empress was a woman after her own heart -- a powerful, lusty, independent woman who surrounded herself with tall muscle men. According to West, an ardent spiritualist, this likeness was appropriate as she herself was the reincarnation of Catherine the Great.
Like the historic Catherine, West's identity as a sexual titan who seemed untarnished by age. West still demanded daily sex well into her 60s and held onto a girlish figure through an assortment of eccentric practices. According to West, she avoided sunlight to preserve her skin, massaged her breasts for two hours a day with cold cream to keep them firm, had her men massage warm baby oil into her skin to keep it soft, and began each day with an enema to rid her body of toxins and keep her skin silky smooth.
Determined never to be a "has been" (she hotly turned down Billy Wilder's invitation to play Norma Desmond in Sunset Strip) West frequently managed to reinvent and reintroduce herself to the American public. She had her own Las Vegas show in the 1950s. And in the 1960s, she appeared on the album sleeve for The Beatles "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", she popped up on a number of popular television programs (including The Red Skelton Show and Mr. Ed), and she even cut two rock and roll albums. In 1970 she at last returned to the big screen with Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge.
But although the time seemed ripe for West's bawdy humor to make a come back, with society and censors more open to sexuality, age was catching up with her. Now in her mid 80s, she was struggling with diabetes and other ailments. During the 1978 filming of Sextette, her last film, she often needed to rest during scenes. And she forgot her lines so often that it was necessary to fit her with an earpiece so she could be prompted with her lines. But the indomitable Mae insisted on playing a woman in her late 20s, and she behaved as if she were still the knockout sex goddess that every man wanted to make love too. Despite such handicaps and eccentricities her co-stars would remember West as a grand lady. And when the film finally premiered her cult of longtime fans still found her adorable and embraced Sextette, viewing the flaws of the film as delightful self-parody. But the public in general was not so impressed and despite added talent from the likes of Timothy Dalton, Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, Tony Curtis, Walter Pidgeon and George Raft, the film fell flat at the box office.
Two years later West's decline culminated in a series of strokes, and she died on November 22, 1980 from stroke related complications. Two days later her former lover and longtime friend, George Raft, who had co-starred with West in both her first film and her last, died as well, of leukemia. Like Raft, West is memorialized by a Motion Pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Like only a handful of other stars her trademark gestures and phrases (such as "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie", "When I'm bad I'm even better", and "Come up and see me sometime") have entered into the pop culture lexicon.
Mae West's films continue to be released on video and DVD and some of her plays remain in current publication. She continues to be immortalized as well by assorted drag queens and festivals who celebrate her talent and persona. More than 20 years after her death biographies of West continue to abound, including Mae West: An Icon in Black and White by Jill Watts (2003), Becoming Mae West by Emily Worth Leider (2000), and Mae West: Empress of Sex, by Maurice Leonard (1992). West's autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, first appeared in 1959 and has been republished a number of times. Father: John Patrick West ("Jack", boxer, d. 1935)
Mother: Matilda Delker-Doelger ("Tillie", d. 1930)
Sister: Katie (d. respiratory disease)
Sister: Mildred Katharina West ("Beverly", b. 1898, d. 1982)
Brother: John Edwin West (b. 1900, d. 1964)
Husband: Frank Wallace (vaudevillian, m. 11-Apr-1911, div. 21-Jul-1942)
Hollywood Walk of Fame 1560 Vine St.
Kentucky Colonel Oct-1933
Sgt. Pepper Lonely Heart
Indecent Exposure
Obscenity 1927 (convicted)
Stroke Aug-1980
Irish Ancestry Paternal
German Ancestry Maternal
Risk Factors: Diabetes, Klismaphilia, Yoga
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Sextette (3-Mar-1978)
Myra Breckinridge (24-Jun-1970)
The Heat's On (25-Nov-1943)
My Little Chickadee (9-Feb-1940)
Every Day's a Holiday (18-Dec-1937)
Go West Young Man (13-Nov-1936)
Klondike Annie (21-Feb-1936)
Goin' to Town (25-Apr-1935)
Belle of the Nineties (21-Sep-1934)
I'm No Angel (6-Oct-1933)
She Done Him Wrong (27-Jan-1933) · Lady Lou
Night After Night (20-Oct-1932)
Author of books:
The Constant Sinner: Babe Gordon (1930, novel)
Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It (1959, autobiography)
Wrote plays:
Sex (1911)
Diamond Lil (1928)
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