The original blonde bombshell, Mae West (1893-1980) was an actor, singer, dancer, writer, and comedian who created and controlled her career with an iron grip. Raised by a stage mother with her own thwarted dreams, little Mary Jane sang and performed for crowds as a child, becoming a professional vaudevillian by age 14. She even made it in a Broadway show at age 18. Early on, she seemed to realize her knack for risqué comedy more based in witticisms and double entendres as opposed to something like stripping. She later said, “My advice for those gals who think they have to take their clothes off to be a star is: baby, once you’ve boned, what’s left to create an illusion? Let ’em wonder. I never believed in givin’ ’em too much of me.”
West wrote her own material, including a notorious Broadway play Sex in 1926, which packed in 375 performances before being shut down, and West was jailed for 10 days. Even more successful was 1928’s Diamond Lil, also written and acted by West. This one gained the attention of Hollywood, where she had a small role in a 1932 film, rewriting the part for herself and stealing every scene. Paramount Pictures then turned her Diamond Lil into She Done Him Wrong — a massive hit that saved the studio from bankruptcy.
Mae West made less than a dozen films, but she was the highest paid woman in the 1930s, acting and writing most of her own movies. While she tended to play the same type of character, this was always a woman in charge. She exuded sex appeal, but always on her own terms, for her advantage. She was ahead of her time in this attitude, saying: “I freely chose the kind of life I led because I was convinced that a woman has as much right as a man to live the way she does if she does no actual harm to society.” Censorship and morality crusades tried to keep her down, but West persisted, going from movies back to the stage, and then capping her career with a last few movies.
Since her most memorable role of Diamond Lil was set in the 1890s, some of Mae West’s work qualifies as frock flicks, so let’s go up and see her sometime!
Lady Lou in She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Ruby Carter in Belle of the Nineties (1934)
Rose Carlton in Klondike Annie (1936)
Peaches O’Day in Every Day’s a Holiday (1937)
Flower Belle Lee in My Little Chickadee (1940)
How do you remember Mae West?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Mae West film, but I’m intrigued by the photos! Her costumes always look so glamorous
I love Mae West. She Done Him Wrong is a great film, and it may not have launched Cary Grant’s career, but it certainly helped launch Edith Head’s.
I actually went to see her final film Sextette, mainly because Timothy Dalton was in it.
I believe that in the thesaurus ‘Mae West’ appears as a synonym for ‘Va-va-voom’, ‘Yowza!’ and ‘Wowee!’.
Looking at these pictures one can certainly see why.
Has anyone noticed we never see her feet?
Maybe because she’s wearing very tall platform shoes. She was actually very short!
In WW2 a “Mae West” was a type of inflatable life jacket, which per Merriam-Webster gave its wearer “a buxom appearance.” She looked as if she’d been poured into her gowns! She had her own kind of swaggering walk which always reminded me a little of John Wayne, no less. Some people claimed she was really a man, but that theory was debunked.
“I’ve been in Who’s Who, and I know what’s what, but it’s the first time I’ve been in the dictionary.”
I love her one liners and her bravery against censors.
But i’ve read her autobiography. It’s a monument of montruous ego and self celebration.
Every Day’s a Holiday: the costumes for this are by Elsa Schiaparelli! Apparently the dressmakers form Mae West sent to Paris so stunned the designer that she used it as inspiration for her famous torso shaped “Shocking!” perfume bottle
Where I live there is a curvy road and it is still called “Mae West Bend” decades later. She was fun actress to watch on screen.