Mae West

 Died on this November 22 in 1980: Mae West

West was a huge celebrity in the 1930's and indeed, throughout most of the twentieth century. She is a cultural icon with her trademark hourglass figure and overt sexuality.
West was born Mary Jane West in Bushwick, Brooklyn, delivered at home by an aunt who was a midwife. She was the eldest surviving child of John Patrick West and Matilda "Tillie" Doelger. Doelger had emigrated with her family from Bavaria to the United States in 1886. Her mother was a former corset and fashion model.

West began her entertainment career at the age of seven, appearing in church socials and amateur talent shows. Her first appearance on Broadway didn't last long but Mae was singled out by the New York Times as a someone to watch for. Her photograph appeared on an edition of the sheet music for the popular number "Ev'rybody Shimmies Now" in 1918. Her 1928 play, Diamond Lil, about a racy, easygoing lady of the 1890s, became a Broadway hit. This show enjoyed an enduring popularity and West would successfully revive it many times throughout the course of her career.

1932, West was offered a motion picture contract by Paramount Pictures, when she was 38 years old, an unusual age to begin a movie career. However, West would keep her age ambiguous for several more years. She made her film debut in Night After Night starring George Raft. At first, she did not like her small role in Night After Night, but was appeased when she was allowed to rewrite her scenes. In West's first scene, a hat check girl exclaims, "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds." West replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie." Reflecting on the overall result of her rewritten scenes, Raft is said to have remarked, "She stole everything but the cameras."

She brought her Diamond Lil character, now renamed Lady Lou, to the screen in She Done Him Wrong (1933).The film is also notable as one of Cary Grant's first major roles, which boosted his career. West claimed she spotted Grant at the studio and insisted that he be cast as the male lead.The film was a box office hit and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.The success of the film most likely saved Paramount from bankruptcy, a reference Norman Desmond alludes to in the film Sunset Boulevard, a role that Mae was offered but turned down.

Her next release, I'm No Angel (1933), paired her with Grant again. I'm No Angel was also a financial success, a film that proved to be her most successful film of her entire movie career. By 1933, West was the eighth-largest U.S. box office draw in the United States and, by 1935, the second-highest paid person in the United States (after William Randolph Hearst). On July 1, 1934, the censorship of the Production Code began to be seriously and meticulously enforced, and her screenplays were heavily edited. This spelled the end of her successful rein as Queen Of Camp.
She made a string of unsuccessful films after this and was soon labeled "box office poison". She was in good company, however. Others on the list were Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, Dolores del Río, Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks, and James Cagney. She teamed with W.C Fields in the movie My Little Chickadee, which, despite its moderate success, became one of her most famous roles. She and Fields did not get along, both with massive egos, and never teamed up again. West, a teetotaler, had very little tolerance for drunks and Fields was a sublime drunk.

She went on to radio in 1937. Appearing as herself, West flirted with Charlie McCarthy, Bergen's dummy, using her usual brand of wit and risqué sexual references. West referred to Charlie as "all wood and a yard long" and commented that his kisses gave her splinters. Even more outrageous was a sketch written by Arch Oboler that starred West and Don Ameche as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. She told Ameche in the show to "get me a big one... I feel like doin' a big apple!"Days after the broadcast, NBC received letters calling the show "immoral" and "obscene". Women's clubs and Catholic groups admonished the show's sponsor, Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company, for "prostituting" their services for allowing "impurity [to] invade the air". The Federal Communications Commission later deemed the broadcast "vulgar and indecent" and "far below even the minimum standard which should control in the selection and production of broadcast programs". There is some debate regarding the reaction to the skit, however. Mainstream reaction was not as swift as that of Catholics. Some claim that Catholic groups already had it in for Mae West; they despised her sexual image and warned the sponsor of the program they were planning to protest.

Nevertheless, the incident is known as one of the first cases where radio programming faced claims of indecency from the FCCm NBC personally blamed West for the incident and banned her (and the mention of her name) from their stations. They claimed it was not the content of the skit, but West's tonal inflections that gave it the controversial context. West would not perform in radio for another twelve years.

West appeared as Catherine The Great on Broadway in the 40's for 91 performances. In the 1950s, she also starred in her own Las Vegas stage show, singing while surrounded by bodybuilders. (One of the first major film stars to do so) Jayne Mansfield met and later married one of West's muscle men, a former Mr. Universe, Mickey Hargitay, while attending one of these shows. Apparently Mae West did not take kindly to Hargitay making a "fool out of himself" over Mansfiled and insisted he hold a news conference denying romantic rumors. Instead Hargitay used the conference to profess his undying love for Jane, until one of West's other muscle men decked him.

In 1959, she released her autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It. After a 26-year absence from motion pictures, West appeared as Leticia Van Allen in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970) with Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, and Tom Selleck in a small part. The movie was a deliberately campy sex charged comedy that was both a box office and critical failure. Vidal later called the film "an awful joke". Despite Myra Breckinridge's mainstream failure, it did find an audience on the cult film circuit where West's films were regularly screened and West herself was dubbed "the queen of camp". There was rumors of tension on the set between Mae and Raquel as well. Raquel reportedly said in an interview that she thought West was secretly a man. Ouch.

Her final film, Sextette (1978), was adapted from a script written by West. Daily revisions and disagreements hampered production from the beginning. It was also a ludicrous premise, casting West as a sexy, desirable young woman surrounded by adoring men, when she was pushing 90. It truly gave new meaning to the term "In denial". Due to the numerous changes, West agreed to have her lines fed to her through a speaker concealed in her wig. Despite the daily problems, West was, according to Sextette director Ken Hughes, determined to see the film through. In spite of her determination, Hughes noted that West sometimes appeared disoriented and forgetful and found it difficult to follow his directions. Her now failing eyesight also made navigating around the set difficult. Hughes eventually began shooting her from the waist up to hide the out-of-shot production assistant crawling on the floor, guiding her around the set. Upon its release, Sextette was a critical and commercial failure. Not a very dignified way to end such a ground breaking career.

In August 1980, West tripped while getting out of bed. After the fall, West was unable to speak and was taken to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles where tests revealed that she had suffered a stroke. She remained in the hospital where, seven days later, she had a diabetic reaction to the formula in her feeding tube. On September 18, she suffered a second stroke which left her right side paralyzed and developed pneumonia. By November, her condition had improved, but the prognosis was not good and she was sent home.

She died at Ravenswood, her lovely penthouse in Hollywood, where she had been living for several years.

She died on November 22 in 1980. She was 87.