Mae West

Mae West as featured in the 1934 film BELLE OF THE NINETIES. She was born Mary Jane West on August 17, 1892 in Brooklyn, New York. She studied dance as a child, and by the time she was 14 she was billed as "The Baby Vamp" for her performances on stage. Later Mae began writing her own plays. One of those plays, "Sex", landed her in jail for ten days on obscenity charges in 1926. Two years later her play "Diamond Lil" became a huge Broadway success. Mae caught the attention of the Hollywood studios and was given her first movie role in “Night After Night” (1932). Her second film, “She Done Him Wrong” (1933), was based on her earlier and popular play that she had written herself. Her third film later that year was “I'm No Angel” (1933). She became a box-office smash hit, breaking all sorts of attendance records. The controversy aroused by these two films resulted in the studios establishing the Motion Picture Production Code, which regulated what content could be shown or said in pictures. As a result of these codes, Mae began to double-talk so that a person could take a word or phrase any way they wished. This was so she could get her material past the censors, and it worked. Her next film, “Belle of the Nineties” (1934), was an equal hit and by 1936, with “Klondike Annie” and “Go West Young Man” she became the highest paid woman in the US. After “Every Day's a Holiday” (1937), she didn't make another film until 1940, when she co-starred with W.C. Fields in “My Little Chickadee” (1940). After “The Heat's on” (1943), Mae took a respite from the film world and went back to the stage with continued success there. When censorship began to end in the 1960s, she returned to film work in 1970's “Myra Breckinridge” (1970). Her last film was “Sextette” (1977). Mae suffered a series of strokes which finally resulted in her death at age 88 on November 22, 1980, in Hollywood, California.

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