1174: Mae West

1174: Mae West

Film Actress, Screenwriter, Playwright, and Sex Symbol

Born: 17 August 1893, Brooklyn, New York, United States of America

Died: 22 November 1980, Hollywood, California, United States of America

Original Name: Mary Jane West

Mae was one of three children in a family that moved around different parts of Brooklyn in her early years. By the time she was five, Mae had already begun performing onstage. She was a vaudeville performer by the time she was twelve, and it is reported that her mother approved of all of Mae’s performances, including the ones deemed inappropriate for their time period.

Mae was five foot two inches tall at her tallest point in life, and so it is said she wore high heels to increase her stage presence and height.

Mae was arrested on indecency charges for her play “SEX.” Written, directed, produced, and performed by Mae in 1926, she was thirty-three years old at the time of the play’s debut.  Mae received a sentence of a fine of $500 and ten days in jail for her offense but was released after serving eight days. This stunt made her budding stardom rocket to new heights, cementing her place in history.

In 1932, Mae was given a contract with Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, despite the fact that she was “mature” at the time—meaning she was already thirty-eight years old. Within a year, Mae was the second-highest paid actor in the country, and according to IMDb, her performances at Paramount saved the company from bankruptcy. At the time, Hollywood films were controlled by the Hays Code, meaning many of Mae’s most controversial or overtly sexual lines, scenes, and so on were deleted from films before they went to theatres. Mae got crafty, however, and began upping the amount of double entendres used in her films to continue inputting the amount of sexuality she wanted to showcase. Her career went up and down over the years, with her leaving the limelight for twenty-six years before returning in 1970. That film bombed, but Mae was back on the scene.

Mae described Hollywood, and her underwhelming first impression of it, in her autobiography, stating: “I saw some of the town, met some of the sodden gilded people. I saw that under the daffy California sun there had hatched out as queer an industry and as odd a collection of self-made men as ever crossed the Rockies…. The studios were giant factories turning out the same length of scented tripe, dressed up with the same rubber stamp features of large cowlike heads, mammary glands, and 10-foot-high closeups of nostrils you could drive a Cadillac into.”

During the 1970s, Mae reportedly became the only actor to allow photographers to check her for signs of plastic surgery. She was found to still be entirely natural. Mae appeared in her final film in 1978, but continued to live in Hollywood, write personal messages to her fans, and leave her phone number listed in Los Angeles so fans could visit with her.

Mae only made twelve films over a forty-six year career, which shows just how impactful her career and star-status really were.

In her personal life, Mae married in 1911 and divorced in 1943 (or possibly married in 1914 and divorced in 1920, everything I am finding says she was married once and once only, but the dates are different pairs and there are two different names given for her ex-husband) but she was surrounded by several men throughout the years. In later life, she continued to employ muscular younger men as chauffeurs and bodyguards, even launching a Las Vegas review show of the former bodybuilders.

Mae is also remembered for her staunch feminism as well as her support for the LGBT+ community. Mae’s beliefs were actually controversial, even among the allied community at the time. According to Turner Classic Movies, “She was an advocate of gay and transgender rights, but her belief that "a gay man was actually a female soul housed in a male body" ran counter to the belief at that time that homosexuality was an illness.”

Mae passed away from complications following a series of strokes.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Located In My Personal Library:

 Where Are They Buried, How Did They Die? by Tod Benoit

The Rough Guide to Film Musicals by David Parkinson

Backwards and in Heels by Alicia Malone

Appetite For America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time by Stephen Fried

America’s Women by Gail Collins

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/204532%7C103917/Mae-West/#overview

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mae-West

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/mae-west-autobiography-scandal

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mae-west-biographical-timeline/14486/

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922213/trivia/?ref_=nm_dyk_trv

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1089/mae-west