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“Mae West: The Brooklyn Lass Who Made Naughty Feel Like the Best Thing Ever”

She started in vaudeville dives, took on Hollywood’s stuffy rules head-on, and with that razor wit of hers, basically told the censors to shove it while she got rich and famous doing exactly what she pleased.

Mary Jane “Mae” West was more than just a celebrity; she was a force of nature who made American entertainment do what she wanted. She was an actress, dramatist, screenwriter, comedian, and recording artist, and she did each job with the same bold confidence. She became one of the most recognizable people of the twentieth century over a career that lasted more than seventy years. She had a drawling contralto voice, a serpentine walk, and many double entendres that she delivered with the calmness of someone who knew that anger was just another way to show appreciation. The American Film Institute later named her one of the greatest screen legends of old Hollywood, but long before that, West had already made herself a legend.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1893, before New York City became five boroughs. This was a suitable start to a life that would not fit into neat classifications. “Battlin’ Jack” West, her father, had been a prizefighter before moving on to do odd jobs and work as a private investigator. Tillie, her mother, was a German immigrant with a flair for the dramatic. She became the driving force behind her daughter’s goal. West’s identity may have appeared inevitable later on, but it was developed in the little neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, in church halls and social clubs where she started performing as a youngster. She performed at a church party when she was five, and by the time she was seven, she was winning amateur competitions. The desire to be in the limelight was not learned; it was natural.

She began doing vaudeville professionally by the time she was fourteen, and at first she was known as “Baby Mae.” Even then, she played around with her identity by pretending to be a man and other characters on stage. People say that her over-the-top hip-swaying stride was inspired by female impersonators of the time. This evidence shows that she recognized performance as stylization rather than confession from an early age. West never thought show business was real. She immediately understood that identity was something that could be made, sharpened, and sold.

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In 1911, she made her Broadway debut in a revue directed by Ned Wayburn. The concert ended practically immediately, but reviewers recognized her. One critic said that a young lady who was “hitherto unknown” had made a name for herself in a show that was otherwise going to be forgotten. She then appeared in musical comedies, including one with Al Jolson, and became known as a quick-witted, daring performer. By 1918, in the Shubert revue Sometime, she was dancing the shimmy and making a risqué novelty her calling card. Her picture was on sheet music, and her name started to spread beyond the playbill.

But the true change for West occurred when she started creating her own stuff. She was unhappy with the restrictions that producers set on her, so she wrote plays under the name Jane Mast that put women’s sexual confidence in the centre instead of on the edges. She wrote, produced, directed, and performed in Sex in 1926. Conservative critics were upset, but crowds were eager to see it. The show was finally raided, and West was arrested for making people behave badly. She was sentenced to 10 days in prison, but she only spent eight and then came out to a lot of media attention, which she had cleverly planned for. “I believe in censorship,” she would later say. “I made a lot of money off of it.” The affair made her the “bad girl” of Broadway, a title she carried like a crown.

She then wrote The Drag, a play about homosexuality at a time when it was not spoken about. Even though it never premiered on Broadway because of lobbying from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the controversy only made her more famous. West knew something that moral crusaders didn’t: denunciation is like gasoline. Every time someone tried to quiet her, her platform grew.

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She kept writing and staging plays in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including The Wicked Age, Pleasure Man, and The Constant Sinner. But Diamond Lil was the one that lasted. It was a dirty story set in the 1890s that showed her as a smart, unrepentant heroine who dealt with sin with humor instead of guilt. The show was a smash, and she would bring it back to life for decades. Some critics called her rude or clumsy, but the box office numbers indicated a different tale. She wasn’t looking for refinement; she was looking for impact.

By 1932, West had conquered Broadway and run out of controversy. She signed a deal with Paramount Pictures and went west. Hollywood usually sees forty as the end of a career, but West was always vague about her age. She kept her age flexible and her image the same. She made her first movie, Night After Night, with George Raft. She wasn’t happy with her supporting part, so she altered her lines. When a hat-check girl gushes over her jewels in one scene, West says, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.” This statement encapsulated her philosophy, prioritizing style over morality. Raft subsequently said that she “stole everything but the cameras.”

She Done Him Wrong, an adaptation of Diamond Lil that teamed her with a teenage Cary Grant, was her big break in 1933. The movie was a huge hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. It is said that it saved Paramount from going bankrupt, and West’s fame grew. She made I’m No Angel next, again with Grant. This movie was her biggest hit ever. She was suddenly everywhere: in song lyrics, comics, and art. Variety said she was the person who got the most people talking throughout the nation. She wasn’t just a movie star; she was a subject of conversation all around the country.

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In 1935, she was the highest-paid woman in the US and the second-highest-paid person overall, behind William Randolph Hearst. Hearst asked her to come to his castle in San Simeon, but she turned him down because she didn’t like the showy lifestyle. She liked having power over dating. But as her financial account grew, the cultural atmosphere became worse. Hollywood’s short time of permissive irreverence came to an end on July 1, 1934, when the Production Code, a set of industry guidelines for film content, started strict enforcement. Censors used to go over West’s screenplays, which were full of innuendo. She planned her response by putting in words that were too risqué for the versions she knew would be removed, hoping to save the more subtle insults. She was playing chess and didn’t want to give up.

Movies like Belle of the Nineties and Goin’ to Town show how strong she is and how much censorship costs. The edges became duller, and the humour got softer. Klondike Annie fought against religious hypocrisy, which made Hearst angry. He told his newspapers not to run ads for it. West said she was writing about freedom and a lady who no guy could outsmart. But the Code took away some of that freedom.

Exhibitors who didn’t want to get into trouble called her “box office poison” toward the end of the 1930s. She turned down offers that may have changed her situation, including the part of Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind. She appeared with W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee at Universal in 1940. They had many problems with each other off-screen, yet the movie did well at the box office. Religious authorities, as expected, didn’t enjoy statements like “When I’m caught between two evils, I usually like to take the one I never tried.” West’s sense of humour stayed the same, but America’s tolerance changed.

The Heat’s On, released in 1943, was her last movie at that time and was quite disappointing. She was not in charge of her discourse for the first time. She felt that the outcome was dead, so she left Hollywood because she didn’t want to be a decorative artifact in someone else’s vision.

There was no escape on the radio. In 1937, she was on Edgar Bergen's show with the dummy, Charlie McCarthy, and they made fun of each other in a way that shocked audiences. A later depiction of Adam and Eve was full of contradictory meanings. Sponsors got many letters of criticism, and the Federal Communications Commission said the show was inappropriate. NBC said she couldn’t work with them. The event showed how scary her personality was when it was shown straight to people in their homes. The same innuendo that made moviegoers laugh became too much for a media that was intended to be family-friendly.

West turned, as she usually did, to places where she might win. She went back to the theatre in 1944 with Catherine Was Great, a funny play with a chorus of strong “imperial guards.” In 1949, she brought back Diamond Lil, and the praises were such that they treated her like an institution instead of a scandal. She sang in events in Las Vegas at the Sahara, with bodybuilders on each side of her, which was the opposite of the usual chorus line and showed how in charge she was. She once said, “Men come to see me, but I also give the women something to see.” It was a smart way to change the show.

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Hollywood called every now and again. She was given the part of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard but turned it down because she didn’t want to be sad. Other parts, including those in Pal Joey and Federico Fellini’s movies, were also turned down. West wouldn’t play sad or nostalgic music. She liked the present tense better.

Television performances in the late 1950s and 1960s, including a live performance with Rock Hudson at the Academy Awards, brought her back to new audiences. Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, her autobiography, became a success. Even on TV, she made producers uneasy; a feature with a nude statue of her was said to be too suggestive to air. The marble figure was just as controversial as the one that was moving.

Her music career, which was on and off but always full of energy, ended with recordings that included modern rock. Way Out West and Great Balls of Fire have renditions of songs by younger, more edgy performers. It was both a joke and a statement: she would not go away silently.

After some thought, her image was featured on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The counterculture saw West as a trailblazer, a performer who broke the rules long before disobedience became cool. She went back to acting in 1970 in Myra Breckinridge, which was based on Gore Vidal’s book. There were problems with the production and bad reviews, and her part was cut in editing. The movie was a disaster, but West’s presence made it interesting in a rebellious way.

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Her last movie, Sextette, was out in 1978, although it was delayed because of her age and other problems. Because she couldn’t see well, lines were supplied to her via an earpiece hidden in her wig. There were many well-known individuals in the cast, as well as some new ones. Despite the movie's poor box office and critical reviews, West viewed it as a testament to her determination. She had written the screenplay years before and was determined to see it through.

Honors include a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and membership in the American Theatre Hall of Fame. It felt like this kind of recognition was necessary. West had never needed permission to matter.

Her private life was full of secrets and drama. A marriage to fellow vaudevillian Frank Wallace when she was a teenager was kept secret for decades until it came out in the news. She had relationships with artists and managers that came and went. She was with Paul Novak, a bodybuilder who was decades younger than her, for many years. He stayed with her until the end. She spoke about “Mae West” in the third person, as if the character were a business partner instead of a mask. It was intentional to make the difference. The character couldn’t be destroyed; the individual only lived in it.

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After falling in her Los Angeles residence in August 1980, she had a stroke. She passed away on November 22 at the age of 87. Before she was buried at the family mausoleum in Brooklyn, there was a private funeral. The path from church events in Woodhaven to a mausoleum at Cypress Hills Cemetery showed more than just a life; it showed how American views on sex, celebrities, and censorship have changed over time.

The legacy of Mae West is not easy to understand. She was neither a martyr nor a moralist. She used innuendo not to shock people for the purpose of shocking them, but to show hypocrisy and to show that women have a need that doesn’t need to be apologized for. She fought back against censorship as it became stricter. When Hollywood became boring, she went to Broadway and Las Vegas. When radio kicked her off, she came back years later without giving up. The character, hips swinging, eyes down, voice purring, became a simple way to say “audacity.”

West was unwilling to accept an industry that consumes its pioneers. She considered publicity to be money, controversy as a way to get what she wanted, and sex as a way to get what she wanted. The fact that the culture both loved and hated her was part of the plan. She once said that she would rather choose the bad things that she hadn’t tried. It was a jest, of course, but it was also a belief.

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