Mae West (1893 – 1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol, who was famous for her provocative double entendre laced humor. She was an outspoken crusader for free speech, and was also an early advocate of gay and transgender rights.
She began performing in vaudeville at the age of twelve, and after a few years she moved into burlesque, where she was billed as “The Baby Vamp.” Her costumes would typically include an assortment of rhinestones, leopard skins, and huge plumed hats.
In 1926 she starred on Broadway in a popular play that she also wrote, called Sex. In 1927 Mae wrote and directed and starred in her second play, Drag, a play about homosexuality. The play was a smash hit in New Jersey, but she was warned not to bring it to Broadway, or she would be charged with obscenity.
In 1932 she moved to Hollywood and become well known as a comedienne, actress, and writer in the motion picture industry, as well as radio, and by 1935 she was the highest-paid woman in the United States. She also became a shrewd real estate investor, once making a profit of almost $5 million on a $16,000 investment.
In World War II Allied soldiers called their inflatable life jackets “Mae Wests” in honor of her shapely figure.
Some of Mae West’s more popular movies include “My Little Chickadee,” “Klondike Annie,” “I’m No Angel” and “She Done Him Wrong.”
Here is “Willie of the Valley,” sung by Mae, from “My Little Chickadee“, which also starred W.C. Fields :
Here is a clip from “She Done Him Wrong“:
When her movie career ended, she continued to perform on stage, and appear on radio and television. In the early 1950s, when West was over 60, she tried to revive her career by creating a nightclub act, “Mae West and Her Adonises,” that still portrayed her as a sultry siren. A group of young, handsome bodybuilders dressed in loincloths assisted her in the act. Paul Novak, one of the bodybuilders, became her companion for the last 26 years of her life.
In the 1960’s she did guest spots on many television shows, such as The Red Skelton Show and Mister Ed.
In 1970, after an absence of almost thirty years from the movies, she appeared in an odd adaptation of Gore Vidal’s “Myra Breckinridge,”with Raquel Welch. Myron Breckinridge (played by Rex Reed) gets a sex-change operation and returns as the glamorous and willful Myra Breckinridge (Raquel Welch). In 1993, Vidal wrote that “despite the iconic presences of Raquel Welch and Mae West, the film was so bad that the book stopped selling for a decade.”
In 1978, at the age of eighty-five she appeared in her last movie, “Sextette.” An adaptation of Mae West’s Broadway musical of the same name, “Sextette” is widely considered one of the most embarrassing movies ever made. Mae West attempted in vain to maintain her sex kitten persona, while in reality she was an overweight 83 year-old, who always seemed to be propped up somewhere due to her bad hip. In one of the more painful moments in the movie (or in the history of mankind), Mae sings a disco rendition of the Captain & Tenille hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” to a thirty-ish Timothy Dalton, who plays her newlywed husband. The film also features embarrassing appearances by Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, George Raft, Tony Curtis, George Hamilton and a makeup-less Alice Cooper singing Van McCoy’s Next, while dressed like Elton John. The movie ends with Mae, writhing in bed next to Timothy Dalton, moaning “Oooow, the British are COMING!”
Both “Myra Breckenridge” and “Sextette” failed miserably at the box-office, but are now noted for their extreme camp appeal.
Despite her “loose” professional image, Mae West did not drink or smoke, and lived in the same small apartment for over 50 years.
In the 1960’s, in an attempt to keep her commercial appeal with younger generations, Mae West recorded two Rock and Roll albums, Way Out West (1966), which featured covers of songs by Bob Dylan and The Beatles, and Wild Christmas (1964), which featured “Santa, Come Up and See Me Sometime,” a very strange song where Mae expresses her lust for Santa (and his reindeer).
LISTEN TO SONG:
DOWNLOAD MP3:
Mae_West_-_Santa_Come_Up_And_See_Me.mp3
Loading ...
