Go West, Young Man - Mae West

By

R. C. Fleet

The absurd places where the battle lines of freedom are drawn: the cost of tea in Boston, a funny-looking house painter from Austria, a busty lusty "belle dame sans merci" named Mae West.

Mae West. The vaudeville comedienne who saved Paramount Pictures in the 1930s - and almost single-handed took on the censors with every movie she made. And to look at her legacy now: almost forgotten beyond nostalgia for a "camp queen," her pictures dated and denuded of their controversial context, remembered today primarily as a warning of what Madonna threatens to become. Nevertheless, for a brief period in American film history Mae West was the line in the sand drawn between those supporting "decency in America" and advocates for freedom of speech (and profits).

That sounds cynical. Everything written about Mae West eventually degenerates into parody. Why not? Mae West was a comedienne foremost, a satirist of the first order within the range of her interests - which were, first and foremost, sex.

HAT-CHECK GIRL
Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!

Diamond Lil
Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

"Goodness had nothing to do with it," Mae West's self-written entrance line, became the title of her 1959 autobiography, "told honestly and the way I lived it, within limits." The qualifier is both literal and suggestive - just the way Mae's approach to acting and writing was. A master (or, as she would prefer, mistress) of the double-entendre, it was her skill with verbal and physical innuendo that put West in the limelight of publicity and the spotlight of condemnation. She courted both. After she had amassed a few million in movie salaries (West was one of the highest-paid, least-worked stars of the '30s), Mae alternately complained and admitted -

"The censors wouldn't even let me sit on a guy's lap, and I've been on more laps than a napkin."

But conceded -

"I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it"

A dominatrix of the one-liner, Mae West refused to let serious consideration of the censorship issues she provoked dampen her sense of humor at the situation. Sex was her chosen theme, and sex (as she did not say) is everywhere as long as men and women inhabit the same planet. The difference between Mae West's method of treating the subject and that of her contemporaries is where the issue of artistic freedom lies.

The America of pre-World War II was a young nation with a cultural inferiority complex. Hidden away in the wilderness for a hundred and forty years, the United States emerged to take centerstage during The Great War of 1914-18. Like many newcomers, we suddenly found ourselves in the uncomfortable social situation of being thrust into the midst of a more sophisticated public. Americans grasped at the first convenient role model: the Victorians. In England, the death-blow to Victorian standards had already been dealt during the grueling four years of World War I - even while Americans were picking up on its key ideals: authoritarian family models, with strong male/submissive female roles to play, and sex as an unmentioned (and unmentionable) marital necessity.

Mae West liked to talk about sex. The "marital necessity" was, to her persona dramatica, the grist for her hungry attention.

How that theatrical persona developed is a matter of public record. Mae West was in the public eye from a very early age. Born in 1893 middle-class Brooklyn and christened "Mae West" (no stage name hers!), she was the first child of a prominent heavyweight boxer/entrepreneur and an immigrant mother: "I am of English, Irish and German extraction, which means the usual European intermixture of many unknown genes that keeps people lively." It was a robust relationship between John and Matilda West, complete with physical brawls to win Matilda's heart from jealous suitors. Younger siblings were produced. Young Mae had no difficulty in understanding how they came to be. Not a reticent Victorian atmosphere.

By the age of five, with her publicity-prone father's encouragement, "Baby Mae" was performing in amateur nights. At age eight she was a professional in a stock theatrical company. All of this was possible within a family setting: turn-of-the-century New York had more stage activity than the rest of the country combined. Her formal public schooling suffered, but the young thespian experienced a variety of private tutors, including a French teacher who owed her father money. Her formal education was filled out by the need to memorize a repertoire of classic dramas for the stock company. The young girl was unfazed by the grandeur of the classics, though, noting:

... they were rewritten for Brooklyn taste, even if the French got a reputation for bedroom habits little better than a mink's. ... Murder, rape (done offstage of course)... any excuse to get the girl into tights and drawers.

After a few years hiatus between the ages of eleven and fifteen - too young to tour and too old-looking to play juveniles - Mae returned to show business on the touring vaudeville circuit. She usually teamed with a song-and-dance act or a comedy duo. Whether as a matter of design or a nature-designated event, dozens of unmemorable acts were spiked up by West's unique stage presence. "It isn't what you do - it's how you do it," lamented one fellow trouper with whom she toured - and who belatedly discovered that booking agents were signing on the comic ingénue, not the act. In New Haven even the local newspapers took notice of the small-time vaudevillienne's act, gloating:

HER WRIGGLES COST MAE WEST HER JOB
Curves In Motion Shock Manager at Palace.
Whole Act "Fired."

The ensuing publicity brought Mae West to Broadway at age eighteen - solo.

From necessity, Mae was already writing her own material: no one was breaking down doors to write song-and-dance acts for fifteen year-olds. By the time she reached Broadway, West had developed a clear perspective on her position in the theatrical picture. She turned down an offer to work in one of the legendary Flo Ziegfield's extravaganzas: "It's too big, too wide, there isn't much chance for a personality - I need people close to me." Later, in 1921, she was offered a leading film role in Pathé's Daredevil Jack (Dempsey). It, too, was turned down. The role had not been written specifically for Mae and they refused to let her rewrite it. Never claiming to be a director, Mae West was nevertheless completely in charge of her performances - the actress as auteur.

From 1911-1919 Mae West appeared on Broadway in musical revues, where her performances in songs, dances or skits was carefully designed by herself. Her first "legitimate" Broadway performance - that is, in a completely plotted, character-driven theatrical piece - was in the 1919 show Sometime. Appropriately, her co-star was Ed Wynn, known for his own unique brand of characterization. Despite music by Rudolf Friml, hardly known for Jazz Age proclivities, West used Showtime's built-in encore breaks to introduce the sensual, Harlem-originated "Shimmy" dance to the Broadway mainstream.

(Breaking with the traditional steal-it-from-Harlem standards of show biz, West never appropriated credit for her dance sensation, giving credit where due - to the black dancers who taught it to her. The scandal that ensued - the trade paper Variety attacked the Shimmy as "joint dancing" - came from Mae's unabashed acceptance of the African-American sensuality in dance. This casual embrace of talent regardless of race was to characterize West's film work. It was a rather solitary accomplishment, never supported by the rest of Hollywood in the 1930s. As film critic Judith Christ acidly observed in her 1965 article "Pointing a Pinky at the Negro": "Why was it that Negro servants on screen were never allowed the dignity and almost majority rights they were accorded in Mae West movies - or haven't you seen something like I'm No Angel lately?")

[Continued...]

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