A wise woman once said: “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
That quote came from Mae West. Most know her only as an early sex symbol, but she was so much more. Today is her birthday, coming into this world on August 17, 1893, in Brooklyn, New York.
Her real name is Mary Jane West. She was, of course, a stage and film actress. She often played women who led lives of dubious virtue.
Her onscreen persona was all about sexuality, surrounded in the real world of prudes. As such, she was one of the most controversial movie stars of her day. It caused her a lot of problems, especially with censorship.
Mae West was a bit of a rebel if you ask me. She bucked the system by making fun of them, really. She made jokes out of conventional mores and standards. Apparently, the Depression-era audience admired her for it.
She started out in some Brooklyn theater with a stock company around 1901. Stock companies were troupes of actors who performed regularly in a particular theatre. They would put on a different play every night. Then, by 1907 she took it up a notch and became a performer on the national vaudeville circuit. From there, it was Broadway. In 1911, she made her Broadway debut as a singer and acrobatic dancer in the show “A la Broadway.” Then, and I do mean then, for the next 15 years, she alternated between vaudeville and Broadway shows. She would also do an occasional nightclub act. So there she was. If I have the math right, that is 25 years on stage before she ever worked in a movie. Give or take a year.
In her personal life, she was a bit of a rambler too.
In 1911, she married a man named Frank Wallace. She was only 17 at the time. They kept the marriage a secret, but some clerk discovered the marriage certificate and alerted the press. Apparently, there was a scandal about their marriage, as she claimed they never lived together as husband and wife and always had separate bedrooms. At any rate, they didn’t have a final divorce until 1943.
But. But. But. In 1913, she met Guido Deiro, an Italian-born vaudeville guy. She had an affair with him and possibly married him in 1914. Again, a scandal occurred about an abortion, and children, and such.
Then, then. In 1916, when she was a vaudeville actress, West had a relationship with James Timony, an attorney nine years her senior. Timony was also her manager. But by the 1930s, they were no longer a couple.
Also, West had a relationship with the Cotton Club’s Owney Madden during this era, who did not “date” the chorus girls. But he dated and got serious with good old Mae.
I’m not going to name all the rest of them. But trust me. The girl was busy.
Back to her career. By 1933, West was one of the largest box-office draws in the United States. People loved her. Men loved her.
This next one is big. By 1935, she was also the highest-paid woman and the second-highest paid person in the United States — after William Randolph Hearst.
There is a lot more about her. She was a writer. She wrote books, and from early on, she wrote a lot of her own stage plays. This started in the 1920s. They were always controversial and, many times, dealt with sexuality.
Mae West was also an early supporter of the women’s liberation movement but said she was not a “burn your bra” type of feminist. In addition, from the 1920s onward, she was also a supporter of gay rights. She made public statements about the police brutality that homosexuals were experiencing at the time.
So that is her in a nutshell.
She lived a long life, too. But, in August 1980, West tripped while getting out of bed. After taking that hard fall, she could not speak and was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. There, tests revealed that she had suffered a stroke. She died on November 22, 1980, at the age of 87.
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“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
― Mae West
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“I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.”
― Mae West
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“Good sex is like good bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
― Mae West
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