Mae West: Psychic Jack Kelly

Mae West: Psychic Jack Kelly and Manifestations of the Hereafter

- - - this text is an excerpt from a N.Y. Times article by Tom Burke - - -

Los Angeles. It was pathetic, Hollywood observers scoffed, that a woman over 80 should star in a movie opposite six young and handsome leading men. That was last spring when Mae West declared that she would return to the screen in an updated version of her play "Sextette." They may have chuckled patronizingly when Miss West announced her comeback, but will they still be laughing when they see "Sextette"? Skeptics are in for a surprise, for the lady is in remarkably fine shape. The famous amble is not arthritic, the voice is not depleted, the skin is not archaic. Precisely two minutes after one is received in the white and gold apartment on top of the Ravenswood, in Hollywood's old Wilshire district, by Paul, a pleasant, maybe middle-aged man who is dressed in a blue suit and built like a gangster, and shown into the white and gold living room (the white and gold piano is painted with a vaguely licentious pastoral tableau), she appears, wearing a long white and gold gown, blonde wig, and vaguely come-hither grin. . . .
.
Well, I don't live in the past, Mae West insists -- "though I like t' see people from then.
Cary Grant comes t' see me. Gilbert Roland, Bette Davis, Garbo. Jack LaRue, before he passed on, and George Raft. I almost married George. W. C. Fields? I never spoke to Fields but when there was other people around. Universal teamed us for, uh, commercial exploitation, then built a feud between us for publicity, but we got on okay, 'cause we never talked. I don't like people sayin' we collaborated in the writing of 'My Little Chickadee.' Fields wrote maybe eight pages to my 130."

Deferentially, Paul points out that in 1970 she also had to doctor the "Myra Breckinridge" scenario. "Yeh, our director, what's-his-name, yeh, Michael Sarne, he still working? He thought he was another Fellini, but he messed us up. I had t' write my lines myself. Originally, I started writin' 'cause I had to, nobody else understood how I made fun of sex, so I couldn't find the right vehicles. When I came to movies, I was already a skilled writer, I coulda made it on the writin' alone. I always took it serious: when the papers printed I made more money than anybody but Hearst, he phoned and asked me up to San Simeon. He wanted a romance. I coulda married him, but I was busy. See, I never was one for parties, I always been two people, with two jobs -- writer and star. An' listen, you gotta think to write."

She starts work, she says, by settling the beginning and end of a story, then dictates to a secretary for three to four hours a day. Current and future projects include scenarios of her play "The Constant Sinner" and her play and novel "Pleasure Man," and a prose adaptation of "The Drag."

The Afterlife & Jack Kelly
Agent Irving Lazar is handling the American version of her book "Sex, Health and ESP" ("It's already a big seller in England"), and she's completing "The Amazing Mr. Kelly," a biography of the Reverend Jack Kelly, who "passed on" 10 years ago.

"He was the world's greatest psychic. And he's come back. I always figured when you're dead, you're dead, but I wanted to know the truth. I had this yogi master travelin' with me for five years, I gave him a hotel suite, a car, everything, but he never convinced me. Then one day a few years ago, I come into this room from my boudoir, and there was Mr. Kelly, sittin' right there were you are, on that couch. I screamed for Paul, who was in my chamber answerin' fan mail. Some it's addressed just to 'Mae West, Hollywood,' and they deliver it. Anyway, Paul runs in, and Mr. Kelly vanished. An' I don't kid myself or have mystical illusions. I never drink or take anything."

She has witnessed other manifestations, too. Her deceased brother and pet woolly monkey appeared to her, separately, on the cornice of her bedroom wall. "And several groups of handsome young men have come and stood beside my bed. I extended my hand to them, like this, and they disappeared."

The Cheshire smile, the seductive murmur in the silence following her remarks, again imply the put-on. But evidently she is quite serious this time, at least about Reverend Kelly.

"I was already workin' on his biography, see, an' he came back to show me there is an afterlife, so now I know."

She sounded utterly logical. Under the make-up, what may be dark spots of fatigue have appeared, yet she rises almost athletically. "Paul and I gotta drive down t'the beach now." She still maintains an elaborate Santa Monica house, and her ranch in the San Fernando Valley, but likes town best. "We go to pictures a lot, some 'a these modern styles are terrific. I like movies about strong women. I was the first liberated woman, y' know. No guy was gonna get the best of me, that's what I wrote all my scripts about."

- - - - - - - this text is an excerpt from this article - - - - -
Mae West to Star Opposite Six Leading Men
by Tom Burke
Tom Burke is the author of "Burke's Steerage," a collection of essays and interviews with personalities in the arts.
The New York Times
article published on July 25, 1976
- - - - - - - this text is an excerpt from this article - - - - -