• • Meant to promote Mae's latest photoplay "I'm No Angel," the eye-catching feature was titled "Mae West - - Queen of Sex" and its contrarian appeal ran so far afield of all the other woman-as-clinging-vine "confessions" in this edition that the distaff-readership must have been astonished, to say the least.
• • A man in Mae's life, her friend Jack LaRue, offered charming encomiums that were used as large captions.
• • No stay-at-home-wife-life would do for the versatile performer from Brooklyn, New York, explained the editors. Mae West "learned how to do black-face imitations at an age when other children were doing long division."
• • Announcing that the actress is "more than forty today," the text continued: "There is practically no line of stage work that one can mention that Mae West has not tackled. By twelve years of age, she was a fully developed woman. Her curves were as solid and firm and alluring then as they are today. Imitations and child-parts, to which she had graduated, were discarded and Mae became a burlesque Queen at $500 a week when she was thirteen." [N.B.: Mae West was 13 years old in 1906. Did child labor laws in America permit a minor to strip in a burlesque revue in 1906??]
• • The writer added: "Vaudeville, musical comedies, even engagements at Coney Island. She became a strong woman in an acrobatic act. Dancing lessons with Ned Weyburn [sic] led the way to musical comedies. Big money in burlesque, pin money in small roles in comedies. Any job that came along - - Mae West could do it." . . .
• • In 1933 True Confessions was owned by Fawcett Publications with editorial offices in Minneapolis. Photographs printed with this lengthy piece were very interesting and show Mae in male drag, posing with animal trainers, etc.
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Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • October 1933 • •
NYC
Mae West.
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