Monday, June 11, 2007

Mae West: Hays Fever

The Hays Office monitored MAE WEST and Paramount Pictures non-stop during the making of "Klondike Annie."
• • The screenplay raised eyebrows because of its implications of interracial sex, representations of torture, and unpunished murder which undermined the Hays Office's principle of "compensating moral values" and, of course, because of casting Mae West as a sex-positive [unrepentant] prostitute.
• • A letter from a spokesman for Paramount to the censor Will Hays painted a rosy picture, however: "The ending of our story will be a romance between West and one of the characters in our picture, and it will indicate for the future a normal life and nothing that will bring condemnation from the most scrupulous [29 June 1935]."
• • In their heated replies to Paramount Pictures, there were more fireworks in letters from the Hays Office than on the Fourth of July.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Add to Google
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
Mae West.

No comments:

Post a Comment