Mae West: Comic Capital

Vaudevillian MAE WEST explored her own style along the laugh route. Beginning with amusing novelty songs, often delivered in an ethnic idiom, "Baby Mae" honed her skills based on reactions from a live audience. Over time, Mae coined her own comic capital.
• • These days, college teachers teach courses in funny business to coeds. [This is what has replaced the "core curriculum," apparently.]
• • In a recent interview, Kelley Lynn explained that her male students approach stand-up humor with more assurance than females. "Comedy definitely mirrors the culture," says comedian Kelley Lynn, who is also an adjunct professor and teaches a comedy class at Adelphi University, in Garden City, NY.
• • Writing for the Christian Science Monitor, reporter Gloria Goodale observed: Certain roles have been acceptable for women since the rise of mass media: the sexy vamp (think Mae West) or the ditzy klutz (everyone from Carole Lombard to Lucille Ball and Debra Messing). "These roles are not threatening to men," says actress Jennifer Coolidge who has made a career of crafting cunning but klutzy air-headed females.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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NYC
Mae West.