MAE WEST has been on the minds of the minions at Contra Costa Times.• • Here's an intriguing article by their Staff Writer, Pat Craig on the play "Sex" — — the version in 1926 and its current configuration with Delia McDougall's firm hand guiding the joy-stick.
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Selling sex and calling the shots
Aurora Theatre revives the play that made Mae West the ultimate strong, sexy siren
By Pat Craig, STAFF WRITER
• • Delia MacDougall knows Mae West. Oh yeah, they go way back; back to fond childhood memories of an impressive woman.
• • "My mother was a big fan of Mae West," says MacDougall, who plays Margy LaMont, the Mae West role in "Sex," a play written by West in 1926 and opening November 8th, 2007 in Berkeley's Aurora Theatre. "I grew up in Mountain View [California], and there was a playhouse in Palo Alto that showed only black-and-white movies, and my mom would take me there to see Mae West's films."
• • It was West's unflappable toughness that struck her. "She was so much more powerful than any other woman I had ever seen," she says. "And I had five brothers, so I was attracted to very powerful women. And she was so in charge."
• • • • Meet the prototype • • • •
• • West still stands as the prototype brainy bombshell — — a woman in show business who oozed sexuality, was smart, and was able to call her own career shots. "And she was the sexiest woman I had ever seen on the screen; not a Jean Harlow sexuality, but just so powerful."
• • West's combination of sexuality, savvy, creativity, and power helped pave the way for a long line of female entertainers who refused to rely on their looks or male writers and producers to sustain their careers. Likely the most obvious example is Madonna, who has consistently managed to push the sexual and moral boundaries while firmly controlling her career and public image.
• • MacDougall didn't know the full scope of West's power until Aurora's artistic director Tom Ross handed her a copy of the script for "Sex" and asked her if she might be interested in playing the LaMont role.
• • The theatrical works of Mae West have been rediscovered by theaters over the past several years. While West's movies have never really gone out of favor, her stage work from the late teens and '20s had been more or less lost to history until "Sex" was revived in New York in 1999. Claudia Shear mentioned some of West's theatrical work in "Dirty Blonde," a moderate Broadway hit in 2000. In the play, West's early stage work was recognized as the foundation for the familiar character she created on the screen.
• • No one, though, is claiming great artistic achievement in Mae West's stage creations. In fact, "Sex" isn't the sort of play you would normally expect from the Aurora Theatre. Typically, the Berkeley company focuses on plays with outstanding writing, and "Sex" is an exploitation piece with a story line that doesn't even track logically — — a variety of styles, it begins as a regular play, then becomes a musical for one act before returning to the style started with in act one.
• • • • Chilly reception • • • •
• • "Sex" is the story of a young prostitute who travels the world looking for love, meeting a wide variety of humanity, from pimps and prostitutes to socialites and sailors.
• • In 1926, Mae West wrote the play for pretty much one reason: to get herself noticed. It worked.
• • The show was raided by New York cops, and West was jailed for indecency and sentenced to the women's facility on New York's Welfare Island for 12 [sic] days (where, according to gleeful contemporary accounts, she was allowed to wear her silk undies rather than the rough cotton prison drawers, and dined each night with the warden).
• • "I expect it will be the making of me," West told reporters as she was escorted to the paddy wagon after the raid on "Sex," which came after the show had been running 11 months. The raid came on the same day as two other sexually oriented shows, "The Captive" and "The Virgin Man," were shuttered by New York's vice squads. They were all termed "dirt shows" at the time.
• • The appellation made no artistic judgment, since Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" was placed in this same category, according to Ross. At least one New York newspaper, the World, campaigned to remove harder-edged, sexually themed plays from Broadway.
• • But the World was unable to have any huge impact on Broadway, which was more or less reflecting considerable changes in American culture since the '20s began to roar.
• • "I think one of the reasons they closed the show after it had been running nearly a year was because more and more women were going to see it," he said. "What was happening in society then was that more women were independent and would go out in groups and have that 'slumming' experience. Plays like 'Sex' would let them have the experience without actually putting themselves into any real danger."
• • • • Times of change • • • •
• • Moral codes were changing in the '20s, and while West, the low-brow tough-gal daughter of a boxer and a corset model, was not the only one pushing the blue envelope at the time, her knack for publicity made her the most logical target.
• • "One critic called her 'the Babe Ruth of stage prosties,'" Ross said, adding that some experts believe "Sex" was finally raided because West had been rehearsing her next play, "The Drag," a sympathetic story about homosexuality, and was about to open it.
• • While the moralists had some success in slowing West's progress, their objections probably did as much to boost her career, which moved to Hollywood and movies, most of which she wrote, in the '30s, not long after the beginning of talking pictures.
• • Actually, West's fondness for sexually charged topics was discouraged somewhat by the much more successful Hollywood moral code created by Will Hayes. On the other hand, the Hayes edicts, which kept even married couples in the movies sleeping in single beds beyond the mid-20th century, honed West's writing skill.
• • Since she couldn't say racy things outright, she became remarkably skilled at the double-entendre, creating the sort of wordplay that continues to play hilariously even when her films are viewed today, in some cases 75 years after they were made.
• • While the bluenose wing of the media may not have appreciated it, most of the press actually seemed to delight in West and her antics. A 1928 New Yorker profile of West, by Thyra Samter Winslow, comments on her appearance, which like most everything else is designed to deceive:
"You've probably pictured her as a large woman — — a bit gross-looking. She's neither large nor heavy, almost slight except in personality. At that, she is probably the only woman in America who doesn't want to look thin. She feels that curves are far more appealing than angles, and won't accept photographs that do not show her a bit more voluptuous and rounded than the slim silhouette the modern woman has succeeded in making popular."
• • Winslow also reported that West, in all of her Broadway appearances, would greet after-performance visitors in full costume, because she knows that a star is more impressive than "an overdressed little woman in street clothes."
• • "When she reached Hollywood, she managed to get in two or three films before the code," MacDougall said. "I've watched most of the Mae West movies recently, and it's really fascinating how really sexy it was. Her innuendoes are much racier after the code came in."
• • While MacDougall isn't attempting a West impersonation in "Sex" (after all, she's playing the character West created, not West herself), she says getting into the West persona is not tremendously difficult because the author/actress wrote the piece in her own rhythms.
• • What has impressed MacDougall more is the crafty way West was able to highlight herself in the plays she wrote.
• • "She never starts a scene," she says. "She always makes her big entrance about five minutes later after people have been talking about her. She really wasn't the best-looking woman in the world, but the other characters talk about her as if she is, which shows what a wonderful, smart woman she was."
— — source: Contra Costa Times contracostatimes.com/ — —
• • Byline: Pat Craig
• • Published on: 4 November 2007
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• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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