Mae West: Oedipus Rector

In 1937, Paramount Pictures spent a record one million dollars on its MAE WEST vehicle "Every Day's a Holiday" [released in the USA as holiday fare on 18 December 1937].
• • Mae West portrays Peaches O'Day, a turn-of-century con artist who poses as a famous French chanteuse to avoid arrest. In this guise, she manages to expose crooked police chief Lloyd Nolan and smooths the path for reform mayoral candidate Edmund Lowe. A strong cast of supporting comedians, including Charles Winninger, Charles Butterworth, and Walter Catlett, match Mae quip for quip. Set in the Naughty Nineties, the motion picture features the gayest New Year's Eve party ever held at Rector's on 31 December 1899.
• • Elaborately produced — — on a set that matched the interior of Rector's on Broadway — — and snappily directed by Eddie Sutherland, "Every Day's a Holiday" should have been the hit that Mae West needed to save her flagging film career. Sad to say, thanks to the scrub brush Joe Breen used on her manuscripts, Mae's saucy screenplay became a pepless stew.
• • And unfortunately Mae was also under fire from America's bluenoses because of her previous "racy" vehicles and her recent "lewd and lascivious" appearance on Edgar Bergen's radio show in mid-December 1937, just before Christmas. (Heard today, Mae West's "Adam and Eve" sketch seems harmless enough.)
• • Result: "Every Day's a Holiday" lost every penny it cost and then some — — and effectively ended Mae West's relationship with Paramount.
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• • In January 1938, Time Magazine published a review of Mae's film "Every Day's A Holiday" (Paramount Pictures, 1938).
• • Time's critic had this to say:
• • In the peculiar idiom of show business, Mae West's art comes under the head of umph.
• • This quality is expressed by sinuous gyrating and prurient murmurings. That this sort of thing will make money is well established. Actress West's last recorded cinema earnings (1936) were $323,000, about as much salary as Bethlehem Steel's president, Eugene G. Grace, and the chairman of its board, Charles M. Schwab, draw down together. That umph sometimes shocks the public is established too.
• • For "Every Day's A Holiday" Paramount made a determined effort to de-umph Mae West by vacuum-cleaning the script, disguising Mae in a fantastic black French periwig. But, like trying to purify the water by white-washing the village pump, it did not work. To situations with considerably less potential than the story of Adam & Eve, actress Mae West imparts a meaning all her own; despite all directorial and script-writing efforts to make her steer a straight course, she still writhes as she pleases. As sexless a game as selling a sucker the Brooklyn Bridge resembles, in the West vernacular, a bargain sale of great temptations.
• • Other impressions of "Every Day's A Holiday": snowy-haired Charles Winninger in typical foxy grandpa mood, Negro Swing-Trumpeter Louis Armstrong leading a torchlight procession, the plushy mustiness of the turn of the century, and a few gags, all mothered and murmured by Miss West.
• • Typical examples:
Q. "You mean he made love to you?''
A. "Well, he went through all the emotions. . . ."
"Keep a diary and some day it'll keep you. . . ."
"She's not as strait-laced as she's laced up to be. . . ."
• • With the release of "Every Day's A Holiday," Paramount and Mae West parted company. She is under contract to Producer Emanuel Cohen, whose production Paramount has sponsored. Last week Producer Cohen and Adolph Zukor, Paramount head, climaxed a four-year feud by calling off their deal. What bothered Paramount more than Mae West's loss was that on Producer Cohen's personal payroll is Crooner Bing Crosby.
• • Source: Time Magazine
• • Published: Monday, 24 January 1938
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• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1937 • •
NYC
Mae West.