Mae West: Paul Johnson

MAE WEST is prominently profiled in Paul Johnson latest book on heroes, who peculiarly claims her ancestry can be traced to Buckinghamshire [sic] and gets a number of other details wrong.
• • This is an excerpt from "Why two blonde bombshells are in my list of all-time heroes" by Paul Johnson [London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, February 2008].
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Heroes are to be found in every age and in all kinds of places. Nor are they confined to one particular sex.
• • There are many women in my pantheon of heroes — — from Deborah and Judith in the Old Testament to Lady Jane Grey, Emily Dickinson, and Queen Boudica. It was in AD61 that, from her chariot, Boudica (or Boadicea, as her statue on Westminster Bridge calls her) bared the bruises where the Romans had flogged her and dared her fellow tribesmen to help her resist the invaders of England. . . .
• • But it was that very same spirit of independence and boldness that, two millennia after [Boudica], was to be found in a more modern hero — — the sassy and indestructible Miss Mae West.
• • From the start, West made a shrewd assessment of all the physical advantages her sex gave, capitalised on her strengths, kept her weaknesses in check, and ended a long, rich life with money in the bank, men on tap, and a few jokes to the good.
• • She was born Mary Jane West in 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, though her ancestry was English, from leafy Buckinghamshire [sic]. Her stage debut, aged seven, was Baby May — — Song And Dance.
• • As a teenager she changed her name to "Mae" because it was sexier, and by the time she was 20, she had played in Shakespeare [sic], toured in burlesque, danced on Broadway in a production of Les Folies Bergere [sic], and had her own vaudeville act.
• • She had also married and kicked out a no-good called Frank Wallace. He helped shape her views on men, which she set down in her "Ten Commandments" (there are actually 15).
• • Among "Things I'll Never Do", she swore not "to marry a man who is too handsome, a man who drinks to excess, a man who is easy to get, or is easily led into temptation — — unless I do the leading."
• • She said she would never "walk when I can sit, or sit when I can recline. I believe in saving my energy — — for important things".
• • And she would "never take another woman's man. Not intentionally, that is."
• • In her solo vaudeville act, she specialised in suggestive jokes and dressed to exploit her sexuality.
• • To theatre audiences in the 1920s, she was the personification of sex, an image she exploited by associating, for publicity purposes, with prizefighters, wrestlers, and athletes and musclemen.
• • Her ostensible choice in men did not change. Even in her 80s she still liked to be photographed with boxers, often admiring their physiques.
• • But was it all a stunt? There is no evidence that she had a particular interest in sex or wide sexual experience or knowledge, or salacious tastes.
• • In some ways, she was prudish. She was never photographed in the nude or topless.
• • She never used four-letter words or crude, explicit expressions. She never kissed onstage or on film.
• • She devoted much of her life to derisory innuendos and double entendres of great variety and ingenuity, putting them across with remarkable skill.
• • But she never told a dirty story as such, onstage or in private.
• • Her greatest achievement was to retain control over her own career.
• • Mae was one of a generation of inspired comics, including Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, and Stan Laurel.
• • The competition among them was keen, and the need for fresh, first-class material and funny scenarios was constant.
• • She soon discovered she could write better jokes, dialogue, and scripts than the ones provided for her.
• • But she had no authorial amour-propre or artistic pretensions. Everything was done ad hoc, much of it at the last minute.
• • The only criteria were applause and box office. Yet her role as author and gag-writer enabled her to keep complete control and to present herself as she wanted.
• • As a result, between the wars she turned "Mae West" into one of the most enduring and indestructible showbiz images in the world. No other female star was so completely her own invention.
• • Her efforts made her the highest-paid entertainer in America in 1934, with an income of $399,166. The following year, her earnings went up to $480,833, exceeded only by the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
• • She made her fortune by working outside the Hollywood studio system, which kept most other actors in gilded slavery under long, exclusive contracts giving them no share in profits.
• • By making herself her own boss, she won freedom and affluence.
• • She invested her money in high-quality diamonds, which were also stage props, and by the end of the 1930s, she was probably the most celebrated owner of precious stones outside India. She wore them as often as possible.
• • When an usherette at the Hollywood Roxy exclaimed at a premiere in December 1936, "Goodness, what diamonds!" Mae West came back with her best spontaneous [sic] riposte ever — — "Goodness has nothing to do with it." ["Spontaneous"?? Mae West used that line in a motion picture "Night After Night" in 1932.]
• • This was in the great American tradition of one-liners: "A hard man is good to find"; "It ain't the men in my life; it's the life in my men"; "When I'm good I'm very good, but when I'm bad I'm better."
• • There were also her suggestive songs such as Come Up And See Me Some Time, I Like A Man Who Takes His Time, What Do You Have To Do To Get It, and many more.
• • She worked hard on her gags, and her enormous gag book was, next to her diamonds, her most precious possession.
• • It eventually numbered 2,000 pages and 20,000 jokes. She took some from stock publications for stand-up comics, such as McNally's Bulletin and Digest Of Humour, some of them going back to the 19th century.
• • But most were originals or at least her own versions.
• • The only effective restraint upon her was censorship. In 1927 she was convicted of corrupting public morals with one of her plays — — Sex.
• • She was sentenced to ten days in jail and served eight, with two days off for good behaviour.
• • She wove her prison term into her public image. With a proto-feminist twist, she pointed out that all the lawyers in the case against her were men, the jury was all-male and no women witnesses were called.
• • "This," she said, "was a case of Men versus One Woman."
• • That summed her up. She set out to prove that a woman can outdo men in the grand and grim task of show business, and she succeeded.
• • If Mae West was a boss-heroine, then Marilyn Monroe was a victim-heroine. The actress Shelley Winters knew them both. "I admired Mae West but I wanted to be Marilyn — — she had all the assets."
• • Mae West agreed. She said of Monroe: "She was the only girl who ever came close to me in the sex department. All the others had were big boobs." . . .
— — excerpt — —
• ADAPTED from Heroes by Paul Johnson, to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on February 14 at £20. ° 2008, Paul Johnson.
• • Source: Daily Mail [UK] — — www.dailymail.co.uk
• • Published on: 4 February 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.