The best of MAE WEST's motion pictures were released during the dark days of an economic downturn and yet her screenplays show that her art declined to submit to the world. Instead she demanded that the world submit to her own mimetics — — with its rainbow of racial tolerance, its tenderness towards society's outcasts, its belief that women could sin and win, fool and rule.
• • NPR mentioned Mae West in their commemoration of the 80th anniversary of "Black Tuesday," 29 October 1929 — — which is considered the climax of the stock market crash that preceded the Depression, and a day that changed America's economic history.
• • Sam Sanders writes: It's impossible to think about our current "Great Recession" without flashing back to America's Great Depression of the 1930s. We might only remember images of people waiting in bread lines and being served in soup kitchens. But some folks — — and businesses — — managed to find themselves "On The Sunny Side Of The Street" during the Depression. He adds: "Actress Mae West was highly paid during the Depression."
• • • • How To Earn, Eat and Dance During A Depression • • • •
• • 'Winners' Of The Great Depression • •
• • Hollywood — Throughout the Great Depression, as many as 80 million Americans went to the movies once a week or more. The introduction of films with spoken words added to the industry's popularity, and movies were a way for Americans to escape their gloomy economic realities.
• • Filmmakers and theaters slashed prices and introduced special promotions to keep viewers in seats. Although that high attendance rate fell in 1933 by about 40 percent, it was a sector that outperformed countless others during some of the hardest times for industry.
• • Mae West — Hollywood's vixen of the Great Depression, her starring roles in multiple films helped keep Paramount Pictures afloat.
• • Mae West made $5,000 a week as a film actress and by the mid-1930s was paid $300,000 per acting performance and $100,000 per screenplay. Her hypersexualized roles were tamped down by censorship prompted by the 1930s Hays Code Of Decency, which was adopted by the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association. ...
— — Excerpt: — —
• • Article: "Remembering The Great Depression's Sunny Side"
• • BY: Sam Sanders
• • Published by: NPR — — www.npr.org
• • Published on: 23 October 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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