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In the opinion of MAE WEST, the radio people let her down.
• • A Hollywood reporter with United Press interviewed her. It's a long article, so we'll give you just a small taste this time.
• • "Radio People Let Her Down" • •
• • "Maybe the College Boys Should Have Gone to Vespers, Miss West Says" • •
• • Frederick C. Otkman wrote: Mae West shrugged a svelte hip in disdain for the National Broadcasting Company and accused its executives of impolite, disrespectful, ungentlemanly and ungracious conduct for leaving a lady in the lurch.
• • Frederick C. Otkman continued: This same indictment went also for the heads of a coffee advertising company. It hired her last month to broadcast an "Adam and Eve" skit, of which there were complaints that echoed all the way to the Federal Communications Commission.
• • "They were no gentlemen," she said. "They let a lady down " Fact was, Miss West continued, there was nothing wrong with the broadcast. Nobody would have complained about her conversation with the snake in the Garden of Eden, she said, had not most of the student body of "a certain Midwest boys' college" stayed home to listen to her, rather than attend vespers. ...
• • Source: syndicated column rpt in The Times (Hammond, Indiana); published on Sunday, 30 January 1938.
• • On Sunday, 30 January 1938 • •
• • Mae West Is Banned Over Radio • •
• • ("The Sunday Times" Special Message.) • •
• • NEW YORK, Saturday — — The National Broadcasting Company from its headquarters here has issued definite instructions that the name of Mae West must not be mentioned over any station in the network which it controls.
• • It is believed that this is the result of violent objection that followed Miss West's recent appearance, after a four-year absence from the air, in a sketch entitled "Adam and Eve."
• • Source: Sunday Times (Perth); published on Sunday, 30 January 1938.
• • On Wednesday, 30 January 1935 in Singapore • •
• • "Lord Byng at a Mae West Tea-Party — Star Will Be In London For Jubilee Celebration."
• • Lord Byng and Lady Byng joined Mae West for tea and tried to butter her up with some friendly persuasion. The Straits Times in Singapore ran an article with all the particulars on page 6 on Wednesday, 30 January 1935.
• • The NYC newsman wrote: "Miss West entertained Lord and Lady Byng at tea in her dressing room at Paramount Pictures. She soon put her guests at their ease with a few simple Westisms." ...
• • Before he left, Lord Byng suggested that she should come to London. "Sure," said Miss West. "It would fascinate me." ...
• • "Tea began formally but Miss West soon broke the ice," the journalist noted.
• • Source: Article: "Lord Byng at a Mae West Tea-Party — Star Will Be in London for Jubilee Celebration" printed in The Straits Times; published on Wednesday, 30 January 1935.
• • On Sunday, 30 January 2011 in Florida • •
• • Words of Mae West come to life in “The Drag” • •
• • Orlando-based columnist Dawnn Behrens wrote this for Examiner.com: Originally written in 1926, the words of Mae West come to life in “The Drag” tonight [on January 30th] at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center (Studio B). Directors Michael Wanzie, John DiDonna and their group received permission from the estate of the late Mae West to present the show. It will be present tonight as the last night of an exclusive 2 night performance as part of their “Dangerous Plays Series — Giving breath to dissenting voices” series. . . .
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • According to the Mayors of some seaport cities now in convention in New York, Mae West is TOPS! Asked by Paul Moss, Commissioner of Licenses, who their favorite screen star was, they unanimously selected Mae so Boris Morros, in appreciation, is having the Mayors as guests of the N. Y. Paramount today Miss West is now in her fifth week at this house with her pix, "Goin' to Town".
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "My pictures don't shock me, but I have been genuinely shocked by stories and some scenes I have seen in pictures."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • The Bunyip mentioned Mae West.
• • "Mae West's Business Approach" • •
• • 'You know, the unfunniest people to interview are comedians — they take themselves so seriously! But I remember asking Mae West the secret of making sex a success without being offensive. And she said, 'Well, I'm not really a hotsy-totsy dame — I'm a serious business woman. A lot of women make dough by exposing their torso. But I make more by doing nothing of the sort. I just keep 'em guessing.''
• • From Denis Duperly, a film correspondent on 'The Gleaner,' speaking in a BBC programme . . .
• • Source: The Bunyip; published on Friday, 11 May 1951
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started nine years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 2843rd blog post.
Unlike many blogs, which draw
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photos,
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1938 • •
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Meditating on MAE WEST jumpstarted the juice for one discerning essayist published by Bright Lights Film Journal.
• • There is much to consider and mull over in Erich Kuersten's delightful piece "Help us, Mae!" — — and we know you'll savor his hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations [below].
• • According to Erich Kuersten, the pre-code is alive and well today, just not onscreen. The stars have split their private life off, so the tabloids tell the sordid stories, while the screen shows teenagers trying on clothes to montage pop. But since 1934 America has always liked its love and desperation to be separate. In real life, the love of the desperate is as intense as the love of the genuinely enchanted; in fact in our age of digital hermits and alienation, there is no difference.
• • Take for example, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, Babs Streisand and Madonna. These are camp icons for a reason, women whose ferocious drive was such that they changed the face of beauty in order to make themselves pass for beautiful. The hallowed hierarchy of class, genes, and style that make us "attractive" is relative, of course; it's in the eye of the beholder: a very lonely sailor might, for example, fall in love with a dust mop, or mistake a seal for a beautiful mermaid. On the other hand, a jaded rock star might see Sienna Miller as an ocelot or common sea snail.
• • Take Mae West for another example. • • Take Mae West for another example. Kind of heavy and yet small breasted, short and coarse, but it didn't matter. She could have been a dust mop crossed with a sea snail and men would still be falling for her. No one could tell Mae she wasn't a knockout glamour girl, so whether she was or not becomes — with the passing of each new generation — more and more immaterial. She defines beauty because we have seen her on the silver screen being adored. It must be true; we saw it on television.
• • Remember Cary Grant and Mae West in "She Done Him Wrong"?
• • She's so startlingly progressive, we presume all of ancient history defined her as the ultimate; it all has the iconic haze of myth, folklore. Mae is like (and would probably sleep with) Paul Bunyan, or John Henry, the steel-drivin' man. Like them she's embodying an archetype, she is the elevation of the cathouse harlot to the status of a benevolent, wisecracking Aphrodite. If she was genuinely beautiful, the ridiculous fawning of the men around her would be irritating and immodest. But because it's Mae, it's joyous, because we realize that beauty — if it wasn't already in the eye of the beholder before her — is now. She made it flex and bend until even the shy and ugly kids got some, too. She brought cake out to the guards. She shared her humongous appetites with her next-door neighbor in the Paramount dressing rooms, Marlene Dietrich; they passed guys like Gary Cooper and Cary Grant around like playing cards. West actually launched Grant's career for him. She had an eye for real moxie — a talent scout like her is sorely missed in Hollywood these days. But at any rate, the disciples of her brilliance live on; there are shades of her in everyone from Roseanne Barr to Diane Keaton, Paula Prentiss and up to Nicole Kidman and Anna Faris. Age, height, weight have nothing to do with it per se, it's all in the hips and their willingness to subvert the status quo from within, and the genius to know how to make it work and the nerve to pull it off at just the right time. When a girl at the end of her rope admires Mae's diamonds in "She Done Him Wrong," for example, Mae remarks, "Men, it's their game. I just happen to be smart enough to play it their way."
• • What does that mean exactly? It means she doesn't fight the current, and so has the energy to swim to the front and direct the whole wave. This means Mae is genuinely subversive, which is why the Catholic Legion of Decency was so quick to have her censored (she made only one radio appearance in her entire life, an "Adam and Eve" sketch, which got her banned forever). It's nothing in her double entendres so much as her complete lack of inhibition and — even more important — the copious admiration and financial gain she shows herself getting, onscreen, for her unmarried sexual congress. If Mae's characters had died alone and unloved, having sacrificed all for her child to marry a prince, etc., she would have been fine with the censors. But daring to indulge in the forbidden fruits and end the film all the richer and with Cary Grant on your arm and no harm done? It was just too dangerous to a rigid class and sex system like the Catholic delusory 1930s.
• • Those moralists wanted sex to be served in little teacups to a temperate nation. Mae served it by spreading tea leaves on the floor and flooding the building with hot water. It was like showing the corruptible females of the world a magic faucet by which they could drown their men's precious capitalist system with a few flicks of their diamond-bespangled wrists. And that doing it was not only easy but rewarding as hell; Mae was a lost generation Tyler Durden!
• • What was more than a mere threat to the Christian status quo, though, was Mae's willingness to peek behind the magic curtain where the big deals are made, and to point out that regardless of how much they bellow and bluster, they're all just men underneath the suits and uniforms. They can be had. If the Christians were reading this right, Mae was training women all over the country to step into men's affairs and topple them, just to see if they can. The whole social ladder seemed to shake and buckle from the force of Mae's tsunami hips.
• • We don't really have a similar figure to Mae West today, right now, do we? Kate Winslet, Vera Farmiga, Naomi Watts, Nicole, they're all genetic miracles who represent the next step in our evolution, knock on wood, and the sexually active party girls, like Paris Hilton, aren't really movie stars (the Paris equivalent of the time would have been Peggy Hopkins Joyce).
• • No, the merely semi-attractive women — the ones for whom finding dates is actual work — have no one to champion them, no one like Mae West or Bette Davis to star in movies where they're adored as beautiful and desirable beyond words while all the straight men in the room go "What? I don't get it." Instead, the non-goddesses have to make do with martyrdom, the dregs of the coffee cup. I guess the closest we have at the moment are those British soul singer tarts across the sea, but I'm too old to know anything about that.
• • All I know is, I watch Bette in some of these DVDs, like Now Voyager, and I long for the blurriness of VHS. As our world moves more and more to high definition and blu-ray, that eye of the beholder is going to see some things better left obscured by Blanche's paper lantern, that's all I'm saying, with all the format changes. Even the most airbrushed and metallic of goddesses won't catch any fanboys if they can see "that" much. You know what I mean, bro? Do I got to underline it in highlighter marker? Darkness makes everyone equally attractive. It's key! The high-def future will mean the end of sex for all but the supermodels. The rest of us will punch our way through days so gray and isolated they make Gilliam's Brazil look like Christmas with Bing Crosby. No matter how lovely you think you are, we'll be able to see into your pores from the back row.
• • Spend some time in France or England and you'll see a whole different approach to casual hooking up for sex. It's not that big a deal. People feel better, eat better, look better, when they're having steady sexual relations, say twice a week minimum. In America, somewhere along the line we got the idea that it's better not to have sex unless the partner is gorgeous, rich, famous, or you're very drunk; otherwise, we're "saving" ourselves. If we take home someone unattractive, we slump home the next day, guilty, as if we were so hungry and poor we ended up eating at McDonald's and now feel sick. But we don't really feel sick, my friends, that's social conditioning! That's why we need a Mae West or a Bette Davis to come along and sashay their weight around, or smile their crooked teeth and still have Tyrone Power or Cary Grant grow mad with desire for them. Maybe we don't want it, but we need it. We're a nation that's grown sexually anorexic.
• • Help us, Mae! Show us how to enjoy our food again.
— — Source: — —
• • Desperation and Divinity — — "Help us, Mae!"
• • • • Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
• • Byline: Erich Kuersten | Columnist
• • Published in: Bright Lights Film Journal — — www.brightlightsfilm.com
• • Published on: May 2009 | Issue 64
• • Copyright © 2009 by Erich Kuersten
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Celebrating "Women's History Month" — — by performing as MAE WEST and others — — usually keeps Dorothy Leeds busy and wearing many hats. 
• • The one woman show she does is “Good Lessons from Bad Women” and it is more than one singular sensation since the actress portrays a selection of goodie-goodies and bad girls. Her figures include Mae West along with Eve from the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Machine Gun Kelly, Elizabeth Freeman, pirate Anne Bonney, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
• • “Good Lessons from Bad Women” asks “Was mother really right?” — — while dramatizing some of the ways that a person will value the good and also find the bad irresistible.
• • Dorothy Leeds is an actress and author based in New York. The show was co-written by Daphne Greaves and directed by Eve Collyer. For the past three years, Ms. Leeds has been touring the USA with her virtual entourage of saints and sinners.
• • Another good lesson is that the interest Mae West arouses does not lessen.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
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The radio ruckus MAE WEST set in motion just before Christmas 1937 continued being discussed in the news. Time Magazine's issue — — dated Monday, 24 January 1938 — — focused on all those "right-thinking" citizens who penned complaint letters and the FCC's request for a transcript of the offending program. NBC was reluctant to release it. Can you guess why?
• • In case you never saw the article, here it is.
• • FCC on Mae West
• • Last August Franklin Roosevelt plucked goggle-eyed Frank McNinch — — one of the liveliest members of the Federal Power Commission — — and made him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. His job was to inject some New Deal vigor into the politics-ridden FCC. Last week the results became apparent.
• • Last month Mae West brought down a deluge of criticism from all over the United States by a sexy burlesque of the story of Adam & Eve (TIME Magazine, Dec. 27, 1937). A partial transcript is below.
• • Among the 1,000-odd letters of criticism that showered on National Broadcasting Co. was one from FCC asking for a transcript of the program. Last week NBC President Lenox R. Lohr got another letter from FCC, signed by Chairman Frank McNinch.
• • Taking time out from such radio supervising jobs as dividing up the ether, allotting slices of it to broadcasting stations and licensing operators, Mr. McNinch sounded off on Mae West:
• • "The admittedly objectionable character of these features is, in our opinion, attributable to the lack of a proper conception of the high standards required for a broadcast program intended for reception in the homes, schools, automobiles, religious, social and economic institutions, as well as clubs, hotels, trains and other places, reaching in the aggregate a much larger number of people daily than any other means of communication and carrying its message to men, women and children of all ages.
• • "A clear recognition of the social, civil and moral responsibility for the effect upon listeners of all classes and ages requires such a high standard for programs as would insure against features that are suggestive, vulgar, immoral or of such other character as may be offensive to the great mass of right-thinking, clean-minded American citizens."
• • Although it has long been recognized that the rights and privileges of broadcasters are not so great as those of the press, this letter pointed the difference in official black & white. The press, in spite of its guaranteed freedom, is not permitted to be immoral, obscene or libelous. But in order to preserve freedom of expression, freedom of artistic taste and freedom of information to all minorities however wrong-thinking they may be, the press is permitted to be vulgar, if not suggestive, to be just as offensive as it likes to "right-thinking people." By FCC doctrine as laid down by Mr. McNinch, the radio may reflect only views and tastes agreeable to one group, those whom FCC defines as "right-thinking" people. Mr. McNinch went on still further to restrict the field of radio. He wrote:
• • "In our present system and the statute under which the Federal Communications Commission functions, the Commission has no power of censorship, but this power and responsibility rests squarely and unavoidably upon the licensee. . . . Licenses are granted without any compensation by the licensee to the Government and solely for the purpose of serving the public interest, and, hence, the broadcaster must accept, along with the privilege granted, a definite, inescapable and high public trust in the use of the facilities licensed. . . .
• • "The Commission has decided to take no further action at this time than the writing of this letter in condemnation of the program. However, upon application for renewal of the licenses of the stations carrying this broadcast, the Commission will take under consideration this incident along with all other evidence tending to show whether or not a particular licensee has conducted his station in the public interest."
• • Forced thus to censor themselves, radiomen were placed not only in the position of having to observe a special set of taboos, but of daring to err only in one direction, by being too conservative. Frank McNinch's letter was as good as official notice to the radio industry that its future lies in entertainment and education but not in rivaling the press.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Last week all parties involved refused to release the text of the script, excerpts from which follow:
• • Snake: That's the forbidden tree.
• • Eve (Mae West): Oh, don't be technical. Answer me this — my palpitatin' python — would you like to have this whole Paradise to yourself?
• • Snake: Certainly.
• • Eve: O.K., then pick me a handful of fruit — Adam and I'll eat it — and the Garden of Eden is all yours. What do ya say?
• • Snake: Sssounds all right . . . but it's forbidden fruit.
• • Eve: Listen, what are you — my friend in the grass or a snake in the grass?
• • Snake: But forbidden fruit.
• • Eve: Are you a snake or are you a mouse?
• • Snake: I'll — I'll do it. (hissing laugh)
• • Eve: Now you're talking. Here — right in between those pickets.
• • Snake: I'm — I'm stuck.
• • Eve: Oh — shake your hips. There, there now, you're through.
• • Snake: I shouldn't be doing this.
• • Eve: Yeh, but you're doing all right now. Get me a big one. ... I feel like doin' a big apple.
• • Snake: Here you are, Missuss Eve.
• • Eve: Mm — oh, I see — huh — nice goin', swivel hips.
• • Snake: Wait a minute. It won't work. Adam'll never eat that forbidden apple.
• • Eve: Oh, yes, he will — when I'm through with it.
• • Snake: Nonsense. He won't.
• • Eve: He will if I feed it to him like women are gonna feed men for the rest of time.
• • Snake: What's that?
• • Eve: Applesauce.
— — Source: — —
• • Time Magazine — — Monday, 24 January 1938
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • This skit, written by Arch Obler, got Mae West banned from the airwaves for several years. Mr. Obler, however, continued to work in radio.• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1937 • •
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