Mae West: A New Bio

A new biography of MAE WEST penned by a British journalist has just been released. The Bay Area Reporter covered it. This is what they said.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Mae West was director/writer Billy Wilder's first choice for Norma Desmond in his darkly comic masterpiece about Hollywood stardom, Sunset Boulevard (1950). He knew her narcissism matched that of the fictional Desmond, which explains why she rejected it. "No one would believe me as a 'has-been.'" At the time, West was 57, hadn't made a movie in 7 years, hadn't been a major box-office force for 15, and her last Broadway play, Catherine Was Great (1944), had run for less than 200 performances without recouping its investment. Nonetheless, she was certain that she was the most sexually desirable female on the planet. In his fascinating Mae West: An Interview and Biography (Grand Cyrus Press, $11.95), Clive Hirschhorn captures one of Tinseltown's most improbable legends in all her contradictory splendor.
• • They met when she was 75. Impressed by his English accent, she agreed to a Sunday Express interview in her Hollywood apartment. She wore a black full-length tea gown, a long blond wig, and enormous false eyelashes. He must have been starstruck, or else she had taped her skin underneath her wig and carefully controlled the lighting, because he claims her face had no wrinkles. (Candid shots of West taken when she was in her 60s disprove this.) During the interview, she asserted that what made her more popular than ever was her "glamour," and that only "pretty" Marilyn Monroe came close to rivaling her, but the others, like Jayne Mansfield, were "imposters" with "big chests, small voices, and no brains."
• • The interview inspired Hirschhorn to write this brief, astute biography. She was born in Brooklyn and began performing as a child, pushed by her adoring mother. If West loved anyone more than herself, it was mother. He astutely corrects her own, unreliable memoirs, Goodness Had Nothing To Do with It, and shows how, despite the notoriety of her plays The Drag and Sex (which resulted in a highly publicized jail sentence), West had only one successful starring vehicle, which she wrote herself, Diamond Lil (1928). Her one-liners were famous, but critics found her repetitive. She was difficult to cast.
• • In 1932, producer William Le Baron, who had worked with her in New York, and movie star George Raft, who had been one of her lovers, summoned her to Hollywood for a supporting role in Night After Night. She wrote her own dialogue, and as Raft said, "stole everything but the cameras." At 40, she was a movie star.
• • Paramount Studios signed her and filmed Diamond Lil, calling it She Done Him Wrong. Cary Grant co-starred, and audiences and critics raved. She followed with I'm No Angel (1933), again with Grant, and the success of the two movies saved the studio from bankruptcy. She became the most quoted woman in America. "It's not the men in my life that counts, but the life in my men." "I used to be snow white, but I drifted." "There are no taxes on the wages of sin." "It's better to be looked over than overlooked." When asked if she believed in love at first sight, she replied, "Well, I dunno, but it sure saves a lotta time."
• • She didn't cause censorship – the Production Code was already in existence – but became its most famous victim. The Catholic Legion of Decency cited her immorality. Censorship hurt all her subsequent films, as did her limited repertoire. By 1943, offers were scarce, but her impact had been indelible. She inspired countless drag queens, and some believed (incorrectly) that she was a man.
• • Unlike Norma Desmond, however, West had one comeback left. In 1954, she launched a nightclub act surrounded by handsome musclemen. It opened in Las Vegas, and was a smash. She sang and quipped before adoring audiences. She toured the country, setting box-office records. Occasionally, she appeared on television, notably on the 1958 Academy Awards Show, singing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Rock Hudson. Again, she created a sensation. It would be her last.
• • Amazingly, the movies beckoned, but her return tarnished her legend. She wasn't directly responsible for the awful version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge (1970), which gave her top billing over Raquel Welch. As Vidal noted, however, the film "embalmed" her nightclub act. No one else could be blamed for Sextette (1978), based on her play about a famous star whose sixth honeymoon is interrupted when the CIA asks her to prevent World War III by seducing an ex-husband, a Soviet VIP (Tony Curtis). Timothy Dalton was her child groom, and Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, Alice Cooper, Raft, and Walter Pidgeon were among her admirers. She recycled old lines. "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" West couldn't remember her dialogue, which was fed to her via a microphone hidden under her wig. She was barely ambulatory, but managed to complete this unprecedented vanity production. It had brief runs in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is available — — for masochists — — on DVD. She died two years later, from complications following a stroke."
• • Hirschhorn documents her many love affairs and one marriage, and her obsession with spiritualism. He writes sympathetically yet critically about her career and place in the Hollywood Pantheon. He concisely shows why, despite only 13 movies, only three or four good ones, she finished 15th in the American Film Institute's Greatest Female Legends of the 20th Century. West undoubtedly would have dismissed the 14 named ahead of her.
— — Source: — —
• • Article: "Disconnected from reality"
• • BY: Tavo Amador | Book Reviewer
• • Published by: Bay Area Reporter — — www.ebar.com
• • Published on: 11 March 2010
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • book cover • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Minnesota

Handsome men in Minnesota are still calling your name, MAE WEST.
• • Veteran lit-critic Dave Wood is feeling a might cranky, though. And he hasn't even noticed the totally hideous Photo-shopped book jacket with the goony mackerel lips. [Or has he?]
• • Dave Wood writes: Do we really need another biography of Mae West? Apparently Simon and Schuster thought so, because they’re just out with “She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography” by Charlotte Chandler [March 2009].
• • I’d call it “A Personal Hagiography” because Chandler finds Mae West to be absolutely flawless, loyal, loving, generous to a fault. Even more irritating, Chandler is one of those biographers with a memory that’s flawless.
• • She quotes the actress endlessly, long, long quotes that are perfectly constructed and obviously never came out of Chandler’s tape recorder.
• • Can’t these pop biographers figure out some other way to enliven their dull subjects in some way other than highlighting interviews with quotations that probably weren’t ever uttered?
• • I’ve ranted long enough. But if you want to know more of what I think about biographies of long dead film stars, come up and see me some time.
• • Dave Wood is a past vice president of the National Book Critics Circle and former book review editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Phone him at (715) 426-9554.
— — Source: — —
• • Column: "Dave Wood's Book Report, June 10, 2009"
• • Byline: Dave Wood | Critic
• • Published in: The Red Wing Republican Eagle [in Red Wing, Minnesota 55066] — — www.republican-eagle.com
• • Published on: 10 June 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
• • Feed — — http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MaeWest
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Bartlett's Way

Why take the trouble to analyze a new biography when you can simply quote some of your favorite lines by MAE WEST?
• • New York Post critic Mackenzie Dawson does just that, turning in copy that sounds not unlike Bartlett's compendium of wit and wisdom.
• • Here is the unvarnished Empress of Sex entertaining a latter day visitor who confesses to cupboards bare and insufficient sparklers.
• • "Do you know my idea of a wonderful time? Sex and chop suey."
• • The best part of the new Mae West biography, "She Always Knew How" by Charlotte Chandler, isn't her well-known life story, but verbal gems like these. The voluptuous Brooklyn-born actress, who died in 1980, held court in a series of interviews with the author (a woman West pities for her lack of diamonds). Besides her best known quips "the best way to get over someone is to get under someone"; "I've climbed the ladder of success, wrong by wrong" the excellent Ms. West shares her thoughts on, well, just about everything.
• • On serving jail time for indecency: "I was told I could pay the fine and get out of going to jail, but I made up my own mind. I decided it would be more interesting to go to prison. I was always fascinated by prisons and mental institutions . . . I wasn't going to be deprived of that experience. I saw those as ten very valuable days, a kind of working vacation."
• • On sex: "Honey, sex with love is the greatest thing in life. But sex without love that's not so bad, either."
• • On independence: "I made up my mind very early that I would never love another person as much as I loved myself. Maybe that sounds selfish to you. But I saw what a mess a lot of other people could make of their lives when they're smitten . . . they find a person who they think holds the key to their happiness . . . they don't understand they're the ones who give the other person that power."
• • On the stock market: "I didn't have money in stocks because that kind of paper didn't seem real to me. I always liked investing in things I could see and touch and enjoy. The country was on the gold standard. I was on the diamond standard. If the market in diamonds fell out of bed, I could always wear them. They'd always be just as beautiful."
• • On children: "I knew I didn't want children. When I was a little girl, I wanted a doll. But I knew that a doll wasn't a baby. You can just put your dolly away when you don't feel like playing that game anymore. But I don't think I was meant to be a mother. I don't think a woman should have a baby unless she's prepared to love that baby more than she loves herself."
• • On monogamy: "I found one man who had beautiful hair, another had great muscles, and another one . . . ummm. I didn't see why I should deprive myself of anything, so a lot of men was better for me than just one man. That way I could enjoy what was great about each one, but I wasn't tied to him."
• • On alcohol: "I have a theory that people drink because they're bored, bored with themselves, even more with other people. So they drink, and after drinking, they bore everyone else."
• • On seeing spirits: "I started seeing other men, all dressed in clothes from some earlier time. They spoke in 'thees' and 'thous,' and I couldn't understand why they came to me. Some kind of mistake in traffic signals, maybe."
• • She Always Knew How
• • by Charlotte Chandler [Simon & Schuster]
— — Source: — —
• • “The Wonderful Wisdom of Mae West”
• • By: Mackenzie Dawson
• • Published in: The New York Post — — www.nypost.com
• • Published on: 22 March 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Blush-worthy?

Here's another drive-by scattershot embrace of the latest book on MAE WEST — — the hardcover with that dreadfully Photoshopped dustjacket, a retouched image that makes Mae's lower lip look like something you bait a hook with.
• • Tsk tsk.
• • And it is also sad to realize that the brief interval when BookReporter.com had insightful scribblers keeping abreast of new titles is over. No longer a model of narrative rectitude, BookReporter.com has current standards calibrated to the average soap opera fan.
• • Check out Bronwyn Miller's column below. Blush-worthy, cringe-inducing, gullible, inept? We demur — — you decide.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • • • SHE ALWAYS KNEW HOW: Mae West — — A Personal Biography
• • • • Charlotte Chandler
• • • • Simon & Schuster [ISBN: 9781416579090]
• • As Mae West herself once proclaimed, “Some women know how to get what they want. Others don’t. I’ve always known how.” This epigram explains the title as well as the mindset of this very driven and singular woman. Charlotte Chandler, venerated biographer of Alfred Hitchcock, Groucho Marx and, most recently, Bette Davis, turns her keen eye to the life and career of one of the most iconic stars of Hollywood.
• • Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, New York, in 1893, she quickly found her calling, and it involved a stage, a spotlight and a receptive audience. Mae, who changed her name only slightly from the nickname of “May” for aesthetic reasons, was the first child of Matilda and Jack West. Jack was known throughout New York as “Battlin’ Jack,” a tough, no-nonsense neighborhood boxer who once laid a guy flat with one punch for merely looking at his young wife. Her parents wanted to give their talented daughter all they could and encouraged her to perform on the stage, which she did, with great success. She spent her formative years in variety shows, vaudeville tours and the burlesque circuit, literally growing up in front of her audience.
• • When she came of age, Mae decided that instead of fitting a rather voluptuous peg into a square hole, she would do far better if she wrote her own material. Thus, Mae West the playwright was born. Her first play, scandalously titled Sex, opened in 1926 and became something of a cause célèbre. Mae was convicted of obscenity and sentenced to 10 days in jail. She could have had her lawyer and soon-to-be lover persuade the powers-that-be to knock the sentence down to community service, but Mae felt it was more honorable to do her time — — and, of course, think of the publicity!
• • Years later, she commented, “They say censorship was my enemy, but I’m not so sure about that. Maybe censorship was my best friend. You can’t get famous for breaking the rules unless you’ve got some rules to break. Where would censorship have been without me? Like I always say, I made censorship necessary.” After that, there was no stopping her. Plays that tackled very tough, very modern issues continued until Hollywood came to call. There, as on Broadway, she called her own shots, never afraid to push the envelope.
• • Not only did her trademark sayings like “Come up and see me sometime” (which is actually a misquote from one of her early films) and that one-of-a-kind walk define her persona, Mae proved herself to be a rather acute arbiter of talent. She made sure that Cary Grant was cast alongside her in I’m No Angel, and she persuaded George Raft, a local tough she had known in New York, to come to Los Angeles to pursue acting, eventually becoming her leading man in Night After Night. She was always about the work and took it most seriously. If W.C. Fields turned up to the set of My Little Chickadee inebriated, West would promptly leave. “Sex and work have been the only two things in my life,” she once said, “… but if I ever had to choose between sex and my work, it was always my work I’d choose.”
• • But apart from the work and the men (amazingly, there were only a few really important men in her life), Chandler also divulges what a kind and generous woman Mae was — — always eager to sign an autograph (she kept extra photos in the car, just for this purpose), faithfully keeping up with her fan mail, answering most letters herself, and generously donating to local charities in need. Once, she donated her slightly used limousine to the local convent because she couldn’t bear “to see a nun waiting for the bus” and decided they need a little luxury, too.
• • Most of the stories in this book were culled from conversations Chandler had with Mae at her Ravenswood apartment in Hollywood the year before her death. Her recall is astounding, and her desire to protect her image is unmistakable: “I made up my mind very early that I would never love another person as much as I loved myself. Maybe that sounds selfish to you. It is. But I saw what a mess a lot of people could make of their lives when they are smitten. Some of them go temporarily insane. They find a person who they think holds the key to their happiness — — the only key to their happiness that exists. They don’t understand they’re the ones who give the other person that power. It’s like a fever. The person in that condition may ruin their own life, and the lives of others, as well.”
• • Both reader and author find it difficult to ascertain if Mae is all about protecting the image she carefully created over so many years, or if she really believes it. But with her trademark wit, she retorts, “Some people thought I ought to see a psychiatrist, but why spoil a good thing?”
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
— — Source: — —
• • “Review”
• • Written by: Bronwyn Miller
• • Published in: Bookreporter.com — — www.bookreporter.com
• • Published on: 20 March 2009
• • © Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • N.B.: We put the copyright line there so no one will think WE wrote this drivel.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: PW

Publishers Weekly offered a capsule review of a new title devoted to Mae West.
• • Speaking about the author Charlotte Chandler's latest release, the critic wrote this: Chandler (Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford) draws on her interviews with the 86-year-old Mae West, known for her “risqué brand of humor,” in this chatty memoir. West carefully constructed and guarded the image of her personality as a woman who enjoyed sex at a time when “skirts had to cover ankles.” She contended she was “never vulgar. The word for me was suggestive.”
• • West (1893–1980) craved the spotlight from a young age and had been a success in vaudeville, where she began to write her own material. Her screen legend perfected her sexually playful alter ego in such films as She Done Him Wrong, which contained her most quoted line: “Come up and see me sometime” [sic].
• • Chandler also includes Mae West's first-person account of her 10 days in jail — — when she was found guilty of producing an immoral Broadway show, her first full-length play, Sex. West remained a box-office draw into her 70s, appearing in the 1970 film Myra Breckinridge. Whether discussing her love life or advising on playwriting or beauty tips, Mae West was always entertaining. Photos. (Feb.)
• • Title reviewed: She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography Charlotte Chandler. [NY: Simon & Schuster (336p) ISBN 978-1-4165-7909-0]
— — Source: — —
• • Article: PW's Nonfiction Reviews
• • Printed in: Publishers Weekly — — www.publishersweekly.com
• • Printed on: 12 January 2009
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • "Courting Mae West" features intriguing scenes dramatizing Mae's arrest and trials.
• • Offered onstage July 19th—22nd in New York City during the Annual Fresh Fruit Festival, "Courting Mae West" has been nominated for several awards. The black-tie awards gala will take place during April 2009 in Manhattan.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • b/w detail from sketches for the Courting Mae West Comic • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: Ethel Merman

MAE WEST draws a bead of sweat in an earnest review of an Ethel Merman bio.
• • Like Mae, Ethel Merman was born and bred in New York City; fibbed about her birthdate; remained close to her family; was not the introspective type; did not interrupt her strong work ethic with the missteps of drug abuse, recreational pill addiction, breakdowns, nor a stint in rehab. Nevertheless, the two entertainers were quite unalike.
• • Newsday's book maven Liz Brown observes about the Astoria native, who died in 1984 of a brain tumor: "The performer didn't exude the vulnerability of Judy Garland, nor the subversive carnality of Mae West. For all the intimate testimonies, there's very little tension in Merman's personal makeup. Not much evolution, not much growth — — maybe she applied Gershwin's advice [i.e., to never take a singing lesson] too broadly — — and ultimately not enough complexity to grip the reader. ..."
• • We have not yet seen the tombstone-sized biography churned out by Professor Caryl Flinn — — Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman [University of California Press, 556 pages] — — but if you enjoy reading about dames reeking of "subversive carnality," we recommend authors Jill Watts and Emily Wortis Leider on the ever fascinatin' Brooklyn Bombshell.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: In Blackface

Among several intriguing studies on the American actress MAE WEST there is one written by Marybeth Hamilton, who holds a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University and teaches American History at Birkbeck College, University of London.
• • In When I'm Bad, I'm Better, Marybeth Hamilton discusses how Mae West's former lover George Raft, who was becoming a matinee idol in Hollywood during 1932, was instrumental in getting Mae a cameo role as Maudie Triplett, his blowsy ex-girlfriend in "Night After Night." Hamilton also explains how Mae was aghast at being cast in such a colorless bit part — — and then went on to revise her dialogue and win all the applause. "If nothing else," writes Hamilton, "[Mae West] showed Paramount that they were dealing with an expert scene stealer."
• • It is not surprising that Marybeth Hamilton mentions the hatcheck girl's line: "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!" and Maudie Triplett's famous comeback: "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie!" [Mae borrowed the routine from her diamond-draped pal Texas Guinan.]
• • What was left unsaid in this study (and other Mae West books) about that film scene?
• • Curiously, no writer ever mentions that Paramount made the 21-year-old actress Patricia Farley play the role of the hatcheck girl in blackface.
• • Take a peek. Do you remember the sepia-skinned beauty in the scene — — or not? How come no one ever mentions the deliberately darkened skin? Why not?
• • Here's another question: which house in the West 50s inspired the plot of "Night After Night" [originally titled "Number 55"]? Which heiress was raised in that stately residence? Which Pulitzer Prize-winner wrote the short story that Hollywood adapted for the screenplay? Which gangster met his death on the marble staircase?
• • On Friday evening 17 August 2007, a guided tour will stop at that location in midtown Manhattan, that is, the "Mae West Side Story" walking tour. The event, open to the public, is timed to salute the Brooklyn-born bombshell on her birthdate. [See the Annual Mae West Gala posting below.]
• • Speaking of blackface, Mae West "blacked up" for vaudeville performances and was known as an expert "coon shouter" in 1911. Other vaudevillians who "blacked up" were Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker, Al Jolson, and many more.
• • Only 23 more days until Mae's birthday!
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West in "Night After Night" • • 1932 • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae West: The Hindu

The book reviewer for The Hindu has been busy leafing through past lives.
• • In his column for India's National Newspaper published on Sunday 4 March 2007, V. Gangadhar observed that 2006 was a boom time for biographies in the U.S.A.
• • He writes: "Sex symbol Mae West reigned in Hollywood for less than eight years but there was something weird about her narcissism according to biographer Simon Louvish in Mae West: It Ain't No Sin. After a sensational debut, she ruined her career with endless sex talk on her conquests and female unsatiated sexual needs. All this got boring after sometime, the newly-constituted U.S. Board of Censors began to wield its scissors and West's movie success dimmed. She had to remain content with suggestive one-liners."
• • Source: The Hindu - - http://www.hindu.com/
• • Publication Date: 4 March 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Movie Poster Artwork: • • Mae West • • 1934 • •
NYC
Mae West.

Mae Bio: Me-Oh-My-Oh

From a new biography of Mae West, here's an excerpt:
Liberty belle feels the heat
by Simon Louvish
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • MAE WEST ran out of takers for her exploration of society's rejects at a time when more and more people were falling over the edge to join their ranks. And there were fewer and fewer theatres available in the straitened circumstances that now had a new name: the Depression.
• • Opportunities on the New York stage were sinking fast. Even on the other side of the continent, economic woes were mounting, unemployment rising, movie attendances dropping. Hollywood studios were looking for new ideas, novelties, sensations that could revive sagging fortunes.
• • Now that the movies could talk, sing and babble, new voices were wanted, and the sassier the better.
• • Mae took time to adjust to the pace of Hollywood in 1932. Settling down at the Rossmore Apartments, Mae claimed that she found doing nothing for $5,000 a week somewhat unnerving, and the part written for her in the script she was (eventually) sent by Paramount appeared banal and unrewarding — — at least until she could rewrite the lines.
• • We now know that Mae was never doing nothing, her spare time being spent in continuous production of her notes, gag folders, and quips. But as she was to write in her autobiography: "It was a new medium, a technique I had to learn, bend to my will and forget in order to give a natural performance." The studios, Mae soon discovered, were "giant factories turning out the same length of scented tripe, dressed up with the same rubber-stamp features of large cow-like heads, mammary glands, and 10-foot-high close-ups of nostrils you could drive a Cadillac into."
• • Mae could well have been worried by these great close-ups disclosing the fact that, as some shrewd journalists had surmised, she was about to breast the 40-years-old tape rather than the official 33 marker, wondering how she could re-enact the trick that the distance of the stage and theatrical make-up enabled her to carry off.
• • She need not have worried. In 1934 Mae became the highest paid performer in the US, bar none, with an annual income, according to the press, of $399,166.
• • While her Belle of the Nineties was not as big a hit as She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel, these were to remain on the books as Paramount's highest grossing pictures for the early years of the 1930s.
• • But comedy was moving on, with Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, made for Columbia in 1934 with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, winning five Oscars and establishing a new romantic but socially more realist format.
• • And time was taking its toll on Mae, despite all her endeavours to ignore the incoming tide.
• • In 1935 when Paramount sought to re-release She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel, censor Joseph Breen wrote to his colleague Will Hays that "it is our judgment that no successful effort can be made to cause them to be entirely unobjectionable to the production code."
• • Just a month before, the US Customs Service had banned Mae's 1932 novel of Diamond Lil as obscene. The two movies were classified by the Production Board as class one: "Pictures which should be withdrawn immediately and not again released."
• • It was in this atmosphere that Mae laboured to produce the rest of her '30s movies, from Klondike Annie through to My Little Chickadee. The gates were shut, and all but padlocked, on Mae. World War II itself and the great shaking that it gave American life did not move Breen one inch. The code's provision that foreign nations should not be offended constrained the making of movies that would be overtly critical of Nazi Germany, or fascism in general, until the US entered the war.
• • In 1949, Breen was again writing to Paramount, this time to executive Luigi Luraschi: "With further reference to the question of the reissue of the Mae West 1933 production I'm No Angel ... no good will accrue to the industry among right-thinking people with a release of a Mae West picture. On the contrary, it would appear to me that we would expose ourselves to the charge that we were 'letting down the bars'; that we were again making 'filthy pictures', as was the charge levelled against the industry, from a thousand sources back in 1933-34."
• • And for those who still dreamed of movies that nevertheless challenged the status quo, the era of senator Joseph McCarthy and the Hollywood Ten would soon provide further deterrence. Without Breen's zealous witch-hunting in the '30s, McCarthyism might not have had so potent a precedent to root out transgression in American cultural life.
• • Mae was to make one wartime comeback movie, The Heat's On, in 1943. But at the beginning of the '40s her creative energies were focused on her return to the stage. . . .
• • Edited extract from a new biography — — Mae West: It Ain't No Sin by Simon Louvish [UK: Faber & Faber]
Condensed by the editorial staff of The Australian: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
________________________________
Source:http://maewest.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West (born 1893 in Brooklyn, NY)
NYC
Mae West.