MAE WEST’s plump, curvaceous body was a vital element in her comedy. Academics have emphasized that “excessive body is one of the qualities of female unruliness, suggesting that she is unwilling or unable to control her physical appetites.” Japanese film historian Mio Hatokai discusses how Hollywood publicists and fan zines responded to this “fatness” in 1933. This is Part 29 of a lengthy piece.
• • Laughing off the “Fatness” ― Mae West’s Body Image and Female Spectators in the Early 1930s • •
• • Mae West: Leading fans to favor Mae’s voluptuous figure • •
• • Mio Hatokai wrote: Already in January 1933 issue, even before the release of “She Done Him Wrong,” Photoplay introduces Mae West as “Broadway’s daring, and most spectacular exhibit, explod[ing] on the screen.”
• • Mio Hatokai wrote: The Photoplay article continues: Mae West as the indestructible ex-girlfriend of a wiseguy speakeasy owner, Maudie Triplett, in “Night After Night.” Blonde, buxom, rowdy Mae ― ― slithering across the scene in a spangled, sausage-skin gown! [...]
• • Mae West: Falsely portrayed as a “young newcomer” • • ...
• • Mio Hatokai’s lengthy article will continue on the next post.
• • Source: Academic anthology on film stars released by Waseda University, 2015.
• • On Tuesday, 29 November 1932 • •
• • Mae West's movie script had been playing hide-and-seek with the Hays Office. However, on Wednesday, 30 November 1932, the project finally had a title that would not change: "She Done Him Wrong." A day earlier, there had been delicate negotiations on the part of Paramount's rep Harold Hurley. He mamboed around the play's references to white slavery, he massaged away any suggestion that Lil was a kept woman, and he agreed that the Salvation Army uniform had to be made into a safe generic. For all that, Mae West still got some zingers by the censors.
• • On Monday, 29 November 1948 • •
• • An American revival of "Diamond Lil" opened out of town on Monday, 29 November 1948 at Montclair, New Jersey.
• • Overheard in Hollywood • •
• • By the way, Mae West is now working on her new contract by the terms of which she gets $100,000 a picture. They also say that the curvaceous one also gets about half that amount again for providing her own story and, be it known, Mae won't stand for anybody's writing stories for her pictures but Mae.
• • In Her Own Words • •
• • Mae West said: "Don't you see how my life is? I gotta top myself in my pictures and I gotta watch myself in everything else. My private life has gotta be a model."
• • Quote, Unquote • •
• • The New Yorker featured an article on Mae West.
• • “The Strong Woman: Mae West” • •
• • Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote: Mae West, at almost forty, became the biggest star of 1933, and a national fixation.
• • Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote: Marybeth Hamilton pinpoints West's startling transformation from frank man-hating to easy sexual mockery as occurring during rehearsals of "The Drag" (a homosexual comedy-drama which led to the outlawing of depictions of homosexuality on the New York stage) and its spinoff, "Pleasure Man." …
• • Source: The New Yorker; published on Sunday, 3 November 1996
• • The evolution of 2 Mae West plays that keep her memory alive • •
• • A discussion with Mae West playwright LindaAnn LoSchiavo — —
• • http://lideamagazine.com/renaissance-woman-new-york-city-interview-lindaann-loschiavo/
• • The Mae West Blog celebrates its 17th anniversary • •
• • Thank you for reading, sending questions, and posting comments during these past seventeen years. Not long ago, we entertained 3,497 visitors. And we reached a milestone recently when we completed 4,800 blog posts. Wow!
• • By the Numbers • •
• • The Mae West Blog was started seventeen years ago in July 2004. You are reading the 4,875th blog post. Unlike many blogs, which draw upon reprinted content from a newspaper or a magazine and/ or summaries, links, or photos, the mainstay of this blog is its fresh material focused on the life and career of Mae West, herself an American original.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • costumed as Lady Lou; Vanity Fair in 1933 • •
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