How Mae West took on the Hollywood studio system | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How Mae West took on the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio system

17 Aug 2019

Words by Lynsey Ford

A glamourous, middle-aged woman with curly blonde hair, wearing a sparkling black and gold dress, striking a dramatic pose.
A glamourous, middle-aged woman with curly blonde hair, wearing a sparkling black and gold dress, striking a dramatic pose.
In the pre-code era, the trail­blaz­ing Hol­ly­wood star used her sly humour and sex appeal to thrill audiences.

When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m bet­ter.” With her husky purr, plat­inum blonde curls, hour­glass fig­ure and exag­ger­at­ed sev­en-inch-heel walk, Mae West was one of the most icon­ic sex sym­bols of 20th cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma. The undis­put­ed Queen of Camp’, West’s rapid-fire deliv­ery, unbri­dled sex­u­al­i­ty and lib­er­al use of the dou­ble-enten­dre delight­ed and shocked audi­ences (and cen­sors) dur­ing the pre-code’ Hol­ly­wood era of the ear­ly 1930s.

An ear­ly pio­neer of the women’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment, West became an It’ girl of the deca­dent Jazz Age through her bold and auda­cious image as the free-spir­it­ed, sex­u­al­ly per­mis­sive har­lot with the heart of gold”. Despite mak­ing just 13 film appear­ances between 1932 and 1978, her sul­try on-screen per­sona influ­enced a wide range of artists includ­ing Sal­vador Dalí, who cre­at­ed The Mae West Lips Sofa’, and The Bea­t­les, who immor­talised her through Sir Peter Blake’s art­work on the album cov­er of Sgt Pepper’s Lone­ly Heart Club Band’.

Born Mary Jane Mae” West in Brook­lyn, New York on 17 August, 1893, she start­ed her pro­fes­sion­al career in Amer­i­can vaude­ville from the age of 14, lat­er devel­op­ing her skills as a per­former and writer in sex come­dies. But it was in 1926, that West first gained noto­ri­ety as the provoca­tive writer and star of SEX’ (work­ing under the writ­ing pseu­do­nym of Jane Mast). Charged with obscen­i­ty, she rev­elled in her new sta­tus as the jezebel, spend­ing eight days in prison to court publicity.

In 1932, fol­low­ing a peri­od work­ing on Broad­way, West won a six-year con­tract with Para­mount Stu­dios at the rel­a­tive­ly late age of 38. Secur­ing fourth billing and writ­ing cred­it in the George Raft crime dra­ma Night After Night West debuted as the brassy beau­ty par­lour own­er, Maudie Triplett. When a hat check girl remarks to Maudie, Good­ness what beau­ti­ful dia­monds,” West retorts, Good­ness had noth­ing to do with it, dearie.”

Raft lat­er admit­ted that West, stole every­thing but the cam­eras!” But it was in 1933 that West cement­ed her rep­u­ta­tion in a dou­ble-bill with her pro­tégé, a then-unknown bit part play­er by the name of Cary Grant. In She Done Him Wrong, she plays Lady Lou (based on her stage per­sona Dia­mond Lil’), a saloon singer and good time gal who falls under the spell of Grant’s Mis­sion­ary work­er (and secret agent), Cap­tain Cummings.

Black and white image of two figures, a man in a suit and a woman in an elaborate dress, seated at a table with an ornate decoration.

Lady Lou is on a mis­sion – to seduce the debonair Cum­mings – and utter­ly fear­less in her approach, lead­ing to the immor­tal line, Why don’t you come up some­time and see me?” Gross­ing more than $2 mil­lion at the box office (equiv­a­lent to $140 mil­lion in today’s mon­ey), West effec­tive­ly saved Para­mount from finan­cial ruin at the end of The Great Depres­sion. The stu­dio heads repaid her by nam­ing a stu­dio lot in her hon­our and grant­ed her full script approval as their high­est paid star. West returned to play Tyra, a bur­lesque dancer and lion tamer in the com­e­dy-dra­ma I’m No Angel attract­ed to suave play­boy Jack Clay­ton (played by Grant).

By 1935 West was the rich­est woman in Amer­i­ca, com­mand­ing $300,000 a pic­ture, a share of the prof­its and $100,000 for her writ­ing. How­ev­er, the sti­fling new pres­ence of The Hays Code in 1936 ensured that West’s scripts were heav­i­ly edit­ed (despite her attempts to slip in risqué one-lin­ers) by The Motion Pic­ture Pro­duc­tion Code. West also occurred the wrath of mag­nate William Ran­dolph Hearst for her con­tro­ver­sial depic­tion of reli­gion and pros­ti­tu­tion in Klondike Annie from 1936. She deliv­ered a defi­ant response to the sanc­ti­mo­nious Hearst: I used to be Snow White, but then I drifted.”

After the com­mer­cial bomb of The Heat’s On for Colum­bia Pic­tures in 1943 (with­out West’s cre­ative writ­ing skills), she spent the next 27 years work­ing as a cabaret artist, sell­ing out Broad­way and Las Vegas before she returned to the screen in 1970 to star in Gore Vidal’s Myra Breck­in­ridge. Dubbed the worst movie ever made” by Vari­ety, the pro­duc­tion suf­fered from the grow­ing froideur between West and co-star Raquel Welsh in the tit­u­lar role of Myra, but the film grad­u­al­ly gained a cult fol­low­ing. As the octo­ge­nar­i­an the­atri­cal agent Leti­cia Van Allen using the cast­ing couch treat­ment’ on male actors, West doesn’t dis­ap­point in her sug­ges­tive musi­cal num­ber You Got­ta Taste all the Fruit’.

In her final film, the com­e­dy-musi­cal Sex­tette, an 88-year-old West was cast as the 26-year-old Mar­lo Man­ners, a six-time mar­ried movie star, along­side Tim­o­thy Dal­ton as her devot­ed young hus­band, Sir Michael Bar­ring­ton. Most crit­ics right­ful­ly con­sid­ered the farce cru­el and exploita­tive, with the film earn­ing a measly $50,000 out of a $5 mil­lion bud­get. But West’s star remains undimmed; a true trail­blaz­er for female empow­er­ment in a man’s world.

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