Mae West

Mary Jane "Mae" West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) worked as an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright for over seventy years. She built a reputation as a major sex symbol, playing characters who were sexually assured and delivering lines loaded with double meanings in her signature contralto voice. West started out in New York City vaudeville and stage productions before moving to Los Angeles for film work.

Censorship controversies frequently followed her. She once remarked, "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it." When her film career faded, she stayed busy writing books and plays, performing in Las Vegas and London, and appearing on radio and television. Later in life, she also cut rock and roll records. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her 15th on its list of the greatest female screen legends from classic American cinema.

West was born Mary Jane West on August 17, 1893, in either the Greenpoint or Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York, before the city consolidated. Her aunt, a midwife, delivered her at home. She was the oldest surviving child of Mathilde Delker West, a corset and fashion model, and John Patrick "Battlin' Jack" West, a former prizefighter who became a "special policeman" and started a private investigation agency. Her mother, called "Tillie" or "Matilda," was a German immigrant from Bavaria who arrived in 1886 with her siblings and parents, Christiana (née Brüning) and Jakob Doelger. West's paternal grandmother, Mary Jane (née Copley), had Irish roots, and her paternal grandfather, John Edwin West, had English and Scottish ancestry. Her parents married in Brooklyn on January 18, 1889; the groom's parents supported the match, but the bride's family opposed it. They raised their children as Protestants. West's eldest sister, Katie, died as an infant. Her surviving siblings were Mildred Katherine "Beverly" West and John Edwin West II (often mistakenly called "Jr."). As a child, her family moved around Woodhaven, Queens, and the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn. She may have made her first public performance at Neir's Social Hall in Woodhaven.

West was five when she first entertained a crowd at a church social, and by age seven she was appearing in amateur shows. She often won local talent contests. At 14, in 1907, she began professional vaudeville work with the Hal Clarendon Stock Company. As a child performer, she used the stage name "Baby Mae," and later tried different personas, including dressing as a male impersonator. Early on, she sometimes went by the alias "Jane Mast." Her distinctive walk was reportedly inspired or influenced by female impersonators Bert Savoy and Julian Eltinge, who were well-known during the Pansy Craze. At 18, in 1911, she made her Broadway debut in the revue *A La Broadway*, staged by her former dancing teacher, Ned Wayburn. The show closed after only eight performances, but a *New York Times* review praised her, noting that "a girl named Mae West, hitherto unknown, pleased by her grotesquerie and snappy way of singing and dancing." She then appeared in *Vera Violetta* with Al Jolson, and in 1912 played La Petite Daffy, a "baby vamp," in *A Winsome Widow*. She kept building her vaudeville career, performing on circuits like the one run by Gus Sun of Ohio. West said her mother was a constant supporter who thought everything Mae did was "fantastic," though an aunt and her paternal grandmother disapproved of her performing. In 1918, she gained major attention in the Shubert Brothers revue *Sometime*, starring opposite Ed Wynn. Her character, Mayme, danced the shimmy, and her photograph appeared on the sheet music for the hit song "Ev'rybody Shimmies Now."

West eventually began writing her own risqué plays under the pen name Jane Mast. Her first starring Broadway role came in the 1926 play *Sex*, which she also wrote, produced, and directed. Conservative critics panned it, but ticket sales were strong. City officials, responding to complaints from religious groups, raided the theater and arrested West and the cast. She was taken to the Jefferson Market Court House, prosecuted on morals charges, and on April 19, 1927, sentenced to 10 days for "corrupting the morals of youth." She could have paid a fine and been released but chose jail for the publicity. While incarcerated on Welfare Island, she dined with the warden and his wife and told reporters she wore her silk panties instead of the "burlap" issued to other inmates. She served eight days, with two days off for good behavior, and afterward called her play "a work of art." The media attention boosted her career, with reporters calling her a "bad girl" who "had climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong." Her next play, *The Drag*, dealt with homosexuality and was what West called one of her "comedy-dramas of life." After try-outs in Connecticut and New Jersey, she announced she would open it in New York. But the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice worked to ban any attempt by West to stage it, and *The Drag* never opened on Broadway. West explained, "The city fathers begged me not to bring the show to New York because they were not equipped to handle the commotion it would cause."