Mae West
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It is interesting to note the absurd places where the battle lines of freedom are sometimes drawn: the cost of tea in Boston, a funny-looking house painter from Austria, a busty lusty "belle dame sans merci" named Mae West. Mae West, née Mae West (nobody ever had to invent an interesting bio for her), was the vaudeville comedienne who conquered Broadway in the 1920s, saved Paramount Pictures in the 1930s, and - almost single-handedly - took on the censors of artistic freedom with every movie she made. And to look at her legacy now: almost forgotten beyond nostalgia for a "camp queen," her pictures dated and denuded of their controversial context, remembered in the 1990s primarily as a warning of what Madonna threatens to become. Nevertheless, for a brief period in the 1930s Mae West was the line in the sand drawn between those supporting "decency in America" and those advocating freedom of speech (and profits). Everything written about Mae West eventually degenerates into a parody of seriousness. Why not? Mae West was a comedienne first and foremost, a satirist of the first order within the range of her interests - which were, first and foremost, sex. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. "Goodness had nothing to do with it," Mae West's self-written introductory line from her motion picture debut, became the title of her 1959 autobiography, "told
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s. As a popular audience device, the choice certainly worked; West's evocation of earlier time never mollified her critics and censors, however.
It should be noted at this point that Mae West was certainly not alone in basing her performances around a central theme of sexual innuendo. Comedienne-singer Sophie Tucker thrived for decades on "blue" humor; in films of that era, Pola Negri and other "vamps" played with sexual tension as a threat/delight (Rosen 111-112). But Mae West's ambitions were greater than those of the Sophie Tuckers, who were content to play the club circuit and vaudeville bawdy-houses where word-of-mouth made the career and good, hard-drinking newspaper reporters did not want the Legion of Decency closing their watering holes. The Hollywood vamps, meanwhile, were not writing their own material: Pola Negri could play the title whore Carmen in one film and a noble (albeit sexy) chambermaid in another (Hotel Imperial). Hollywood vamps were criticized, but usually as a genre not individually. Besides, they were an exotic creation of Hollywood, not "real" American women - and, as in Pola Negri's case, quite often foreign (Rosen 110-113).
Mae West was unabashedly homegrown - and vigorously upfront about be
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Approximate Word count = 4369
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)
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