ΩPARA ΓPAR@ ` RTEXT ` DWest, Mae1892?╨1980entertainerBorn in Brooklyn, New York, on August 17, 1892 (or perhaps 1893), Mae West was already acting and dancing in amateur theatricals by the time she was seven. At eight she became a member of a stock company and began playing juvenile roles. In 1906 she went into vaudeville as a partner in a song-and-dance team, and five years later, in September 1911, she opened in the Broadway musical revue A la Broadway and Hello Paris at the Fulton Theatre. For the next 15 years she alternated between vaudeville and Broadway shows, the latter including Sometime, 1918, Demi-Tasse, 1919, and The Mimic World, 1921, and she did an occasional nightclub act. West╒s first great success came in April 1926 with the production of Sex, which she wrote, produced, and starred in, at Daly╒s Theatre. The play ran for 375 performances before it was closed under pressure from the Society for the Suppression of Vice. West was convicted of ╥corrupting the morals of youth╙ and emerged from an eight-day jail sentence a national celebrity. From that time she appeared almost exclusively in vehicles that she herself wrote. For all the variety of the scripts, the constant factor was her own personality and her ability to burlesque social attitudes, especially toward sex. In 1928 she starred in the title role in the play Diamond Lil, a characterization that virtually became her alter ego. Her public persona became a fixture: a wisecracking, ironic, languorous, and somewhat regal woman, sure of her fatal attraction and not at all embarrassed by the practical use she makes of it. The frank sensuality of her stage presence, her opulent attire set off by her flippant double-entendres, marked her as a prime target for moralizers and censors. In 1931╨1932 she appeared in the stage version of her book The Constant Sinner (first published as Babe Gordon, 1930). She then moved to Hollywood. After starring with George Raft in Night After Night in 1932, she did a film version of Diamond Lil entitled She Done Him Wrong. It was in this film that she spoke to Cary Grant her most famous line: ╥Come up and see me sometime.╙ For the next decade she worked almost solely in movies, making such comedies as I╒m No Angel (in which she casually ordered her maid ╥Beulah, peel me a grape╙), 1933, Klondike Annie, 1936, Go West Young Man, 1936, and the classic My Little Chickadee, which she and W. C. Fields wrote and starred in together, 1940. During the 1930s West became one of Hollywood╒s highest salaried stars and invested heavily in real estate and business. In 1944 she returned to the stage with Catherine Was Great, and she did revivals of Diamond Lil from 1948 to 1951. During the mid-1950s she toured with a nightclub act consisting of herself and a ╥chorus╙ of muscle men. Subsequently she performed less frequently. She appeared occasionally on television and also made records of some of her songs. After 1943 she did not make any movies until the 1970 filming of Gore Vidal╒s novel Myra Breckenridge. The movie itself was a failure, but West wrote her own part for it, received star billing, and proved its main attraction. She emerged from retirement again to appear in the unsuccessful film Sextette, 1979. West╒s provocative drawl and her variety of languid drapes and swivels were uniquely hers, as was the hourglass shape that inspired World War II fliers to dub their pneumatic life-vests ╥Mae Wests.╙ Her autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, was published in 1959, and in 1975 she published On Sex, Health and ESP. She died on November 22, 1980, in Los Angeles, California. nstyl ` 8 ! ¬
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