Mae West │Sexuality │Hollywood

How Mae West Used Censorship To Sell Her Brand Of Sexually Suggestive Humor

A sexually free woman who broke down societal sexual barriers

Long before Marilyn and decades before Madonna, there was another platinum blonde whose wit and iconic one-liners captured the world’s attention. Her name was Mae West. The name conjures up images of a sharp-witted woman with marcelled hair who exuded powerful and confident sexuality. She is best remembered for her bawdy double entendres.

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” — from “Sextette

Measuring a mere 5’ tall, this petite blonde created a persona that was larger-than-life. Over her seven-decade career, she reinvented herself many times. She showed women they could successfully compete in what was largely a man’s world. A truly remarkable feat.

It’s not the men in your life that matters, but the life in your men.

Born in 1892 in Brooklyn, New York, West got her start as a child star in vaudeville. Her entertainment career began at the age of five. By 14, she was starring alongside entertainment greats like Al Jolson.

Despite little formal education, she learned how to read and write. By the 1920s, she was using her sharp wit and command of language to write plays that challenged social norms with their openness towards homosexuality and female sexuality. She wrote plays for real people.

When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.

But it was during Prohibition that she first struck commercial gold. Now in her thirties, she took a calculated risk and wrote, produced, directed, and starred in her first Broadway play entitled “SEX.”

Panned by critics, SEX played to full houses drawing an audience of over 320,000. It was a huge commercial success at a time when Broadway was struggling. In 2016, SEX returned to the New York stage.

But it also drew attention from censors who arrested her for “indecency” and “[corrupting] the morals of youth.” Following a highly publicized trial, she spent ten days in a New York City jail. Upon her release, she commented to reporters…

I expect this will be the making of me.

She was right.

Undeterred by censors, West leveraged her notoriety into a film career in Hollywood.

Unlike many of her silent film peers, her sassy quick wit made her a star in Hollywood. Her on-screen performance in the raunchy Diamond Lil launched her into Hollywood’s elite.

By the 1930s she was under contract with Paramount. Over the next decade, she wrote nine of the thirteen films in which she starred. But it was the wild success of her film She Done Him Wrong that is credited for bringing Paramount Pictures out of bankruptcy.

At the time, she was the best known and highest-paid star. Rumour had it that she was the second-highest paid person in the United States, behind publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Sex and I have a lot in common. I don’t want to take any credit for inventing it — but I may say, in my own modest way, and in a manner of speaking — that I rediscovered it.

But as she approached fifty, her film career was coming to a close. There was no way the aging West could compete against another blonde bombshell, twenty years her junior — Marilyn Monroe.

So West showed resilience and pivoted once again. She returned to the stage with a comedy act. Once again the censors tried to stop her. West took her sexually suggestive brand of humor to nightclubs in Las Vegas and the United Kingdom.

In the world of comedy, her quick wit and sexual double entendres made her star shine bright again.

When I was younger, I admired West’s confident sexuality. She didn’t pretend to be anything she wasn’t. West was all woman.

Now that I’m older, I’m inspired by her approach to aging. She never let her age influence her attitude or her sexuality.

At a time when the majority of women in the United States worked in menial jobs, she managed to become a successful actress, playwright/screenwriter, author, comedienne, and entrepreneur. She showed the world how a woman could be strong, successful, and sexy.

At the time of her death in 1981, West’s personal property was valued at $1 million. She left everything to her sister, Mildred West. In today’s dollars, her estate was worth approximately $3-million.

In 1999, the American Film Institute posthumously voted West the 15th greatest female screen legend of classic American cinema.

But perhaps West said it best:

I created a kind of twentieth-century sex goddess that mocked and delighted all victims and soldiers of the great war between men and women. I was their banner, their figurehead, an articulate image, and I certainly enjoyed the work.

Sadly, today’s Hollywood starlets are lucky to have careers that last a decade. Clearly, West worked out a winning strategy.

Sex sells.

References

Quiterio, Dan. MAE WEST: DIRTY BLONDE: She Was No Angel: 8 Mae West Quotes That Will Get Your Blood Flowing PBS. July 7, 2020.

Mae West Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved May 15, 2021, from BrainyQuote.com.

© Copyright Belle Du Journey, 2021

Belle Du Journey writes about sex, life, parenting, writing, and anything else that she finds interesting. If this story appears anywhere other than Medium.com without my consent it has been stolen.

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