Mae West, the original blonde bombshell, was a sharp-tongued sexpot ahead of her time. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1893 to working-class parents involved in vaudeville, Mae worked on stage from the age of five. Her time was spent performing and studying dance and by the age of fourteen, she was billed as The Baby Vamp.

In 1911, Mae was secretly married to her vaudeville partner, Frank Wallace, as a security measure against “tomcatting men” and to “appear respectable”, as urged by an older cast member. Mae also feared she may have been pregnant hours before the ceremony. The marriage was something she would later regret.

Around 1913, she was married to Guido Deiro under an assumed name, since both were under pressure to keep up appearances; living in cohabitation at that time without being married was not only outrageous, but illegal in most jurisdictions. With the lack of easy access to public records in those days, she was able to slip by as a bigamist. To protect herself from embarrassing charges, Mae consistently denied her marriage and Guido was never mentioned by name once in her 1954 autobiography. In the ten pages devoted to their romance, he was only referred to as “Mr. D.”

In 1926, she penned Sex, where Mae West starred as a prostitute in a Montreal brothel. Although critics hated it, it was a box office smash. Socialites returned to see the play again and again for West – not the play. Sex also debuted in Stamford, Waterbury, and New London.

In the 1920’s, before any production made it to Broadway, it had to be reviewed by New York City’s Play Juries (via the NYC Police Department). Although approved and given a license, its incredible success and suspicion of indecency caught the attention of the District Attorney. In June 1926, a volunteer Play Jury re-reviewed the manuscripts and was cleared by a vote of eight to four.

When Mayor Jimmy Walker, a huge fan of West, happened to be out of town, forty-one weeks into a sellout run, the acting mayor, holier-than-thou Joseph V. McKee, decided to raid the play. “Holy Joe” had Ms. West arrested, and she spent the night in Jefferson Market Jail. After a trial in the Jefferson Market Courthouse during February and March 1927, Mae West was found guilty of “corrupting the morals of youth.” She was sentenced to ten days in the Women’s Workhouse on Welfare Island.

Her next piece in 1927, entitled Drag, never saw the light of day. Drag was subject to many expensive court battles and banned from Broadway due to its homosexual content; however the following year, Diamond Lil became a hit and she caught the eye of Hollywood’s fat cats. Although her role in the 1932 film Night After Night was a small one, it was quite memorable. Her racy wit solidified her stardom.

Her second film in 1933 was the film version of Diamond Lil, entitled She Done Him Wrong. The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture and made Cary Grant a star. She Done Him Wrong and her third film, I’m No Angel, had effect on the Motion Picture Production Code, regulating content in film. Mae found a way to work around the censors with her own brand of “double talk”; her dialogue was left up to interpretation. Many of her quotes such as “When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better” and “You ought to get out of those wet clothes... and into a dry martini” have gone down in infamy.

By 1936, with Klondike Annie and Go West Young Man, she was the highest paid woman and second highest salaried person in the USA, behind William Randolph Hearst.

In 1943, after the release of The Heat’s On, Ms. West took a break from film, since the censors were becoming more rigid and it became harder for her to find work. She felt she’d had more freedom on the stage, and she continued her success there. By the 1970’s, when censorship became more lenient, Mae returned to working in film in Myra Breckinridge. This celebrated bomb of a film is taken from a novel by Gore Vidal about a boy who has a sex change operation and goes to work in Hollywood as a woman, played by Racquel Welch.

Her last film in 1978, Sextette, was from a script resurrected from the 1930’s. Ms. West stars as the sex kitten well in her 80’s, and is still full of feisty innuedoes. Although it is cited as a trainwreck of a film, it has been raised to cult status for West fans.

After a series of strokes, this Hollywood legend passed away in November 1980. Although she only made twelve films in 46 years, her persona had an incredibly powerful impact upon our culture.