Mae West

From Philosopedia

West, Mae (17 August 1893- 22 November 1980)

West was born Mary Jane West to an unhappy German mother (Matilda Delker-Doelger) and a drunken prizefighter father (John Patrick West).

In Becoming Mae West (1997), Emily Wortis Leider wrote that she had lovers at the age of thirteen, went steady with a vaudeville pianist and singer when fifteen, then professed to have remained chaste until her marriage to Frank Wallace when she was seventeen, a marriage she later denied had ever happened.

An unparalleled mistress of the double-entendre, she was a Brooklyn-born film actress who took a comic approach to hedonism, religion, and sex:

• “To err is human . . . but it feels divine,” she ethicized.

• “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” she epistemologized.

• “I like a man what takes his time,” she aestheticized.

• And “Some men are all right in their place - if they only knew the right places!” she moralized.

• West was always depicted as being surrounded by men. In one scene, for example, would be a muscular type male at whose groin area she would gaze, following which she would remark that he appeared to be a new face in town.

• In “Diamond Lil,” her memorable line was, “Come up some time and (pause) see me.” Another variation of the line was, “Whyncha come up some time and see me?”

• Another often quoted Westism was made to her black maid, “Beulah, peel me a grape.”

In 1926 at Daly’s Theater in New York City, at which religious lectures and Biblical movies had previously been shown, she starred in Sex, a play she wrote and produced. The place was soon raided, and she spent ten days in jail for “corrupting the morals of youth.” The following year she wrote but did not appear in Drag, which was successful in Paterson, New Jersey, but she never brought it to New York. The play led to rumors that she really was a man, a transvestite, but she wrote:

I have a double-thyroid, ya know. . . . It means I have twice as much sexual vitality. That sort of thing runs in the family. My father was a boxer and my mother was famed far and near for her hourglass figure - she was New York’s top corset model at one time. And one of my grandmothers had three breasts.

As for homosexuals, she disliked lesbians. Gay men were perverts, victims of a tragic disease that needed to be treated like cancer, Leider claims. He also said that as a teenager West devised sexually suggestive acts based on ideas picked up from belly dancers such as Little Egypt.

In 1930 she wrote The Constant Sinner, a novel about a white woman who worked in Harlem, took a black lover who was a prizefighter and ex-pimp, but she denied having had liaisons with her chauffeur-boxer Chalky Wright or with any other black men.

On Broadway, appearing as Catherine the Great, she penned the material for Catherine to ask of her male hairdresser, “And what do you want me to give you for Christmas?”, followed by his fey response, “One of your discarded lovers, your highness,” or lines to that effect.

In another production, West offered a plan to insure that whoever passed the plate at church services could not pocket the money: Choose parishioners with one arm.

According to legend, novelist Frank O’Hara claimed that by her demeanor and pronouncements West was the inventor of “small-town faggot psychology.” Humorists enjoy pointing to other of her one-liners:

• When a woman goes wrong, men go right after her.
• Marriage is a great institution—but I’m not ready for an institution.
• Give a man a free hand, and he’ll try to put it all over you.
• I wrote the story myself. It’s all about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it.
• Between the two evils I always pick the one I haven’t tried before.
• It’s better to be looked over than to be overlooked.
• I was in a tight spot, but I managed to wriggle out of it.
• It’s not the men in my life that count—it’s the life in my men.
• A man has more character in his face at forty than at twenty—he has suffered longer.
• I like a man who’s good, but not too good. or the good die young, and I hate a dead one.
• When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.
• (Hatcheck girl): Goodness, what lovely diamonds!

(Miss West): Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

At the age of seventy-seven, by her count, West made what some critics termed a “creepy” appearance in Gore Vidal’s movie, Myra Breckenridge, six decades after her start on Broadway in burlesque: a rococo figure in curls, feather bow, and Cheshire-cat face. Returning from the set to her beach home in Santa Monica, West was surrounded with murals of naked men who had golden phalluses and disembodied testicles.

Philosophers weary of analyzing ratiocinative processes have been known to consult her The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West (1967) and Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (1959).

However, the little educated performer was not known for her intellectual profundity and was, in fact, intrigued by occult matters. A non-practicing Protestant, she enjoyed attending Catholic mass with a friend, never quite comprehending why the Church disapproved of her.

West died of stroke-related complications and is buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

{CE; Emily Wortis Leider, Becoming Mae West, 1997}