When I was a little kid I remember watching a movie on the late, late show in New York City. In this movie was a blond, pretty buxom woman, she had a raspy and sultry voice. The kind of voice that sounded beckoning, lulling, yet tough. This woman was getting up close and personal to a very nice looking young man. The closer she got, the more jumpy the young man got; he was putty in her hands   I remember thinking, “How does she do that?” The woman on that TV screen was beautiful Mae West, with her handsome co-star Cary Grant.

When I see Mae West today, I can’t help thinking how ahead of her day she was. She was bold, and had fun being so. It’s 1920’s New York City and Mae West is starring in a play called “Sex.” In this play she plays a tough prostitute who takes no crap from her Johns, or her pimp. There are guns, liquor, and sex, just about anything that is illicit at the time was in this play. On one of her performances, Mae had to face real life and real cops. An agreement was made that she can conclude the play on this night, but after the play, she would be arrested. She concluded her last scene, and quickly ran to her dressing room, removed her heavy make-up, put on her knee length fur coat, black cloche hat and headed out to court. She had to look her best for court. As she stepped outside many people waited to see the real show—see Mae West leave the playhouse and step into a taxi. Mae West was being charged with “unlawfully preparing, advertising, giving, presenting, and participating in an obscene, immoral and impure drama, play, exhibition, show and entertainment.” This charge carried a penalty of one year in jail. This night Mae pleads not guilty, and demands a trial by jury. She posted bail and walked out.

"When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better."

Mae and the Bad Boy Syndrome

This was in 1927, and Mae was 33 which is “old” for a song and dance girl, but Mae not only had sex appeal, she had brains. She’d use this to her advantage. She figured that scandal would make her a star. Mae was right. Let’s just say she paved the way for many stars after her, who understood that sex, controversy and a juicy tabloid story can take a down and out, struggling, actor and make them a star. In fact, Mae said in her biography, “Censorship made me.”

Mae liked action, the more dangerous the city, the more she’d want to visit it; the tighter the dress, the better.  She said in her biography she liked…”lipstick, jazz, sex in taxis, intrigue, gun-toting bootleggers, boxers lathered in sweat and cops who read her the riot act.” Let’s just say she courted danger. Born in Brooklyn in 1893 to a prize fighter father, and corset model mother, Mae was in the spotlight at the tender age of 5. Once she experienced it, there was no turning back. Eighty years later she told an interviewer, “I ached for the spotlight, which was like the strongest man’s arm around me, like an ermine coat.” As a teenager she did vaudeville, singing and dancing, and displayed a natural talent for comedy.

She learned early on that she liked dabbling in the forbidden and extreme. She liked hanging around black juke joints, listening to sultry blues, and learning the dance of the day called “the Shimmy.” In 1918 she did the Shimmy when performing in a revue in Broadway, and she rocked the world. After her shimmy she’d give a speech, and no doubt a funny speech at that. Mae was in the habit of writing her own lines, changing lines, to suit her persona, the persona of a sexy, sassy, wisecracking, Brooklyn girl who loved men, but spurned marriage. And that persona was not too far-fetched. She did marry at 17, but soon realized, marriage was not for her. She preferred the attention of many men, than just the one. Mae loved body building men, boxers, dangerous men like gangsters, bootleggers, or the “bad boy”.” Mae refused to conform to “old fashioned limits.” She said in her 1959 memoir, “I saw no indecency or perversion in the normal private habits of men and women.”

Well, back to her play, “Sex.” It was Mae who changed the title of the play to “Sex.” She said of her theory of playwriting, “you’ve got to hit them in eye with it.”  The original version of the play was tamed; Mae added brothels, bribery, blackmail, crooked cops, jewel theft, suicide, and lots of sex.  One of her boyfriends produced the play in 1926, with some backing from Mae’s other lover, Owney Madden, a bootlegger who owned the famous Cotton Club. They rented out Daly’s theatre and “Sex” opened on April 26, 1926, and producers hoped that the scandalous play would bring in the crowd and money.

The play received mixed reviews. The New York Times, called it “crude,” the Daily Mirror called it “monstrosity.”  Others called it “dreary,” & “poorly written, poorly acted, horribly staged…the cheapest, most vulgar low show to have dared to open in New York this year.” Yet a review from Variety, said that Mae played a prostitute well enough to “fool a traveling salesman’s convention.” Despite the mixed reviews, the play packed the house and became a hit. Controversy worked. The show went on from 1926-1927 making both Mae and her backers plenty of dough. But that was short lived. Soon a bunch of citizen groups, newspapers, condemned the show and demanded the show be terminated. The show was raided and the producer arrested. The producer managed to obtain an injunction which allowed the show to go on until the case was settled. The arrests, Mae West’s court appearances, gave the play more publicity and the crowds came by the hundreds to fill the playhouse. It was said that the stories that played out in court regarding this case were a lot more hilarious than the play. I can only imagine.

Mae Goes to Jail

In the end the jury found West, the producer, co-producer, and some members of the cast guilty. The judge called the play “obscene and immoral” and said he wanted to make an example of this case to the rest of the country, and prove that New York City was “the most moral city in the universe.”  Ah, NYC most moral? My we’ve come a long way since then… The defendants were sentenced to 10 days in jail, except the cast members. With that said, “she (Mae) nonchalantly rouged her lips as she rose to leave, and swaggered across the courtroom,” the Daily News noted.  The papers had a party with Mae in prison. Much like today, the media just loves a juicy story to play up. There were “horror” stories about her underwear and ugly stockings in prison. The media seriously has to get a life… Mae emerged from her prison time nine days later unscathed and held a press conference. She said that her time in prison was a learning experience, that the conversations she had with other inmates gave her enough material for 2-3 more plays! LOL

This all played out just as Mae planned, the scandal catapulted her to stardom. A year after this scandal she wrote and starred in other controversial plays, one called “The Drag,” a play about gay men in the theater world, a taboo at the time. Finally in 1932 a lover by the name of George Raft, and we all know him, lured her to Hollywood to co-star with him in her first movie, “Night after Night.” In 1933 Mae West was the highest paid woman in America, and a 40-year-old sex symbol.

Mae died at the age of 87 in 1980. By this time she saw the change in American cinema, no more censorship to fight. And maybe, just maybe, she felt she had a little something to do with that. After all, it was Mae who felt a woman could not only speak freely about sex, but joke about it as well. It was Mae who pioneered the art of using sex and scandal to advance her career. Can’t say that I agree with it all, but I got to say, the woman had guts, and was a woman way, way, ahead of her day. And yes, censorship made her and she proved the axiom that sex certainly does sell.