Mae West

Mae West, born Mary Jane West on August 17, 1893, in Brooklyn, New York, was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose Broadway career extended from 1911 to 1951. The daughter of Mathilde Delker, a corset and fashion model, and John Patrick "Battlin' Jack" West, a former prizefighter who later founded a private investigation agency, West grew up in the Woodhaven, Queens and Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Her mother was a German immigrant from Bavaria, her paternal grandmother was of Irish descent, and her paternal grandfather was of English and Scottish ancestry.

West began entertaining publicly as early as age five at a church social and was competing in local talent contests by age seven. She entered professional vaudeville at fourteen through the Hal Clarendon Stock Company in 1907, performing under the childhood stage name "Baby Mae" and occasionally using the alias "Jane Mast." Her Broadway debut came in 1911 at age eighteen in the revue A La Broadway, staged by her former dancing teacher Ned Wayburn. Though the production closed after eight performances, a New York Times review singled her out, noting that "a girl named Mae West, hitherto unknown, pleased by her grotesquerie and snappy way of singing and dancing." She subsequently appeared in Vera Violetta alongside Al Jolson, and in 1912 played La Petite Daffy in A Winsome Widow. In 1918, she gained considerable attention in the Shubert Brothers revue Sometime, starring opposite Ed Wynn, in which her character Mayme danced the shimmy and her photograph appeared on the sheet music for "Ev'rybody Shimmies Now."

West eventually began writing her own plays under the pen name Jane Mast. Her first starring role as a playwright and performer came with the 1926 production Sex, which she also produced and directed. Despite strong ticket sales, the show drew complaints from religious groups, leading to a police raid of the theater and West's arrest along with the cast. On April 19, 1927, she was sentenced to ten days for corrupting the morals of youth. Choosing the jail sentence over a fine for its publicity value, she served eight days on Welfare Island, with two days off for good behavior. The episode drew extensive media coverage and amplified her public profile considerably.

Her 1928 play Diamond Lil, centered on a clever woman of the 1890s, became a Broadway hit that West revived multiple times throughout her career. She continued writing and staging productions in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including Pleasure Man and The Constant Sinner, the latter of which opened at the Royale Theatre on September 14, 1931, with West playing the role of Babe Gordon. She also appeared in Catherine Was Great during her Broadway years. An earlier work, The Drag, which dealt with homosexuality, completed tryouts in Connecticut and New Jersey but never opened on Broadway following opposition from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

West was known for portraying sexually confident characters and for her use of double entendres, delivered in a distinctive contralto voice. Her walk was said to have been influenced by female impersonators Bert Savoy and Julian Eltinge. Since the 1920s, she spoke publicly in support of gay rights and against police brutality toward gay men. Her views on homosexuality, however, shifted in tone across her published writings: her 1959 autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, ghostwritten by Stephen Longstreet, expressed concerns about homosexuality's effects on society, while her 1975 book Mae West: Sex, Health, and ESP called for greater understanding and tolerance.

As her film career declined, West remained professionally active through writing, Las Vegas and London performances, radio and television appearances, and rock and roll recordings. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her fifteenth among the greatest female screen legends of classic American cinema. Her career as a Broadway performer and book writer, rooted in Brooklyn and shaped by decades of vaudeville and stage work, spanned more than seven decades in total.