Mae West (Billy Rose Theatre Collection: NYPL)

Name: MAE WEST (1893-1980)

Born: MARY JANE WEST, BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN

Occupation: ACTRESS, PLAYWRIGHT, SCREENWRITER, AND SEX SYMBOL.

Starting in Vaudeville at the age of fourteen in 1907, Mae West experimented with numerous different types of characters before becoming a controversial sex-symbol actress.  She tried being a male impersonator, a coon shouter (where she would dress up in blackface) and a character named Sis Hopkins.  She finally got her big break in 1918 in the Shubert Brothers’ Sometime.  Her Broadway credits, some of which she wrote (using the pen name Jane Mast), include A La Broadway, Sometime, The Mimic of World 1921, Sex (Writer), The Drag (Writer), The Wicked Age, Diamond Lil, The Pleasure Man (Writer), The Constant Sinner, Catherine Was Great, Come On Up, and Sextette. Her films include Night After Night, She done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel, the Bell of the Nineties, Goin’ to Town, Klondike Annie, Go West, Young Man, Every Day’s a Holiday, My Little Chickadee, The Heat’s On, Myra Breckinridge, and Sextette. She was prosecuted on moral charges for “corrupting the morals of youth” and was sentenced to ten days in jail, in which she had a ball.  Her play The Drag, which dealt with homosexuality, never opened because of controversy.  She was an early supporter of the women’s liberation movement and a supporter of gay rights.