Some my favorite quotes can be attributed to this week’s Tart. You’ve heard them all.
“A hard man is good to find.”
“So many men, so little time.”
“When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.”
Vaudeville performer, playwright, movie star, sex icon, Mae West was born in 1893 in Brooklyn. She began performing at an early age, and, with the advent of the Roaring Twenties, she took advantage of the changing attitude toward women’s rights to develop a style and attitude that was sometimes scandalous, but always sensational. She turned her attention to Broadway, and titled her first play “Sex”. Her performance in the leading role won her an arrest and conviction on a morals charge, but it didn’t even slow her down. She followed it up with success after success. Her fourth play on Broadway, in 1928, called “Diamond Lil” was wildly successful, received rave reviews and had theater patrons lined up around the block to purchase tickets. The motion picture industry deemed the play unsuitable for the screen, but a determined Mae went to Hollywood anyway, accepting a small part in a Paramount film with her old friend and movie star, George Raft. Mae was given one line, which she immediately rewrote to fit her own inimitable style. In the film, when a nightclub patron commented “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds.” “Goodness,” she replied, “had nothing to do with it, dearie.” She stole the show. Mae made other movies for Paramount, but by this time, her name was synonymous with sex. Her films met with the very strictest censorship, which frustrated her. The radical changes, that the censors insisted on, changed the films so much that they met with only moderate success. In the late 1930’s, tired of the meddling studio officials and censors, Mae West gave up movie making.
In her later years, she produced a Las Vegas stage show in which she starred, surround by body builder type men in loincloths. Her career was revived during the 60’s and 70’s, during the “free love” era, where her true genius was finally appreciated. Mae West died in 1980 at the age of 87, but she left us with this quote, which became her signature line: “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime, when I’ve got nothing on but the radio.”
We think Mae would have been proud to be named Tart of the Week!
