As Mae West herself once proclaimed, “Some women know how
to get what they want. Others don’t. I’ve always known
how.” This epigram explains the title as well as the mindset
of this very driven and singular woman. Charlotte Chandler,
venerated biographer of Alfred Hitchcock, Groucho Marx and, most
recently, Bette Davis, turns her keen eye to the life and career of
one of the most iconic stars of Hollywood.
Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, New York, in 1893, she quickly
found her calling, and it involved a stage, a spotlight and a
receptive audience. Mae, who changed her name only slightly from
the nickname of “May” for aesthetic reasons, was the
first child of Matilda and Jack West. Jack was known throughout New
York as “Battlin’ Jack,” a tough, no-nonsense
neighborhood boxer who once laid a guy flat with one punch for
merely looking at his young wife. Her parents wanted to give their
talented daughter all they could and encouraged her to perform on
the stage, which she did, with great success. She spent her
formative years in variety shows, vaudeville tours and the
burlesque circuit, literally growing up in front of her
audience.
When she came of age, Mae decided that instead of fitting a
rather voluptuous peg into a square hole, she would do far better
if she wrote her own material. Thus, Mae West the playwright was
born. Her first play, scandalously titled Sex, opened in
1926 and became something of a cause célèbre. Mae was
convicted of obscenity and sentenced to 10 days in jail. She could
have had her lawyer and soon-to-be lover persuade the
powers-that-be to knock the sentence down to community service, but
Mae felt it was more ho