Mary Jane "Mae" West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned over seven decades.

[1] Considered a sex symbol, she was known for her breezy sexual independence and her lighthearted bawdy double entendres, often delivered in a husky contralto voice.

When her film career ended, she wrote books and plays, continued to perform in Las Vegas and London and on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums.

[30] West developed her career in vaudeville, appearing in such circuits (or "wheels") as that run by Gus Sun of Ohio, which was considered bottom of the barrel but gave her experience.

[43] In her 1959 autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, a memoir compiled by ghostwriter Stephen Longstreet, West strongly objects to hypocrisy while also disparaging homosexuality: I have always hated the two-faced, the smoother-over folk — the people who preach loudly one way of life, and then do something in private that they're against in public.

[46] Her 1928 play Diamond Lil, a story about a racy, easygoing, and ultimately very smart lady of the 1890s, became a Broadway hit and cemented West's image in the public's eye.

[48] Three years after the initial success of Diamond Lil, West portrayed another sexually charged character, Babe Gordon, in The Constant Sinner, which opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on September 14, 1931.

[50] Atkinson's "scathing"[51] assessment of her three-act production was published in The Times the day after the dramedy's premiere: ...The Constant Sinner commits one of the major sins in the theatre; it is dull.

This is a sin which is common to all of Miss West's wonderworks except Diamond Lil, but because of the luridness of the hokum plot and the highly colored melodramatic backgrounds of the new piece, it has seldom been more in evidence..."The Constant Sinner" is also, as might be expected, vile as to speech....

Seldom, come to think about it, has fouler talk been heard on the Broadway stage, even in these frank and forward times...However creditable an impersonator of scarlet roles Miss West may be, variety of attack is not among her qualifications as an actress....

During that time, in the months after the play closed, West decided to put her stage career on hold and to accept a short-term, but lucrative, contract offer from Paramount Pictures to perform in a feature film in Hollywood.

[56] The veteran stage performer was by then nearly 40 years old, an unusually late age to begin a film career, especially for women, although Paramount certainly never had the slightest intention of casting her as an ingénue.

In the months after its release, references to West could be found almost everywhere, from the song lyrics of Cole Porter, to a Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural of San Francisco's newly built Coit Tower, to She Done Him Right, a Pooch the Pup cartoon, to My Dress Hangs There, a painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

As Variety put it, "Mae West's films have made her the biggest conversation-provoker, free-space grabber, and all-around box office bet in the country.

[66] Despite Paramount's early objections regarding costs, West insisted the studio hire Duke Ellington and his orchestra to accompany her in the film's musical numbers.

Her next film, Goin' to Town (1935), received mixed reviews, as censorship continued to take its toll by preventing West from including her best lines.

West, along with other stellar performers, was put on a list of actors called "Box Office Poison" by Harry Brandt on behalf of the Independent Theatre Owners Association.

Others on the list were Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, Dolores del Río, Katharine Hepburn and Kay Francis.

Initially, she did not want to do the film, but after actor, director and friend Gregory Ratoff (producer Max Fabian in All About Eve) pleaded with her and claimed he would go bankrupt if she could not help, West relented as a personal favor.

West was so distraught after the experience and by her years of struggling with the strict Hays Code censorship office, that she would not attempt another film role for the next quarter-century.

More outrageous still was an NBC sketch written by Arch Oboler, starring Don Ameche and West as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

[81] Several conservative women's clubs and religious groups admonished the show's sponsor, Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company, for "prostituting" their services for allowing "impurity [to] invade the air".

Nonetheless, Mae West went on to enjoy a record-breaking success in Las Vegas, swank nightclubs such as Lou Walters's The Latin Quarter, Broadway, and London.

[87] When Mae West revived her 1928 play Diamond Lil, bringing it back to Broadway in 1949, The New York Times labeled her an "American Institution—as beloved and indestructible as Donald Duck.

On March 26, 1958, West appeared at the live televised Academy Awards and performed the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Rock Hudson, which received a standing ovation.

[97] After a 27-year absence from motion pictures, West appeared as Leticia Van Allen in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970) with Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, and Tom Selleck in a small part.

The movie was intended to be deliberately campy sex change comedy, but had serious production problems, resulting in a botched film that was both a box-office and critical failure.

[101] Mae West was a shrewd investor, produced her own stage acts, and invested her money in large tracts of land in Van Nuys, a thriving suburb of Los Angeles.

[103] Because of the near-endless last-minute script changes and tiring production schedule, West agreed to have her lines signaled to her through a speaker concealed in her hair piece.

[136][137] Her friend, bishop Andre Penachio, officiated at the entombment in the family mausoleum at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, which had been purchased in 1930 when her mother died.