Mae West: And The Men Who Knew Her | The Hollywood Collection

[Music] mae west was a superstar at Paramount and the Paramount gate that I'm looking out over there now she kept that gate open many years she was very advanced for her time for the stories were always had a risque agent so marvelous risque one-liners been this you must recall was a time of very strict censorship in Hollywood we scared him equally say I'm a bad man good man she took this rather ordinary physical visa wasn't particularly pretty she didn't have a good figure by almost any standards and she created this absolute goddess that was synonymous with sex and sex appeal for years I shall die to make you happy but she wouldn't be much use to me dead she was all the sexy kind of women that you had heard about but you never knew she was funny about it though that was her saving grace I'm sorry you think all of your diamonds and you do with your soul so you think my oh my soul and your doing my diamonds thank you I came for running around single we're intellectual opposites what do you mean well I'm intellectual and urops the character's name was Mae West you could call her diamond lil you could call her my little chickadee you could call her whatever you wanted she was still Mae West we asked what types of men you prefer just to domestic and far won't you tell us where you're stopping during your visit here [Music] hello I'm Dom DeLuise and I had the privilege of working with Mae West and I do mean privilege I worked on her last film sextet and take it from me she was some kind of lady most everyone addressed her as Miss West but the first day I walked in and I said oh good morning Mae she smiled and she said oh is that what I sound like and I said oh yeah you betcha Mae she threw her head back and laughed from then on I called him a to me that was a gift for six years Mae West was one of Hollywood's biggest stars Mae West on her own saved paramount pictures from bankruptcy and while she was at it she brought sex out of the closet she made it fun the way she walked the way she sang the way she dressed and most of all the way she delivered those lines single-handedly Mae West changed show business and sex forever and with that one scene Mae West became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and certainly one of the most prominent stars here at Paramount and for the next few years Mae West was the biggest attraction paramount head she was a gold mine play my mouth the first film she wanted to do a Paramount she had read the scripts and didn't like it at all and told I guess it was Adolph Zukor who was running assume that I can do better than that went away and came back two or three days late days later with a whole new script the whole idea of the script which was the film they made everything that Mae did on the screen the other people in the scenes had to fight for for their presence because Mae had that tremendous dominance that when you looked at the screen no matter how many people were there you only looked at Mae and her movements in her dialogue wait we go yes madam sure your mug may would have burned down the hole of Records to hide her age but the census roll shows she was born Mary Jane West on August 17th 1893 the place Brooklyn New York which was obvious every time she opened her mouth the elevated train was already making distances shorter but the city still depended on horses mais father John Patrick West was nicknamed battling Jack he kept a livery stable in a tough neighborhood he and Matilda West had two other children Beverly and John Patrick for second but it was Mary Jane who was the center of her mother's life and dreams that was your real name Mary Jane Wes when you're born with kind of a mary-jane quality you want to maybe get out of that situation that she said I wanted to get out of being a little Mary Jane my grandmother and Mae West had been girlhood chums as she used to say and I think they were originally attracted to each other because they were about the same age and they both had the first name of Mary and they both had interest in a lot of the same boys her mother had had her in child roles as baby Mae in little stock productions around Brooklyn and Queens she was made for the stage to be the focus of all eyes Matilda believe this and Mae was a very good pupil she believed it to other kids might enjoy themselves at Coney Island they were all manner of simple delights in those far-off days but Mae stuck to the hard grind of the vaudeville circuit at 15 she teamed up with a vaudevillian in Willy Hogan and at only 17 she married Frank Wallace a song-and-dance man with whom she had toured but Mays only marriage didn't last they soon separated and Frank was really ever mentioned again but the Mae West we knew and loved was yet to be born after the first world war when vaudeville became a lot more risque she realized that that was where she had to get her audience if you did the juggling act if you came out and did straight songs that this was not going to get her anywhere in fact her early reviews say just that that it she's quite ordinary in a not very good voice and a not very beautiful woman and so she tried everything she dyed her hair red she bleached her hair blonde and started realizing that there were other entertainers at the top Heba Tang Wei who always did double on Tom material and songs [Music] Savoy and Brennan Albert Savoy was a female impersonator her hats that were twice as big as anything that was in fashion and Bert's humor was very bold and very very risque for the time when Mae West started Lillian Russell was doing her vaudeville act at the palace and around the world the songs songs about men songs about sexual happenings and Mae West decided that she was going to do Lillian Russell in a totally different way in 1911 Mae received rave reviews when she appeared in a la Broadway the following years she opened in the Broadway comedy a winsome Widow she was soon revising her vaudeville skits to make them spicier May enjoyed the reaction she provoked she grew even bolder in 1913 she opened in some time by now the senses were outraged she did a dance which was derived from a dance she saw in Harlem called the shimmy sawaal she did this dance with the number it created a sensation and it was her first really big recognition as a stage personality the Schubert's wanted to label her the shimmy girl and she said no no it I don't want to be labeled like that she said I have to be labeled for something that's gonna last a lot longer than a dance [Music] World War one was over and it was time to enjoy life there were speakeasies [Music] there was prohibition the demon alcohol threatened the purity of the nation [Music] even greater was the threat of unfettered sex and Mae West was its personification there were other plays that opened and closed and vaudeville to us reviewers invariably commented on Mays sexy comedy style and flipped dialogue and then Mae West found a way to make sure she would not be forgotten in 1926 May wrote a play under a pseudonym it opened in New York it was called sex it starred Mae West and was a box office hit and none of the papers in New York would carry the ad they didn't want to use the words se extra letters se X at first the conservative reviewers savaged the play but then the New York police did Mae West a favor they closed the play for three days she was put in jail she went to jail on Governors Island for ten days because of this and she lived in jail like a princess the warden and his wife took her out every evening for dinner and she said she had the best time of all she talked about having gone to jail like it was a like a medal of honor in a sense she did deal with subjects that were not considered normal subjects for a theatre comedy then homosexuality black-white relationship things like when Mays diamond lil opened in New York he was 1928 Mae West had found the character she would play for the rest of her life the bad girl with the heart of gold the play was a smash hit four years later May bought that bad girls to a silver screen that now had the ability to talk no no I couldn't we had several sirens ish early days as they called him : Agri Gloria Swanson and they had the the eyes and the whole thing but a lot of that was silent and then Mae came in with talking pictures of course in 1932 and her dialogue was very risque she didn't care what she did or what she said and it was always funny what she did and what she said and the audience was always slightly titillated a little bit shocked very laughter lied she knew how to write for herself she was a wonderful writer for Mae West and no one could quite write lines for her like she could night after night she doesn't have the lead in that that's the only film in which may West never got Top Billing she was a secondary character in it but she exploded on the screen after she did night after night with George Raft I remember enjoyed saying Mae stole everything but the cameras and of course she also came with this reputation from New York having done diamond lil and been this notorious woman that often got arrested or was threatened with the rest and so people were rather suspicious of her in the first place but of course that was very good for the box-office like in one of her films she said it's a man's world she said I happen to know how to play their game you know and that's that was her attitude when she went to Paramount they offered her a salary and her first question was how much does Adolph Zukor make he was the head of the studio and they told her he was getting two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year they said that I want two hundred and fifty one thousand dollars I want to be the highest-paid person in the studio flood of mail came to the studio all addressed to Mae West the box of his triumph of 9f tonight convinced Paramount it had found a new star Mae's contract did not only include the highest salary ever paid by the studio she also demanded and was given full script approval fine next film may selected a story based on her played diamond lil she did make one concession to the studio she agreed to change the title it became she done him wrong she discovered curico she was on her way to her car and zuker was with her and they were about to get into her car and she saw this tall man and she said was the tall dark and handsome gent and he said it's an actor ESA's it his contract expires he's a big player she said the guy can talk he's my leading man that's a Cary Grant truly became a star I always did like a man the uniform that one fits you grin I just come up sometimes to me I'm home every evening but I'm busy every evening you know I met your clan before I screw up sometimes oh well I don't be afraid I won't tell but come on well son your function you can be a head Cary Grant was in two of her pictures and I think those two pictures established him as a motion picture star and one of our biggest attractions here at Paramount maybe I ain't got no soul yes you have but you keep it hidden under a mask you'll wake up and find it sometime haven't you ever met a man that could make you happy sure lots of times mae west had done it she was 40 for six more years she would be one of the top movie stars in America and around the world and she did it by promoting an idea some still found a shocking and even dangerous sex could be fun every masculine eye oh well what's pretty go into that [Music] Hollywood in the 30s the studio system was in its heyday and the studio's themselves were huge dream factories for some however sex was turning those dreams into a nightmare we must be on the lookout for scenes or action or dialogue which are likely to give offense that's when the Hays office came along and there was an actual censorship board then responsible men in this industry want no such pictures and will not allow these to be shown it took years for Hollywood to ever get away from things such as even if a married couple was shown in a bedroom they had to have double beds if nobody could ever be on the sit on the side of a bed if somebody was in the bed with that their foot on the floor we worked with producers authors scenario writers to the end that our pictures maybe the vitals and wholesome entertainment we all want these to be canapé apart this may made more pictures for us here at Paramount the census became more dedicated to trying to subdue Mei Weston to water down her dialogue she told me this herself she would write out her script and she would put all kinds of lines in it that that she knew the censors were going to cut because it got to the point where they wouldn't even let her film us anything until they read the script you were wonderful tonight I'm always wonderful at night her sexuality all had to be done by my suggestions by innuendo nothing nothing is obvious or blatant as we could have today in terms of what we are allowed to show on the screen in terms of the human body and in certain degrees of nakedness tonight you are especially good well well I'm good I'm very good but when I'm bad I'm better [Music] she plays coochie dancer and a carnival and because it's Mae West you accept it but it is really ludicrous under any situation that this woman of this size and this dimension would be hired by a carnival according to Mays script and according to the Paramount film all the guys sitting around watching Mae West were just almost beside themselves because she was such a hot number but I mean that's that's why it all worked because you couldn't really take her seriously as far as exuding sex it was simply because she knew how to pull it off she knew how to get those lines out there and just innuendo like I said double entendre and do this stuff and that stuff that was a secret of Mae West Mae West impact on the American public showed itself in revealing ways curves were back in style and so were the garments to keep them under control I think if she had looked like Dietrich or if she had looked like Marilyn Monroe or something I think she couldn't have gotten away perhaps with what she did but I think one of the reasons she got away with it was because she was this rather oversized almost matronly looking actual woman Mae West certainly appealed to the men and I don't believe that the women were intimidated by Mae West because they saw this bigger than life figure on the screen with the hourglass figure and all of the risque dialogue that she had an affinity had in selling songs I think they were entertained Bart [Music] cause I just came from a story I guess you know she was never a victim like many actresses of the day she was she was the one Mae West ran everything personally and as a movie character I think Mae was primarily fascinated and interested men I don't think she liked other women too much but not some exceptions she is she did like my wife her father was a very strong and dominant figure and that was the world then it was a patriarchy not a matriarchy and I think Mae in her own way rather resented that so I think she made a determination earlier on that she was not going to be found in a position of being subjected to the male dominance all through her life and she established that early on and kept insisting and working on that and and finding it all the way through [Music] I can't even think of here let me tell you something don't have a little man put anything over on you outside of an umbrella yeah she knew how to get a man to do things for her and how to be coquettish and bat her eyes around a cinematographer or a director and get them to do what she wanted them to do she was the first liberated woman really I mean when she came on with these lines and no one ever told her what to do were are drug her around or pushed her down she pushed in them she told the men what to do how to do when to do it come up and see me sometime and women love that I mean they were tired of getting the short end of the stick I'm wild about the wildest men make the best pets oh she won't did not want an all-consuming love though on a sense she preferred a rather light romance she didn't like a person to take over any part of her life or demand anything from her men who come into her life or to realize that she was a free agent and they may not have the same freedom no matter who you were she had this routine I mean she'd start at the head and go down to the shoes and look at you and everything and say hello you know it was so calculated but it worked and you couldn't help but be fascinated by her because at that moment she made you think you were the only man in the whole wide world anywhere the sexual woman Mae West invented and everyone watching Mae West saw the sexuality through Mae West's eyes when she looked at a good-looking man whether he be perfect or not she believed him to be perfect and she made that audience in the dark believed that that man was as attractive as he was not a dangerous woman thanks you look good to me too come on she knew what worked for her she know how to manipulate everybody she was real best press agent mother you afraid of me I'm afraid of you [Music] Mei bought the Ravens what she lived there for 40 years everything in that apartment was white and gold mirrored walls a nude statue of made on the piano her bedroom round circular bed above wall-to-wall mirrors and her answer to that was simply well I'd like to see how I'm doing she became a multi-millionairess not just by writing the screenplays not just by appearing in her screenplays or her stage plays but by buying property [Music] my name was called Anthony grin she was dressed in white in this dingy office but somehow she gave it a glamour and as I entered the door she reached over that's my muscle my I said I'm not feeling you up I just want to see what you're made of that's the other arm says now I'm gonna get a little personal because I want to know whether your legs can stand up and felt my legs very good I wanted to lie but I was 18 I said 20s I'll use you some timely at 21 I walk that and then in a dream I mean I met Mae West I had been waiting for for at least 45 minutes to an hour and just sitting perching on this chair in this white white room looking at all the white white statues and pictures all of whom of course were this May and finally in came the lady herself very small she was very tiny much tinier than you expected her to be and one day during rehearsal the leg of her pant got caught on the edge of the sofa and went way up and I saw the shoe and the shoe was about 9 inches or more high so I came to realize that the Mae West walk was in fact a shuffle on stilts [Music] I don't think she was over five feet tall she made up that difference was wearing terribly high-heeled she was even platform shoes and then filing her blonde hair way up on top as she once put it she said it's not what I say it's how I say it it's not what I do but how I do it and how I say it when I do it and that's it [Music] she was in a very filmy negligee her hair was very carefully done to look casual with ringlets hanging down and as she was on the arms of two of her muscle man I think she had a whole retinue of him and she came in and said so what you want to see me about and then she said you're a smokin man aren't you I found it very interesting her background and the kind of lady she was she was quite the quite the opposite in many ways from the kind of sex pot or sexy lady was she portrayed on the stream she did the smoke she didn't drink and I asked her about this once as well you know I haven't drunk since I was about 18 since I went out one night and I got a little tipsy and I came home and I was very rude not nice to my mother and my mother just really took me down and I was so embarrassed and so ashamed after that and what I'd done being a little drunk that I never talk again in my life see what you're doing find Annie she told me privately was one of her favorites although she was very disappointed in the cutting of it they cut scenes out which were very important to it but the censors at the time didn't want this or that you'll never get anywhere because you don't know how to wrestle the devil tying a knot in his tail won't throw him on his back you gotta grab him by the horns you gotta know him know his tricks I know I'm how I know she never again tried to put any really dramatic acting and anything she just stayed Mae West nice and cool this afternoon is it I'm sorry I don't carry spare parts I always had a feeling that Mae was enjoying what she did on the screen just as much as the audience was enjoying watching her do it and she always had a little sparkle and when a scene was over you could just see the smile on her face of satisfaction knowing that she did this scene the way she wanted it in the way she knew that the audience would would accept it and like it she was very protective of her image as far as photos she did a thing with costumes it's very interesting she had her figure put into the costumes in as much as the seams of the costume had a contour she had put her thumb on that seam so that when a picture was taken and retouched they would cut her figure into the seams of the dress which gave her a constant hourglass figure no matter what year it was or when it was done oh it's these cobblestones that make me appear to be galloping she could feel lights she could tell where the heat was from alight she could turn and just to know that the shadow from her nose was not good because of that lamp up there and we'd have to put another gel in her walk was calculated the movements everything was done she knew when to walk up the stairs and she'd say hold it and talk to the cameraman and say your angle should be down farther when I wiggle I want it all to be seen I think she had that typical kind of tunnel vision that particularly those ladies have to have to become great stars she was like her own invention but I don't think I've ever met one whether it was Betty Davis Marlene Dietrich whoever that didn't have total focus on themselves and how they presented themselves how other people reacted to them how they would seduce people I met her at George Cukor's house and hit one other house guest for dinner that night Greta Garbo and Garbo never got a word in because Mae West did all the talking I think she was probably one of the great ego people of all time her favorite subject was Mae West I'm not sure she ever got out and smelled the flowers or ever minaton had picnics in the park or went sailing on the bay or whatever but obviously those things weren't important to her she would have done them she pretty much stayed in that apartment the Ravens would in Hollywood and lived her life out as Mae West playing this image that she had created as far as regretting having children and things like that no no Mae was not that kind of person she was just she was - she was - unto herself I don't think I ever saw the real Mae West but I'm not sure I was the only one who never did I think that the real Mae West was so highly covered by this actress playing Mae West I'm not sure a real person still existed on one occasion I can remember we drove down Fifth Avenue and I was with her and we were in the back of the limousine and the way she kept up with what were the current fashions where she was always looking in store windows so we would get out this would be around 11:30 midnight she said you know I feel like going out to shop nice a shopping you can't shop now the stores are closed says no no no no it's quite all right I I have my way of shopping she would stop and she would look in the windows and see what the mannequins were wearing and what the colors were and the length of the dresses and this and that and if anyone came along the limousine which was following very slowly behind suddenly the back door flew open she jumped in the back until whoever was on the street passed a check in the morning eventually as it was inevitable we heard sirens and I knew they were coming for us well the police did stop they pushed both of us up against a wall and I said they said what are you doing and I said miss West is shopping they said at this hour with a flashlight and I said well this is what she usually shops by 1938 reviewers and audiences had begun to complain Mae West wonderful flip humor had lost some of its same constant attacks by senses had left some of her best lines on the cutting room floor every day's a holiday was May's last film at Paramount but in her six years there she have left an indelible mark and a stronger studio [Music] I stay in 1940 the improbable happened Mae West agreed to co-star with WC Fields to future generations it would be a magical partnership these assumptions what kind of motions are good but a cautious maid had some conditions written into her contract she demanded that WC Fields if he was drunk and her contract stated that he was to be ejected from the set she always worked with very talented people the one she didn't want to work with the course was WC Fields and it was one of her most successful associations how do you know second I thought I had the voice of experience she did not envision herself as a comedy character per se and she always preferred working with people like Cary Grant Randolph Scott a Warren William you know handsomer devilish men that she took seriously as leading men so that's why she wasn't too keen about WC Fields my little chickadee would eventually become Mae West most popular film but at first review as a pool and audiences were not exactly overjoyed to see their favorite Mae West become the butt of someone else's joking especially if that someone was WC Fields she always had good directors she always had at the best production values she did not go out at all in a second-rate vehicles the only time perhaps that happened was when she did a film called the Heat's on but again she was now at an age the war had come along audiences were looking for the you know pinup girls the Betty graybles and all of that and that was a whole era later than May these girls were all like 20 years younger than she was that's when she started concentrating on the stage Mae West believed at one time she was Empress of Russia she believed that she was Catherine the Great so she wrote a play called Catherine was great she began to toast and Broadway all over again I was a comedy all about the Empress and when the play was over they invited the audience to go up on the stage and the spotlight was still there they they wonderful spotlight that may need it so much was there and she just handed out autographed pictures you know the postcard size pictures and the audience she never broke the illusion of who Mae West was because Mae West was an institution the world's premiere stateside and also had the longest eyelashes in 1948 Mae left for England where she opened in diamond lil she was 55 now but there was no let-up in her plans for new productions and new plays work and being Mae West nothing else men what do you think of men men well men of my career may tell me what is your hobby my hobby is men funny I like to ask what what is our definition of love love love is what you make it and who you make it with it can be a an art a luxury a physical culture mm-hmm Mae West I want to ask you one thing what is your greatest ambition my greatest ambition well okay come up and see me sometime I'll let you know diamond she sailed over on the Queen Mary was there in London never went to Paris never went to any of the European countries there and I thought to myself why would you go all that way and not go sightseeing at least and but Mae wasn't like that it was wonderful in London England the men were terrific they were a little reserved than I am not she had adapted a play come on up ring twice but enabled her to take Mae West to theaters across America and it was always diamond lil to put on somewhere new a devoted companion Jim Timoney would be by her side to help it happen but it was always up to me to make the final decisions Marlena Dietrich was mentored by Josef von Sternberg Marilyn Monroe she had her Johnny hides in her Lee Strasberg whereas May she was her own advisor she knew what she was doing right when she started and she never gave up mae west was a person who philosophy was you have a choice to be happy or to be sad so why be sad the only time did I ever see her even slightly sad my mother and I were sitting around talking with her and Mae watched my mother she put her finger between her teeth and she says you know Kenny I do the whole world I'd give everything in the world everything I have if I had my mother back when her mother passed away Mae West's whole life crumbled only did she have the sweet spirits and the divine forces that kept her alive because she knew she could communicate in many a night sweet spirit many a night Mae West and I and a group of people either sat in my home or the Ravenswood and talk to the spirits may Wes was very superstitious she loves psychics she loved fortune-telling and I walked out of her dressing room with her one day and there was a new penny on the sidewalk and she picked up and she said hey see this is a good luck penny and you want to be a producer I want you to put this in your shoe and never be without it and wear it every day and all 20 years later when paramount announced that they had made me a producer here at Paramount the first call I got was from Mae West and she said eh see I told you you wore that penny and that penny did it in 1954 Jim Timoney died he had graduated from lovah to devoted friend and helper for months may remained in total seclusion at the Ravenswood and then she came out with a new idea what better way for her public to experience Mae West and in the flesh nothing to play this time rather in a nightclub act where she would sing move and deliver her most memorable quips framed by a bevy of ardent bodybuilders [Music] she said we have something for the girls boys boys boys she would undulate and move her face in such a way but it was always like gay like she wasn't going to make an approach towards you or put her hand out at you but kind of walk around you and we were always supposed to look at her with desire but she didn't feel that it should be overt she'd all be subtle she didn't want a competing female line that was also in Las Vegas in Hollywood in San Francisco all the chorus lines were eliminated in diamond lil it was interesting in makeup the actors the girls all had to have dark hair they had to tone their teeth down so that it looked too white and there was some kind of an off gray substance they could rub on their teeth and may of course was blond beautiful smile beautiful skin and the girls also had to use a darker makeup they couldn't use a light makeup so that when she appeared she truly looked angelic Mae West is always giving a lot of credit for having great courage to going out and doing the nightclub act with the muscle men and everything when she was in her 50s but I'm not sure it was courage as much as desperation because she had no career in films at that point they had been turned over to a much younger group of ladies and television was certainly not a area that may West would have been welcomed into except as a special guest star occasionally because people would be afraid she'd come in their living rooms and tarnished them because she always had this this kind of Boreas sexual image she lived in the very center of Hollywood though she was rarely seen around town but her name was still listed in the phone because what if a producer should need her but she was a prisoner she could not outside of a small circle of friends that she had for a long time and also some like myself a young young boy could be around her because they would literally smother her and she had to perform she had to be armed so that was extremely difficult to say she trapped herself Mae West trapped herself into becoming a recluse she was in this cocoon world she was protected of course her bodyguard and she was either in her apartment or in her limousine or in her restaurant and there was always people with her to protect to help her I remember going up one day and his Paul at me and the door she just comes right out of her bedroom and she says oh how you doing honey and she comes close to me and I kind of hug her a little she hugs me and she says well you're looking good what have you done to yourself and her nothing she said well how old are you now this was after I'd left the Ravenswood and I said well I'm 34 at the time that was quite a while ago and she said well honey you look 24 you could pass for 24 look at him Paul isn't he great doesn't he look great and that I mean she was that to me made my day she was fair for Mae West to tell me I looked great in the cast come on up ring twice was a man who had been in her muscles show in Las Vegas or Nova he was absolutely devoted to her adored her he was at her beck and call it was always miss West wants this miss West what's that he was certainly a man who's easily 40 or more years younger than she but he absolutely doted on her and she onion nobody else even got a head but Mae West had the ability to live her life as you saw it on the screen in the character she had created she was surrounded by glamour her incredible wardrobe and this turned me on as a nine-year-old child going to movies and I said I have got simply got to be Mae West and we were having a Halloween party so I got my grandmother and I said come on make me into Mae West so she dug up an old dress my aunt supplied the shoes we got a spun glass wig a gay night he's had and off I went to Thomson junior school as Mae West popping up the street in my Minnie Mouse shoes ladies and gentlemen from one high heeled step beyond from the Twilight Zone a return of Mae West [Music] May was this flamboyant extravagant very special person and when I walked on stage she was instantly recognizable and the audience just went bananas I've always said that sex is a misdemeanor the more you misdemeanor you get sex is like British if you don't have a good partner you better have a good hand she enjoyed people who impersonated her and went to see them quite often she'd be very offended if any of the impersonators spoke or used foul language because she felt that wasn't part of her if you think you're coming up and I'm whoring people identified her with something naughty and because she was so desperate for fame she played on that naughtiness she was a woman who spent her entire life grasping for the only kind of power a woman could have through her sex appeal and that was true even in her 80s when she did Myra Breckinridge I was around the set of Myra Breckinridge quite a bit when she was making that with Rex Reed and Raquel Welch that was a very testy period for her difficult period because she was coming back into the movie medium and she wanted to look good and she was a little old once and she was working in Myra Breckinridge she said what do you think of Raquel wells do you think she's a good-looking lady and I said yes I think she's quite good-looking but she really isn't as good-looking as you that seemed to please her quite a bit I remember one day she was auditioning muscle men in her dressing room and she had a strange little dressing room that was pulled on to the set by two guys and I remember we all sat around waiting for her to emerge from this little dressing room wondering what was going on in there but I being a movie critic from the East Coast always had more moxie than anybody else because I was never sure what the pecking order was so I just walked up and I said Mae she had not asked me to call her Miss West so I always called her Mae I said Mae what is going on in there what are you what were you doing I'm really curious and she just looked at me and said we weren't playing Scrabble the end result was a little bit sad for me to watch because she took herself seriously she thought the men were in love with her she thought she was still a sex symbol didn't matter she still stole the movie every scene she was in lit up when she was around because she just had that undefinable something that is really stardom it separates the men from the boys and the real women from the kids I mean Mae West whatever that was she had it may was 85 when she agreed to star in sex Ted she played a bride of 28 she insisted she had to be portrayed as the eternal Mae West desired by every male in sight they was very careful about how she looked and she took transparencies and she did not like them to make sure they would not be used she would punch a hole in the face on the transparency thereby rendering it useless it was sad to see this terribly old old lady going through it not only in the finished product but certainly on the set when she was working she would often have to sit down when they had dance numbers that she was you know singing and dancers behind him after a sextet but we got into her car I said nothing about the film she asked me nothing the chauffeur was driving I was sitting on the backseat with me and I just continued to look out the left side of the car Mae was looking out the right side we didn't talk to one another I was determined not to talk about the film without any warning she put her hand on mine whereupon I turned to her and she says well dear that was yesterday I've got to think about tomorrow I'm not sure there was a real Mae West anymore whatever the girl was this little girl that was three or four or five skipping along streets before she invented this character that she became I'm not sure she existed anymore after a while I think Mae West as Cary Grant totally became Cary Grant he was no longer a cockney little guy and he became Cary Grant in his real life he grew into that role he played it so often and so well and I think that's what happened to me West for women she represented an individual who carved her niche every bloody way to the top of a profession that was run by men and even if she was a cartoon she still had power and not too many women in the industry in those days had that kind of power oh man it's a portal wife and me at the same time honey it's never me [Music] what have you done in me she glowed she had an incandescent that was absolutely incredible when she came on the screen you couldn't look at anything else you didn't want to look at anything else she looked like a decorated wedding cake she looked like a girl coming out of a cake at a party you all but all dressed in fabulous gowns and furs and plumage and jewels she made you happy she made you laugh she made you happy she could make you cry she can be imitated but there was only one name [Music] she only made 11 pictures and the world laughed and loved Mae West and she left a legacy she influenced every sex goddess who came after her ah but she still remains queen of them all oh thank you your majesty [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Hollywood Collection

Views: 2,527,894

Rating: 4.7836871 out of 5

Keywords: steve mcqueen, cinema, actor, shirley temple, actress, documentary, movie, biopic, hollywood collection, charlton heston, lassie, biography, filmmaker, theater, film, bio, star, director, clint eastwood, marilyn monroe, theatre, michael caine, hollywood, audrey hepburn, stage, free, mae, mae west, sex, bombshell, icon, sex symbol, sexuality, feminism, actors on actors, actress photoshoot, mae west movies, mae west movies online, mae west movies with cary grant

Id: JpcEEyXo7QQ

Length: 56min 59sec (3419 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2016