Mae West

“Why don’t you come up and see me some time?” Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and author is still regarded as the pop archetype of secual wantonness and ribald humour. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of
a film legend?Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and
underworlkd figures, nad follows her journey through vaudeville, Broadway, and finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen’s most popular – and colourful- stars. Exploring West’s penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed haeavily from African Americna culture, music, adance and humour. Viewing West as a trickster, Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black tradition of
double-speak and “signifying”, West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the phenomenon of a black woman passing for white. This absolutely fascinating study is the
first comprehensive interpretive account of Mae West’s life and work. It reveals a beloved icon as a radically subversive artist consiously creating her own complex image.

Author Biography

Jill Watts is an Associate Profesor of History at California State University, San Marcos and is Co-Director of the Women’s Studies Program.