Mae West's birthday
Published August 17, 2003
Mae West was born 110 years ago today, August 17, 1893.
She brought her marginally legal vaudeville hooker act to the big screen. Besides being a buxom physical specimen, she had a very strong force of personalityand a sharp wit. Her playfully sarcastic purr would have to melt any straight man, for starters. She was the platonic ideal, the "eiday" of hookers, the nietzchean uber-hooker.
That force of personality came out also as a writer. She wrote plays, and co-wrote numerous of the screenplays she was in, including My Little Chickadee with WC Fields.
My favorite Mae West dialogue-
Judge: You are showing contempt for this court!
Mae: Oh, NO sir. I'm doing my best to hide it.
- Mae West's birthday
- Published: August 17, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Video
- Writer: Al Barger
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Comments on this articleComments
Yeah, the Hays office was definitely her nemesis.
ONE film with Fields. Yes, my bad.
Al, "Platonic ideal" and "Nietzschean" do not necessarily go together. Check out my URL.
But I get your larger point. Ms. West was the proto-hottie.
Platonic and Nietzchean do not necessarily go together, that is correct. It's good to see someone so philosophically astute paying attention.
"Ei-day" of hookers, and "uber-hooker" are two separate thought categories.
It's not just that she was hot, but that she was smart and hot. In the words of James Brown, "You've got to use just what you got to get just what you want." She was expert.
Come Up and See Mae - at her birthday party!
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Not to be too picky, but Fields and West only shared billing once in Chickadee: the film doesn't show either at their best (by this time, the ultra-prudish Hays Office was clamping on "obscenity" in movies - and Mae's greatest, risque material did not fit within the parameters of what the blue-noses considered decent), but the duo is still fun to watch. I'm No Angel catches the woman at her peak, though. . .