Mae West: The Woman Who Fashioned Herself a Big Star

Few quips have achieved the immortality of Mae West’s sultry invitation, “Come up and see me sometime.” She issued it first on the New York stage in 1928 in “Diamond Lil,” and then a slight variation on the screen in “She Done Him Wrong,” where its eternity was cemented by the guy on the receiving end: a virtually unknown actor named Cary Grant.

From that same 1933 movie came two other memorable West-isms: Lady Lou, when asked, “Haven’t you ever met a man who can make you happy?,” retorted: “Sure. Lots of times.” And, as reassurance to another shady lady, she observed, “When women go wrong, men go right after them.”

Pithy wisecracks are the actress’ most obvious legacy. When you delve into Westmorabilia, it’s amazing how many familiar witty, on-the-mark irreverences and clever double-entendres can be traced straight back to the blond, hourglass-shaped actress who wrote much of her own material and delivered it in her unique, slack-mouthed style.

But beyond the racy quotes that sprang, tough-dame style from the side of her mouth, West’s was a story of survival, persistence, independence and unshakable self-esteem. In her life--which ended in 1980, at 87--she became both an icon and a caricature.

Thanks to the miracle of celluloid, we are able to see the brassy and brazen self-mocking vamp of the Hollywood films West made before the censors homogenized her act--the classic “My Little Chickadee,” with W.C. Fields (1940), comes around regularly on television; many of the other films are available on video--and the campy creature who, at 85, insisted on playing a young chorus girl, a pathetic parody of her youthful self, in that 1978 bomb “Sextette.”

But before there was a Hollywood Mae West, there was the stage sensation who came up through the ranks of burlesque, vaudeville and revues (West began performing when she was 6). And it’s that West who is back with us for a visit, via surrogates, in two current off-Broadway productions.

“Dirty Blonde,” an original play about West and her legacy, written by and starring her fellow 5-foot-2 Brooklynite Claudia Shear, opens Monday in the East Village at the New York Theatre Workshop. Shear plays herself on the trail of West (including making a visit to the Brooklyn mausoleum where the actress is entombed) and the living sex symbol at various stages in her colorful, yet oddly staid, life.

Meanwhile, “Sex,” West’s own raunchy 1926 play that made her both famous and infamous (and landed her in jail), is being given what’s believed to be its first New York revival by the appropriately named Hourglass Group in the Gramercy district’s Gershwin Hotel.

Margy LaMont, the free-spirited hooker West wrote for herself, is played by Carolyn Bauemler, and the production, with a cast of 10 playing two dozen roles, has incorporated transcripts from the 1927 court trial for indecency, as well as West’s controversial use of drag queens in her casts.

The set for “Sex,” by George Xenos, plays off Salvador Dali’s famous “Face of Mae West Which Mae Be Used as an Apartment,” in which her lips are a sofa and her eyes set within picture frames.

And, to add to the West lore, the paperback edition of “Becoming Mae West,” Emily Wortis Leider’s 1997 biography of the actress’ early years, is about to be released in paperback by Da Capo Press.

It was James Lapine’s idea to do a piece on Mae West, says Shear, an old-movie buff who leapt at his proposal and spent a year and a half researching and developing the show, becoming, along the way, a huge fan not only of West’s talent but also of her obsessiveness. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a day in my life in which I was as focused as Mae West,” Shear says with a laugh.

*

Lapine’s direction of “Dirty Blonde,” which also stars Kevin Chamberlin and Bob Stillman, began with his suggestion of an ending for the show: “Mae West kissing Mae West.” One of these Maes is a guy--in keeping with West’s enduring popularity as a subject for female impersonators.

“It’s interesting to me how a person’s persona lasts through time,” says Lapine, who admits, “I had thought of her in a kitschy, cliche way--like a cartoon. I had no idea she was a pretty amazing lady.”

“Pioneer” is a word often used when people talk about West’s highly unconventional life. Arriving in Hollywood when she was 39, she famously announced straight away, “I’m not a little girl from a little town making good in a big town; I’m a big girl from a big town making good in a little town.”

She proved it: Only a few years later, she was the highest-paid woman in America, commanding $300,000 a picture. “She Done Him Wrong,” the movie West made, “was the ‘Star Wars’ of its day,” Shear says. “They had round-the-clock showings.”

The Hourglass Group chose “Sex,” says Elyse Singer, its director, “because the piece has the feeling of giving birth to a star--the creation of an icon”--importantly, the self-creation. One of the founders of a company that operates on a shoestring, she says it was also pleasing to discover that West had her own difficulties financing her first play.

Sadly, once West created her image, she was unwilling to change it, deluding herself that she had defied the passage of time. “She was not someone who would take smaller, character roles to work,” says Shear, who becomes a teetering, gargoyled West in “Dirty Blonde.” “That’s the part that makes you hurt for her, but there’s something about her that makes me think, ‘Whatever.’ This is about the power of Mae West, and I say, ‘Mae, good for you.’ ”