I first started imitating Mae West when I was a young girl. The gay hairstylists at the salons my mother frequented loved it, and I vividly remember prancing up and down the salon-way when I could not have been more than 10 years old, reciting "Come up sometime and see me" for an adoring crowd of middle aged mothers and stylin' queers. I owned a huge poster of Mae that was the centerpiece of my bedroom decorations and I even held a special New-Agey paganized memorial service in our living room after Mae West died. Marilyn Monroe was a distant, distant second.
More than her raw sexuality, which I read right off the bat and admired, it was her daring wit that enthralled me. This woman pushed the boundaries of "acceptable" and willingly paid the price society extracted from her, including fines, jail time, and ostracism. The bitch was brave!
And smart. Nothing inspires me like a smart person…or a sexy person, or a brave person, or a self-confidant person. Mae was all of those things, and more. She made mistakes and did not age gracefully but those aspects of her life, I believe, come more from the era she was from than the person she was.
You gotta see it to believe it. Her best movies are the early ones, Night After Night, She Done Him Wrong, and I'm No Angel. Go. See. Admire.
Find out more at Wikipedia: mae_west
