West, Mae (1892–1980)
US vaudeville, stage, and film actor. She wrote her own dialogue, setting herself up as a provocative sex symbol and the mistress of verbal innuendo. She appeared on Broadway in Sex (1926), Drag (1927), and Diamond Lil (1928), the last of which was the basis of the film (with Cary Grant) She Done Him Wrong (1933).
Her other films include I'm No Angel (1933), My Little Chickadee (1940, with W C Fields), Myra Breckinridge (1969), and Sextette (1977). Both her plays and her films led to legal battles over censorship.
| West's autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, was published in 1959. |
