MAE WEST AND HER ADONISES Q&A with MICHAEL GREGG MICHAUD
1. There are many biographies of Mae West. What made you want to write another one?
This is my third book about West. None of them are biographies. I focus on certain aspects of her long career in show business. Mae West Between the Covers is a collection of editorial features and interviews from movie magazines during the 1930s that documented her rising movie stardom. Mae West Broadcast Muse focuses on her few, but important, appearances on radio and television throughout her 80-year career. Many rare photos are included, and scripts from the various programs. This new book, Mae West and Her Adonises focuses on an overlooked segment of her career – her personal appearance tours in the 1930s, and then her legendary night club act which began in 1954, and toured the country until 1959.
2. What separated her from the other leading female stars of the 1930s?
Independence. Long before arriving in Hollywood, West established herself as a veteran Vaudeville performer, and Broadway star. She not only starred in a string of Broadway hits, but she wrote the plays as well. She dared to write about subjects considered taboo – from simply scandalous to borderline illegal. She even went to prison for her play Sex. She was accused of corrupting the morals of New York City, something she considered one of her greatest achievements.
She came to Hollywood in 1932, at the age of 40, to make one movie. Her debut in Night After Night was unforgettable. She stayed in Hollywood to work at Paramount Pictures on her own terms. She wrote her own screenplays, and was very involved in casting her films. And she took on the powerful studio censors by portraying strong, independent women who lived with the same freedom as men did at the time. Her first starring role in She Done Him Wrong, based on her Broadway hit Diamond Lil, was a box office sensation, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Her early films were huge successes, and she became the highest paid woman in America.
3. Do you think she influenced blonde sex symbols who came after her?
She became unlikely friends with another Paramount screen goddess, Marlene Dietrich. The two women played the sex symbol role very differently, but Dietrich enjoyed West’s company, and always spoke about her with great respect.
Marilyn Monroe didn’t admit being influenced by anyone, but there is a lot of West in Monroe’s many screen characterizations. Mamie Van Doren, another blonde bombshell in the 1950s, has always expressed her admiration for West. And so does Madonna many years later. And, of course, West’s distinctive delivery, swagger and style continues to be impersonated to this day.
4. What makes her humor so lasting?
Her humor was based on her own real life observations. The balance of power between men and women informed her story-telling. And the importance of women being represented as strong, independent, and fully functioning human beings was always represented in her writing and work. The idea that “what was good for the goose, was good for the gander” was never far from her creative instincts. Sometimes challenges to the depiction of male dominance in entertainment fields was an arguable bone of contention, but she managed to always deliver her message wrapped in subtle wit to make it more acceptable.
5. Is Mae West still relevant today, nearly 100 years since her film debut?
Her determination to personify an ageless woman who challenged the way women were depicted on stage and in film is as fresh, clever, and important today as it ever was. It’s still a patriarchal world, and women still fight for equal rights, equal opportunities, and equal living standards.
6. Would you consider Mae West a survivor?
She is more than just a survivor. She thrived in show business for 80 years on her own terms. She took her act – a characterization of a powerful female who had the same fearless strengths and desires as any man – from Vaudeville, to the legitimate stage, to motion pictures, to radio, to television, to recordings, and to books – and created an unforgettable, iconic figure.
7. How did self-invention inform her public persona?
Her most memorable role, that of her self-penned heroine “Diamond Lil,” was the spirit of every character she played in film, TV, and on stage. Her physical stature was that of a tiny woman, but she was able to create with makeup, wigs, padded costumes and platform shoes the illusion of a voluptuous blonde bombshell sex symbol. Her greatest work of art was the public Mae West she invented. And she played that role until her death at the age of 88.
8. What is Mae West and Her Adonises about?
Mae West and Her Adonises provides the first complete, comprehensive look and record of her several personal appearance tours in the 1930s that were created to accompany the premiere of several of her best films. Her tour agendas are included, the script from those early tours, detailed stories and interviews from those times, and many rare photographs from the author’s personal collection. The largest portion of the book provides the same details for her legendary night club show, first presented at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas in 1954. The overwhelming positive reception coaxed West to tour her act in nightclubs and hotel showrooms for the next five years.
Age never slowed her down. She considered the stage character she created to be ageless. And timeless. Being provocative and challenging the mores of society always informed her playbook. Her controversial and hugely entertaining club act reminded fans and critics alike that she remained a thoughtful social critic. “Pushing the envelope” was nothing new for the actress, and was still an effective and memorable gimmick. Her objectification of men – nearly stripped bare and head to toe and paraded around the stage for an audience to ogle – was the complete opposite of what had been seen and celebrated before in the fields of live entertainment. Her shameless exploitation of the male body not only titillated the females in her audience, it forever changed the way men were physically objectified in the public eye. “All this meat,” she’d say, “and no potatoes.”
Behind the scenes stories about her affair with twenty-one-year-old Mr. America 1954 Richard DuBois, the jealous battles between body builder performers Mickey Hargitay and Chuck Krauser that ended in a dressing room brawl landing them all in court, and the truth about the public feud between West and Jayne Mansfield are included.
Her purpose was never more apparent than when she sashayed onto the stage in diamonds, sequins and feathers with her titled musclemen posing and flexing around her while she sang, “I like to do all day what I do all night…”
9. Is the book illustrated?
It sure is, with more than 100 photographs from the author’s personal collection. Photographs of West, photographs of newspaper advertisements for her appearances, and photographs of rare advertising ephemera. All presented here for the first time.