My review of Mae West: It Ain't No Sin, by Simon Louvish

It Ain't No Sin

by Simon Louvish

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I loved reading about this skilful, acutely intelligent performer who haunts my foggy formative years' recall. I still visualise her swagger, hear her distinct drawl in scratchy, early '30s movies that TV showed late at night, like 'She Done Him Wrong,' 'I'm No Angel' 'Bell of the Nineties' and 'Klondike Annie'.

What we learn from this book is that Mary Jane 'Mae' West, born 1893, turned her hand to many things including scriptwriting and jazz singing. She did some astonishingly risqué work long before there were any movies, or talkies anyway. Learning her stagecraft treading the boards, she wrote prolifically, including some fiction and much that was banned.

She produced some extraordinarily daring comedic material, loaded with double entendres outrageous even by today's standards. This was long, long before the age of political correctness, way before anything like the Hayes Production Code was even thought of. She subsequently became a pioneer in fighting censorship.

Her celluloid glory days need no elaboration here.

By the '50s she was such a legend she was blithely turning down roles like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. By the early '70s she was appearing in gender-bending things like Gore Vidal's 'Myra Breckinridge' with Raquel Welch. How long can any mortal keep going so, really? But she kept at it.

By the late '70s, making 'Sextette', she needed her lines fed to her through a tiny speaker hidden inside her wigs. She reportedly seemed disoriented and forgetful, having difficulty following direction. Failing eyesight made navigating around the set difficult for her. The camera crew started shooting her from the waist up (one official account is that this was to hide an out-of-shot production assistant crawling on the floor, guiding her around the set, but another I've read is that she had sandbags strategically placed for her feet to feel and guide her as she shuffled her way about the set floor).

I didn't mind Simon Louvish's academic style of documentation here, which accorded fine balance between the unavoidably outlandish subject material and the sensibly erudite final draft.

Fascinating and well-crafted biography about a greatly underestimated gal, the remarkable woman behind the legend of Diamond Lil.