Mary Jane " Mae " West August 17, β November 22, was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned over seven decades.
West was one of the most controversial movie stars of her day; she encountered problems especially with censorship. She once quipped, "I believe in censorship.
I made a fortune out of it. When her film career ended, she wrote books and plays, continued to perform in Las Vegas and London and on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums.
In , the American Film Institute posthumously voted her the 15th-greatest female screen legend of classic American cinema. West's parents married in Brooklyn on January 18, , to the pleasure of the groom's parents and the displeasure of the bride's, and raised their children as Protestants. West was five when she first entertained a crowd at a church social, and she started appearing in amateur shows at the age of seven.
She often won prizes at local talent contests. She used the alias "Jane Mast" early in her career. Her trademark walk was said to have been inspired or influenced by female impersonators Bert Savoy and Julian Eltinge , who were famous during the Pansy Craze. The show folded after eight performances, [ 28 ] but West was discovered and singled out for praise by a New York Times reviewer, [ 29 ] who wrote that a "girl named Mae West, hitherto unknown, pleased by her grotesquerie and snappy way of singing and dancing".
