Mae West

• "I am anxious to dispel any mistaken impression that I can play only the hot mamas of thirty years ago."
• Mae West

Unlike many sayings of the great and famous, most quotes that are attributed to Mae are authentic. They can be verified since they are usually from her plays and motion pictures. However, Mae usually delivered the lines when she was "in character", as they say. So they probably shouldn't be called true "Mae West" quotes.

But the quote above is a real Mae West quote. Mae said this in 1933 after the release of I'm No Angel which was her third movie. The picture was set in the modern era - that is, in the 1930's - and was released after She Done Him Wrong a story about what was then called "The Gay 90's". Both movies, by the way, were hits, and her leading man was some fellow named Archibald Leach. Supposedly he was personally picked by Mae herself and since there are few leading men named "Archibald" he appeared under the name of Cary Grant.

Mae's first movie was Night After Night in 1932. It starred George Raft - a hoofer who specialized in playing coin-flipping gangsters - and Mae starred as a character modeled after the famous nightclub owner and singer Texas "Hello, suckers!" Guinan.

In one scene Mae was going into a club and the hatcheck girl commented on her jewelry.

Hatcheck Girl:	Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!
Mae:	Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

Peppering her sayings with such double entendres¹ became Mae's signature. These made her performances quite titillating (no double intended) but it also shocked! shocked! the more dainty women and delicate men.

Among Mae's more famous bon mots are:

It's not the men in your life that matters, it's the life in your men.

Love thy neighbor, and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.

Don't keep a man guessing too long - he's sure to find the answer somewhere else.

The only good woman I can recall in history was Betsy Ross. And all she ever made was a flag.

It's a testament to Mae West's fame - and popularity - that in World War II it wasn't just the inflatable life preservers that the GI's named after her. The boys also dubbed parachutes, bombers, ack-ack guns, fur parkas, and a road in Burma after the even then iconic actress. Given the fact that Mae wasn't far from fifty at the time - and this was when quinquagenarians looked old - it's quite a compliment that young men in their late teens and early twenties thought to honor her.

Mae West was born on August 17, 1893, in New York. A natural performer, she began singing and dancing before audiences while still a kid. She quickly gravitated toward vaudeville with, we should point out, the encouragement of her parents. Performing as a professional when was fourteen, she was appearing on Broadway at eighteen.

What isn't appreciated by those who see Mae only as the platinum blond bombshell with the wry asides is that Mae really became a star after she began to write and produced her own shows. With a rare business acumen, she knew how to hire the right people and what would sell.

And we also have to admit that Mae had a knack for picking a title. Her first real hit was the Broadway play Sex.

Not long after the the play opened on April 26, 1926, a chap named John Byrne claimed that Mae had swiped his play "Following the Fleet". He demanded payment.

But what actually happened is that in 1924 Mae's manager, James Timony, purchased the rights of what one author describes as a "sketch" of one act from John. John got $300 in a one-time payment.

May's play, though, is in three acts, and what you saw on stage was almost all Mae's work. So with the convention of the times (and probably even today), she should be considered the author.

However, once Mae's play became a success John not only claimed the play was his, but he waxed wroth saying that Mae and James had turned what was a moral tale into trash. Unfortunately (for John), a judge ruled that both plays were written for "salacious appeal" and that no court would support the author of either play. He dismissed the case.

It's no surprise the play was popular with the public. But it found less favor with the critics, whose objections were less the manner than the matter of the subject since Mae was playing what was politely called a lady of the evening.

Then on February 9, 1927, and after the play had been packing them in for nearly a year, the indignation of the righteous got to be too much, and the cops showed up to shut the play down. But at least they let Mae finish the night's performance before hauling her and the rest of the crew down to the hoosegow.

Mae and her manager spent ten days in jail and were fined $500 (the rest of the cast got suspended sentences). Naturally the publicity had exactly the opposite effect as the Good People intended and instantly Mae was a big name star.

Mae's career encompassed a most interesting time for the performing arts. She started off when entertainment had to be live, and her career ended when television had pretty much taken over. But Mae avoided the tube except for an interview with talk show host Dick Cavett³.

Well, she was on some TV shows. One of her rare appearances was in 1964 when she appeared on the (surprisingly) popular Mr. Ed, a sitcom where the main character was a talking horse.

On the episode titled (what else?) "Mae West Meets Mr. Ed", Mae hires Mr. Ed's owner, Wilbur, to design her horse stables. As you expect, Mae tossed around her wisecracks. Decked out in a tight full length dress, Mae visits Wilbur and his wife Carol. When Carol asks Mae to sit down, Mae with a typical Westian delivery replied, "Honey, you don't dare sit down in this dress. It's standing room only."

During the 1930's Mae was one of the most active, successful, and wealthy performers in the nation. She continued to write and stage successful plays where she not only delivered her Maeisms but sang in her characteristic sultry contralto. If the critics frowned, the public raved.

Then in 1935 came a shock. A man named Frank Wallace showed up and claimed he was Mae's husband. And as her spouse, Frank said he had equal rights to Mae's fortune.

At first Mae had denied she had ever married Frank. But when questioned under oath, she admitted they had been married in 1911.

Mae insisted that she and Frank never lived together as man and wife and she last saw him long before she became a star. So Frank had no claim.

However, reporters found photos of the two together with Mae's wedding ring in evidence, and Frank maintained he and Mae had lived together for three years before Mae abandoned him in 1914. Modern researchers, though, think Mae and Frank separated soon after their nuptials and went their separate ways.

Technically Mae and Frank remained married until 1943 when they reached a settlement. It was probably more than Mae wanted to pay but far less than Frank demanded. Throughout all this brouhaha, the public - both men and women - were strongly on Mae's side.

It's Mae's movies that have insured she would be remembered by later generations. Compared to modern celebrities, she wasn't in that many, a baker's dozen, but there are those - She Done Him Wrong, My Little Chickadee - that have become classics.

Mae's heyday - the 1930's - was not just the Golden Age of Broadway and the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was also the Golden Age of Radio. As the Great Depression put crimps in family finances, radio became the most common stay-at-home, sedentary, and family-oriented entertainment. Although going to the movies was cheap, listening to the radio cost nothing. So the whole family would gather around the radio and listen to shows like (and to skip this rather lengthy list click here) Ford Theater, The Big Show, Theatre of Freedom, Nick Carter, Master Detective, Maxwell House Showboat, Guy Lombardo, Mr. District Attorney, The Adventures of Babe Ruth, Flash Gordon, National Barn Dance, The Jack Benny Program, The Spike Jones Show, Crime Classics, The Roy Rogers Show, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Amazing Nero Wolfe, Bing Crosby Entertains, The Kate Smith Hour, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Mystery House, Doctor Kildare, The Milton Berle Show, The Adventures of Sam Spade, Gunsmoke, Smilin' Jack, Ed Sullivan's Pipelines, I Was a Communist for the FBI, Chandu the Magician, Burns and Allen, The Henry Morgan Show, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Perry Mason, The Fred Allen Show, Mr. Moto, The Orson Welles Show, Cab Calloway's Quizzical, Doc Savage, The Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney Show, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Louella Parsons, Blackstone the Magic Detective, The Life of Riley, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, The Gay Nineties Revue, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, The Chase and Sandborn Hour, The Joe E. Brown Show, The Al Jolson Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Abbott and Costello Show, Kraft Music Hall, The Bob Crosby Show, Ed Sullivan Variety, Alka-Seltzer Time, The Rudy Vallée Show, The Mel Blanc Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, Bringing Up Father, Just Mary, Ma Perkins, Hollywood Star Playhouse, Dan Dunn, Secret Operative #48, Information Please, Amos and Andy, X Minus One, Little Orphan Annie, Have Gun, Will Travel, Horatio Hornblower, The Green Hornet, Family Theater, The Lone Ranger, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Bob Hope Show, Ellery Queen, Young Doctor Malone, Rogue's Gallery, Ozark Jubilee, Fort Laramie, Tom Mix, The Adventures of the Thin Man, Ranger Bill, Mandrake the Magician, The Nelson Eddy Show, The Adventures of Superman, Space Patrol, Bulldog Drummond, Incredible, but True, MGM Musical Comedy Theater of the Air, Sears Radio Theater, The Arkansas Traveler, Dick Tracy, Grand Ole Opry, The Ray Bolger Show, The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, The Shadow of Fu Manchu, Dimension X, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Captain Midnight, Tales of the Texas Rangers, The Adventures of Charlie Chan, and Lights Out. (To return to the beginning of the list click here.)

Then on December 12, 1937, Mae appeared on The Chase and Sanborn Hour⁴. This was hosted by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his wooden and sarcastic sidekick, Charlie McCarthy.

The story that Mae got a lot of static for her routine with Charlie is true enough. As she and Charlie began their banter:

Mae:	Listen, Charlie, are these your keys?
Charlie:	Oh, thanks, Mae. Did I leave them in the car?
Mae:	No, you left them in my apartment.

As the conversation continued, Mae noted that Charlie had come up to see her.

Mae:	I thought you were going to have a nice long talk Tuesday night at my apartment. Where did you go when the doorbell rang?
Charlie:	Well, I tried to hide in your clothes closet but two guys kicked me out.

Later Mae commented on Charlie's demeanor.

Mae:	You weren't so nervous on Saturday when you came up to see me in my apartment. In fact, you didn't need any encouragement to kiss me.
Charlie:	Did I do that?
Mae:	Why, you certainly did. I got the marks to prove it - splinters, too.

In the 1982 biopic starring Ann Jillian, James Brolin, and Roddy McDowell, it was Mae's banter with Charlie that caused the problems with the network bigwigs and the group of politicians and religious leaders. But it was the "Adam and Eve" sketch with Don Ameche that really generated controversy. Of course, controversy with Don Ameche is almost an oxymoron, and today audiences wonder what was the big deal. Eve was complaining that Eden was too dull.

Adam: (Don)	This is Paradise. Free light. Free heat. Free meals. What else could a man want? Answer me that.
Eve: (Mae)	I got a couple of good ideas if you'll tell me how to break the lease.

But those were prudish times. Once a network was threatened with a fine when it used words like those spoken by the President of the United States. Such prudishness continued until the onslaught of cable television - with its lack of FCC control - brought the walls of both censorship and propriety a-tumblin' down.

But in those heady days of 1937 the fallout to the networks was too much. Mae was effectively banned from radio and disappeared from the airways.

But not from the stage or movies. Of course, it was her 1940 film, My Little Chickadee with the legedary comedian W. C. Fields, that remains one of her most famous.

Mae didn't release another film for three years when she appeared in The Heat's On. Unlike her other movies she had no part in the writing and for this reason, most likely, it was not very successful.

After that Mae decided to stick to live performances. In 1954 she toured in her own show which introduced her to another generation. By this time no one saw anything wrong with Mae's lyrics and they shrugged off the doubles. Now over sixty, Mae thought it was time to retire - or at least to start taking it easy.

The 1960's saw, among other things, a revival of interest in the films of the early 20th century. Watching movies featuring Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and yes, W. C. Fields, and Mae West became something that was cool to do.

Once in the early 1970's a group of students were watching My Little Chickadee in the lobby of their dormitory. They kept waiting for Mae to deliver one of her most famous lines.

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

Great was their disappointment when it looked like the television censors had cut the line out!

Alas, it was decades before any of the students - who should have been studying - learned that Mae had never said any thing of the sort. Or at least not at the time. Instead it wasn't until years later that Mae actually said the quote she was already famous for.

Ha? (To quote Shakespeare.) It took years for Mae to say a quote she was already famous for. We'd really like to know how that is possible.

I thought you would, as Captain Mephisto said to Sydney Brand. It's very simple really.

It's just that Mae finally decided to make a movie and really say what everyone thought she had already said. But it would be more than three decades after My Little Chickadee that Mae would finally deliver the line.

No, it wasn't in the lamentable Myra Breckinridge in 1970. Instead it was in Sextette, Mae's last movie which was released in 1977. Despite the star studded cast - which including George Raft (who had starred with Mae in her first movie), Regis Philbin (yes, Regis), Gil Stratton, Ringo Starr (now Sir Richard Starkey), Keith Moon, Rona Barrett, Tony Curtis, Alice Cooper, Timothy Dalton (James Bond in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill), George Hamilton (of King Rat and Love at First Bite fame), Walter Pidgeon, and Dom DeLuise (yes, Dom Deluise) - the film was not a success. Nevertheless in Sextette Mae did make the famous quote. So yes, she did say it albeit after the fact.

On the other hand, quotemeisters who have researched Mae's mots (research which includes Mae's own comments on the matter) have come to the conclusion she did likely say something of the sort in her early years. Probably it was during live performances and while joking during personal appearances. So the famous quote from Mae can be considered authentic.

That said, until our more lubricious times, certainly Mae's most famous line was:

Why don't you come up and see me sometime?

And she didn't say that either - or not exactly. What she actually said to Cary Grant in She Done Him Wrong was:

Why don't you come up sometime and see me?

Which leads to a big surprise for the viewers of My Little Chickadee. In the last scene, Mae and Bill are parting on good terms.

Bill:	If you get up around the Grampian Hills you must come up and see me sometime.
Mae:	I'll do that - my little chickadee.

So it seems like we have one more case where quotes are misrepresented. It was Mae who said "My little chickadee" although everyone thinks the line was from Bill!

Today you may find people who will smugly state that it was really Mae who used the "chickadee" line and it has been misattributed to Bill. However, here it's the revisionism which needs the reversion. Bill was indeed famous for saying "My Little Chickadee" well before the movie was released. In If I Had a Million written by Joseph Mankiewicz, Joe had Bill calling a female character as a little bird. But Bill thought being more specific was better and changed the word to "chickadee". This became his trademark endearment and characters obviously modeled on Bill were commonly depicted using the phrase in animated cartoons starting in the 1930's. And remember that people were then (somewhat mis)quoting Mae as saying "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" So inversion of quotes was simply an example of intentional self-parody by Mae and Bill, who co-wrote the screenplay.

Throughout her life Mae never smoked nor drank - which helps explain her longevity compared to Bill. Claude William Dunkenfield⁵ died on Christmas Day, 1946, at 66. Mae lived until November 22, 1980, age 87.

References

They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions, Paul F. Boller Jr., John George, Oxford University Press, 1990.

Mae West: It Ain't No Sin, Louvish, Simon Louvish, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2006.

Mae West: An Icon in Black and White, Jill Watts, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Becoming Mae West, Emily Leider, Thorndike Press, 2001.

"Mae West", Encyclopedia Britannica.

"May West Turns Back On Hot Gals of '90s! Plays Modern Dame", The Bismarck Tribune, October 26, 1933, p. 10, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

"Mae West Becomes a Great Variety", Washington Evening Star, October 13, 1943, Page A-12, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

"Mae West, Authoress and Star of 'Sex', Given Jail Term and Also $500 Fine", New Britain Herald, April 19, 1927, p. 1, p. 5, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

"Writer Says Play 'Sex' Was Pirated; Asks Pay", Washington Evening Star, July 29, 1926, p. 10, Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

"78 Great Quotes By Mae West, Hollywood's Wittiest Sex Goddess", The Famous People.

"Is That a Gun in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Glad to See Me?", Quote Investigator, August 20, 2013.

"Mae West Meets Mr. Ed", Alan Young (Actor), Connie Hines (Actor), Mae West (Actor), Leon Ames (Actor), Bamboo Harvester (Actor), Arthur Lubin (Director), Bill Davenport (Writer), Lou Derman (Writer),CBS, 1964, Internet Movie Database.

Mae West, Ann Jillian (Actor), James Brolin (Actor), Piper Laurie (Actor), Roddy McDowall (Actor), Lee Philips (Director), E. Arthur Kean (Screenplay), Hill/Mandelker Films, 1982, Internet Movie Database.

"Ranking the 12 Strangest Stadium Names in Sports", Laura Depta, Bleacher Report, September 2, 2016

"Mae West Plays Role for Mr. Ed", The New York Times, January 22, 1964.

"Hollywood Picnic", Sid Marcus (Writer and Director), Charles Mintz (Producer), Color Rhapsody, Columbia, 1937, Internet Movie Data Base.

My Little Chickadee, Mae West (Actor), W.C. Fields (Actor), Edward Cline (Director), Mae West (Writer), W. C. Fields (Writer), 1940, Internet Movie Data Base.

Sextette, Mae West (Actor), George Raft (Actor), Regis Philbin (Actor), Gil Stratton (Actor), Ringo Starr (Actor), Keith Moon (Actor), Rona Barrett (Actor), Tony Curtis (Actor), Alice Cooper (Actor), Timothy Dalton (Actor), George Hamilton (Actor), Walter Pidgeon (Actor), Dom DeLuise (Actor), Ken Hughes (Director), Mae West (Play), Herbert Baker (Screenplay), 1978, Internet Movie Data Base.