Mae West was born in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role was a small part in Night After Night, her scene has become famous. A coat check girl exclaims, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!", after seeing Mae's jewelry. Mae replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it". Her next film, in which she starred, came the following year. She Done Him Wrong was based on her earlier and very popular play, "Diamond Lil". She went on to write and star in seven more films, including My Little Chickadee with W.C. Fields. Her last movie was Sextette, which also came from a play. She died two years later.



Myra Breckinridge (1970): $350,000
Belle of the Nineties (1934): $400,000
I'm No Angel (1933): $300,000
She Done Him Wrong (1933): $130,000
Night After Night (1932): $50,000

Hollywood's outrageous, self-proclaimed psychic Criswell predicted in 1955 that she would win the 1960 Presidential election, and would fly to the moon in 1965 with him and friend Liberace!. According to actor Tony Curtis, her famous walk originated while beginning her career as a stage actress. Special six-inch platforms were attached to her shoes to increase the height of her stage presence. Her walk literally was "one foot at a time." She was with George Raft in both her first (Night After Night (1932)) and last (Sextette (1978)) film. Appears on sleeve of The Beatles "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". West at first declined to be pictured on the cover ("What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?!"), but reconsidered when the Beatles sent her a handwritten personal request. Is sometimes credited with originating the Shimmy (a once-popular dance). She was famous for her morning enemas, which she claimed made her skin like silk and left her "smelling sweet at both ends". On the set of her last film Sextette (1978), co-star Tony Curtis claimed that she was given an enema after being made up, at approximately 11:00 in the morning, as the last step of her preparations before going before the camera. Her films are credited with single-handedly saving failing and debt-ridden Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy in the early 1930s. At one point, her chauffeur was Jerry Orbach (who is best known for playing Detective Lennie Briscoe on all four "Law & Order" TV series. Is portrayed by Ann Jillian in Mae West (1982) (TV) and by Gloria Gray in Marlene (2000) Playing opposite Ed Wynn in Arthur Hammerstein's "Sometime," with music by Rudolf Friml, she introduced the shimmy to the Broadway stage in 1918. The dance requires hardly any movement of the feet but continuous movement of the shoulders, torso and pelvis. She had seen the dance at black cafés in Chicago. Eldest of three children of John Patrick West, an occasional prizefighter and livery-stable owner, and Matilda Delker Doelger, a one-time corset and fashion model. Was not a smoker or a drinker. Her parents converted to Protestantism, although her mother was, by heritage, a Jewish Bavarian-German and her father was born Irish-Catholic. Born Mary Jane West in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, she always considered herself half Jewish. Her mother, Matilda Decker Doelger, an immigrant from Munich, was Jewish. Her father, Jack West, a featherweight prizefighter called "Battling Jack" West and later a stable master, was Anglo-Irish. Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí created one of his most iconic works influenced by her: "Mae West's Lips Sofa" (1937). There is a photo in fundamentalist preacher Billy Sunday's autobiography (circa 1932) of Billy Sunday and Mae West pouring out a bottle of beer into the river. Sister of Beverly Arden.