The Legendary Mae West PDF Download

Author: Tabatha Yeatts
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0967915813
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Author: Lillian Schlissel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136041982
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Mae West, wise-cracking vaudeville performer, was one of the most controversial figures of her era. Rarely, however, do people think of Mae West as a writer. In Three Plays By Mae West, Lillian Schlissel brings this underexplored part of West's career to the fore by offering for the first time in book form, three of the plays West wrote in the 1920s--Sex (1926), The Drag (1927) and Pleasure Man (1928). With an insightful introduction by Schlissel, this book offers a unique look into to the life and early career of this legendary stage and screen actress.

Author: Carol M. Ward
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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This provocative work analyzes Mae West's long life and productive career in three major phases: the early theater years, her meteoric film career in the thirties, and her subsequent life as a popular culture legend. It examines her theatrical approach to life and her unique talent for translating a low comic variety style into a subtle satire of melodramatic conventions. West's attempts to control her comic creation led her into many public battles over her claims to authorship of her plays and filmscripts. The book's bibliography explores her talents as a writer, summarizing the plays and books she wrote and investigating the validity of those claims. A thorough study of West's background and attitudes, this volume combines the approaches of both biographical and critical/artistic analysis and broadens our understanding of how Mae West fits into American popular culture. The book examines West's philosophy of success and how it was reflected in her personal and professional life, and places her in a historical and cultural perspective without forcing her personality into predetermined categories. This bio-bibliography provides a fresh view of the legendary Mae West, and a new insight into the complexity of her artistry and social vision. It will be a valuable addition to all public libraries, and a useful resource in the study of American popular culture and film history.

Author: Charlotte Chandler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471105849
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Sex goddess Mae West is responsible for some of the most quoted lines in film history: * Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? * When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. * It's not the men in my life that counts - it's the life in my men. She was a performer from childhood and debuted on Broadway in a play she wrote entitled "Sex" which was a success until it was raided for immorality and Mae was jailed for ten days. This book is packed with stars from George Raft to Cary Grant and W.C. Fields, with whom she made "My Little Chickadee", the most successful film of Fields' career. Charlotte Chandler recorded Mae West over a period of roughly a month towards the end of the star's life. She was still as vital and lively as ever, and this book will convey all of Mae West's legendary attitude.

Author: Jill Watts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195347678
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and author is still regarded as the pop archetype of sexual wantonness and ribald humor. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of film legend? Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, and follows her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen's most popular--and colorful--stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed heavily from African American culture, music, dance and humor, creating a subversive voice for herself by which she artfully challenged society and its assumptions regarding race, class and gender. Viewing West as a trickster, Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black tradition of double-speak and "signifying," West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the phenomenon of a black woman passing for white. This absolutely fascinating study is the first comprehensive, interpretive account of Mae West's life and work. It reveals a beloved icon as a radically subversive artist consciously creating her own complex image.

Author: George Baxt
Publisher: St Martins Press
ISBN: 9780312098643
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Mae West impersonators are falling victim to a vampirish killer, until the legendary siren herself decides to lead in the pursuit of the murderer. By the author of The Noel Coward Murder Case.

Author: Emily W. Leider
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520949633
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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From the beginning, Myrna Loy’s screen image conjured mystery, a sense of something withheld. "Who is she?" was a question posed in the first fan magazine article published about her in 1925. This first ever biography of the wry and sophisticated actress best known for her role as Nora Charles, wife to dapper detective William Powell in The Thin Man, offers an unprecedented picture of her life and an extraordinary movie career that spanned six decades. Opening with Loy’s rough-and-tumble upbringing in Montana, the book takes us to Los Angeles in the 1920s, where Loy’s striking looks caught the eye of Valentino, through the silent and early sound era to her films of the thirties, when Loy became a top box office draw, and to her robust post–World War II career. Throughout, Emily W. Leider illuminates the actress’s friendships with luminaries such as Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Joan Crawford and her collaborations with the likes of John Barrymore, David O. Selznick, Sam Goldwyn, and William Wyler, among many others. This highly engaging biography offers a fascinating slice of studio era history and gives us the first full picture of a very private woman who has often been overlooked despite her tremendous star power.

Author: Matthew Reilly
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501167162
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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The new, thrilling novel featuring Jack West, Jr., from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Matthew Reilly. Jack West, Jr. and his family are living contentedly on their remote farm when their lives are abruptly shattered. Jack is brutally kidnapped and he awakens in an underground cell to find a masked attacker with a knife charging at him. It seems he has been chosen—along with a dozen other elite soldiers—to compete in a series of deadly challenges designed to fulfill an ancient ritual. With the fate of the Earth at stake, he will have to traverse diabolical mazes, fight cruel assassins, and face unimaginable horrors that will test him like he has never been tested before. In the process, he will discover the mysterious and powerful group of individuals behind it all: the four legendary kingdoms. He might also discover that he is not the only hero in this place…

Author: Jill Watts
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060514914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Hattie McDaniel is best known for her performance as Mammy, the sassy foil to Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Though the role called for yet another wide–grinned, subservient black domestic, McDaniel transformed her character into one who was loyal yet subversive, devoted yet bossy. Her powerful performance would win her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and catapult the hopes of Black Hollywood that the entertainment industry ––after decades of stereotypical characters–– was finally ready to write more multidimensional, fully realized roles for blacks. But racism was so entrenched in Hollywood that despite pleas by organizations such as the NAACP and SAG ––and the very examples that Black service men were setting as they fought against Hitler in WWII–– roles for blacks continued to denigrate the African American experience. So rather than see her stature increase in Hollywood, as did other Oscar–winning actresses, Hattie McDaniel, continued to play servants. And rather than see her popularity increase, her audience turned against her as an increasingly politicized black community criticized her and her peers for accepting degrading roles. "I'd rather play a maid then be a maid," Hattie McDaniel answered her critics but her flip response belied a woman who was herself emotionally conflicted about the roles she accepted but who tried to imbue each Mammy character with dignity and nuance.

Author: Guido Roberto Deiro
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 9781977210647
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Mae West & The Count takes you inside Mae's relationship with the man who launched her career and stole her heart. Set in the first half of the 20th Century, this is the heretofore untold story of the torrid romance, lust-filled five-year marriage, and entwined show business careers of the Vaudeville headliner "Deiro" and the "Queen of Camp" Mae West. Unpublicized by mutual agreement, the improbable, humorous, and often heartbreaking, personal and professional relationship between the Italian nobleman, who rose to "rock-star" fame, and the Brooklyn-born fifth-grade dropout who became a show business legend and an icon of sexual freedom, is intimately and elegantly exposed in this volume. "I couldn't help myself - "D" was an amazing lover. The sex thing was terrific with this guy. I wanted to do it morning, noon and night, and that's all I wanted to do. " -Mae West, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (1959). "It went very deep, hittin' on all the emotions. You can't get too hot over anybody unless there's somethin' that goes along with the sex act, can you?" -Mae West, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (1959).