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Biography of Mae West
Name: Mae West
Birth Date: August 17, 1893
Death Date: November 22, 1980
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Nationality: American
Gender: Female
Occupations: actress, playwright
Mae West
Mae West (1893-1980) played the sultry, provocative woman in numerous popular films and plays. Her sexuality and off-color comments made her films and plays the frequent target of censors. West also wrote and produced several plays and recorded albums.Mae West was born Mary Jane West on August 17, 1893, in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, John, held various jobs as a livery stableman, a detective, a salesman, and a prizefighter. Her mother, Matilda, was a model and dressmaker. By the age of seven, West was singing and dancing in amateur performances and winning local talent shows. She soon left behind formal education and joined a professional stock company headed by Hal Clarendon, where she played the character of "Little Nell" in a long-running melodrama.In her early teens, West joined a vaudeville company, where she met Frank Wallace, who soon became her song-and-dance partner. Unknown to the public for more than 30 years, …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…increasingly interested in paranormal events, and insisted she was in contact with a pet monkey who had died. It has also been reported that West feared being reincarnated. After suffering a stroke, she died on November 22, 1980 in Los Angeles. As she said in her autobiography, West had no regrets about her life: "I freely chose the kind of life I led because I was convinced that a woman has as much right as a man to live the way she does if she does no actual harm to society." Further Reading Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, HarperCollins, 1991.Dictionary of American Biography, Scribner's, 1995.Leider, Emily Wortis, Becoming Mae West, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1997.Watts, Jill, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White, Oxford Press, 2001.West, Mae, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, Prentice-Hall, 1959.Interview, May 1997."Mae West," Biography Life File, http://mmnewsstand.com/static/products/4002/west.html (February 10, 1999).
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