The role that got Mae West jailed for obscenity: “I expect this will be the making of me”
Before Marilyn Monroe became Hollywood’s ultimate sex symbol, there was Mae West, whose penchant for provocation made her one of the most scandalous figures in the media.
Especially back then, society wasn’t used to women being confident in their sexuality. To many, this was offensive, repulsive, and far from normal – women were meant to be submissive creatures. Yet, if one thing is going to make a man weak, it’s a woman who knows her own sexuality, but this power has always scared many men. It isn’t part of the social order, the ‘natural’ way of being, they say. Women are supposedly meant to be caregivers and mothers, not innuendo-spouting bombshells like West. That was the attitude that had West doused in infamy, a star who was admired by as many as she was condemned.
West’s iconic status as a notorious harbinger of scandal was only solidified when a play she wrote and starred in landed her in trouble with the police. America might be called the land of the free, but back in the 1920s, there was no chance that anyone was getting away with a play as supposedly naughty as West’s creation, Sex. Using the pen name Jane Mast, she wrote the provocative tale of gender relations, but the inclusion of themes like prostitution was too much for certain viewers, who couldn’t believe that a Broadway show was allowing such obscenity.
That’s not even a stretch of language. West’s play, which she directed as well as starring in, was labelled as such, and she was thrown into a van by the New York Police Department’s Municipal Vice Squad and subsequently charged with obscenity and “corrupting the morals of youth”. It’s bizarre to think that almost 100 years ago a play featuring a sex worker could have you arrested for obscene behaviour, but American society has come a long, long way since then.
West was sentenced to ten days in a workhouse, and she did her time (well, eight days of it), knowing that she would only gain further exposure from this whole ordeal. Sure, she might have been tangled up in controversy, but all press is good press, right?
“I expect this will be the making of me,” West told a journalist, and it seems like she was right.
She wasn’t going to let censorship stop her from writing about taboo topics, and she followed Sex with The Drag, which explored homosexuality. You don’t have to think too hard about how that one was received, either. Within a few years, West had made her acting debut on screen in the film Night After Night, which marked the start of a successful (but just as controversial) cinema career.
Loads of people admired West’s confidence and the way she tackled sexuality head-on, though some thought she was a bit over the top – maybe even a touch indecent. Still, you can’t win ‘em all. She properly came into her own in the 1930s, landing standout roles in films like She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel, carving out a legacy as one of the boldest and most fearless women to ever grace the silver screen.
The fact that West was willing to serve time for the sake of her art really says it all – she was a dedicated woman, and she wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from creating authentic art regardless of the consequences.
