Mae West (1893-1980) was one of the few joys Americans were allowed during Prohibition and the Great Depression. In 1926, at the Christian age of 33, she wrote, produced, directed and starred in a Broadway play entitled Sex; it was a huge box-office hit, but received harsh reviews and a 10-day jail sentence “for corrupting youth”.
In Hollywood, she delivered some truly masterful lines: “When I’m good, I’m very good. But when I’m bad… I’m better”; and others as mythical as they are memorable: “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” As you can see, in the absence of the Inquisition, Mae could only burn at the stake of the vanities.
Joseph Weintraub’s The wit and wisdom of Mae West contains some of the actress’s philosophy. The edition I’ve handled includes a hardly translatable publishing wedge: “the juiciest best of West: gaudy, bawdy and Oh, Lawdy!”. Among Mae West’s pills of wisdom collected in this book, there is one devoted to basic arithmetic:
One and one is two, and two and two is four, and five will get you ten if you know how to work it.
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