Mae West: Dirty Blonde

It's nice that this rather slapdash doco keeps the legacy to Mae West alive, but it offers only a shallow and somewhat contentious take on her career. Along the way it buys into a number of myths cleverly created and marketed by Mae herself, it recycles highly dubious stories around her (alleged) love life, and it even re-frames West as a kind of proto-feminist heroine. One commentator assures us that West was quite promiscuous. Others blithely accept that certain relationships (for example, with her longtime assistant Paul Novak) were sexual. And the theory that Mae was actually a man is only briefly raised and quickly dismissed. In fact, there's a good deal of evidence to support the idea that Mae West was born male, or perhaps a hermaphrodite (with indeterminate sexual organs). One biography makes a very good case that West never had sex with any man, and nobody ever saw "her" naked. There certainly isn't any man who has gone on the record about sex with West, including Paul Novak, who insists their 30-year relationship was platonic. Her one marriage was quickly abandoned, covered up for a decade, and the husband paid to keep his mouth shut. But what's really odd about ignoring the enduring legend about West's gender and sexuality is the photographic and film evidence from her life. West looks masculine more often than she looks convincingly feminine. Her film and stage performances have a clear and distinct aura of drag. And the subject matter and attitudes expressed in her plays and movies are more logically those of the female experience viewed from an outsider (if not precisely a gay male) perspective. Entire books have been written about this, so it's odd that the producers of this doco couldn't come up with even one person to express that point of view. I can't help feeling they couldn't see the wood for the trees.

Although Mae West only made a baker's dozen films, she had a persona and impact that were far, far greater....and this installment of "American Masters" is dedicated to her. Using film clips, interviews and narration, you learn about her life, her stage act, her films and her personal life...though in Mae's case, there didn't seem to be that much of a life outside the stage. Overall, a very well made biography that focuses more on her impact than her craft. The only thing I didn't like is that a few times it promoted common myths...such as her saving Paramount studio and her discovering Cary Grant (a common myth--promoted both by her and publicity agents). Well worth seeing.