Mae West - Motion Pictures

Motion Pictures

In 1932, West was offered a motion picture contract by Paramount Pictures, when she was 38 years old, an unusual age to begin a movie career. However, West would keep her age ambiguous for several more years. She made her film debut in Night After Night starring George Raft. At first, she did not like her small role in Night After Night, but was appeased when she was allowed to rewrite her scenes. In West's first scene, a hat check girl exclaims, "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds." West replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie." Reflecting on the overall result of her rewritten scenes, Raft is said to have remarked, "She stole everything but the cameras."

She brought her Diamond Lil character, now renamed Lady Lou, to the screen in She Done Him Wrong (1933). The film is also notable as one of Cary Grant's first major roles, which boosted his career. West claimed she spotted Grant at the studio and insisted that he be cast as the male lead. The film was a box office hit and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. The success of the film most likely saved Paramount from bankruptcy.

Her next release, I'm No Angel (1933), paired her with Grant again. I'm No Angel was also a financial success, a film that proved to be her most successful film of her entire movie career. By 1933, West was the eighth-largest U.S. box office draw in the United States and, by 1935, the second-highest paid person in the United States (after William Randolph Hearst). On July 1, 1934, the censorship of the Production Code began to be seriously and meticulously enforced, and her screenplays were heavily edited.

West's next film was Belle of the Nineties (1934). Originally titled It Ain't No Sin, the title was changed due to the censors' objections. Her next film, Goin' to Town (1935), received mixed reviews.

Her following effort, Klondike Annie (1936) dealt, as best it could given the heavy censorship, with religion and hypocrisy. Some critics called the film her screen masterpiece. That same year, West played opposite Randolph Scott in Go West, Young Man. In this film, she adapted Lawrence Riley's Broadway hit Personal Appearance into a screenplay. Directed by Henry Hathaway, Go West, Young Man is considered one of West's weaker films of the era.

After Go West, Young Man West starred in Every Day's a Holiday (1937) for Paramount before their association came to an end. After Every Day's a Holiday finished as only a moderate success, West was put on a list of actors named "Box Office Poison" by Harry Brandt on behalf of the Independent Theatre Owners Association. Others on the list were Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, Dolores del Río, Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks, and James Cagney. The attack was published as a paid advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter and was taken seriously by studio executives. The association argued that these stars' high salaries and extreme public popularity didn't affect their ticket sales and thus hurt the exhibitors.

In 1939, Universal Pictures approached West to star in a film opposite W. C. Fields. The studio was eager to duplicate the success of Destry Rides Again starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart with a vehicle starring West and Fields. Having left Paramount eighteen months earlier and looking for a comeback film, West accepted the role of Flower Belle Lee in the film My Little Chickadee (1940). Despite their intense mutual dislike, and fights over the screenplay, My Little Chickadee was a moderate box office success, but the film outgrossed Fields's previous film, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), and the later The Bank Dick (1940).

West's next film was The Heat's On (1943) for Columbia Pictures. She initially didn't want to do the film but after producer and director Gregory Ratoff pleaded with her and claimed he would go bankrupt if she didn't, West relented. The film opened to bad reviews and failed at the box office. West did not return to films until 1970.