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A veteran of vaudeville and Broadway, Mae West made her first movie when she was nearly 40 and promptly became a national sex symbol for her hourglass figure, saucy double-entendres, and sin-promising sashay on five-inch stiletto heels. Openly evoking the atmosphere of bawdy houses and honky-tonks with her characters, she built a career out of burlesquing sex. She often clashed with censors and decency groups, and a 1926 play that she wrote for Broadway, 'Sex,' was shut down following a campaign against it by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. West herself was arrested in the theater, found guilty of a performance that 'tended to corrupt the morals of youth,' and sentenced to 10 days in jail. Such controversies only served to increase her fame, and her first two films, 'Night After Night' (1932) and 'She Done Him Wrong' (1933) (based on her 1928 hit play 'Diamond Lil'), made her an instant star. West's next film, the outrageously suggestive 'I'm No Angel' (1933), was said to have inspired the film indus

Posted: 4/6/2008 Length: 02:11 Price: Free Video Type: Clip