The Actress Who Single-Handedly Saved Paramount Pictures
Who was Mae West, and why was Paramount struggling?
Going West
Ten days in jail wasn’t enough to demolish Mae West’s career.
It was in 1927 that the New York-born actress was arrested for obscenity charges while starring in her self-penned Broadway play Sex. She replied to reporters who asked how she found her first night in prison that it was “not so bad. The inmates were very interesting. Will have enough for ten shows. I didn’t think so much of the bed.” West didn’t take the arrest seriously. In fact, the event garnered a great amount of extra publicity for both the show and herself.
Mae West was what many now — and probably then — would call a pioneer in the theatrical and literary world, writing plays that dealt with taboos of the era, including sex, homosexuality, prostitution, and female rights. Her notoriety on Broadway caught the attention of Hollywood in the early years of sound pictures. It is impressive that West began her career as a cinema actress in 1932 at the late age of thirty-nine, after being signed to Paramount Pictures, making the journey from New York to Hollywood. That year, she appeared in her first film Night After Night alongside George Raft, an extremely well known and highly regarded actor of the era closely associated with gangster films, at the same time as James Cagney. Although it was only a small role, her performance was notable.
By the time she began starring in films, she had adopted a platinum blonde look rather than the long, dark hair she sported the previous decade, all while continuing to project her highly sexual, glamourous, and strong persona. Combined with her hourglass figure, this one film defined her as a sex symbol of the 1930s while her popularity also rose as a result of her comedic re-writing of her lines. It was in this first film that she wrote into the script an exchange between herself and a hotel maid. The maid, in admiration at her glamorous attire, states ‘Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!’. West replies, ‘Goodness had nothing to do with it dearie’. Her status as a sex symbol, actress, writer, and comedienne made her a very unique figure in Hollywood and cemented her immediately as a film personality.
Paramount’s struggles
It will come as no surprise to say that Hollywood was just as affected by the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression as everyone and everything else in the United States. It is often stated amongst scholars that cinema was a means of escapism from the realities of depression life, which, although true, doesn’t take into account the reality that theatre attendance dropped by around one-third due to economic hardship, with the worst years of the economic downturn between 1929 and 1932. This put a lot of additional stress on the box office and the film industry as although people wanted to see films, they were simply unable to afford it. Prices were dropped in 1932 to attract greater audience numbers, however, at the same time, around 30% of theatres across the United States closed.
Cinema appealed to and deliberately allured the lower class, who made up the largest demographic of filmgoers. This is a reason for why many cinemas of the 1920s and 1930s were elaborately decorated in Art Deco and European styles — the ‘picture palaces’, as they came to be known, were places for the lower classes to immerse themselves in a picturesque, upper-class style setting, with the addition of film removing them from the reality of life. In the immediate aftermath of the Crash, even this was no longer sufficient to attract attendees.
Bad financial decisions prior to the depression meant Paramount suffered more than the other leading Hollywood film companies, thus it was vital that they find a film to help them recover. Despite many good films and the biggest stars under their contract, Paramount was still struggling to attract filmgoers to their pictures and were on the verge of complete bankruptcy. It was after the success of West’s performance in Night After Night that Paramount believed they should at least give her a chance in her own starring film and even allowed her to adapt one of her own plays. The play she chose was Diamond Lil, and its film adaptation would prove to be Paramounts saviour.
She done them right
However, Paramount found out that they faced a big issue with Mae West. Despite widespread public interest in the actress, her actions and lines were full of sexual connotations and innuendos which proved to be a problem for an industry that was gradually being restricted as a result of mass censorship in the 1930s. Many lines had to be rewritten or cut out completely as a result of the obvious sex references. Still, West found a way around this. She wrote lines that were deliberately too sexual so the censors wouldn’t notice the others that she wanted to keep in.
Diamond Lil was revised and adapted into She Done Him Wrong, co-starring Cary Grant in his first major film. It was released in theatres in 1933 with much criticism for its sexual nature from other competitive film studios who didn’t understand how it passed the censors in the first place, while the Church made their own criticisms heard. However, West helped save the company — having spent $250,000 on the production of the film, Paramount acquired $2 million from the box office.
The film was such a success and held in such high regard that it was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award at the Oscars that year. Although not winning, the nomination — and backlash — was enough to attract even more viewers, pulling Paramount out of the financial hole they were in, and making Mae West one of the biggest attractions in Hollywood cinema. Paramount capitalised on this and quickly arranged for West to star in another of her own authored films, again co-starring Cary Grant, in I’m No Angel, which was even more popular. The film, in which West made it a priority to include black actresses, did even better, grossing $2.3 million in the United States from a budget of $200,000.
Despite making her last film in 1943, until starring in Myra Breckinridge in 1970, a 1949 poll found that Mae West was the best-known woman in the world alongside Eleanor Roosevelt. This was an impressive feat considering she only made ten films in her lifetime. Although she is not as well-known today, her impact on both the film industry and society throughout her life was enormous — not many stars could single-handedly save an entire film studio with their own self-written, self-starring film.
