Mae West Net Worth

Mae West's Quotes

• It's better to be looked over than overlooked.
• A hard man is good to find.
• Men are my life, diamonds are my career!
• When women go wrong, men go right after them!
• When caught between two evils I generally pick the one I've never tried before.

Interesting Facts about Mae West

1. Hollywood's outrageous, self-proclaimed psychic Criswell predicted in 1955 that West would win the 1960 Presidential election, and would fly to the moon in 1965 with him and a friend Liberace.
2. After two years of denying that she had ever been married, West admitted in a reply to a legal interrogatory in 1937 that she and Frank Wallace had married in 1911. During her divorce trial in 1942, she testified that they had lived together only "several weeks".
3. According to Tony Curtis, her famous walk originated while beginning her career as a stage actress. Special six-inch platforms were attached to her shoes to increase the height of her stage presence. Her walk literally was "one foot at a time".
4. During World War II, United States Navy and Army pilots and crewmen in the Pacific named their inflatable life vests after her, supposedly because of her well-endowed attributes. The term "Mae West" for a lifejacket continues to this day.
5. She was with George Raft in both her first (Night After Night (1932)) and last (Sextette (1977)) film.
6. Appears on sleeve of The Beatles "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". West at first declined to be pictured on the cover ("What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?!"), but reconsidered when The Beatles sent her a handwritten personal request.
7. Former Beatle Ringo Starr appeared with West in Sextette (1977). He was unpleasantly surprised at first, at all the attention given her on the set (usually reserved for pop stars like The Beatles), but came to admire West during the shoot, and praised her afterwards.
8. Is sometimes credited with originating the Shimmy (a once-popular dance).
9. Was banned from NBC Radio after a guest appearance in 1937 with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy that was loaded with flirtatious dialogue and double-entendres. She returned to the network as a guest on The Perry Como Show (1948) in 1949.
10. She was famous for her morning enemas, which she claimed made her skin like silk and left her "smelling sweet at both ends". On the set of her last film Sextette (1977), co-star Tony Curtis claimed that she was given an enema after being made up, at approximately 11:00 in the morning, as the last step of her preparations before going before the camera.
11. According to psychic Kenny Kingston, she wrote all her plays while in a trance.
12. Her films are credited with single-handedly saving failing and debt-ridden Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy in the early 1930s.
13. Was named #15 Actress on The American Film Institutes 50 Greatest Screen Legends
14. At one point, her chauffeur was Jerry Orbach (who is best known for playing Detective Lennie Briscoe on all four "Law & Order" television series).
15. Died two days before her Night After Night (1932) and Sextette (1977) co-star George Raft.
16. Is portrayed by Ann Jillian in Mae West (1982) and by Gloria Gray in Marlene (2000)
17. One of the first women to consistently write the movies she starred in.
18. Playing opposite Ed Wynn in Arthur Hammerstein's "Sometime," with music by Rudolf Friml, she introduced the shimmy to the Broadway stage in 1918. The dance requires hardly any movement of the feet but continuous movement of the shoulders, torso and pelvis. She had seen the dance at black cafés in Chicago.
19. Once when she was scheduled to play a theater in New Haven, Conneticut, the theater's management refused to let her go on because her act was too "risqué" and canceled the show. Disappointed, Yale University students rioted and wrecked the theater.
20. Eldest of three children of John Patrick West, an occasional prizefighter and livery-stable owner, and Matilda Delker Doelger, a one-time corset and fashion model. A baby girl died before Mae was born and a girl and a boy were born after.