Buy this book on-line HAMILTON, MARYBETH: : When I'm Bad I'm Better - Mae West,Sex and American EntertainmentUSA,NY.HARPER COLLINS,1995. ISBN 0060190310.
US,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.MINT/MINT.8vo, 307pp includes notes,a bibliography,an index and b/w photographs.Author's first book - she teaches US history at Birbeck College,University of London.
In the world of trendsetting film icons, few are more familiar than Mae West - that extraordinary combination of temptress, satirical sex-bomb,Gay Nineties throwback, promiscuous siren,taboo breaker,and female drag queen.Yet for all her public controversy,West is also a mystery.She left little that might shed light on her 'private' self.The focus of her life was her work, and the private Mae West became subsumed in the screen character's myths.
Throughout her career West regularly reshaped her persona to suit new audiences,in vaudeville,on Broadway,and in Hollywood.The Mae West we all recognise, the swivel-hipped seducer at once projecting and parodying sex,was the outcome of a thirty year career in disreputable theatre,climaxed in the 1920's by unprecedented notoriety as a low rent playwright and actress who showcased the sexual underworld.
A portrait of an outrageous career that set the stage for future groundbreaking performers.Combining elements of biography,cultural analysis,and social history,HAMILTON unmasks Mae West through the story of her public persona and the process of theatrical experimentation; commercial savvy,and sheer willpower by which West constructed herself.
Though she has been sentimentalised in recent years,Mae West was a truly shocking performer who transgressed boundaries and set off spectacular controversies,which encapsulated the cultural confusions of her time and have powerful resonances for our own.
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