A Phoenix Rising: Impressions of Vietnam

This book is primarily a thoughtful examination on the myth, and work of Mae West whose public persona won her a place in American folklore, and outraged the morality police of her times. (I recall back in the early 40's when I, a mere lad, was refused admittance to one of her movies because it was unfit for tender eyes). Hamilton, a professor of history at the University of London, has done a remarkable job of attempting to get at the real Mae West. Mae, herself, authored two autobiographies, one in 1959, the other in 1975; and a host of journalists and hangers-on were more than willing to recount what they knew of her life. But the critical point of her life, between 1920 and 1927 when she metamorphosed from a burlesque performer and probably, a prostitute, into a writer, producer, and actress of some stature--remains unknown. As to the untampered biographical data that do exist, Mae West was born in 1893, baptized as Mary Jane. Her father, John West was of Irish extraction, and although details of his occupation, etc. are largely a creation of his daughter's fertile invention. The author writes that he was undoubtedly "a onetime craftsman on the margin of Brooklyn's underworld." Her mother, Matilda (Tillie) Doelger was an emigrant from Wurtemberg, Germany. She pushed her daughter into the theatrical life. Mae made her professional debut at the age of 7, in a theatrical company that specialized in blood and thunder melodrama. Mae's venue was never very high. She continued to be associated with cheap theater that catered to prurience, flaunted sex, crime and scandal. She became, in the author's word, a "tough girl", the bane of reformers such as Jane Addams. Mae was married before her eighteenth birthday to a fellow performer, but after flagrant adulteries, walked out on her marriage as if it never existed. (She was not legally divorced until 1943). Mae quickly found a niche in burlesque, and may have been a stripper; probably a prostitute. In any case, she dropped out of sight around 1920, and did not surface until 1926-1927 when she burst upon the notice of New York theater by two productions that she wrote, and with the help of private funding, produced. The first was a story of a Canadian prostitute that was provocatively titled, Sex. Despite howls from the "better sort", this play became one of the major hits of the 1926 Broadway season. Sex was followed in 1927 by her own written "homosexual comedy-drama" titled The Drag, and in 1928, with Pleasure Man (closed down by the NY police) and finally, Diamond Lil, better known in its cinema version, She Done Him Wrong. Now here is were the biography breaks down. Mae West had no better than a grade-school education. She was a bottom feeder in the vaudeville/burlesque venue, disappearing from the radar between 1920 and 1926. The author never gives us a clue, or tries to explain what she was doing during those years and how suddenly, she became a no mean play

In this well-researched book Marybeth Hamilton offers a picture of an brave and individual performer/writer and her work. It was surprising to discover that Mae West was all but washed up by the 1940's, her legend seems so dominating in popular culture. I also learnt more than I could ever have imagined about burlesque theatre and life in early 20th Century America.All in all, The Queen of Camp an interesting history of the fascinatin' Ms West and the world she inhabited.