Screen Goddess Collection - Mae West (Small Box) DVD | Movie Mail UK

Star Review

An actress, comedienne, singer, playwright, and scriptwriter, Mae West swung her hips with practised nonchalance, was fabulously flamboyant, and her double entendres were screamingly funny. Her good-humoured vulgarity made her Hollywood’s biggest box-office draw from 1933 to 1934, and it is said that she single-handedly saved Paramount from bankruptcy, but she soon became a target for the new Legion of Decency, which makes it fortunate that her best pictures were made before the new Production Code came into force in April 1934. West was a most unlikely sex symbol, as she was nearly 40 when she made her first film. She wrote most of her own dialogue, and her wisecracks are legion: “It’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men that counts.” “How tall are you, son?” “Ma’am, I’m six feet seven inches.” “Let’s forget the six feet and talk about the seven inches.” This six-disc collection includes She Done Him Wrong (1933), her second picture and first starring role, in which she reprised her Broadway role. She co-scripted the film, and it’s one of her finest, with young Cary Grant invited by Mae to “come up sometime and see me,” which evolved into what she never actually said, “come up and see me sometime.” Her bawdy renditions of “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone” and “I Like a Guy What Takes His Time” are priceless. Her third film, I’m No Angel (1933), reunited her with Cary Grant and is considered her best picture. “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” “I see a man in your future,” a fortune-teller predicts. “What, only one?” Belle of the Nineties (1934), Klondike Annie (1936), My Little Chickadee (1940, which paired her with another comedy legend, W. C. Fields), and The Heat’s On (1943) are lesser works, but each contains great charm. By the time she stopped making films in 1943, Mae West had become one of the wealthiest women in Hollywood. “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds.” “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”

R. Dixon Smith on 1st September 2005

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