Seventy-five years ago, Hollywood's queen of obscenity made her first trip across the Atlantic – and the UK didn't know what had hit it
In the dreary winter of 1947, two events brought some sparkle to British life. One was the then Princess Elizabeth’s wedding to Philip Mountbatten, and the other was the first and only visit to these shores by Mae West, the queen of comedy, famous the world over for her catchphrase “Come up and see me sometime,” and the risqué one-liners with which she peppered such movies as I’m No Angel and My Little Chickadee.
West, who arrived in England in mid-September, was among the very first wave of American stars to perform in British theatres after the Second World War. A few months earlier, Laurel and Hardy had made their triumphant post-war return visit – and after West, there would be a steady flow of Hollywood headliners crossing the Atlantic to perform up and down the country. Many of them, like West, were no longer making hit movies, but had found that they were still a box office draw for theatres.
The voluptuous 54-year-old actress, singer, comedienne and playwright had originally made her name on the stage and, 20 years before her arrival in Britain, had served time during the Broadway run of her controversial “sex-drama”, Sex. The theatre had been raided and she had been charged with “obscenity and behaviour designed to corrupt the morals of youth,” but eight days later she emerged from prison a star with a hit on her hands. “Censorship made me,” she later quipped.
To post-war Britain, she brought Diamond Lil, a play, set in the underbelly of New York in the “Gay Nineties,” which she had written and headlined on Broadway in 1928. It had introduced the archetypal Mae West character – the sexy and savvy man-eater whose one-liners would sparkle as brightly as her jewels in a series of film comedies popular both in the States and in Britain the following decade. Such was her fame over here in the 1930s that young girls would dress up as her in fancy dress contests, and she was a favourite subject for impressionists in music hall acts and on the radio.
At her first British press conference, held as soon as she had disembarked from the Queen Mary in Southampton, she gave a flavour of her sassy repartee. “I want every man in England to come up and see me. Especially I would like this Big Ben character I hear about to come up and see me, too.” Asked why she wasn’t married, the diminutive West slowly rolled her eyes and drawled: “Because it would interfere with my hobby.” To the follow-up question – “What is your hobby?” – she replied: “Men.” With a knowing look, and a pat of her platinum curls, she volunteered: “I can’t cook or sew – but I do everything else.”
While the males in the press corps hung on her every, innuendo-laden, word, the female reporters noted that she cut a stylish dash in her “new American double-duty snood in pink-beige,” which was teamed with a wide-brimmed hat, a calf-length black dress, a chic cream duster coat and her trademark platform heels.
If her clothes were understated, her jewellery – notably a 22-carat diamond ring (described by one reporter as “the size of a pigeon’s egg”) and a diamond bracelet of somewhere between two and five inches’ width depending on which newspaper you read – was not. Indeed, she had brought £25,000 worth of jewellery with her, along with 150 dresses and 60 pairs of shoes.
She took up residence in a riverside suite at the Savoy Hotel (“My bed was wonderful, even if it didn’t have a mirror over it,” she later said) while assembling a cast for the production which would premiere in Manchester, and tour the country for three months before opening in London. With so many parts to be filled, her producers cast their net wide; a young Christopher Lee is believed to have been among the actors who responded to the casting call. West may have been scouting for talent herself when she attended the Saville Theatre to see Noose, a Soho-set gangster drama starring Michael Hordern and Nigel Patrick.
She was, after all, keen to have bit-part players who added colour; authentic-looking characters who would bring the lively, rough and tumble atmosphere of the Bowery of the 1890s to life. According to one cast member interviewed by West’s biographer Maurice Leonard, “there were lots of ladies of the town and tarts among the girls. At that time Equity was not so strong on restricted membership.” West even hired a little newspaper seller who had caught her eye as she entered the theatre.
The main supporting female role was played by Noele Gordon, later famous as Meg in Crossroads. According to Leonard, Gordon loathed West because West only ever addressed her by her character’s name and made the younger actress wear drab costumes so she wouldn’t upstage her.
Bruno Barnabe, who was invited to re-audition for the male lead after initially being dismissed as too old, found himself being asked to run through the bedroom scene – in the star’s hotel suite. West, who was sitting at the dressing table fixing her hair, instructed him to come up behind her and place his hands “on my bosom”.
Barnabe tentatively put a hand on her left breast. “I meant both breasts, honey,” she said. The actor later recalled: “I put the script between my teeth and my right hand on her right breast, as directed, and gently rotated both hands. ‘You’re in,’ she said briefly.” (When the show opened in London, that scene reportedly prompted shocked cries of protest from women in the audience.)
The exchanges with Barnabe, as Lil’s Latin lover, provided some of the laughs in a rather turgid play which centred around white slavery and murder.
“My love for you will last for ever,” he said.
“Yeah,” replied West, “but how about your health?”
“It’s wonderful in Rio,” he continued.
“It’s wonderful anywhere,” said West dryly.
“But I would go through fire and water for you …”
“Just make it fire,” snapped West – “I’d sooner have you all hot than wet.”
After the London rehearsals, the show toured the country – weeks at a time in Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham and Blackpool. West, a nervous traveller, refused to be driven between cities and took the train with the rest of the cast – albeit in different carriages. Arriving in Manchester on a foggy Sunday evening in October, she quipped to her fellow passengers: “I’m sure they’ll love me – if they ever see me.”
Ticket prices had to be boosted to meet her weekly salary of £1,250, and although the critics were not impressed with Diamond Lil – The Stage described it as a “melodramatic piece of mediocrity” in which the highlight was a series of songs performed by West – punters were thrilled to see a diamond-dripping Hollywood icon in the flesh.
Offstage in particular, West made a favourable impression everywhere she went – not that she took on many personal appearances during her stay in Britain. The few that she made included the opening of the British Philatelic Exhibition in Glasgow and a visit to the Dunlop factory in Birmingham, where she signed one of the inflatable lifejackets which Allied airmen had nicknamed “Mae Wests” because they reminded them of her hourglass figure. She also accepted Bud Flanagan’s invitation to be guest of honour at the Vaudeville Golfing Society Ball at the Park Lane Hotel in the spring of 1948.
In Glasgow, where 2,000 people had braved the bitter November cold to await her late arriving train, she indulged her passion for boxing – she was, after all, the daughter of a prizefighter named “Battlin’ Jack” West – and watched local hero Willie Whyte in action at the Kelvin Hall. She was accompanied by her bodyguards, all ex-boxers who appeared to have come straight from Central Casting and who were led by Ted “Kid” Lewis, a character with a penchant for flamboyant neckties.
A firm believer in spiritualism, West also, discreetly, attended spiritualist meetings while travelling through Britain. While she was in London, she began to sponsor a young Luton boy’s education after, she said, her father had come to her in a vision and told her to do so. Unfortunately, her father hadn’t materialised to warn her about the burglary which took place at Glasgow’s Alhambra Theatre during her two-week run there. Many cast members lost valuables; West’s jewels, which were locked up in her hotel’s safe at the time, eluded the Scottish thieves – but she was less lucky in London five months later, when her dressing room at the Prince of Wales Theatre was raided.
She may have enjoyed bedecking herself in bling, but tee-total West had simple, inexpensive tastes when it came to food. While appearing at Manchester’s Palace Theatre, she didn’t care for the menu at the Midland Hotel, so the boarding house landlady who was playing host to the rest of the cast sent food parcels to her. Similarly, she accepted an invitation to spend Christmas with a family at their home in Lytham and was said to be very “homely”. She and the family’s grandmother spent the evening swapping recipes.
Apart from the occasional outing, she mostly divided her time between her hotel, where she made regular revisions to the show, and the theatre – even after Diamond Lil had moved to London in January 1948. She may not have been interested in socialising with celebrities, but her opening night drew an impressive line-up of stars, among them British actors Patricia Roc, Eric Portman and Hermione Baddeley and fellow Hollywood A-lister Danny Kaye. A few weeks later, the Parisian cabaret legend Mistinguett was said to be travelling to London specially to meet her and see the show.
By the time Diamond Lil closed and Mae West was holding her farewell press conference on the Queen Mary, in May 1948, there was more to her than had met the appreciative eyes of the reporters when they had welcomed her eight months earlier. Back then, she had revealed that she had intentionally gained four or five pounds’ reserve weight for the trip – and had brought supplies of American food – because she was concerned that British rationing and food, which she found “a teeny bit dull,” might cost her her curves.
As she prepared to go home, she admitted that, contrary to expectations, she had gained several pounds. “But,” she was quick to point out, with one final slow roll of the eyes and wiggle of the hips, “they are all properly distributed.”
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