Mae West : an icon in black and white / Jill Watts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watts, Jill.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

West, Mae.

West, Mae--Relations with African Americans.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States--Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses.

Relations with African Americans.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

x, 390 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

[Oxford ;] [New York] : Oxford University Press, [2003]

Summary:

"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" Mae West invited -- promptly capturing the imagination of generations. But who was this woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and banned from the airwaves, yet would ascend to the status of film legend? Sifting through previously untapped sources, Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of a woman who, even today, is regarded as the pop archetype of sexual wantonness and ribald humor. Tracing Mae West's early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, we follow her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen's most popular -- and colorful -- stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed heavily from African-American culture, music, dance and humor, creating a subversive voice for herself by which she artfully challenged society and its assumptions regarding race, class and gender. Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black tradition of double-speak and "signifying," West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the phenomenon of a black woman passing for white.

Contents:

1 They Were Too Smart

2 The Way She Does It

3 Shimadonna

4 Speaking of the Influence of the Jook

5 You Can Be Had

6 The Subject of the Dream

7 Good Night to the Dichotomies

8 If You Can't Go Straight, You've Got to Go Around

9 Naturally I Disagree

10 Bring Me Rabelais

11 A Glittering Facsimile

12 I Had Them All

13 I Wrote the Story Myself

14 Really a Prologue.

Notes:

"First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2003."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-390) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has p. 343-358 wanting.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has index mentioned in the contents but it does not appear in the text.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy bibliography is incomplete ending on p. 390 with the last entry being Okada, Yuko.

ISBN:

0195161122

9780195161120

OCLC:

52570730