“Sometimes it seems to me, I’ve known so many men that the FBI ought to come to me first to compare fingerprints.”
It was Mae West month around here, and to top off watching my favourite sexpot’s films, I decided it was time to read her autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It. After turning the final page, I concluded that Mae West was an incredible woman. She created a successful persona and knew just how to market herself–controlling every last little detail–from the costumes she wore, the scripts she edited and wrote, to the theatres she performed in. She understood her audience, and she knew how to give her fans what they wanted.
Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It begins with Mae West’s childhood. While this portion of the book is relatively brief, it’s clear that Mae was a precocious child. She thrived on amateur theatrics, and her mother supported the goal to make Mae a star. Mae West details her career and explains how she moved from Vaudeville to Broadway, and eventually turned her sights on Hollywood.
This is not a tell-all book. Mae West remains surprisingly discreet when it comes to naming names–although she includes overviews of liaisons with various men. Throughout the book, Mae West doesn’t hesitate to offer her insights on love, male/female relationships, homosexuality, and sex. And Mae West is unrelenting when it comes to giving herself ample praise–it begins with noting that her siblings were comparative weaklings, and goes on to her describing herself as a forerunner of the sexual revolution. No one can accuse Mae West of false modesty.
The book also includes several amusing anecdotes. She describes what it was like working with W.C. Fields, how she fooled a diamond swindler (she kept a jeweler’s scale at home for her hobby of diamond collecting), and how she imperiously selected a director (it was Mae’s way or the highway). Included are many details of the changing theatre scene as the Depression hit, behind the scenes information on her delightful films and her ongoing battles with the Hays Code. Even William Randolph Hearst wrote “Isn’t it time Congress did something about Mae West?” Fans of Mae West will enjoy this book and be surprised to discover that in print she sounds like her film characters–tough, unsentimental, always in control, and full of one liners: “getting down to your last man must be as bad as getting down to your last dollar.”
