Mae West The Glamour Collection

I didn't put this in the DVD section, because I was hoping we just might want to talk about Mae West in general as well...

I've been wading my way through the Mae West Glamour Collection, a DVD with 5 of her movies.
She really had something, her debut movie Night after Night starring George Raft, jeez she was 39, that was old for an actress in 1932, especially playing a sex-pot like she did. She really was quite funny, the movie itself is a crashing bore, but the second she hits ths screen after about 30 minutes the thing really takes off. She really was a hoot. Her scenes with Alison Skipworth are hysterical.

This film is not a comedy - although it has many hilarious scenes (wait until you see West and Skipworth in bed together!). It is a frank and insightful drama, very risque and dangerously sexual. George Raft is unusually sensitive, Constance Cummings outstanding and Alison Skipworth dazzling. The supporting cast is also fine - led by the incomparable Mae West. A rare treat from the early 1930's.

Miss Mabel Jellyman: Maudie, {Mae}do you believe in love at first sight?
Maudie: I don't know, but it saves an awful lot of time.

Her second movie, which she starred in and wrote the story and screenplay, I'm No Angel, 1933, is the second film of the collection.
She is a lion tamer/dancer in a carnival. Cary Grant is her love interest, along with about 20 other men !!!
The film moves at a brisk pace, and its concluding courtroom sequence is unarguably one of the funniest scenes in film comedy.

Come up and see me sometime - any time!

Beulah, peel me a grape,"

Well... When I'm good, I'm very good. But, when I'm bad... I'm better.

The other three films in the collection are Goin' To Town, Go West Young Man and the one I love the best, W.C. Fields is in it..My Little Chickadee.

Well those are my thoughts..the rest of this is from Amazon........

Amazon.com
The triumph of personality is beautifully demonstrated in Mae West: The Glamour Collection, a bundle of five comedies featuring the never duplicated (if often imitated) Ms. West. Never altering her insouciant, sexed-up persona, Mae West sashays through these films like a tour guide in a well-lit bordello, cheerfully cracking herself up with a series of perfectly-timed one-liners. Since she wrote her own material, there was no separation between the lady (what a feeble word) and her scandalous dialogue.
If you doubt this, check out Night After Night, her film debut. The first half of the picture is an unremarkable gangster comedy: George Raft in his usual inert form, Constance Cummings the good girl, capable comic support from Roscoe Karns and Alison Skipworth. Then West blowses in, and it's all over. Within a minute she's tossed off an eternal signature line (hatcheck girl: "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds." West: "Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie") and disrupted the high-class aims of gangster Raft. The other actors look agog at this unapologetic force of libido. Watching this, you might recall the first time you ever saw Groucho Marx or Bill Murray on film--the movie itself disappears, replaced by gratitude that someone like this exists.

I'm No Angel followed her first starring vehicle (She Done Him Wrong, not included here), and its lunatic plot--Mae as a lion tamer taken up by New York society--does nothing to slow the barrage of sexual innuendo. West hums her way through the film with the kind of confidence that must have inspired countless fans to try something disreputable. Cary Grant is the bemused recipient of West's attention. Goin' to Town is nearly as good, as dance-hall gal Mae inherits an oil fortune, then sets her cap for the haughty Englishman working on her, uh, wells. West's style is undiminished (she was in her mid-forties already), although by this time the Production Code--concocted in part as a horrified response to her first films--was trimming her entendres.

Tamer still is the tongue-in-cheek Go West Young Man, although the spectacle of West (playing a "temperamental" movie star) leering after hunky Randolph Scott is pleasant. My Little Chickadee, made at Universal after her run at Paramount ended, is the legendary pairing with W.C. Fields. It's full of great bon mots from both drawlers, even if the sum is less than its parts. Disapproving Margaret Hamilton tells Fields of West, "I'm afraid I can't say anything good about her." Fields replies, "I can see what's good, tell me the rest." These five films are a good introduction to the rest. Beulah, peel me a grape. --Robert Horton

Product Description
Smart, seductive and undeniably funny, Mae West is one of cinema’s most enduring comedy legends. Now this larger-than-life buxom beauty charms fans all over again in an amazing 5-movie collection of some of her most wildly popular films. Revel in Mae’s breakout performance in Night After Night; join her as a bewitching lion (and man) tamer in I’m No Angel; lasso up some fun with the wealthy and the wicked in the rags-to-riches tale of Goin’ To Town; delight in a comic country romance in Go West Young Man; and see how wild the West can really get in My Little Chickadee. It’s a must-own salute to one of Hollywood’s most outrageous and hilarious leading ladies.

Mae West was outrageous (for the time) with her sexual innuendo. Some of my favs of hers are:

"How tall are you son?"
"5ft 8ins, ma'am"
"Well forget the five feet..lets concentrate on the eight inches"

"Goodness! What pearls."
" 'Goodness' had nothing to do with it!"

and my favourite:

"I used to be snow white...but I drifted!"

She was a pip alright, she really got away with murder in her first few films before the censors started paying more attention to her...I'm No Angel is pretty damn risque. I'll have to search for some more quotes later...

in a rush now trying to get ready for work... :rolleyes:

There's a whole page of her quotes here (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mae_west.html)

I do like : "I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure"

There's a whole page of her quotes here (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mae_west.html)

I do like : "I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure" :D Oh thanks...of course I love the first quote...and since we are in the Mae West thread, what the hell...A hard man is good to find...

I'm draggin Mae back up, if for no other reason than she is one of, well two of, the 50 best breasts in Hollywood.

And seriously if you have never watched her films, this collection is fantastic.

The woman who brought curves to the screen was Mae West, the taboo-breaking Brooklyn-born 1930s wisecracker who plied laughs while shaking her astonishing anatomy. Plenty of men wanted to come up and see her sometime, but Mae’s upper echelons actually helped saved lives in World War II. An inflatable life vest that created oversized flotation power was named the Mae West in honor of the star’s celebrated upper torso.