***WARNING: WATCH CLIPS AT YOUR OWN RISK***
Contrary to popular belief Mae West was not a silent film star (even I was surprised to find that out!) Oh she COULD have (being born 1893) but she never did. She performed in vaudeville from a young age, and eventually took to writing her own plays which gained her first notoriety. Mae didn't do things subtly...her first Broadway show (which she wrote, produced, and starred in) debuted in 1926 with the lovely title "Sex". It was so scandalous she was imprisoned for 10 days on obscenity charges!
That really didn't stop her as this amazing woman loved fighting censorship and her infamy grew through the years (her follow up play was full of drag queens...entitled "The Drag"). But it was not until 1932, long after silents had mostly ended, that Mae took to the pictures. Her first film was "Night after Night", and she stole the picture. Mae West had arrived!
This amazing woman was the female Hugh Hefner if you will. She hated censorship and pushed their buttons all her life (her last line in this last film, "I hope to say the same as Paul Revere...the British are coming!" about her umm British husband). She fought for GLBT rights (though she wasn't fully enlightened on the topic), women's rights, and believed men and women should be equal...and obviously that sex was just fine and dandy. Unfortunately her last film, Sextette in 1978, is so unbelievably bad that it will stain her legacy forever. Mae was 85 when it was filmed, playing a sex kitten who married a 20 something year old man and the world worships like the new Marilyn Monroe. I tried to look past it but...you just cant. She has a lazy eye, moves like shes embalmed, is unfortunately not her svelte self (but thinks she is), and doesnt seem to know where she is or what shes doing.
The Silent Movie Theatre screened the film tonight and did their best to make it go down gently. They started with the cringe worthy Shanghai Gesture (Gene Tierny should be SHOT, oh wait she was HA!) that warrants an article itself someday (it pretty much offended every possible race by putting obviously American whities in Arabic, Asian, and even other nationality roles). They then gave out Gin Slings (the horrible yellowface character was named Madame Gin Sling) trying to liquor up the crowd for the next film...Sextette. All I can say is I didn't drink enough. And I may need counseling...this film truly is horrific.
Plot
Mass hysteria is taking over London, and as Regis Philbin so kindly clues as in its the second coming of Jesus...no wait sorry; I mean the biggest sex symbol in the world, the embalmed Marlo Manners (Mae West) has just married her 6th...or 7th...or 8th...(we're not sure) husband Sir Michael Barrington (Timothy Dalton). He's no older then 30 but no one seems to question this. Then we get our first song...about how Marlo is 'the female Apollo'. This is the kinda song that signals the Apocalypse is near. No wait...that again is the whole film.
We see Marlo in her wedding dress with her teenaged husband in the hotel lobby. Another cringe worthy song (this time about loving Hollywood) begins and Marlo quips several old West lines to which they laugh so hard you'd think she just said the funniest thing ever. Hubby is all excited to get to ravish his 85 year old bride, but her manager Dan Turner (Dom DeLuise) keeps bugging him to let her work 'for her 50 million fans'.
We then see Marlo tape recording her memoirs with more sexy cringe inducing quips about her ex husbands. Michael comes in and has a hissy fit about all the people around her. I believe this is when the horrible disco "Love will keep us together" bit enters...but if not I may have stroked out a bit you just can not believe HOW BAD this movie is.
Well love didn't keep them together (seriously they were a kiss away from getting busy) and Michael goes and gives and interview that mistakenly makes him come off as gay. Dan convinces Marlo to do a fitting and meet with one of her ex husbands, 'Lexi' (Tony Curtis), who is well...how in Gods name do I explain this subplot? See Marlo was apparently conned into dating all these Princes and Ambassadors for 'the good of Uncle Sam' and she had several of them in her past. Lexi is the Russian Ambassador and some big UN meeting is occurring in the same hotel where Russia is opposed to whatever it is they are agreeing on...which seems to be not committing WW3 or something. And if Marlo will just meet with him and vamp him a little he'll change his no to yes. I'm serious. But see Marlo doesn't want her new hubby to know about it so Dan promises to keep him busy with interviews. Thanks to his self induced faux pas there is plenty to go around.
Marlo does her costume fitting (with the gayest fitter ever...Keith Moon...who thinks hes a gay pirate. I wish I was kidding...) and meets with Lexi. Meanwhile earlier Dan convinced Marlo to give him her memoir tapes (to keep Michael from knowing her past) and he threw it in a cake...that Lexi ordered. It falls out the window and a javelin catches it, see the US Olympic team is in town. Marlo notices this and excuses herself, to go find the Olympic team. Meanwhile Michael keeps accidentally giving the impression he is gay to interviewers.
Marlo enters the Olympic team gym where these sexy young men want a piece of that 85 year old woman! She vamps and charms them, and spots the tape on a trampoline, which in a miraculous spurt goes OUT THE CEILING WINDOW AND UP INTO A LION STATUES MOUTH. It makes no sense I promise. Oh and as Mae looks up she couldn't look more confused and her lazy eye is horribly noticeable...poor old misguided woman.
Glad she vamped Lexi, Dan insists she do some screen tests for her new film which is directed by another ex husband of hers, Laslo Karolny (Ringo fucking STARR! Who eerily thinks hes Bronson Pinchot). Meanwhile Michael mistakenly sees her with all these exes and thinks hes just a notch on her belt (HA!) Turns out hes husband #6. Somewhere around here husband #5 Vance Norton (George Hamilton!) reappears which is a surprise to Marlo because she thought he was dead. Hes kinda violent (guns and junk) and insists she's still married to him. However she had been thinking of divorcing him before his 'supposed death' but couldn't REMEMBER if she actually had. Dan realizes her memoir tape would tell and by force he and Vance go to retrieve it. For some reason Michael is already there, also trying to retrieve it, but they don't notice him. Dan fails to get it and they leave, leaving Michael to find the tape which he gives to the chef to place in another cake (WHY?)
Vance is having a hissy fit and Michael is smugly confident. The TV is again conveniently on (an ongoing theme through the film) and shows the UN meeting, and the cake which reveals the tape. The group runs upstairs to get it (where the UN guys, mostly exes, fawn over Marlo), but the head of the UN declares they should get to hear it. Vance 'holds up the world' and gets it back, but a poorly impersonated Godfather (hes stereotypically Italian) makes him return it to the UN who declare they should listen to it. They listen to the tape which reveals a bunch of secrets about them and also reveals she DID divorce Vance before he ''died''. She threatens to let the secrets out and the tape is returned to her. Then a truly horrible rendition of "Baby Face" is done, I die a little more inside, and we move on.
In Marlo's room there's a note from Michael, saying he's just gonna save her the trouble and go to his yacht now (implying divorce). A horrible song, "Sextette" is performed and Marlo goes to leave. Dan stops and congratulates her for "SAVING THE WORLD" and she quips she has to go save her marriage.
On the yacht Michael is humming "Love keep us together" and looking lovingly at her picture. However she already arrived and is in his bed, much to his joy. She quips, "I hope to say what Paul Revere said; the British are coming!" (they haven't had sex the entire movie praise be to God) and the movie ENDS. The Marlo song is repeated, and my head explodes.
Review
Someone has said that this whole expenditure is an example of what goes wrong when a star is so powerful nobody can say 'no'...even though they SHOULD!
When it first started up I concluded she didn't look too bad faraway...and I wondered if people were just harsh on her because she was an old woman vamping a young man. Let's just be honest: people over 60 are not attractive to people under 40...unless they have lots of money. Either gender. Mae was definitely just like Hugh Hefner, who at 82 is currently dating 3 girls near my age (in their twenties). And that's REAL LIFE, not a movie. And yet he gets revered for this, while Mae West gets slighted. Trust me neither of them aged better than the other; I don't care how much money Hugh has I would NOT sleep with him. I respect him greatly for his fight against censorship; but hes 50 years past his expiration date for me in the sexy category.
So that being said I think Mae got unfairly slighted just because she was a woman. But THAT being said it was indeed disturbing. She had really let herself go, and to add to that things were sagging left and right...vital things (if your going to wear a low cut dress that is). Her weave was unbearable fake, and she didn't seem like she had the awareness or health to pull this off. She walked very stiffly, delivered her lines like Lindsey Lohan on a vicodin meets jagermeister binge, and her one eye was definitely noticeably lazy. If she was playing an older woman in an age appropriate role then she woulda been fine...but since she was trying to play the same roles she did at age 20-30...well...its just horribly disastrous.
Due to these things 3 urban legends have sprung up about Mae in this film. First was that she had a cane under her dress to help her walk. I can definitely see where they got that idea (she has her hand on her hips a lot) but I don't believe it. Mainly because those dresses were horrifyingly tight...and that would have to be a hell of a hiding job. To add to that she did the hand on hip then would continue walking without her hand on hip...just as stiffly...so it seems she took that pose more for her deluded sexual appeal then because she had a cane under her dress.
The second rumor was that she waited in an elevator for HOURS waiting for her cue but it never came. This one would be harder to disprove or prove but she didn't seem to have it all together. Its possible.
The final one is that she wore an earpiece under her wig because she couldn't read cue cards or remember her lines. It may sound far fetched but if its NOT true then her performance SEEMS like it. She doesn't seem to know where she is or what shes saying, and her reactions are horribly delayed. Also her weave is over her ears through the entire movie, which lends credit to this one.
Poor Mae West aside this film actually wouldn't have been so bad if she had just chosen an AGE APPROPRIATE actress for it. See she wrote the play "Sextette" and had it not had the horrible musical numbers (mostly takes off popular songs of the day) and her decaying body well...it woulda been just fine. It COULD have been an interesting enough story had it been done properly...but Mae West being mummified just sinks that possibility. To add to it the rest of the actors were EXTREMELY over the top (how Isle of Love of them!) and it just did not help. Especially the words: Keith, Moon, gay, pirate.
I literally was horrified. I sat there with a look of mortified shock on my face and my mouth literally open through most of the film. There were moments where I literally screamed "OH MY GOD NO!" and prayed someone would just put me out of my misery. I've seen kitschy bad films before but this is the Queen of all of them. I literally drove home shocked...that's how bad it stays WITH YOU.
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