The life and times of the original diva
As a collection of Mae West’s possessions goes under the hammer, Julia Molony tells of the acid-tongued iconoclast’s huge writing talent
WHEN she was born on a summer night in Brooklyn, Mae West’s parents couldn’t have predicted that she would grow up to become a grande dame of Hollywood. But she’d been destined to be a diva from the moment she took her first breath, in 1893.
She was the second child of prize-fighter John Patrick West and Matilda Doelger, a corset model; her older sister, Katie, had died at just a few months of age from a respiratory illness.
When Mae came along, her father was disappointed that she wasn’t a boy. But her grief-stricken mother doted on her healthy daughter with a rare intensity. Young Mae was a bonny baby, with chubby cheeks, blue eyes and blonde hair. An only child until the age of five, she was the object of her mother’s fierce devotion. The girl’s every desire was indulged.
Mae’s primary place in her mother’s affections instilled an unshakeable self-confidence that was to endure throughout her life. Her sense of self was too secure to be rattled by the arrival of her two siblings, a brother and a sister.
“I was never jealous of my sister and brother,” she said. “In my whole life, I’ve never envied anyone. I was too busy thinking about myself.”
Her mother delighted in treating her little girl like a doll, dressing her in lace and curling her hair, instilling a pride in and fascination with her own image. As a child, “I’d pose as I’d walk along and look at myself,” West later remembered.
Her mother had trained as a dressmaker and instilled in little Mae a love of the finer things in life. An early photograph shows her posing on a bear skin, and she loved fine fabrics and jewellery.
Now, her collection of treasured possessions and memorabilia will be viewed in public for the first time. This Friday, Hollywood auction house Julien’s is hosting a sale of West’s property, which has been brought to auction by her former secretary Tim Malachosky.
As a younger woman Matilda had herself harboured ambitions to become an actress, but her parents, respectable merchants of German descent, disapproved and forbade her from the stage. Matilda’s daughter quickly became the focus of her own thwarted ambitions.
“My father wasn’t as sure as my mother about me going on the stage so young,” recalled Mae. “He said, ‘let her have a chance, but if she gets stage fright, she’ll have to wait till she’s older’. Stage fright! Can you imagine? I didn’t know the meaning of the word. Still don’t. My mother didn’t listen to my father. She knew I could do anything I wanted.”
At home, Mae’s career wasn’t the only thing her parents disagreed about. They had married in haste when Matilda was still a teenager, and according to their daughter, her mother soon regretted her choice.
“My father had swept her off her feet,” West once told a reporter, “and she always felt she had made a big mistake, marrying him. She didn’t want me to make the same mistake.”
Matilda taught her daughter to disdain the female destiny of marriage and children in favour of seeking glory outside the home. It was Matilda who ferried her to dance classes, and amateur-night talent shows at the local theatre, the Royal in Brooklyn. She was five years old the first time she performed.
Mae certainly delivered on her mother’s dreams for her, and the two remained close until Matilda died in 1930.
“I took her out on the stage with me for a curtain call before she died,” West said in an interview. “The success I had was worth it for my mother to come and take that bow with me. That meant more than any diamonds.”
By the age of 13, she had gone professional on the vaudeville circuit, performing under her stage name of Baby Mae. Soon after, her acts began to reflect the sexual candour for which she would become famous. She pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in ‘family-friendly’ vaudeville, by incorporating aspects of burlesque into her act. It was onstage as a performer of vaudeville and burlesque that the star Mae West was born. There she carefully honed her craft.
Later, she teamed up with fellow performer Frank Wallace as a duo, devising an act that West later said “was very flashy — loud opening, chic costumes, patter, comic love song (I Love It) and a good get-off.’’
According to Wallace, the partnership apparently soon became more than just professional. In 1937, he turned up in Hollywood brandishing a marriage certificate, claiming he was West’s legal husband. She was by now the second highest-paid woman in Hollywood, and he wanted a cut.
West, for her part, always denied the union. She was successful in proving they had never lived together — but nonetheless in 1942 she was obliged to seek a legal divorce.
It was a play that she wrote herself that made her famous. In 1926, she appeared in Broadway in the lead role of Sex. She’d written the role of libertine and prostitute Margy LaMont as a personal showcase.
“I only knew two rules of playwriting,’’ West said. “Write about what you know, and make it entertaining. So that’s why I wrote it the way I did, on a subject I was interested in — sex.’’
The play was flagrantly provocative, and caused an instant scandal. Variety called it “the nastiest thing ever disclosed on the New York stage”. Of course it was a hit.
It was in its 41st week of performances when police stormed the theatre, arresting West and 20 other cast members. There ensued a noisy obscenity trial, which attracted the attention of the world’s press.
West was eventually charged with “producing an immoral show and maintaining a public nuisance”, fined $500 and sentenced to 10 days in a women’s work-house. It was worth it. West left prison a global star.
“Censorship made me,” she later quipped.
Success in Hollywood soon followed. She arrived, she later said, with a healthy lack of awe for Tinseltown and its studio moguls.
“I’m not a little girl from a little town making good in a big town; I’m a big girl from a big town making good in a little town,” she said.
By the time she was cast in her first on-screen role, she was almost 40. Her first role was a small one, in the 1932 film Night after Night ,buta scene stealer. For her next, she took the lead, reprising the character of Diamond Lil from the hit play Diamond Lil she had written and starred in some years earlier.
Throughout her years in Hollywood, she remained completely in control of her own image. Though many of the female stars of her age were grist to the mill of the studio machine, West remained master of her own destiny, writing nine of the 13 films she starred in.
“Being an actress and a writer both — that’s the best thing you could be because you can be anyone you want,” she said. “You just write yourself the part, and then you play it.”
West had several intense affairs over the course of her life, but never married again. “Marriage is a great institution. I’m not ready for an institution yet,” she quipped.
She was always devoted and loyal to her family, providing them with homes and jobs in Hollywood. But by her own admission, her most fervent devotion was saved for her audience.
“Do you want to know about my first love affair? It was when I was five,” she said in an interview towards the end of her life. “I made my debut in Brooklyn at the Royal Theatre. It was my first love affair with my audience, and it’s lasted all my life… no man could equal that.
“I ached for it, the spotlight, which was like the strongest man’s arms around me, like an ermine coat.”
‘Write about what you know… I wrote on a subject I was interested in — sex’
WHEN friends of Michael O’Dwyer’s then girlfriend learned that he was doing the Crafts Council of Ireland’s goldsmithing apprenticeship course in Kilkenny, they enviously presumed he was showering her in jewellery.
“He spends his time cutting out squares and circles,” she replied, and indeed it was only in year two that the students even got to try to create something as complex as a ring.
I visited Michael at his gorgeous atelier in Stockholm in the company of his old classmate from that course, Ann Chapman, who stocks Michael’s designs in her Westbury Mall store and studio, Stonechat Jewellers.
Both are great fun in person and exceptionally talented, and they look back on their time in Kilkenny with immense fondness and appreciation. There were only 12 students on the two-year course and it was extremely hard to get a place on it. It was, and still is, run by Jane Huston, mother of former RTE presenter, Jenny Huston — now a jewellery designer herself.
Jane was an exceptionally brilliant tutor, they say, and a hard taskmaster who locked them out of class in the courtyard of Kilkenny Castle if they were even a minute late. They spent a week at a time learning to cut one shape out of gilding metal initially using a sawblade, striving to get it perfect to meet Jane’s exacting standards, and slowly and gradually, they progressed to making more complex shapes and designs.
“We’d all spend a week trying to get something exactly right, but Michael would cut out a shape in a few hours and bring it to Jane,” Ann recalls, adding that they were only allowed to use rudimentary tools to help train their eye by learning the hardest way. “She would reject it and send him away to redo it over and over again, but by the end of the week, Michael was able to produce in a day what it had taken the rest of us a week to achieve.”
Poring over Michael’s “book” from the course, which contains all of the metal pieces he made from week to week, you can trace how he honed his craft, literally, over the two years. His beautiful designs are now worn by royalty and celebs, not that he’d tell you that himself as discretion is one of the hallmarks of his business.
Originally from Dun Laoghaire, the 40-year-old stumbled into the career when he got a part-time job in Facet Jewellers after completing his art history degree at UCD. He was instantly captivated and spent four years studying gemmology by correspondence with The Gemmological Association of Great Britain.
He then embarked on the Kilkenny course, which is where he met Ann. Originally from Howth, Ann completed a degree in European studies at Trinity, because her father, George Sevastapulo, who comes from a Greek family, taught geology there and was keen on her having an academic degree. During her Erasmus year in Paris, she fell madly in love with jewellery, and completed a jewellery-making course with FAS in Baldoyle after graduation. She carried out her work placement with the Steensons in Glenarm, Antrim, where Bill and Christina generously allowed her to work on her own designs in the evening in their workshop, having worked on their jewellery during the day.
This helped secure her place in Kilkenny, and she and Michael became instant friends and actually discovered that they had bought houses practically beside one another in the town.
It was through Michael that Ann met her English husband, Tim Chapman. A keen rock climber back then (and an extreme sports enthusiast now), Michael had become climbing buddies with Tim. He and Ann got together at a party near the end of the course, and Ann claims Michael was shocked when she and Tim started dating as they’re very different in personality. Michael protests that it occurred to him a few months earlier that Ann and
Tim might make a good couple.
Ann and Tim are now married with two children, Eve (8) and Katie (4) and live in Dublin, while Michael moved to Stockholm as his (now ex) wife was Swedish. He went via Antwerp first, where he specialised in microscopic stone-setting with the famous diamond setter, Alexander Sidorov.
Ann (38) was more drawn to goldsmithing during the course, and after graduating, she went to work with Design Yard on Nassau Street, ultimately becoming general manager. Noting a gap in what they were offering, she asked Michael to design a collection of diamond wedding bands, which is how his studio, O’Dwyer, (www.odwyer.se) was born in 2009.
He borrowed the money from his mum for that first collection and it was a big hit. His high-end designs are now sold in 18 outlets worldwide. His work is stunning and so perfectly and intricately crafted, and he and his team consistently produce outstanding work by hand. He loves working with coloured stones in particular, like morganite, amethyst, sapphire and tourmaline.
Michael has a daughter Tiarna (9) from his first marriage, and a stepson Vidar (6) with his partner Linnea, with whom he also has two girls, Hilda (2) and two-month-old Alva. Hilda was actually born in Holles Street hospital two months early when Michael and Linnea were home on a visit, but all ended well.
Ann decided to open up her own design studio in Dublin in 2012 because she really missed making and designing. Her brother Colm came up with the name, Stonechat Jewellers, after the Irish bird of the same name. As well as designing and making her own gorgeous ranges of jewellery with her in-house team, the uber-talented Ann stocks ranges from 11 other jewellers, including O’Dwyer. She also offers a bespoke service and a popular remodelling service, where you can get your own jewellery reworked into a new piece.
Aside from the business connection between Ann and Michael, a deep friendship has endured between the two. Michael is godfather to one of Ann’s children and her husband Tim has reciprocated with one of Michael’s.
They have an intrinsic understanding of each other’s design and thought processes, which is what makes their collaborative process so successful. “Ann and I have helped each other grow and we bounce ideas off each other all the time,” Michael says. “She is definitely much stronger than I am on the business and technical side and she’s super organised and has great vision. There’s a real mutual respect
there.”
‘Ann and I bounce ideas off each other and there’s a real mutual respect’