When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Mae West is one of the best-known celebrities of the 20th century; she is a cultural symbol that, 65 years after her heyday, continues to be remembered, imitated, and mocked. Yet how is it possible to know Mae West? She left no diaries, no letters. Her ghostwritten biography is inaccurate. The image she created in interviews and in plays and movies offers only slanted insight into her personal life. Acknowledging all of this, Marybeth Hamilton has created a unique biography that focuses as much on the impact of West's public persona as it does on speculations about her private self. Hamilton's take on Mae West is particularly interesting when she focuses on West's appeal to gay culture and the idea, which originated as long ago as the 1930s, that West was a female impersonator.
Claudia Roth Pierpont, New Yorker
"The most reliably sober and informative of the recent crop of West studies, Marybeth Hamilton's [book] pinpoints West's startling transformation from frank man-hating to easy sexual mockery."
When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment
When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment,Marybeth Hamilton,University of California Press,0520210948,Biography & Autobiography,Biography/Autobiography,Entertainment & Performing Arts - General,General,History - General History,Individual Movie Actors And Actresses,Sex in the performing arts,United States,West, Mae,Women's Studies - General
Fun Book:
Recommended Books