Mae West

A beautiful, florid autograph on an autograph album page.

MAE WEST (1893-1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol. Famous for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in Vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedian, actress and writer in the motion picture industry. One of the most controversial stars of her day, West encountered many problems including censorship.

When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded Rock and Roll albums.

During World War II, Allied soldiers called their yellow inflatable, vest-like life preserver jackets “Mae Wests” partly from Cockney rhyming slang for “life vest” and partly because of the resemblance to her curvaceous torso. A “Mae West” is also a type of round parachute malfunction which contorts the shape of the canopy into the appearance of an extraordinarily large brassiere, presumably one suitable for a woman of Mae West’s generous proportions.

Her name has been incorporated into nomenclature for a number of items. A Mae West slot canyon is one that is too narrow at the bottom to traverse on foot. Instead, one uses chimneying techniques to negotiate above the floor. A “Mae West Hold” is a term used to describe a United States Senate procedure that in effect stops a bill dead in its tracks, usually in secret. The Mae West version of the Senate hold occurs when the senator behind the objection is open to negotiation, inviting the author to “come up and see me sometime.” MAE-West was also the name of the Metropolitan Area Exchange West, one of the first Internet tier-one hubs to connect all the major TCP/IP networks that made up the Internet back in 1992. It is not documented whether the founders of MAE-West named this early Internet Exchange after the actress. One of the most popular objects of the surrealist movement was the Mae West Lips Sofa, which was completed by artist Salvador Dalí in 1937 for Edward James.

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