Films with: West, Mae

Adolph Zuko presents Mae West in Klondike Annie

Mae West stars in one of her most unusual roles set in the Gold Rush of the 1890s. Rose Carlton (West) is a "kept" woman of the wealthy Chan Lo. Rose escapes and flees to Alaska aboard a ship. On board she meets Sister Annie Alden and the two develop a friendship that dramatically changes the life of Rose.

DVD 943

Mae West the glamour collection /

Mae West had an inexhaustibly playful interest in language, and a rare, sometimes perplexing, and even lofty wit, spiced by low-down slang. Well before the second wave of feminism, she wrote all her own material, insisted on total control of her work, and was wildly popular for a short time, right before the Production Code lowered the boom on adult attitudes being expressed in films. She made only 12 movies, but three are first-rate, and these were enough to seal her fame and launch a legend. In her first film appearance, "Night after night," a successful ex-boxer buys a high-class speakeasy and falls for a rich society girl. As the bold Tira in "I'm no angel," she works as a dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. For "Goin' to town," West goes Western. Cleo Borden is a former dance hall queen who has become newly rich. She falls for--and pursues--an upper crust Englishman. This is followed by "Go west young man," where she plays Mavis Arden, a movie star stranded in the country. To stifle her boredom, she trifles with a young man's affections. "My little chickadee" pairs West with a legend of similar stature, W.C. Fields. As Flower Belle Lee, she is rightly suspected of illicit relations with the Masked Bandit, and run out of Little Bend. Surprisingly, things change very little when she arrives in Greasewood City to start over.

DVD 10543

She done him wrong

"Set in the 1890s, West plays a brash barroom entertainer with a soft spot for men in trouble, especially the mission director, young Cary Grant. She unknowingly gets caught up in a murder, as well as a white slavery ring, and sets about clearing things up as only Mae can. In between rescues she manages to perform some of her heated, hip-swinging classics including a steamy belting of 'Frankie and Johnnie."

DVD 9364