She Done Him Wrong - Mae West

Mae West must have been a hell of a woman to know if 'She Done Him Wrong' and 'The Constant Sinner'  are anything to judge by - the heroines in both are physically dead ringers for Mae, and I'm guessing share some of the same principles as well as her gift for memorable one liners. I still have her autobiography 'Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It' to read but I suspect it will only confirm my suspicions.

Of the two novels I preferred 'The Constant Sinner' to read, or at least I remember it being better paced, but 'She Done Him Wrong' is a shade less disturbing. Babe Gordon in 'The Constant Sinner' had to much experience and to few morals to be an easy heroine to care for, Diamond Lil is a shade less troublesome. She reads as a little older than Babe and not quite as damaged but she's still "a beautiful short course to Hell". 

Lil's ex lover, Chick Clark, has found himself in jail due in part to stealing diamonds to keep her happy. Lil not being a girl to let the grass grow under her feet has skipped town and taken up with rising politician and white slave trader Gus Jordan. She doesn't know about the sideline in selling women into the brothels of Rio and wouldn't be happy if she knew that's where the money that buys her diamonds was coming from. Lil's funny like that. Gus's partner in crime Rita has arrived from Rio with a handsome young bull fighter in tow - Jaurez - who's making eyes at Lil, and Rita who didn't like her much in the first place really isn't happy about it. Neither is Gus - but Lil likes a bit of variety. Meanwhile Chick Clark has escaped from prison and is after Lil, intent on revenge and Gus is being watched by a mysterious policeman known only as 'The Hawk', oh and Lil has spotted a handsome salvation army Captain and she's never wanted a man more... 

What's really interesting about 'She Done Him Wrong' though is Mae's attitude to sex. Published as a book in 1932, 'She Done Him Wrong' is based on Mae's 1927 play of the same name, it's not particularly graphic but it's very frank. Lil enjoys sex but her passion is diamonds, they're her career and her only real love. She likes the men she sleeps with, but she's never been in love. She's smart, tough, and quite capable of taking care of herself. She has no particular problem with prostitution believing that a smart woman will make the best of herself and her opportunities such as they are, and in an age when the most respectable career option for a woman was still marriage she makes a sly point. Is it more honest to have fun with a man whilst having an eye on the bottom line or to marry him for bottom line? 

Mae's underlining of the point that Lil doesn't love the men she takes to bed but loves what she does there still feels a little bit unusual for a woman to be admitting to - Lil is a liberated woman by any standards and one who commands respect. Even at the end of the book when it looks like she might get her love story Mae   has Lil ask herself  "Is this love? Really love? Or something just for the winter season?" which is admirably honest as is the last line - the rather splendid 'I always knew you could be had'. Inner goddesses be damned, I want to discover my inner Diamond Lil, she'd give me better advice.

The Constant Sinner – Mae West

The last of my pulp trio, ‘The Constant Sinner’ is an odd beast of a book. The Blonde has a couple of Mae West’s on her shelf and I’ve been coveting them for a long time so was very pleased when I found this (and slightly smug when we realised she didn’t have it already – less smug on finding her copy of ‘Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It’ is hard to find under £30, the Blonde wines this round).

All I really know about Mae West are the famous quotes (which reminds me that I really want a new dictionary of quotations) so I learned something from the introduction. Born in 1893 Mae made a career as a writer and actress, was arrested under obscenity laws for her play ‘Sex’, and I’m guessing was a stranger to inhibitions. I’m not unshockable, but I’ve reached an age and level of experience (thankfully some of its anecdotal) when it’s not so easy to do but ‘The Constant Sinner’ provoked the kind of response normally reserved for the price of good gin (outrageous I tell you).

The constant sinner in question is Babe Gordon, the first time we meet her she’s leaning against the crumbling wall of the Marathon Athletic Club in Harlem and West introduces her thus:

"Babe was eighteen and a prizefighter’s tart, picking up her living on their hard earned winnings. Her acquaintances numbered trollops, murderers, bootleggers and gambling-den keepers."

 Babe is a beauty in the Mae West mould, she likes men, and men love her but it would seem she’s a very dangerous woman to know. She and her friend Cokey Jenny watch the fight, Babe always with an eye to who her next pick up will be, a Frenchman is first up and she wonders if he can provide a bit of novelty for her, but he loses and she loses interest settling instead on the night’s champion.

The poor sap is soon chewed up and spat out. He marries Babe in a haze of infatuation but when the hard pace she sets ruins him as a fighter she moves on, initially to dealing coke, morphine and heroine in a five and ten store, and then onto life as the mistress of Harlem gangster Money Johnson for whom a white woman is the last status symbol. When Money goes down for three months Babe moves on again this time to a social register millionaire which is where her past starts to catch up with her. Babe who “would not have known what a moral was if it could be made to dance naked in front of her” has had no compunction in lying and cheating her way up, the men she can handle but the women want blood and are set to get it.

It’s an exciting read but it’s troubling too. At 18 Babe has far too much experience, there’s no back story, no suggestion that the reader should feel any sympathy for her, and very little in her actions that allow for empathy. Babe loves sex, loves men, loves high living and indeed any sensual experience but beneath that there’s nothing. Not just a lack of morals but a lack of affection or loyalty or foresight, Babe lives entirely in the moment and has to be the archetypal tart without a heart in search of sensation. Seventy or more years after it was written there’s still something deeply shocking about her attitudes – maybe it’s how contemporary they sound.