USA 66m Dir: Lowell Sherman Key Cast: Mae West
Sometimes a film is all about it's star. This is one of those films and it's all about Mae West, based on the play Diamond Lil written by West herself.
West plays Lady Lou, a bawdy singer who spends much of her free time having sex with a range of men. Of course this being the 30s it makes heavy use of euphemism and innuendo but even so this feels quite raunchy for a film of it's era.
Mae West is fantastic in the role, full of humour. Her breezy sexual independence is both hugely embarrassing for everyone around her and highly attractive to all the male characters in the film. She doesn't strike me as being what would have been seen as conventionally attractive at the time- she was forty when the film was made and looks quite different from the thin women with long legs that I've seen so much of in the Busby Berkeley films of the day. West though knows how to flaunt her sexuality in a way that is still pretty uncommon today but would have been unheard of back in the 30s.
Unfortunately the plot of the film isn't really that great. Lou surrounds herself with men who are criminals of one sort or another from robbers to counterfeiters and human traffickers and becomes embroiled in all sorts of crimes when all she really wants is to continue to sing and have sex. On the whole though the story is pretty underwhelming and doesn't serve this excellent character and performance as well as it might have.
There's some interesting things to note about the cast here, most obvious being the fact that this film is one of the earliest appearances of Cary Grant on screen and though his role is relatively minor he's great. I was a little concerned about the fact that Lou has an African American maid who felt like a very stereotypical and racist character. However, I have since learned that West brought actor Louise Beavers to the film personally and made a point to act with black American actors in order to help break racial discrimination. It's a character that was still problematic but it's still a step forward from having no black actors at all.
A memorable performance from Mae West that unfortunately doesn't have the plot to really back it up.
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