Je ne suis pas un ange

A strange thing happened with movie stars during the depression. The most popular players weren't the young and beautiful ones; they were homely, middle-aged figures like Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler and Will Rogers, unlikely stars but ones who seemed perhaps a little more earthly and genuine to moviegoers in troubled times. And this trend even had its own sex symbol – Mae West, a plump forty-year-old who became for a few years a Top 10 box office draw on the pull of her considerable sexual magnetism.

West was not possessing of the beauty of contemporaries such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich (neither of whom ever surpassed her in the polls). Her allure lies in the way she controls her body, a not-so-subtle hinting at what she is capable of in the bedroom, all done without showing so much as an ankle or flash of cleavage. She is perhaps the only female example of what many male stars from Clark Gable to George Clooney have been – an older player publicly seen as sexy thanks to a presence that transcends age. There have been other female stars who have this quality, but I believe West is the only one who thrived on it. As we see from her opening piece in I'm No Angel, she has absolute control over every aspect of her demeanour – a flick of the hips, a roll of the eyes, a set mouth. She could have been a decent straight actress had she turned her hand to drama.

But what is also remarkable about Mae West is that she had an unprecedented level of creative control over her work. Female writers were known but not common, and writer-actors of either gender were almost unheard of at the time. And I'm No Angel demonstrates West's wit and sophistication as much as it does her sexuality. And it's a rare tale for classic Hollywood in which the women are in charge. There's a sense of sisterhood, or at least mutual respect, between Mae and the other female characters. And as she says herself, walking off stage from her opening performance, the men who fall at her feet are just "suckers".

*I'm referring here to the ever-reliable Quigley Poll, which since 1932 has annually interviewed a large section of cinema-goers and asked them for their three favourite stars. Mae West came in at No. 8 in 1933, and No. 5 in 1934.

When I look at this film, first of all, I am astonished no one bothers to mention the costumes she wears which are not only revealing but incredibly original and almost better than designers of today. Edith Head is rumored, but she has a controversial reputation as having put her name on a lot of designs while at Paramount where this film was made and where Head remained as chief designer right through the years Audrey Hepburn brought in Givenchy and though he got special billing, when Hepburn worked, she always chose the advice of Givenchy and it supposedly drove Piaf up the wall. Those people who think of West as "ridiculous" seem to forget that she was writing on her own against the most powerful writers in films and theater, and she skirted the laws by her clever use of the double entendre. When I was invited to her house at the Ravenswood for tea, she was well into her 80's and was as sharp and smart and hilariously funny as she was 50 years before the women's movement, and even woman's suffrage. She was idolized by both men and women because she insisted that "the brain was the best seducer of men".That is sadly lacking in the female of today. West was also an avid reader and ridiculed sex experts with many quotes which never were published.She was an amazing talent who was 40 when she did this film, but she was a seductress to audiences.

Considered by many to be Mae West's finest film appearance (with only 1933's SHE DONE HIM WRONG and 1940's MY LITTLE CHICKADEE even coming close), the legendary star of the stage and screen has rarely been in better form than in this seminal film. Based on her own stage hit, the film's storyline is naturally preposterous, but West and director Wesley Ruggles wisely keep the focus on the then-salty dialogue and the still hilarious word play. Although he doesn't make his first appearance until nearly two-third of the film is over, Cary Grant remains the ideal straight man to West's zany antics. The film moves at a brisk pace, and its concluding courtroom sequence is unarguably one of the funniest scenes in film comedy.

Mae West was an unlikely sex symbol. She was a small woman with a face that defied most standards of beauty and an unremarkable body--and by the time she hit film she was edging into middle age. But as West herself might have said, it ain't what ya got, its what ya do with it. If anybody knew what to do with it, Mae West certainly did, and I'M NO ANGEL finds her doing it in remarkably fine style indeed.

The story and script, by West herself, is hilariously improbable. West stars as Tira, a carny entertainer who divides her work between a hootchie coochie act (which gives her the opportunity to perform a sizzling "They Call Me Sister Honky Tonk") and a lion taming act--but when she runs afoul of a small town romeo she hits the road for New York, where she captivates both city and Cary Grant with her circus act. Needless to say, there are comic complications galore, but like the Mounties, Mae West always gets her man.

West did a number of justly famous films during the 1930s, but I'M NO ANGEL is arguably her best, salted with with one memorable quip after another as she cracks whips, snubs snobs, frolics with her maids ("Peel me a grape!"), and waylays the willing Cary Grant with considerable aplomb. If you've never seen a Mae West movie but have always wondered what made her a great star, this is the film to see!

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

The great stars are inimitable. With the very greatest, such as the outrageous one-of-a-kind Mae West, nobody else even mirrors the style. Bogart, Hepburn, Dietrich, Cagney, maybe a few others - all you ask is that the story not smother what they do best. Here is Mae West's finest movie, giving her the opportunities, sometimes denied elsewhere, to strut her stuff - all of it. Suggestive dialog, provocative poses, sashaying hips, and a young Cary Grant who makes her purr: the Production Code would not be far behind.