Je ne suis pas un ange

Easily one of the funniest comedies of the 193O's, this pre-code West-ern is a real treat. La West plays Tira, a carny gal who's been around the block a few times: in order to raise some dough, she sticks her head into a lion's mouth - and basks in the attention she receives from various fans. The scene between Mae and Gertrude Michael is hilarious: "You haven't a shred of decency in you!" spouts the snobbish Michaels to which Mae retorts "I don't show my good points to strangers!" A young Cary Grant is one of Tira's many admirers and Edward Arnold is memorable as Tira's loud, gruff boss, Big Bill Barton. Mae's courtroom plea, where she puts every man in his place - and wins the admiration of the judge is a gem. This film was made just after Mae's sensational hit SHE DONE HIM WRONG. Feeling indebted to West because the film's success single-handedly saved Paramount Pictures from impending bankruptcy, mogul Adolph Zukor promised Mae that she could do anything she wanted for her next film. Because she had been fascinated by lions since childhood, she had her fantasy written into the movie's plotline.

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.

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

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.