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West’s stage success was not the only success that she had during this time.
West also wrote many plays and books.
The number of plays she wrote in her lifetime totaled ten including her
most controversial play,‘Sex’, which would be her first battle with censorship.
The evening before the play opened, it said in the New York Times
“Biggest sensation since the Armistice [the treatie that ended WWI]: Mae West.”
This was the apparent case because West’s play, that she
wrote and stared in, ran for thirty weeks
and was performed in front of a packed house each night.
When the theater started to become less of a lucrative business,
West decided it was time to take her act to Hollywood, saying
“Could I stay in New York with the Palace Theater losing $4,000 a week?”
On January 16, 1932 West was on her way to California.
West commented in her autobiography about the trip, “We left New York on June 16, 1932,
and the trip by the still un-air-conditioned steam drawn trains took a full four days.
En route I have received a telegram from my agents that I would be met at
Pasadena (Nobody important rides all the way to L.A.).”
West’s trip to Hollywood would be her leap into stardom.
When West arrived in Hollywood, she stated ,
“I am not a little girl form a little town here to make good in a big town.
I’m a big girl from a big town who’s come to make it in a little town.”
This statement exemplified West’s drive and determination
that would propel through Hollywood for the rest of her career.
West’s first movie was Night after Night, a gangster comedy. After her first film,
West’s films rapidly grew in popularity with most people but
many also saw them as a disgusting display of sexual comedy.
West was never sure if she was going to make it or not recalling in her autobiography
what she though to herself: “Would I make it in a land of palm trees,
restaurants shaped like derby hats,
goose fleshed bathing beauties, and far-flung custard pies?
Could I show my stuff in the city of oranges, Warner Brothers, and swimming pools?
I had not doubt about my talents, but I was away I faced a barrier.”
This comment shows that West knew she would come up against some controversy.
The controversy that she would run up against would be censorship.
Even though she would have some barriers West would become very popular during her career.