She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography

by Charlotte Chandler

Book Overview

The acclaimed biographer of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, and Joan Crawford once again draws on personal interviews to examine of of Hollywood's most colorful--and frequently off-color--icons. bw photographs.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416579095
• ISBN13: 9781416579090
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 317 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Window into a soul...

This by far is the most indept,insightful and well written biography I have read about Mae West. I've read practically every book written about this woman. This book gave a personal look into who she was an how she became 'Mae West'. This is a woman who was born into 'her time', 'place' and knew how to market her image without compromising her character... Mae knew how to let you 'come up with the meaning' of the words she spoke....

I liked this biography

Mae West was one of the most interesting women of the early- to mid-twentieth century. She knew what she wanted, and in a world dominated by men, she knew how to get it. This biography, written by veteran biographer Lyn Erhard, under the pen name of Charlotte Chandler, is an interesting view of Ms. West, having more of the feel of an autobiography. The author crams the book full of quotes from the great lady, making you feel like you are hearing her tell her life story to you face-to-face. So, as you can tell, I liked this biography. Like, I said, in many ways it is like an autobiography, in that it tells Mae's story from her (no doubt biased) viewpoint, rather than attempting to be an expose or hard-hitting investigation. I like Mae West, and I really liked the way the book truly feels like her. Is it the best biography of Mae West, no, not really. But, is it a great book on Mae West, a hard-to-put-down read? Oh yeah! (Review of She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography)

PREPARE TO FALL IN LOVE!!

Somewhere up there Miss Mae West is smiling. And our thanks go out to Charlotte Chandler - celebrity interviewer/author of eight previous books - for giving us this thoroughly enjoyable new look at one of America's most original and enduring icons of the stage and screen. Built around interviews taped during the last year of West's life, this new publication offers us the opportunity to "hear" her words exactly as she spoke them, and at a time in her life from which no other such interviews exist. The value of this gift for West fans cannot be overestimated. If you want to hear the "Sin-sational" Miss Mae West tell the final version of her life story, as she would want you to know it - from birth in Brooklyn in 1893, to the heights of Hollywood fame and beyond - HERE SHE IS! And it just does not get any better than this, short of having been able to spend time in the Ravenswood with her! Except for her mother and sister, women were not usually Miss West's first choice for company - and certainly not younger women doing interviews. The idea for Chandler's meetings, however, had been irresistibly suggested to West by director George Cukor, with whom she still hoped to make a film. It took a leap of faith for West to put her words into another woman's hands, but her trust has now been repaid ten fold. In this narrative, which reflects nearly the full 87 years of her life, Mae West's unaltered "voice" and personality, placed once again in her favorite place - "the spotlight", come through "alive" and brilliantly clear. Additionally, Chandler's own personal gift for humor makes this book especially fun to read. Her interactions with Miss West, and descriptions of their time together, are bound to have the reader smiling, at the very least! Did Miss West experience suffering in her life? Was she ever sad, frightened, lonely, or in doubt? Yes, I think we can be sure of that, but she did not believe in dwelling on the "negative". That was just not like "Mae West". And so, instead of stories of despair in this book, there are stories about Elvis Presley, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Beverly Sills, and many others - stories that West told about them, and stories they told about her. It's wonderful! West, who neither smoked nor drank, LOVED men... and mirrors, limousines and diamonds, spiritualists and séances, "chop suey, sex, and my career", she said. She was kind, thoughtful, and often very generous to people, but above all else, she loved her "self" - her "creation" , which remained the unwavering focus of all her attention and lifetime of work. "I had to be prepared for the best that could happen.", she told Chandler. And she loved her fans, to whom she always - at least by mail - remained accessible, and for whom she personally signed each autograph requested. They were her "audience", and her love for them never diminished - yet she was also an intensely private person, carefully choosing her sma

Up close and personal....

Charlotte Chandler's new book is a must for all you Mae West fans out there! It is the latest in her series of "personal" biographies in which she uses as her base material, the audio tapes she made of interviews she conducted over the years with Hollywood's royalty. Her style is not to question but rather to allow her subjects to tell their story in their own way and, most importantly, in their own words. What is fascinating about this book is that it is based largely on the lengthy interview she conducted with Mae at her Ravenswood apartment in 1980, the year of Mae's death. This is the second time Miss Chandler has utilised her source material, the first being in her 1984 interview anthology, "The Ultimate Seduction". This was a very tightly written piece and without doubt one of the best ever accounts of an interview with Mae West. The new book expands on the original piece thereby making the very most of the available material this time around. We find Mae in good sorts and with a very clear mind. She is in unusually reflective mood and in several passages, demonstrates an ability to see her life and career in perspective and in the context of the times in which she lived. Mae made it her lifelong mission to edit and refine her own biography. It is no surprise therefore that she delivers to Miss Chandler a version of her life that is somewhat less than the whole truth. This is the beauty of the book and why it is referred to as a "personal" biography. The main text is supported by the reminiscences of an array of supporting cast members, most notably Tim Malachosky, who was Mae's personal assistant during the last years of her life, and renowned film critic, Kevin Thomas, who both remember her fondly. If you want an in-depth, carefully researched and detailed, biography of Mae West, then this book will not flick your switch. But if you never got the invitation to "come us and see" Mae West in person, this book is the next best thing. It provides a rare insight into the mind of the elderly Mae West and what was occupying her thoughts at the time, touchingly mainly how much she still missed her long dead mother. I loved the book. And given the existence of the source material, an audio version would be the icing on the cake! See more of Mae at the Mae West Color Site, [...]

Mae's recall is astounding, and her desire to protect her image is unmistakable

As Mae West herself once proclaimed, "Some women know how to get what they want. Others don't. I've always known how." This epigram explains the title as well as the mindset of this very driven and singular woman. Charlotte Chandler, venerated biographer of Alfred Hitchcock, Groucho Marx and, most recently, Bette Davis, turns her keen eye to the life and career of one of the most iconic stars of Hollywood. Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, New York, in 1893, she quickly found her calling, and it involved a stage, a spotlight and a receptive audience. Mae, who changed her name only slightly from the nickname of "May" for aesthetic reasons, was the first child of Matilda and Jack West. Jack was known throughout New York as "Battlin' Jack," a tough, no-nonsense neighborhood boxer who once laid a guy flat with one punch for merely looking at his young wife. Her parents wanted to give their talented daughter all they could and encouraged her to perform on the stage, which she did, with great success. She spent her formative years in variety shows, vaudeville tours and the burlesque circuit, literally growing up in front of her audience. When she came of age, Mae decided that instead of fitting a rather voluptuous peg into a square hole, she would do far better if she wrote her own material. Thus, Mae West the playwright was born. Her first play, scandalously titled Sex, opened in 1926 and became something of a cause célèbre. Mae was convicted of obscenity and sentenced to 10 days in jail. She could have had her lawyer and soon-to-be lover persuade the powers-that-be to knock the sentence down to community service, but Mae felt it was more honorable to do her time --- and, of course, think of the publicity! Years later, she commented, "They say censorship was my enemy, but I'm not so sure about that. Maybe censorship was my best friend. You can't get famous for breaking the rules unless you've got some rules to break. Where would censorship have been without me? Like I always say, I made censorship necessary." After that, there was no stopping her. Plays that tackled very tough, very modern issues continued until Hollywood came to call. There, as on Broadway, she called her own shots, never afraid to push the envelope. Not only did her trademark sayings like "Come up and see me sometime" (which is actually a misquote from one of her early films) and that one-of-a-kind walk define her persona, Mae proved herself to be a rather acute arbiter of talent. She made sure that Cary Grant was cast alongside her in I'm No Angel, and she persuaded George Raft, a local tough she had known in New York, to come to Los Angeles to pursue acting, eventually becoming her leading man in Night After Night. She was always about the work and took it most seriously. If W.C. Fields turned up to the set of My Little Chickadee inebriated, West would promptly leave. "Sex and work have been the only two things in my life," she once said, "...but if I ever had to choose between