The Price of Stardom

Mae West worked long and hard to achieve success and to perfect the persona by which the world remembers her. She had some early failures, as shown in the play when she is booed off the vaudeville stage at the Albee Theater in Milwaukee in 1911, and the reviewer for Variety has this to say about her: “her new single act is the same old rough stuff, an act too coarse for this two dollar audience.” But the play also shows that Mae refused to allow such setbacks to affect her self-confidence. When Diamond Lil was an immediate success, she was not surprised, as Ed Hearn reports that Mae said: “I just never thought it would take this long.”

However, the play also shows that West paid a price for her stardom. Having others admire, adore, and even worship her fed her vanity and narcissism. She...