American Masters — Mae West: Dirty Blonde

Caption: Mae West on the set of her film I'm No Angel, 1933.

Credit: Courtesy of General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

Dive into the life and career of groundbreaking writer, performer and subversive star Mae West. 

Over a career spanning eight decades, she broke boundaries and possessed creative and economic powers unheard of for a female entertainer in the 1930s. American Masters — Mae West: Dirty Blonde airs Thursday, March 30 at 9:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

Mae West achieved great acclaim in every entertainment medium that existed during her lifetime, spanning eight decades of the 20^th century. A full-time actress at seven, a vaudevillian at 14, a dancing sensation at 25, a Broadway playwright at 33, a silver screen ingénue at 40, a Vegas nightclub act at 62, a recording artist at 73, a camp icon at 85 – West left no format unconquered. She possessed creative and economic powers unheard of for a female entertainer in the 1930s and still rare today. Though she was a comedian, West grappled with some of the more complex social issues of the 20th century, including race and class tensions, and imbued even her most salacious plotlines with commentary about gender conformity, societal restrictions and what she perceived as moral hypocrisy. American Masters — Mae West: Dirty Blonde is the first major documentary film to explore West’s life and career, as she “climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong” to become a writer, performer and subversive agitator for social change. Produced and directed by Sally Rosenthal and Julia Marchesi.

Major funding for American Masters — Mae West: Dirty Blonde is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Better Angels Society, Brice Brown, The Carson Family Charitable Trust, Leslie and Roslyn Goldstein Foundation, The Sandpiper Group, and Susan Lacy.