1893–1980 · American actress, playwright and vaudeville-bred wit
Mae West was an American actress, screenwriter and playwright who turned double-entendre into an art form on the vaudeville stage, in her own scandal-courting Broadway plays, and in 1930s Paramount films such as She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel. She wrote most of her own dialogue, and her comic method was to take a piece of received wisdom and flip it into something knowing and appetitive. So many quips are pinned on her that a West-sounding line and a documented one are not always the same thing.