1893–1980 · American actress, playwright & screenwriter
Born in Brooklyn on 17 August 1893, Mary Jane “Mae” West went from child vaudevillian to Broadway’s most prosecuted playwright — her 1926 play Sex got her a ten-day sentence on morals charges, of which she served eight, and her 1928 hit Diamond Lil gave Hollywood the character that became Lady Lou. She arrived at Paramount in 1932 and, within a year, had handed the language two catchphrases she largely wrote herself. She then spent decades cheerfully performing the misquoted version of her own most famous line, which is a fairly complete summary of how she operated.