History Daily - Saturday Matinee: Art of Crime

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

On today’s Saturday Matinee, we find out how actress Mae West's original play took her from the Broadway stage to her own jail cell. Link to Art of Crime: www.artofcrimepodcast.com Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

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considering the question of what is pornography and when can it be censored, Justice Potter Stewart coined one of the most famous and quoted of the court's lines when he wrote, I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description of hardcore pornography. And perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it. And the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Most people would agree that they know it when they see it. But that's an infuriatingly subjective standard. And throughout all of history, serious art with genuine, if, provocative intent has been banned, censored, blacklisted, or destroyed for being obscene. In today's Saturday matinee, we bring you a story of another such case from the podcast, The Art of Crime. In 1927, actress May West wrote and starred in a play titled Sex. This risque production launched her to stardom on Broadway, but also straight into a jail cell. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow The Art of Crime.

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public. May West never forgot the first time she saw a sex worker. It was in

1924 as she and a few friends were stuck in traffic in New York City. Running behind schedule, West asked her driver to take a shortcut along the waterfront. As the car inched forward, West spotted a woman with a sailor in each arm strolling near the docks.

She had bleached frizzy hair with, quote, two big blotches of paint on her face. Her lipstick was like she put it on ten times and never washed it off, unquote. Based on her outfit, West had no inkling of how this lady made her living. It just seemed to West like she mismanaged her money. On the one hand, her stockings were torn, and she wore a black satin gown that looked as if she had slept in it. On the other hand, however, she had an elegant turban wrapped around her head, adorned with a beautiful Bird of Paradise feather, an expensive accessory. You wonder this dame wouldn't put half a bird of paradise on her head and the rest of her money into a coat and stockings, West commented. Oh, one of the sailors smuggled it in for her, a friend of her speculated.

she gets 50 cents per trick, a dollar, two at the most. That's when it hit West. The woman was a prostitute, and the sailors were Johns. One had rewarded her services with a bird of paradise. West was indignant. She knew that women sold sex, sure, but she had never imagined that a client might pay as little as 50 cents. I kept thinking 50 cents, how many guys would she have to have to pay her rent, buy her food. That night, West dreamed of the blonde and woke up thinking about her. It was not long before the actress made up her mind to write a play about a downtrodden sex worker like the one she had seen near the docks and play the role herself. By early 1926, she had finished the project. She titled it Sex with all capital letters, and it launched her to

stardom on the Broadway stage. But there was a catch. It also launched her. It also launched her straight into a jail cell. In the 1930s and 40s, movie star May West became an international sex symbol, the embodiment of unabashed, even brazen, female sexuality. Part of it was how she looked. West was a bombshell by every measure, blonde-haired, bosomy, and curvy as they come. Part of it was how she walked. Her gait exuded seductive self-confidence, her eyes straight ahead, and her hips and shoulders swaying as if to you like what you see and I know it. And part of it was how she talked. Endlessly quotable, she fired off one-liners faster than a Tommy gun. Her most delicious witticisms tended to be bawdy and often gave expression to her own love of lovemaking.

Some are pretty edgy even by today's standards. This, after all, was the woman who told the world, quote, a hard man is good to find, unquote. By voicing her desires and exploiting those of others with such easy openness, West flouted expectations about how American women were supposed to behave. But West had made a career of irresistible misbehavior well before she went to Hollywood. She achieved fame as a sexually provocative playwright and performer at a time when the New York authorities were cracking down on theater they considered obscene. Today, we'll hear how West courted controversy in vaudeville scored a hit with sex and then went to prison after a few refusing to shut down the play. This is The Art of Crime and I'm your host, Gavin Whitehead.

Welcome to episode five of Crimes of Old New York. May West goes to jail. Born in Brooklyn on August 17, 1893, May West took her first steps toward a career in show business at an early age. When she was just seven, her mother, Tilly, enrolled her in dance classes. May showed such inherent ability as a dancer that her instructor entered her in an amateur contest at Brooklyn's Royal Theater. The term amateur contest might make it sound like a low-stakes affair, but that was far from the truth. The winner went home with a handy cash prize and the audiences were brutal when a new act flopped. They booed, heckled, and even pelted greenhorns with eggs if the mood struck them. Child performers were not exempted. Perfectly aware of what could happen.

if she bombed, West rehearsed a selection of popular songs along with a dance routine, adopting the stage name of Baby May. Attired in a green and pink satin dress with golden spangles, quote, Baby May epitomized Victorian innocence and sentimentality, unquote, in the words of West biographer Jill Watts. She also epitomized fearlessness, a trait that would stick with her into adulthood as she shed the trappings of cuteness and chastity. When the math, The master of ceremonies introduced her, West later recollected, the spotlight swiveled from the far side of the stage to the center. Quote, When I saw it coming for me, I ran to meet it, not a bit scared. Baby May more than proved herself to the tough critics in the house. She came in first place,

clinching not just a shiny gold medal, but also a cash prize of $10, a veritable jackpot in the eyes of a seven-year-old. Over the next few years, May competed in more talent shows. and often took first prize. Soon, her continued success had convinced her mother and father that she can make a living in vaudeville. Before, May had had a typical girlhood, playing with dolls and attending public school, though her father, Jack, a former pugilist, also taught her how to fight. Now, May and her mother pursued her career with unfailing determination, and her attendance at school became sporadic. West later described this stage of her career as, quote, Hard days of work and more work

When I practiced dancing and singing until my feet ached and my throat felt as if I had been massaged with a marlin spike, unquote. Apart from singing and dancing, she excelled at mimicry, imitating the mannerisms and voices of acclaimed male performers like dancer George M. Cohen

and comedian Eddie Foy. On September 22nd, 1911, at the age of 18, West made her Broadway debut, landing a spot in a musical review, titled A La Broadway, a garish extravaganza that was billed as, quote, a satirical burlesque on all musical comedies, unquote. Throughout the production, individual cast members would take turns singing solos in between larger choral numbers. West was to croon a ballad called

They Are Irish in the character of a flip Irish maid named Mackie O'Hara. West made certain that her act would stand out, rewriting and enlarging the ditty without bothering to many, those alterations to her collaborators. On opening night, she belted their Irish with the heavy brogue she had worked up for the occasion. But instead of stopping where she was supposed to, she sang an additional nine choruses, each in a different dialect and each more risque than the one that had come before. West had taken a big risk with this stunt, and the rewards were enormous. The audience thundered with applause, calling her back to the stage for multiple ones. Cores. Considering the success of her first turn on the Great White Way, it must have disappointed West

when Alla Broadway folded after just eight performances. Lucky for her, entertainment tycoons, Lee and J.J. Schubert were in the audience opening night. Bold over by her number, they cast her in Vera Violetta, a variety show. It was conceived as a vehicle for the Parisian Gabby Deslis, a music hall megastar, and a diva's diva. Peerlessly beautiful. beautiful and no less tempestuous, she bewitched audiences with her melodious voice, revealing costumes and over-the-top headdresses, the more feathers, the better. So great was Desla's international fame that she negotiated a weekly salary of $4,000 on tour in the U.S., more than $130,000 in today's currency.

She spent her fortune on all manner of luxuries and oddities, emeralds, diamonds, pearls, and pet marmosets. Writer Cecil Beaton opined that she, quote, realized the value of overdoing everything, unquote. West admired Desla's glamour, but part of her thought somebody should take this puffed-up peacock down a peg or two. West herself would do the honors during the second performance of Vera Violetta. When a new show opened at this point in history,

it was common to schedule a trial run outside New York. often in Connecticut or New Jersey, before taking the production to Broadway. Along these lines, the Schubert brothers booked the Hyperion Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, for November 17th and 18th. The first performance went off swimmingly, but the problems started early the next morning. Several locals complained to police that Vera Violetta was, quote, vulgar and suggestive, unquote. Law enforcement turned up at the Hyperion and ordered management to shut down the show.

The manager persuaded them to keep it open, under two conditions. First, the creative team would excise any offensive content. Second, police officers would attend the performance and arrest anyone engaging an indecent behavior. With too little time to make strategic cuts, management eliminated all dialogue, leaving only the musical numbers and drastically shortening the runtime. In this new iteration, Gabby Deslis would go on last. That night, the audience consisted largely of drunken football fans, who had come from a game between Princeton and hometown favorite Yale. Not only were they drunk, but they were also ornery because Yale had lost to Princeton in an upset. Nevertheless, once the show started, everyone had a splendid time, especially when Gabby Deslis made her entrance sporting one of her trademark, Look at Me Headdresses. In raptured, spectators, quote, clapped,

ranted and practically stood on their seats, unquote. What they did not realize was that they were not clapping for Desla's at all. In actual fact, they were cheering May West. Making use of her talents as a mimic, West was imitating the grandiose Deslis. She sang a set of impromptu songs and brought down the house before making her exit. A short time later, the real Deslis glided on stage, fully expecting deafening applause. Instead, spectators looked at each other in bewilderment. Hadn't Deslaz already come on? Furious over the tepid reception, Deslis finished and stormed off to her dressing room. The show was over, but because of the cuts that management made, it had concluded much earlier than

expected. The crowd felt entitled to at least another hour of entertainment. Drunk from the football game and baffled by the mystery of the Deslaz's doppelganger, they grew angry as the orchestra packed up and left. Audience members called for the manager, demanding an explanation. When one never came, all hell broke loose. Yale students leapt onto the stage and ripped down curtains while others tossed chairs out of the boxes onto the floor. In a desperate attempt to restore order,

members of the crew rushed on stage and blasted the rioters with fire hoses. According to one witness, women charged into the fracas, infuriated at having their gowns ruined by the spray. Finally, Hyperion personnel drove the rabble-rousers out into the streets where the rampage continued with the mob throwing stones, breaking windows, and defacing the Hyperion sign. By the time the uprising had finally subsided, the theater had sustained more than $1,000 in property damage.

As far as I can tell, nobody was seriously injured in the mayhem. West had stolen the show, but the coup came with, consequences. Deslis pitched a fit about getting upstaged and the Schubert's panicked. They had invested heavily in the production and it would spell disaster if Deslis quit. Even members of the press were frustrated with West's antics. The Hyperion fiasco remained a topic of debate for weeks and many disagreed as to who should bear the blame, the police, the public or both. But a writer for variety held West at least partly responsible for the chaos. Quote, it is said that May was right in the middle of that fray if she did not start it, unquote.

Around this time, the same publication announced that West would be leaving the cast of Vera Violetta, owing to a nasty bout of pneumonia. West may have genuinely fallen ill, but it's also possible that the Schubert's booted her and provided a cover as a professional courtesy. Whatever the case, the Hyperion Riot made one thing clear. West was happy to misbehave if it made her the center of attention. It brings to mind a famous line of hers in the 1933 talkie I'm No Angel, purred with impish self-awareness by West. Quote, when I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. It would take seven years for West to make it back to Broadway. In the Meantime, she traveled the vaudeville circuits performing throughout the northeast and Midwest.

While in Chicago, she came across an art form that would lead to her next break. Her visit to the windy city coincided with the Great Migration, during which hundreds of thousands of Black Americans left the South for northern states, partly to escape violent racial hatred and partly to pursue economic opportunities. Black men and women poured into Chicago, bringing artistic and musical traditions with them. West had always admired black culture and held progressive views on race by the standards of the early 20th century. West indicated later that she identified with black Americans because she, as a woman, shared a marginalized status with them among other minorities.

Quote, I thought white men had it their own way too long and should stop exploiting women and blacks and gays. Hopping around nightclubs in Chicago, West fell in love with three black art forms that she appropriated. for her act, jazz music, blues singing, and finally, the shimmy, a dance that scholars trace back to West Africa. One night, West and some friends went to the elite number one, a night spot in the middle of the black entertainment district in Chicago's south side. There she watched, mesmerized as couples did the shimmy. Writing about it later, West provides an apt description of the shimmy, quote, they got up from the tables, got out to the dance floor, and stood in one spot with hardly any movement of the feet, just shook their shoulders,

torsosos, breasts, and pelvices, unquote. The shimmy was sexy, but also kind of silly. Quote, for May West, Watts writes, the shimmy proved irresistible. It was both serious and funny, underscoring and parodying sexuality, unquote. West touched off a shimmy sensation in 1918 when she performed it on Broadway. She did the dance in a show called Sometime, backed by the Schubert's, who apparently decided to give her a second chance. Previously ruled too raunchy for Broadway, the Shimmy had never before been seen there. Suddenly, the dance was all over Manhattan, and West was credited with setting the trend. She even appeared with springy curls and a giant black hat on the cover of the sheet music for a song entitled Everyone Shimmies now.

When sometime closed, West could not find another job on Broadway. She went back to vaudeville, billing herself as Shimadonna and the girl who made the Shemma a classic. She made ends meet, but years went by without another big break. Twice now, West had appeared on Broadway and come tantalizingly close to stardom. Now, as a traveling vaudevillian, she frequented the boonies of the entertainment world, and her name often appeared toward the bottom of the bill. Many and her position would have thrown in the towel. We'll hear how she jump-started her career after a quick break. AJ. Tuotteets, Kirste, we'll have even oeke. Meilted to beauteauctions. Yes, we'll have done it.

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Troullinger Asunt In 1924, West caught sight of her waterfront muse, the sex worker strolling with a couple of sailors. The actress had been casting about for a play that could serve as a vehicle for her Broadway comeback, something bold, something gritty,

and it was her belief that an unflinching inquiry into the struggles of a prostitute was just what she needed. By now, West was dating the flamboyant entertainment and real estate attorney James Timney, who doubled as Wes's lover and unofficial manager. A client of Timonies, John J. Byrne heard through the grapevine that the aspiring dramatist was at work on a play about a lady of the night. Burn drafted a sketch titled Following the Fleet, a breezy little play about a sex worker whose clientele mainly consists of sailors. He offered to sell Timney the rights to the script, pitching it as a way of spurring West's imagination. Impressed by the outline, Timony shelled out $300 and charged the author $100 for acting as his agent. In December, 1925, West fleshed out the

skeletal narrative in Burns script. She poured every ounce of herself into the project, scribbling ideas on stationary, envelopes, and tattered paper bags before forwarding them to Timney's secretaries to be transcribed. West overflowed with characters, dialogue, and scenarios, but she lacked the focus to sit down and synthesized them into a coherent script. Timony took to locking her in a room and refusing to let her out until she made progress. Thanks to Timony's tough love, West soon drafted a three-act play that combined the genres of comedy and drama, titling it the Albatross and assuming the nom de plume, Jane Mast. Jane was her middle name, while Mast merged the first two letters of May and the last two of West.

The Albatross revolves around the meretricious exploits of Margie Lamont, a Montreal prostitute who works for a wicked pimp named Rocky and lives in a dumpy apartment on Kedoo Street in the heart of the city's notorious red light district. One day, Margie comes home to find a woman she's never even met, overdosing on drugs. The stranger, it turns out, is a moneyed American called Clara, who is engaged in an activity that was popular among the rich at this time. Slumming. Basically, you ventured to a rough part of town as if going on safari to gawk at real live poor people in their natural habitat. Clara gets more than the cheap thrill she bargained for when Rocky, her tour guide, plies her with enough drugs to incapacitate a giraffe and leaves her for dead. Acting fast, Margie rescues Clara from certain death, only for the vacationer to accuse Margie of trying to steal her jewelry when a policeman shows up. Margie's

swears to exact revenge. When we next see Margie, she has left Montreal for Trinidad, accompanied by a British sailor named Greg, a regular customer who has fallen in love with her. Margie is in the hopping cafe Port-au-Prince, thrumming with jazz musicians and dancers. She charms the regulars with husky-voiced blues ballads and drool-inducing shimmies. It's not long before she wins the affections of Jimmy Stanton, a good-natured bachelor and the son of a millionaire. Jimmy makes a mistake that is not so uncommon for a guy from his set. He takes Margie for a fabulously wealthy, traveling heiress and proposes marriage. Margie says yes, leaving poor Greg to pine for her in Trinidad while she follows her fiancée to his family home

in Connecticut. Multiple storylines crash into each other in a towering pile-up. Flot twist, Jimmy's mother is Clara, and she threatens to expose Margie as a prostitute. Plot Twist, Rocky barges in and threatens to expose Clara as a thrill-seeking drug user. Plot twist, Margie intervenes, prevents catastrophe, comes clean to Jimmy about her past in sex work, decides she's sick and tired of all these waspy rich bitches and elopes to Australia with Greg on the last page. Yeah, it's a lot. Viewed at a distance, the albatross might appear daring, and in some respects it is. It confronts illicit activity that many would prefer to ignore like prostitution.

But examined up close, the script is pretty tame in its discussion of sex. At its raunchiest, it goes no farther than innuendo. Take this exchange between Margie and Greg. His fleet has just landed in Montreal, and he comes bearing a special surprise for his beloved. Oh, I've got something for you. Wait until you see this. Wait until you see this. Well, come on. You'll get it, you'll get it. I don't mind telling you I had an awful time saving it for you.

Why, all the women were fighting for it. It'd better be good. It's good, all right. It's the best you could get. But you've got to be very careful not to bend it. Then he whips it out, his impressively proportioned, Bird of Paradise, a souvenir he purchased while overseas. The giving of Greg's gift is amusing, even on the page.

It also harkens back to the dockside sex worker who inspired the entire play. What was daring was the way West asked the audience to sympathize with Margie while also applauding her exploitation of men. In a fierce monologue, the heroine declares, quote, Why, ever since I've been old enough to know sex, I've looked at men as hunters. They're filled with sex. In the past few years, I've been chattled to the sex. All the bad that's in me has been put there by men.

I began to hate every one of them, hated them, used them for what I could get out of them, and then laughed at them, unquote. Far from a victim of rapacious male lust, Margie wields power over the men who take her to bed, manipulating their desires and mocking their cluelessness. West and Timony fought an uphill battle in staging the albatross. After several Broadway producers passed on the script, West and Timony were forced to finance much of the production themselves, supported by their acquaintance C.W. Morgan Stern,

Broadway directors were just as allergic to the albatross. After a lengthy search, West recruited Edward Ellsner, a director without much in the way of talent or name recognition. Career-minded actors did not want to play about hard-boiled hookers and drug-addled wasps on their resumes, nor could West and Timony offer competitive salaries. So, rather than stud the cast with stars, West made due with a gaggle of nobody's.

Booking a venue proved no less vexing than every other step in this agonizing process, due to a lack of funding on the part of the company, as well as a lack of interest on the part of theater owners. Finally, West and Timony secured Daly's 63rd Street Theater, a humble playhouse that was willing to take a risk. With cast, crew, and venue lined up, the albatross went into rehearsal. On the night of the comedy drama's first public performance, a trial run in Connecticut, West made an attention-grabbing change to the script.

During rehearsals, director Edward Ellsner told his leading lady, quote, you have a quality, a strange, amusing quality that I have never found in any of the other women. You have a definite sexual quality, gay and unrepressed, unquote. True, Ellsner barely knew how to direct a play, but he was onto something. West was unrestrainedly sexy, more so than just about any other men. mainstream performer. Why not embrace that? Just hours before Curtin, West notified management that she was changing the title of the play. That night, the marquee was emblazoned with a three-lettered word that was far more likely to pull crowds than the albatross. Sex. Results were more than encouraging,

and West took heart. After so many setbacks, her play seemed destined for success on Broadway. The New York premiere was set for April 26th, 1926. Promotional posters dropped double entendre like Sex with May West and trumpeted a huge 100% hit with, quote, more laughs, thrills, and action than a flapper's gin party, unquote. Opening night arrived at last, and it did not go off without a hitch. A loud bang rang out from backstage in the middle of a scene, and a sound effect that went with the popping of a cork came several unignorable seconds too late. By all appearances, much of the audience would have had more fun at a flapper's gin party. While some spectators whooped in approval at the highlights, others walked out midway through. By the beginning of Act

3, quite a few seats were conspicuously empty. In certain respects, early reviews were disappointing. Critics dismissed the writing as amateurish at best and appalling at worst. The New Yorker called it, quote, a poor balderdash of street sweepings and cabaret sentimentality unexpergated in tone, unquote. Another reviewer considered it, quote, as bad a play as these inquiring eyes have gazed upon in three seasons, unquote. But writing was one thing, acting quite another. And while the script lacked punch, West was an undeniable knockout as Margie. Playing up her sex appeal, she showed her legs at every opportunity, let her lips linger on those of her co-stars for passionate kisses, and danced a shimmy that exposed her midriff. This crossed a line in the eyes of some critics. Quote, we were shown not sex, but lust. Stark, naked lust, one critic crowed. Yet others were salivating over what West was cooking up. In what has to be one of the most ludicrous lines of dramatic criticism I have ever read, and I've read a lot,

Varieties Jack Conway hailed the star as, quote, The Babe Ruth of Stage Prosties, unquote. He lathers, May's conception of Margie Lamont will sentence her to the Scarlet Sisterhood artistically for life. Lest that sound like a dubious distinction, Conway closes with a firm endorsement. Grab a look-see and don't forget to bring along your sweatshirt. You'll need it.

By sweatshirt, he means a shirt that absorbs. sweat. This was all kind of gross, no doubt about it, but it was also the kind of publicity that boosted ticket sales. In truth, it didn't matter whether critics were outraged or aroused by sex. Negative and positive reviews alike piqued New Yorkers' curiosity. They flocked to Daly's theater to feast their eyes on this home-run-hitting Hall of Fame stage prosty. Together, word of mouth, the hot and cold press coverage, and provocative advertising, inspired to turn sex into an unqualified hit. Within weeks of opening, it was generating a profit, and its leading lady was the talk of the town. While West was basking in the warm glow of celebrity,

New York's moral crusaders were gearing up for a holy war. Sex was part of a broader phenomenon, a proliferation of so-called dirt plays on Broadway. Take the Shanghai gesture, a 1925 drama by John Colton that tackles taboos like prostitution, miscegenation, and human trafficking. It's set in a Chinese brothel run by a madam named Godam. At one point, a Japanese hedonist, Prince Oshina, pays for the company of the White Poppy, an English nymphomaniac of noble birth. Later, Poppy is auctioned off as a slave to a Chinese mariner. As a reviewer reported in variety, this transaction moved the traumatized Madame Godam

to recount. Quote, her life on the junk, a traditional Chinese vessel, where she had lived chained to the deck, tortured horribly to give her liveliness, and forced to suffer as many as 50 men of all colors in one night, unquote. The critic considered this, quote, one of the most terrific, that is, horrifying narratives ever heard on the American stage, unquote. The Shanghai gesture was followed by two more scandalous plays in the 1926-27 season. First, there was The Captive, a play about lesbianism based on a novel by Marcel Proust, hailed as a deeply affecting drama by open-minded critics, but rejected as smut by reactionary playgoers. Then came the Virgin Man, a more banal melodrama about a young Yale graduate who is tortured by temptation as one beautiful woman after another tries to seduce him. The spate of dirt plays preoccupied critics as well as politicians, even causing concern in the halls of Congress.

In February 1925, Representative Frederick Dallinger, a Republican of Massachusetts, demanded, quote, an investigation as to what action was being taken by the district commissioners to prevent the presentation of improper plays, unquote. Leading the fight against dirt plays in New York was John Saxton Sumner, a puritanical, lawyer who headed the society for the suppression of vice. As you might remember from a previous episode, the same organization investigated Stanford White at the behest of Harry Thaw. The theater, Sumner believed, had enormous potential to corrupt the morals of the weak-minded and uneducated, and he made it his mission to stop that happening. Sumner contemplated recommending the appointment of a stage sensor, but dropped the idea, worried that it would appear draconian. Instead,

he proposed the introduction of a play jury. Impaneled by the district attorney, this body consisted of 12 New Yorkers whose charge it was to attend every play and vote on whether it met the standards of public morality. Plays could go forward as long as four jurors gave their approval. The proposal was accepted. Sex only barely cleared the play jury. When Sumner went to watch it in April, along with his 12 jurors, he expected the worst. What he and his fellow moral guardians could not have known, however,

was that West had been tipped off about their visit. She had prepared two versions of sex, one for the public, unbuttoned and unzipped, and another for the play jury, comparatively straight-laced. I wasn't able to find specifics about how the sanitized sex differed from the dirtier rendition, but it's easy to imagine that West cut kisses and other displays of affection. She may have nixed to the shimmy, too, who knows.

In any event, four votes were needed for the production to continue, and it received four. Disappointed yet determined to wipe Broadway clean of sex, Sumner registered a complaint with the police, eventually condemning the play as, quote, moral poison, unquote. Much to his dismay, it would take more than a formal grievance to shut it down. For the rest of 1926, West kept right on shaking her hips and raking in money. We'll hear how the legal tides turned against her after a quick break. While sex was still playing to full houses at Daly's, West turned her mind to her next creative undertaking.

This time, she took up another lightning rod theme, homosexuality. It's no accident that West chose to write about gay culture when she did. In his seminal study, Gay New York, historian George Chauncey reveals that gay men, achieved unprecedented visibility in New York during the 1920s. Prior to that decade, homosexuals had clustered on the margins of the city, the Waterfront, the Bowery, Harlem, and Greenwich Village. As prohibition took effect, however, the gay community migrated to what had become the cultural

center of New York, Times Square. Many found work in theater, then, as now, that industry was known to welcome people with unconventional sexual identities. Gay men flourished as playwrights, actors, directors, stagehands, and more. Many took lodgings in the area as well. The sudden concentration of gay men in and around Times Square had everything to do with prohibition. In New York, many respectable middle-class establishments relied on the sale of liquor to stay afloat. When selling alcohol was outlawed, many of them went under. Illegal speakeasies and nightclubs cropped up as a result, often housed in the dimly lit basements of brownstones. These businesses made regular payments either to corrupt police officers or to

crime syndicates who provided protection from law enforcement. These measures kept the authorities away from speakeasies and other night spots. As an unintended side effect, gay men could now congregate in bars with minimal fear of persecution by the police. That said, raids were not an uncommon occurrence, and when the doors burst open and officers rushed in, partygoers had to be ready to sprint for the rear exit. Anticipating modern-day gay clubs, gay speakeasies that catered primarily to the LGBT community came into existence. Straight men and women often went to these establishments, curious about gay nightlife. Hence, the so-called pansy craze, a ground-swell, of gay performance in New York.

Drag balls became particularly modish, with female impersonators competing for prizes and achieving notoriety. Bert Savoy, one of the most famous queens of the decade, played a loud-mouthed, love-starved tart, and is credited with inventing now classic phrases like, you don't know the half of it, and you slay me! Poet Langston Hughes reflected on the pansy craze

decades later. Quote, it was fashionable for the intelligentsia and the social leaders of both Harlem and the downtown area to occupy boxes at this hall and look down from above at the queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor, unquote. The largest drag balls drew thousands of spectators, including members of the Vanderbilt's, Aster's, and other ultra-wealthy and influential families. West developed a fascination with gay culture as the pansy craze took off. She read up on homosexuality and found herself stimulated.

by the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrich, a gay German thinker of the 19th century. Ulrich saw gay men as an intermediate sex, one that mingled masculine and feminine traits. West formed her own opinions about the gay question. She decried police violence against gay men, if only because she considered it unschivalrous. Having internalized the teachings of Herr Dr. Ulrich, she once admonished law enforcement, quote, when you're hitting one of those guys, you're hit in a woman, because a born homosexual is a female and a male body, unquote. At the same time, she declared homosexuality, quote, a danger to the entire social system of Western civilization, unquote, on the grounds that its normalization would threaten the perpetuation of the human race.

One evening, in late 1926, she and Timity checked out a drag show at a Greenwich Village club, thrilled by the verve of the female impersonators, West stayed after and gave them complimentary passes to a performance of sex. Those who took her up on the offer received another exciting opportunity. She wanted to cast them in her latest comedy drama, also written under the pseudonym Jane Mast. West planned to write and direct the play without performing in it. Her latest effort was titled The Drag.

The main character is this gay guy named Raleigh, who is married to a straight woman, Claire. Claire is unaware of her husband's sexual preferences and miserable in her marriage. About two-thirds of the way in, Raleigh is shot and killed off stage, and it is not until the finale that the murderer is revealed, another gay man who was spurned by Raleigh. Along the way, West explores the nature of homosexuality, staging a debate between a doctor and a judge. The former paints gay men as sufferers in need of compassion and non-exuality.

medical treatment, while the latter condemns them as a menace to society deserving the harshest punishment. But all that stuff is beside the point. The play's raison d'etra is what happens when Claire goes away on a trip, leaving Raleigh alone at the house. Not unlike a high schooler whose parents are on vacation, Raleigh throws a rager he could never get away with under ordinary circumstances, in this case, a dragball of mammoth proportions. West hired something like 40 hours. West actors, all gay men, to play the guests. The motley assembly included every species of homosexual known to man, from the slender effeminate twink to what West characterized as, quote, taxi cab and truck driver types, unquote. The partygoers arrive one by one. Each of them as

fabulous as they are catty. They bandy quips and talk shit to each other. One queen, Winnie, shouts to another named Hell's Kitchen Kate. My, but you're getting thin. Kate, retorts, I can at least cling to a man without wearing him out. You're terribly fat. Fat, when he explodes, I should say not. I'm the type the men prefer. I can at least go through the Navy yard without having the flags drop to half-mast. Kate, I'm just the type that men crave, the type that burns them up. Why, when I walk up 10th Avenue, you can smell the men sizzling in Hell's Kitchen. After many zingers and much dance floor frivolity, the drag ball comes to a buzz killing end when police raid the house, a nod to the discrimination that gay men endured in real

life. On January 31st, 1927, the drag opened at Polly's Park, a venue located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. New Yorkers reserved seats and took the train out of town. West later claimed that fans of hers came in from as far as Boston and Philadelphia, apart from a drunk who had expected a burlesque with wise-cracking strippers and a middle-aged married couple who left offended, the audience loved it. West declared later, quote, I never used the word sex, but I had screaming gay, great-looking guys flaunted it out all over the place. There were at least a dozen curtain calls after each of the three acts, and it took an hour to empty the theater. Everyone wanted to visit the actors, unquote.

The next day, Bridgeport was a buzz about West's draggtacular murder mystery and those who had scored tickets to opening night became the envy of the town. Yet the chances of a Broadway run became increasingly unlikely. In January 1927, New York's most zealous moral paladins were calling for the introduction of a censor, a political appointee who would wield broad powers to curtail the production of risque plays like sex, the virgin man, the captive, and the drag. Under mounting pressure, New York Mayor Jimmy Walker cautioned Broadway producers that censorship was inevitable unless they cleaned up the theaters. Broadway executives convened an emergency meeting to discuss the impending crisis.

All heaped blame on West for the predicament. She had gone too far with the drag. It made no difference that the play had not yet been seen in New York. Given audience approval thus far, it was a matter of time before it moved to Broadway. and as much as playgoers were lapping it up, critics were pushing it away in disgust. A writer for variety excoriated the play as, quote, an inexpressibly brutal and vulgar attempt to capitalize on a dirty matter for profit, unquote. One Broadway producer condemned the comedy drama as an all-out assault on masculinity itself. Quote,

The drag, I believe, is the worst possible play I have ever heard of contemplating an invasion of New York. That production strikes at the decency of manhood, unquote. They feared that if West brought her latest confection to Broadway, city officials would make good on their threats to appoint a censor, an outcome that all desired to avoid. Banning together, they demanded that Timony pull the plug on the drag. He and West refused to comply, but it was now clear that they would have to allay any fears

about what might happen if the drag came to Gotham. Taking a page from other controversial artists, West styled the drag as educational in essence, a window onto the pleasures and pain of gay men in the modern world. On February 8th, she invited a small group of city officials and respected physicians to a midnight performance of the drag at Daly's. Alas, the drag would never make it to Broadway because the powers that be were already arraying themselves against West. On February 9th, the district attorney ordered police to raid three dirt plays that were currently sullying Broadway, The Captive, the Virgin Man, and Sex. Everybody knew that targeting sex was tantamount to a preemptive strike against the drag.

As the February 9th performance of Sex came to a close, James S. Boland of the District Attorney's Office, entered Daly's Theater with 10 officers in tow. The police presence did not go unnoticed. and passers-byes stopped to watch the raid from the sidewalk. Once the play ended, audience members left their seats and joined the ballooning crowd outside. Finally, Bolin announced that West, Timony, Morgan Stern, and 17 cast members were all under arrest. He was to escort them from Daly's to a night court. West told him fine, just give her a minute to change out of costume.

As the provocateur well knew, the real show was about to begin. By now, more than 1,000 spectators had assembled beneath the lights of the Daly's marquee. When West strutted out in the company of her comrades, the throng went wild. She smiled, waved, and blew kisses in return. Word had spread among West's supporters, and by the time she arrived at court, a welcoming party was there to greet her. Inside, she and the rest of the company lined up before a judge, seated beside acting mayor Joseph V. McKee. Mayor Walker was vacationing in Havana at the time. In the small hours of February 10th, the judge charged the playmakers with staging an indecent performance,

maintaining a public nuisance, and, quote, corrupting the morals of the youth and others, unquote. West was informed that charges would be dropped if she agreed to close sex. Her response was something along the lines of, hell no. Before dismissing them, McKee advised the company that if they performed sex again, police would arrest them. A defiant timony assured the acting mayor that the cast would be costumed and in places by 8 o'clock that night for the scheduled show. And since he perceived the root cause of this drama, namely a desire to suppress the drag, Timney declared that he was, quote, seriously considering hiring Madison Square Garden for it. He could hardly have named a higher

profile venue. That morning, Timney, an experienced entertainment lawyer, arranged for an injuncter that prevented authorities from shutting down the show before the theater company went to trial. When the curtain rang up on sex that night, Margie Lamont sang the blues and danced the shimmy before an auditorium that was packed to the rafters. In trying to protect New Yorkers from sex, the authorities had only encouraged them to see it. Ticket sales remained high for the next several weeks, and it was not until early March that public interest died down, as did profits. Several cast members left the production. Finally, by March 19th, West decided to call it quits. Eleven months of almost daily performances had left her exhausted. That said, the case against her

and her collaborators was still pending, and she had every intention of fighting it to the end. The trial commenced shortly after sex closed. Indomitable as ever and dressed to kill in her finest furs, West went to court with as much self-assuredness as when she met that spotlight during her first talent show. Prosecutors submitted the script for the consideration of the jury, but they conceded that the immorality of sex resided not so much in the text as in West's performance. Prosecutors pointed to her Trinidad shimmy as particularly lewd. Sergeant Patrick Caneely offered key testimony on this point. Don't even get him started on sex. He was so repulsed by this iridivorced by this iridivist. deemable exercise and sexual depravity that he had seen it three times. He described West's, quote, unquote, muscle dance in horrifyingly frank detail, quote, May West moved her navel up and down and from right

to left, unquote. Defense attorney Norman P. S. Schlaas roasted Knieley under cross-examination. Could he be certain that he saw West's navel during the dance in question? Keneally was forced to admit that he couldn't. But never one to back down, he swore that he had witnessed, quote, something in her middle that moved from east to west, unquote. For the sake of clarity, Schloss retorted, would Keneally care to stand and do the dance himself? The prosecutor objected to the question, quote, everyone in the police force is not a dancer, unquote. I'm sorry to say that his objection was sustained. West's team argued that a duly appointed play jury had greenlighted sex and the comedy drama had run for the better part of a year without issue. Why all the fuss

now? And as for the shimmy, a witness testified that dancers were doing it across the country, and nobody was calling the police about them. When it came time for the jurymen to deliberate, they withdrew and grappled with the evidence for several hours. They failed to reach a consensus, with nine out of 12 voting to acquit the theater troupe. At this point, the judge provided additional all-or-nothing instructions to the jury. If they deemed a single act of flirtation, kiss on the lips, or shake of the hips obscene, they must consider the entire production obscene and return with a conviction. The defendant's lost hope as the jurors filed out to re-evaluate the case. Timonee retreated to a corner and muttered prayers, clutching a rosary. Until this juncture, West's co-star,

Barry O'Neill had struck a sanguine attitude. Now, his face. fell and he withdrew into himself. Unflappable as ever, West reassured him, don't worry, Barry, it'll come out all right. If only, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Barry O'Neill shook with emotion and bitten to his handkerchief. Timony and Morgan Stern exited the courtroom in sullen near silence, declining to comment as journalists peppered them with questions. West, by contrast, was willing to talk. She vowed to appeal this case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, insisting that sex was, quote, a work of art, unquote. She added, quote, you've got to fight in this world, you've got a fight to get there and fight to stay there, unquote. The judge gave the company a real dressing down where it came time for sentencing.

He pronounced the play, quote, obscene, immoral and indecent, unquote, and declared his intention to repair the damaged reputation of New York. quote, the most moral city in the universe, unquote. He reserved special censure for West, who, to his mind, quote, seemed to go to extremes to make the play as obscene and immoral as possible, unquote. He imposed a fine of $500 on both her and Timney and sentenced those two, along with producer C.W. Morgan's Stern to 10 days in jail. West would serve her time in prison on welfare island, while Timony and Morgonstern languished in the tombs, a notorious penitentiary.

The rest of the company was free to go. Thoroughly unfazed, West assumed what a reporter for variety called, quote, the hard-boiled manner she played in the play, and did not wink an eyelid when the sentence was pronounced, unquote. Asked about the sentence by a journalist, West predicted, quote, I expect it will be the making of me, unquote. And she sounded positively cheerful when she told another report, Give my regards to Broadway.

We know quite a bit about West's stint in prison because it was covered extensively in the media. By contrast, journalists hardly printed a word about Timony and Morgan Stern. After West's release, Liberty Magazine paid her a walloping $1,000 to write an exclusive article about her time on Welfare Island. She took the deal and the piece was published in August 1927 under the title 10 days and $500, the experiences of a Broadway star in jail. After West's sentencing, policemen escorted her to a waiting room where she made conversation with the official in charge, a black woman West characterized as poised and intelligent. During my half-hour wait,

she recalled, I talked to the official asking her various questions about welfare island. I like to know something about a place I intend to visit. West's first stop was the city jail, where she spent the night in a tiny cell furnished with nothing but an iron cot. To her delight, however, she discovered she was as much as celebrity there as in the outer world. The inmates recognized her and even hollered lines from sex when they saw her, letting her know they had seen the show. Many accounts have West rolling up to Welfare Island in a limousine, dressed as if she were going to a red carpet event. Much as I would like that to have been the case, it simply wasn't. After a night at the city jail, she was loaded with several other prisoners into a black paddy wagon and driven

to the penitentiary. The vehicle lowered from street level onto welfare island underneath by means of a large elevator. West stepped out and sized up the premises, calling it a, quote, marvelous, gorgeous stone structure most attractively decorated with big sheet iron doors and plenty of bar work. The doors opened and I made my grand entrance, unquote. Unfortunately, her reception was anything but grand. First, a matron relieved the star of her pocketbook and valuables. Then, quote, I was met by the second matron who said, strip. I said, what? I thought this was a respectable place. Smiling, the correction officer persisted. I'm sorry, Miss West, but I will have to divest you of your civilian attire. West undressed and was given a raggedy blue and white checked uniform.

a pair of equally hideous shoes and a set of cotton stockings and underwear. Can I even keep my silk stockings, West protested? She sure couldn't, so she drew herself up and handed them over. I'm going to be a woman and show them, she thought to herself, I'm going to make believe I'm acting before an audience and forget that I am doing 10 days in the who scow. First time I ever saw that word for the slamer, by the way, and I was delighted to add it to my vocabulary. Despite an unpleasant introduction to welfare island, West received star treatment for the rest of her stay. When a matron led her through a path cell block, inmates applauded and shouted salutations, hello, May, and glad to see you. Among her most ardent admirers was the warden, Harry O. Schleff, who had a reputation for favoring well-connected prisoners. Thanks to his intervention,

West enjoyed the privilege of her own private room in the administration wing. He even invited her to lunch at his living quarters, a treat reserved for notables, and had new stockings procured for the actress when she complained about the ones that she had been issued. Schleth later defended West's pampering by claiming that he had done what was needed to protect her from, quote, the hardened offenders, unquote, on the island. During the daytime, West took care of light housekeeping, work assigned by the prison. which included making beds, sweeping floors, and dusting bookshelves in the cramped, understocked library. When theater impresarios read about West's chores in the paper, they dreamed up acts that would capitalize on them.

According to the Daily News, quote, A nightclub wants her to mop up the floor in prison costume for a few weeks at a fat salary. But Miss West told the warden, she is writing a new play in the intervals between dusting and making beds, a play that will do people some good and keep them out of jail, though I still don't admit there was any harm in sex. West was released on good behavior after serving just eight of her 10 days. Reporter snapped pictures as she took her leave of the Huskow. One photograph shows her shaking hands with the warden, a big grin on his face. Apart from generating publicity,

West's incarceration opened her eyes to the oppression and exploitation of New York's most vulnerable women, many of them black and working class. She made the acquaintance of professional shoplifters, drug addicts, prostitutes, and venereal disease sufferers. She formed friendships with several and even contacted her attorneys about representing one of them, a single mother with young children who was facing a charge of petty larceny. After her release, West is believed to have provided financial assistance to this woman and her family. She also took steps to improve the lives of prisoners. Remember that $1,000 that Liberty Magazine paid her? Well, she donated that money to the penitentiary so it could expand its book collection, later renamed the May West Memorial Library.

The controversy whirling around sex, the drag, the captive, and other dirt plays led to increased censorship of New York theater. A few days after sex closed in March 1927, the New York State Senate passed the Wales Padlock Act, sponsored by state senator B. Roger Wales. This piece of legislation forbade, quote, immoral drama, unquote, clamping down on plays about sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. Under this law, the district attorney was required to prosecute the cast and crew of productions that were deemed indecent, and theaters that programmed obscene entertainments would be shuttered for a full year. The Wales Padlock Act, caused headaches for quite a few artists.

May West returned to the stage and faced prosecution for a later play called The Pleasure Man, but she wasn't complaining. She asserted, quote, I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it. You've been listening to the Art of Crime,

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