Event Details

JULIEN'S AUCTIONS IS PROUD TO PRESENT OUR "PROPERTY FROM THE LIFE AND CAREER OF MAE WEST" AUCTION EVENT TAKING PLACE IN BEVERLY HILLS AND LIVE ONLINE AT JULIEN'S LIVE ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST.

Our Property From The Life And Career Of Mae West auction celebrates the trailblazing career and style of the 1930s American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian, and sex symbol.  The star who coined legendary one liners such as, "When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better," will showcase a dazzling collection of ornate headdresses, tiaras, jewelry, wigs, film and stage worn bodiced gowns and more. 

Born in Brooklyn, NY on August 17, 1893, Mary Jane 'Mae' West began her seven decades long entertainment career on amateur nights at the age of six years old. West attracted immediate attention performing various personas, such as a male impersonator, and developed her signature sashaying walk early in her adult career. She was singled out by the New York Times for her performance at the age of 18 in the Broadway 1911 revue of A La Broadway and appeared in various stage productions including Vera Violetta opposite Al Jolson, A Winsome Widow in 1912 playing a vamp and in her big break as Mayme who danced the shimmy in the Schubert Brothers revue, Sometime. From the start of her career, West's work was met with censorship and controversy when she began writing and starring in her own risqué plays including the 1926 Broadway play, Sex, whose production was panned by religious groups and conservative critics. 

West's arrest and prosecution for corrupting the morals of youth led to a ten-day jail sentence that she served on Welfare Island (now Roosevelt Island), which garnered her immense publicity and even more attention by the media who crowned her the darling "bad girl". 

By 1933, West was one of the largest box-office draws and in 1935, became the highest paid woman and the second-highest paid person in the United States. Throughout the rest of the decade, her on screen work and script writing of her best one liners in films such as Belle of the Nineties (1934) and Goin' to Town (1935), continued to be censored by the Production Code while West fought to keep them in her scripts, knowing that the censors would cut them out. 

In the 1950s and the following decades, West pursued a successful and record-breaking career touring her famous show in top nightclubs, in theater and on Broadway as well as in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom and on radio and television. The American Film Institute ranked her number 15 on their list of greatest female stars of classic American cinema. 

If you can't make it out to Beverly Hills to bid in person, you can still watch all the action as well as bid online at julienslive.com!