Ten days in jail for Mae West
In 1927, Mae West goes to jail. But the real scandal was her play about gay men.
On 19 April 1927, Mae West was sentenced in New York to ten days in jail. The charge: her play "Sex" corrupted the morals of youth. West had written it under the pseudonym Jane Mast, directed it herself and played a prostitute in it. In February, the vice squad had stormed a performance and carted off the entire cast in police vans.
West could have bought her way out with a fine. She preferred to go to the workhouse on Welfare Island, now Roosevelt Island, and turned the sentence into a press campaign. After eight days she was out again for good behaviour.
Behind the scandal over "Sex", however, there was a second one that is more interesting from a queer perspective. In early 1927, West had staged "The Drag" in try-out theatres in Connecticut and New Jersey. The play tells the story of a gay man who is married to a woman as a cover, and culminates in a drag ball. West had done her research in the gay clubs of Greenwich Village, and gay performers from the neighbourhood were on stage. The houses were full. But the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice threatened a ban if the play came to Broadway. "The Drag" was closed before it reached Manhattan.
New York State responded to "Sex", "The Drag" and other risqué plays with the so-called Wales Padlock Law. It allowed theatres to be closed and everyone involved to be prosecuted if a play depicted "sex perversion". This meant above all homosexuality. Gay and lesbian characters largely disappeared from New York's stages for decades or survived only in hints.
West was not slowed down by this. A few years later she was one of Hollywood's best-paid stars. And the drag scene still reveres her today as one of its great icons.