Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: So I'm thirty two and I'm not a star. It's okay, guys,
Speaker 2: I've accepted it. But I've tried various things over the years.
Speaker 2: You know, I tried to be a rock star, a
Speaker 2: pop star. I've had a couple podcasts, I do stand
Speaker 2: up comedy, I post reels and TikTok.
Speaker 1: Singing humiliating songs and bringing shame to my family's name.
Speaker 2: You know, I've done a lot in my quest to
Speaker 2: become the most famous person who have ever existed. It's
Speaker 2: not a noble quest, but a combination of mental illness
Speaker 2: and American individualism has led me down this path. All
Speaker 2: the same, if you're like me, when you reached thirty
Speaker 2: two and looked at your efforts, you might have been like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe it's not going to happen for me, Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't have star power factor. You might have gone to
Speaker 2: the Internet and asked your search engine questions, like at
Speaker 2: what age did this famous person make it? Who are
Speaker 2: some stars who made it later in life. There's two
Speaker 2: people who give me hope. The first, of course, is
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Yeah, Jesus was pretty obscure until he turned
Speaker 2: thirty three, and now He's one of the most famous
Speaker 2: guys out there. Another person is the movie star May West.
Speaker 2: She didn't make a big splash until she was just
Speaker 2: like me thirty two, and she made it in the
Speaker 2: same way that Jesus did with sex appeal. Oh no, am,
Speaker 2: I about to lose all my Christian listeners with that comparison.
Speaker 2: But also, if you're a Christian and you listen to
Speaker 2: this podcast, good for you.
Speaker 1: You're very open minded.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying how Jesus was posing on the crucifix,
Speaker 2: he looked a bit spicy. May West was also very spicy,
Speaker 2: and what she did was right and star in a
Speaker 2: Broadway production with the simple title that got right to
Speaker 2: the point sex and in part because of that, she
Speaker 2: was launched from small time notoriety to big ass notoriety.
Speaker 2: So let's see what tips and tricks she has so
Speaker 2: that all of us can do the same thing and
Speaker 2: make it at the age of thirty two.
Speaker 1: Cue the theme song. This is American filth. I'm Gabby Watts.
Speaker 2: Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
Speaker 1: This week's episode sex do pe pe doy do boo
Speaker 1: bity do boop.
Speaker 2: Pity doo Unfortunately, in my research I found I am
Speaker 2: already far behind May West because she is funnier and
Speaker 2: wiser than me. She also just oos sexuality and confidence
Speaker 2: and bad bitchery. And I want to say, I'm not
Speaker 2: into celebrity worship, but I can do some celebrity respect.
Speaker 2: And here are some of the funniest things.
Speaker 1: She said.
Speaker 2: A hard man is good to find. Too much of
Speaker 2: a good thing can be wonderful. When I'm good, I'm
Speaker 2: very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better. Love thy neighbor.
Speaker 2: And if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating,
Speaker 2: it will be that much easier. Personally, I like two
Speaker 2: types of men, domestic and foreign.
Speaker 1: Is that a gun in your pocket? Or are you
Speaker 1: just happy to see me? Pew pew.
Speaker 2: Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Speaker 1: Wow. Pretty good.
Speaker 2: And I think it's fair to say that a West
Speaker 2: was an American icon of the stage and then the screen.
Speaker 1: She was a bleach.
Speaker 2: Blonde bombshell whose career was characterized by sexual innuendo, comedic irony,
Speaker 2: being provocative and causing chaos, or, as the censors would
Speaker 2: think so, inappropriate and ruining the youths.
Speaker 1: She was an.
Speaker 2: Actress, dancer, singer, writer who started as an obsolete actress
Speaker 2: in the theater world, but then went on to be
Speaker 2: a big star in the movies and yas. She was
Speaker 2: considered a sex symbol, but before all of that, she
Speaker 2: was a child. You perverts, and that is something I
Speaker 2: can relate to with May West, I too was once
Speaker 2: a child. May was born in eighteen ninety three and
Speaker 2: group in Brooklyn, New York. Have you heard of this place?
Speaker 2: And her life in showbiz started early. She was a
Speaker 2: wee babe of five when she did her first performance
Speaker 2: at her church, and then at seven she started doing
Speaker 2: talent shows, amateur plays, and at fourteen she entered the
Speaker 2: world of vaudeville. How did people see vaudeville at the time, Well,
Speaker 2: it wasn't one of the high arts. It featured review
Speaker 2: shows mixing comedy and song and dance. It could be provocative, raunchy, sexy,
Speaker 2: depending on the show. On the other hand, Broadway was
Speaker 2: considered the legitimate stage. May got a few opportunities on
Speaker 2: Broadway early on, but she didn't get enough work to
Speaker 2: sustain her, so she hit the touring vaudeville circuit. She
Speaker 2: toured around the country singing and dancing in vaudeville shows
Speaker 2: through nineteen seventeen, when she was about twenty four. She
Speaker 2: had done so much performing by that point she even
Speaker 2: had a bit where she would wear men's clothing as
Speaker 2: a male impersonator. When she got back to New York,
Speaker 2: it seemed that things might be looking up. In nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: she got cast in a high profile review show called Sometimes,
Speaker 2: and then in nineteen twenty two she had a successful
Speaker 2: double act with this pianist Harry Richmond that hit the
Speaker 2: premiere vaudeville stages, but she still wasn't back on Broadway,
Speaker 2: and then the pianist Harry Richmond dumped her ass to
Speaker 2: team up with a more notable actress.
Speaker 1: Poor May, What's she gonna do well? At that point,
Speaker 1: she was getting desperate.
Speaker 2: In her autobiography, she sort of skips over what happened
Speaker 2: between nineteen twenty two and nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 1: She's like, if I don't mention it, no one will know.
Speaker 2: But historians, those snaky historians, they discovered what happened to me.
Speaker 2: She had descended from the vaudeville stage to burlesque. Oh no, oh,
Speaker 2: the shame see, burlesque was like Vaudeville.
Speaker 1: But more lude and more nude.
Speaker 2: And a humiliating step backwards for any self respecting performer.
Speaker 2: And see, her family was already divided on her career.
Speaker 2: Her mom loved everything she did, go Mom, but her
Speaker 2: dad's side of the family they seemed to disapprove of
Speaker 2: her acts.
Speaker 1: And I was just doing.
Speaker 2: Vaudeville because in the vaudeville shows even there, May was
Speaker 2: doing crazy stuff like this nude dance move called the shimmy.
Speaker 2: And now she was doing burlesque, and not just that,
Speaker 2: she was working with the Mutual Burlesque Wheel, which was
Speaker 2: notorious for having the ludist of lude acts. So yes,
Speaker 2: burlesque could be seen as a step backwards, but honestly,
Speaker 2: it wasn't that far off from what May was doing before.
Speaker 2: And it seems that she took ownership of this provocative
Speaker 2: material and ran with it, because what she did next
Speaker 2: was write her own play under her pen name Jane
Speaker 2: Mast and through some dubious financial backing aka people think
Speaker 2: she found herself a sugar daddy who has given her money,
Speaker 2: she was able to rent a Broadway theater, hire director
Speaker 2: and put on her own production where she would star
Speaker 2: as the main character, Margie Lamont, and she named the
Speaker 2: play sex.
Speaker 1: And what was this show about? A sex worker?
Speaker 2: Of course, Margie Lamont romps from Montreal to Trinidad to
Speaker 2: the suburbs of New York, going on various adventures and
Speaker 2: sex capades in the pursuit of money. Yeah, the plot,
Speaker 2: it's convoluted. It doesn't always make sense. It's a long,
Speaker 2: unwieldy story filled with lowbrow sexual innuendo and la else.
Speaker 2: For example, in one scene, one of Margie's customers is
Speaker 2: this dude named Lieutenant Greg, and he says, I've got
Speaker 2: something for you, and then Margie's like, well, come on
Speaker 2: and let me see it.
Speaker 1: And Greg's like, you'll get it, you'll get it.
Speaker 2: I don't mind telling you. I had an awful time
Speaker 2: saving it for you. Why all the women were fighting
Speaker 2: for it. And then Margie's like, well it better be good,
Speaker 2: and then Greg's like it's good, alright, It's the best
Speaker 2: you could get, but you got to be very careful
Speaker 2: not to bend it. Oh he he haha. Doesn't it
Speaker 2: sound like they're talking about his waner? But no, joke's
Speaker 2: on you. The gift that Lieutenant Greg got Margie was
Speaker 2: not his big old dong. No, it was an ostrich feather.
Speaker 2: So May West opened the show in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 2: It's during prohibition when the government was like, te Prince
Speaker 2: is so important, let's be teetotal ers. And you had
Speaker 2: all these activists, you know, men and women, being like,
Speaker 2: we need to keep the old values of the Victorian
Speaker 2: era when we were repressed and policing poor people's behavior
Speaker 2: to make sure they didn't get any bright ideas and
Speaker 2: have fun. And we got a censor provocative art so
Speaker 2: that people don't think that kind of stuff is okay.
Speaker 2: And censorship had reached the arts. For example, a few
Speaker 2: years earlier, New York State created the New York State
Speaker 2: Motion Picture Commission, which had to approve movies before they
Speaker 2: were released. They could demand cuts and other changes to
Speaker 2: the films if they deemed them inappropriate. And that was
Speaker 2: before people were even talking in the movies. And commissions
Speaker 2: like that had popped up all across the country because
Speaker 2: lots of folks were concerned with the devilry in Hollywood
Speaker 2: with their loose morals. But of course, as we all know,
Speaker 2: while there is prohibition, there was of course the backlash
Speaker 2: to it where you had flappers, speakeasies and provocateurs like
Speaker 2: May West. Sex premiered on April twenty six at the
Speaker 2: DALYs sixty third Street Theater. And a fun fact about
Speaker 2: that theater was the organization that financed the final construction
Speaker 2: of that building was going to use it to host
Speaker 2: religious lectures and show biblical films, and then after that
Speaker 2: it was a children's theater. But then by nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: six it was time for sex, and wow, wee did
Speaker 2: the critics freaking hate sex. The critical rage against the
Speaker 2: show was almost universal. Almost every critic was like, this
Speaker 2: show is a pile of garbage that will ruin the
Speaker 2: morals of the youths literally. One review said it was garbage.
Speaker 2: The New York Daily Mirror had the headline sex an
Speaker 2: offensive play, monster atrocity plucked from garbage can destined to sewer.
Speaker 2: The New York Times said it was a crude and
Speaker 2: inept play, cheaply produced and poorly acted, and Billboard said
Speaker 2: it was the cheapest, most vulgar low show to have
Speaker 2: dared to.
Speaker 1: Open in New York this year.
Speaker 2: One of the most positive reviews was from the New
Speaker 2: York Herald Tribune, but it was still hating on the play.
Speaker 2: It said, never in a long experience of theater going
Speaker 2: have we met with such a set of characters so depraved.
Speaker 2: All the barriers of conventional word and act that the
Speaker 2: last few seasons of the theater have shown us were
Speaker 2: swept away, and we were shown not sex, but lust,
Speaker 2: stark naked lust. But not only did the reviewers think
Speaker 2: the show was bad, some of them were like, this
Speaker 2: show should be illegal. Call the police on this play,
Speaker 2: like in that article that called the show garbage. The
Speaker 2: New York Daily Mirror reviewer went even further. It said,
Speaker 2: this production is not for the police. It comes rather
Speaker 2: in the province of our health department. It is a
Speaker 2: sore spot in the midst of our fair.
Speaker 1: City that needs disinfecting.
Speaker 2: Not only did the haters dislike sex because it was
Speaker 2: dealing with vulgar subject matter, but also the main character, Margie.
Speaker 2: She was a woman, and she had sexual agency, made
Speaker 2: her own decisions and was confident that must have been
Speaker 2: super awful for all those male reviewers to see. And
Speaker 2: may west just her whole vibe was offensive to her critics.
Speaker 2: One police officer who saw the play said that Wes
Speaker 2: moved her buttocks in other parts of her body in
Speaker 2: such a way as to suggest an act of intercourse.
Speaker 1: Oh god. So yeah.
Speaker 2: Critically the show was a bomb, But in showbiz we
Speaker 2: all know there's no such thing as a bad review,
Speaker 2: because Sex ended up being one of the most successful
Speaker 2: plays of the nineteen twenty six Broadway season, with an
Speaker 2: almost sold out run through nineteen twenty seven. Those bad
Speaker 2: reviews just drummed up more attention and New Yorkers were like,
Speaker 2: I gotta go see what the deal is with this
Speaker 2: crazy show. So when we look back at the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: we might think that this show seems revolutionary, but nothing
Speaker 2: happens in a vacuum, and this show wasn't alone. The
Speaker 2: same time that Sex was out, there were several other
Speaker 2: Broadway shows that had characters who were sex workers. For example,
Speaker 2: two of those shows were called The Shanghai Gesture and
Speaker 2: Lulu Bell, and those shows not only did they portray
Speaker 2: sex workers, but also interracial sex and marriage.
Speaker 1: And it seemed there were.
Speaker 2: So many of these shows going on at the time,
Speaker 2: but they got their own genre on Broadway. They were
Speaker 2: called sex plays, and as the censors and the temperance
Speaker 2: activists circled. Many people on Broadway were also not thrilled
Speaker 2: about these shows. But the thing is, while everyone was
Speaker 2: in a tizzy about sex, May West was already writing
Speaker 2: a new show, and it was going to induce people
Speaker 2: into an even bigger tizzy. The show was called The
Speaker 2: Drag and it was a comedy drama featuring homosexuals. Be
Speaker 2: right back after these soothing advertisements, so May West play
Speaker 2: The Drag was about a guy named Rally. Then Raleigh
Speaker 2: is a homosexual, but unfortunately for him, his dad is
Speaker 2: a prominent judge who likes to use his power to
Speaker 2: persecute gay people. And then Raley is married to a
Speaker 2: woman named Claire, and Claire's dad is a therapist who
Speaker 2: does conversion therapy.
Speaker 1: What a safe space.
Speaker 2: Claire is unhappy because Raleigh has no sexual interest in her.
Speaker 2: And then in act too, Raleigh makes advances on one
Speaker 2: of his employees, Alan, but Alan is like you, no thanks,
Speaker 2: And then Alan is like, actually, I'm attracted to your
Speaker 2: wife though, and then Claire seems to be kind of
Speaker 2: into him anyway. The third act features a big ball
Speaker 2: where there are all these men in drag and a
Speaker 2: jazz band on stage. It's a big old party and
Speaker 2: at some point Ralli gets shot and dies. The next morning,
Speaker 2: his dad, the homophobic judge, is trying to figure out
Speaker 2: who killed his son. They think it's Alan, but then
Speaker 2: a former lover of Rolly confesses.
Speaker 1: Claire's dad.
Speaker 2: The conversion therapist is like, hey, judge, let's be nice.
Speaker 2: Remember homosexuality is a disease and let me try to
Speaker 2: fix it.
Speaker 1: The judge is like, okay, fine.
Speaker 2: I'll say it's a suicide, but alsough discussing homosexuals. I
Speaker 2: don't want people to know my family was associated with
Speaker 2: such behavior. And then the gay lover goes off with
Speaker 2: Claire's dad to get cured of his homosexuality. So looking
Speaker 2: back at this play is a bit confusing, you know.
Speaker 2: On the one hand, the show was revolutionary. May West
Speaker 2: had been around drag before. Remember she had been a
Speaker 2: male impersonator at one point in her life, and being
Speaker 2: in vaudeville in the theater, she had been around a
Speaker 2: lot of gay men. I'm sorry, I'm not stereotyping. The
Speaker 2: gays were just there in the theater. And during the
Speaker 2: run of Sex One night, she invited some of her
Speaker 2: gay colleagues to the show, and then the ones who
Speaker 2: showed up. She said, Hey, come audition for my new play.
Speaker 2: We're having open auditions at the gay bar. And now
Speaker 2: that was the thing that was really revolutionary. This was
Speaker 2: unheard of of having gay characters but then also having
Speaker 2: them played by gay men. The Actors' Union had forbidden
Speaker 2: gay men from having speaking lines in productions, so this
Speaker 2: was huge. So yes, big ups to May West. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, her opinions on homosexuals were a
Speaker 2: bit more nuanced and changed over the course of her career.
Speaker 2: One reading of the message of The Drag is that
Speaker 2: the reason Rolly's lover wasn't convicted of murder was because
Speaker 2: the doctor said he was going.
Speaker 1: To fix him.
Speaker 2: Aka, homosexuality is a disease, and therefore you can't penalize
Speaker 2: gay people because they are sick. And may at one
Speaker 2: point was like, yeah, I didn't read Freud because it
Speaker 2: was too boring, but I agree that homosexuality is a
Speaker 2: mental illness. In her autobiography that was published in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, she said that homosexuality was a danger to
Speaker 2: the entire social system of Western civilization, but then later
Speaker 2: in her life in the nineteen sixties and seventies, she
Speaker 2: was like, actually, I've just really been ahead of my
Speaker 2: time the whole time, Like, yeah, I am a gay
Speaker 2: pioneer for sure. In an interview, she said I glorified
Speaker 2: them to a certain extent and treated them very sympathetically.
Speaker 2: So in January nineteen twenty seven, May West and her
Speaker 2: cast of gays started running previews of The Drag in
Speaker 2: Connecticut and New Jersey. These were widely publicized because it
Speaker 2: was so scandalous again to have homosexuals having speaking lines
Speaker 2: in a show, and also it's about homosexuality, and the
Speaker 2: reviews were also pretty bad, but may was undeterred. She
Speaker 2: was like, these audiences are too childlike to face, like
Speaker 2: grown ups, the problem of homosexuals. But these previews that
Speaker 2: ran over two weeks pretty successful. May West made bank
Speaker 2: about thirty thousand dollars, and she was like, I think
Speaker 2: we are ready to bring the show to Broadway. So
Speaker 2: while sex riled some feathers, the Drag made those feathers
Speaker 2: fall the fuck off. The purveyors of Broadway were pissed.
Speaker 2: They were like, don't you dare bring that filth to
Speaker 2: the New York stage. One Broadway producer said that it
Speaker 2: was the worst possible play i've ever heard of, contemplating
Speaker 2: an invasion of New York. And the reason the theater
Speaker 2: people didn't want May West to do this production in
Speaker 2: New York was because they knew if she put homosexuality
Speaker 2: on Broadway, then Broadway was going to be under even
Speaker 2: more scrutiny and they would all get fucked over. And
Speaker 2: they had reasons to be scared. Their artistic agency was
Speaker 2: at stake because, in early nineteen twenty seven, the New
Speaker 2: York City Assembly introduced a bill that would put the
Speaker 2: theaters under the control of the same commission that censored movies,
Speaker 2: the New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship, remember that.
Speaker 2: And the theater people were trying to propose an alternative.
Speaker 2: They're like, instead of having the theater under the movie
Speaker 2: people's control, how about instead we create our own regulatory
Speaker 2: board called the Theater Supervisory Board, and then we review
Speaker 2: all the scripts to make sure none of these nasty
Speaker 2: May West type shows reached the stage. But may West
Speaker 2: was like, I'm doing whatever the fuck I want, you Pusseys,
Speaker 2: I released my own theater, the Dowley, so you literally
Speaker 2: can't stop me. But unfortunately for may she literally did
Speaker 2: get stopped, and she brought several other productions with her.
Speaker 2: On February ninth, nineteen twenty seven, after the curtain came
Speaker 2: down on another packed out night of Sex, May was
Speaker 2: backstage and suddenly saw a bunch of police officers rounding
Speaker 2: up the cast of her play.
Speaker 1: The police who were.
Speaker 2: There were the officers from the New York Police Department's
Speaker 2: Municipal Vice Squad and had been sent by the mayor
Speaker 2: on charges of public obscenity. May West was probably like,
Speaker 2: this is not the encore I expected. But then the
Speaker 2: police grabbed her as well and shoved her and her
Speaker 2: cast into the back of a police ban. May was pissed,
Speaker 2: and the Sex cast and crew weren't alone. The police
Speaker 2: raided a couple other theaters that were producing indecent plays,
Speaker 2: so May had to use half of her profits from
Speaker 2: the drag to get everyone out of jail fourteen thousand
Speaker 2: to bail out all of her actors and crew. After that,
Speaker 2: she had to go to court to deal with the charges,
Speaker 2: but she was going to do it.
Speaker 1: In May West style.
Speaker 2: For example, when she entered the courtroom, the judge was
Speaker 2: like are you May West? And she was like, don't
Speaker 2: you read the newspapers? See this didn't really seem that
Speaker 2: it was getting made down. She saw this as an opportunity.
Speaker 2: One journalist at the court asked her what she thought
Speaker 2: was going to happen, and she was like.
Speaker 1: I expect this will be the making of me.
Speaker 2: Despite the arrest, May refused to shut down sex at first.
Speaker 2: It did finally close in March nineteen twenty s and
Speaker 2: then in April May was sentenced to ten days in
Speaker 2: prison for corrupting the morals of the youth. She was
Speaker 2: sent to the women's reformatory on Welfare Island now called
Speaker 2: Roosevelt Island to serve her ten days, and she seemed to.
Speaker 1: Have a really horrible time.
Speaker 2: For example, she wasn't allowed to wear her silk underwear,
Speaker 2: she had to wear cotton underwear.
Speaker 1: Ah, and also.
Speaker 2: She had to eat dinner with a warden every night,
Speaker 2: which I'm sure was a huge burden. And then she
Speaker 2: got released eight days later. Yeah, she got two days
Speaker 2: off for good behavior. And May she never did stage
Speaker 2: the drag in New York City. Technically, what she did
Speaker 2: instead was rewrite the play, name it The Pleasure Man,
Speaker 2: made the main character Raley straight, but then kept some
Speaker 2: of the gay stuff in, like The Drag Ball at
Speaker 2: the End that started running on New York City ages
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty eight, and again the theater was rated
Speaker 2: fifty five. Actors, actresses, and musicians along with May were arrested.
Speaker 1: Once they were out of.
Speaker 2: Jail, the next day, May made some cuts to the production,
Speaker 2: you know, took out some of the more obscene parts,
Speaker 2: and they staged the play again, but this time she
Speaker 2: and the cast were arrested during the show. Two years later,
Speaker 2: she and the cast were on trial, but the jury
Speaker 2: was unable to make a final decision.
Speaker 1: So all charges were dropped.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sure, but at this point May West was
Speaker 2: becoming an undeniable star. All of this laid the groundwork
Speaker 2: for her future productions and launched her onto a bigger
Speaker 2: national platform. People were like, damn, this May westchick is crazy.
Speaker 2: We got to pay attention to her along with a
Speaker 2: pleasure man. During this time, she wrote Diamond Lil, another
Speaker 2: story about a prostitute. It was staged on Broadway in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight and brought her mass appeal. A few
Speaker 2: years later, she signed a contract with Paramount and headed
Speaker 2: to California. From there, she became a huge movie star
Speaker 2: and ps. In her first film, she was like forty
Speaker 2: and voila. An icon was made. As always, we learn
Speaker 2: a lesson from American Filth, and the lesson that we
Speaker 2: learn here is that for me to get famous at
Speaker 2: the age of thirty two, I need to be even filthier.
Speaker 2: I need to write a podcast episode so vulgar, so
Speaker 2: disgusting that one of you listeners call the cops on me.
Speaker 1: Will it be you?
Speaker 2: American Filth is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 2: iHeart podcast As. Episode was written sound As I Am
Speaker 2: hosted by me Gabby Wants. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr.
Speaker 2: The theme song was by me and Jesse Niswanger. You
Speaker 2: can follow along with the show on Instagram at American
Speaker 2: Filth pod and please please please give the show a
Speaker 2: review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps us with
Speaker 2: the algorithm. Also tell your friends to listen to it.
Speaker 2: I need this. Thank you all right, Talk with you
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 1: School of Humans