138: Mae West (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 12)
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May West Shimmying
In 19 11, when she was 17, may married frank wallace, a dancer with whom she was then doing a show. Wallace and west had put together an act, singing and dancing to ragtime songs in conscious imitation of black performers whom they had seen in harlem. Neither the marriage, which may kept secret until the truth came out after she was famous, nor the act lasted long. May spent the next few years touring vaudeville theatres as a solo act. By the late 19 teens, her act had stagnated a bit and her prospects had dimmed. But the end of world war one brought a boom time decadence to new york city, in which
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