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In 1926, Mae West and the entire cast of her play “Sex” were arrested for “corrupting the morals of youth and others.”

Mae West aroused the wrath of the New York City moralists because her bedroom farce features a brazen unapologetic sex worker, who after a series of misadventures, falls in love and lives happily ever after. Mae West wrote the play for herself because she was no longer content with playing the good little girl mistaken for a hooker or the working girl that ends up dead in the gutter. She wanted to be the woman that had a good time and wound up with the man in the end, if you know what I mean.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

As an early supporter of the women’s liberation movement and gay rights, Mae portrayed people seeking both romance and sexy fun in spite of the restrictive standards of the time.

Mae West’s play, Sex was so outrageous that it has never been staged in Chicago until now, some 84 years later. The Prologue Theater Company has brought “Sex” back to life, staging the comedy in a series of rooms located in an old historical mansion on the edge of Lake Michigan.

The play’s bawdy dialogue lends itself well to the enthusiasm of the young theater company and actress Jes Bedwineck does a lovely job playing Mae’s character of Margy LaMont without turning Mae into a cartoon, even though she was quite a bit of character herself.

We’re joined today by Jes and her love interest in the play, actor Sean Patrick Ward, to exchange our favorite Mae West quotes and talk about talk about sexuality and morality of the 1920s. Have we come a long way baby or is the best yet to come?

In the News:

The Chicago Cubs say hello to the first lesbian major league baseball team owner!

The USS New York, a naval warship built from steel salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Center arrives in New York City.

and If you’re in Maine, please vote today NO on Proposition 1.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 4:20 am and is filed under Actors, Featured, Interviews, Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.