She Done Him Wrong

Who is Mae West, you may ask? Well, if you're asking that question, you obviously didn't write a paper Junior year of high school about comedy films during the Great Depression like I did. To answer the question, Mae West is a female comedienne and sex symbol. Despite the existence of people like Tina Fey, it is still, unfortunately, common belief that women aren't funny... let alone sexy and funny. To whoever may think this, I would like to point them in the direction of Mae West. I found her extremely ahead of her time and relevant today (then again, do sexual innuendos ever go out of style?). She is the Queen of innuendo. She's her own woman. She owns and runs her own nightclub and flirts with every man she damn well pleases to flirt with. She's smart, cunning, sexy and hilarious. 

Well, perhaps you don't recognize the name Mae West, but you might recognize the line "Why don't you come up some time and see me?". It's on AFI's Top 100 Movie Quotes list and is ranked as number 26. Haven't heard it? Well, it also happens to be one of the most misquoted movie lines and is often quoted as "Come up and see me sometime" (which exaggerates the innuendo of the line a little bit). She says it in She Done Him Wrong when she is talking to Cary Grant (yes, he got his start doing movies with Mae West) who plays the leader of a local temperance group. His character's name? Captain Cummings. Yes. His name is Captain Cummings. He hangs around the Lady Lou (played by Mae West) works at in order to ensure there's minimal trouble.

And what a lot of trouble there is! The most amazing thing about this movie was not marveling at how many obvious innuendos they were able to sneak past the censorship of the time (actually, many point to this film as one of the reasons why the production code was put into place), but also at how much plot happens in a mere 69 minutes (yes, this raunchy comedy is cleverly 69 minutes long). I am incredibly bias (and I think this came up before in my post about Gone With the Wind) when it comes to the length of a movie. I think, the shorter the movie, the better. Ever watch the deleted scenes on the DVD? More often than not, you can see the reason the editor cut it out in the first place. Even for movies that I am a super fan of (like the masterpiece Hot Rod), I like better with the extra scenes cut out. However, because shorter movies have less time to repeat things, it means you have to really pay attention to make sure you catch everything that's going on. Inevitably bits and pieces are missed, bits of plot, or a joke or two, but I think this makes viewing it a second time even better. She Done Him Wrong is an incredibly complex story with lots of twists. It moves at an incredibly fast pace and the Mae West's hilarious innuendos come from all directions. I haven't had the pleasure to watch it again since I saw it the first time, but I can't wait. And you know what? I can do that practically whenever I want! It's not a chore like watching Gone with the Wind. Even though Gone with the Wind is a more critically acclaimed movie than She Done Him Wrong (although, both films were nominated for Best Picture in the Academy Awards... She Done Him Wrong happens to be the shortest film to ever to be nominated Best Picture, and Gone with the Wind is the longest), I would much rather sit down to watch She Done Him Wrong over and over again. 

COMING SOON: Blow Up... which if I were Mae West, I would make into a sexual innuendo.