4

While on Broadway in early 1956, Jayne meets the love of her life, strongman Mickey Hargitay, then performing with Mae West. Jayne feuds with West, makes several TV appearances, and begins her career as a pet-collecting publicity magnet as she and Mickey embark on their romance.

Chapter 8

This chapter considers the burgeoning relationship between Cary Grant and the actress Virginia Cherrill, who would become his first wife. It explains Cherrill’s background, her prominent role in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), and his intense and at times impulsive attraction to her. The chapter offers an account of the making of She Done Him Wrong (1932) and considers why Cary Grant disliked the film’s star, Mae West, so much. In later years, West often said that she “discovered” Cary Grant, a claim he vehemently denied, but there is no doubt that She Done Him Wrong, together with the next film that he made with West, I’m No Angel (1933), were the only box-office hits from this period of his career. The chapter reviews the other films from this period—The Woman Accused (1933), The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), and Gambling Ship (1933)—and considers why they failed to win favour with critics and audiences.

The ‘Awful Truth’ about Cary Grant

This chapter considers the creation of Cary Grant’s star persona – the combination of image, the characters he played, and the publicity that came to form his screen identity – between his early 1930s movies and his breakthrough roles in two 1937 films, Topper, (MGM) and The Awful Truth (Columbia). Grant was neither convincing and comfortable in the ‘likeable rough guy’ roles, in which Paramount (his original studio) cast him in the early Depression years, notably in the 1933 Mae West vehicle, She Done Him Wrong. Going freelance in 1937 led to a change of fortune and a new identity in screwball comedy. By now, the worst of the Depression was over, even if full recovery was elusive. Grant epitomised a newly confident American male, a consumer who cares about fashion and appearance, a leisurely figure who enjoys urban life, and a husband worthy of an attractive wife, but one who was not perfect and often in danger of losing his dignity – thereby suggesting the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy.

Sexualidades disidentes en la narrativa española reciente: políticas sexuales, cine y subversión en Mae West y yo (2011) de Eduardo Mendicutti

Este artículo aborda la obra narrativa del español Eduardo Mendicutti y sus vínculos con la repre sentación de la di sidencia sexual en España en las últimas décadas. En particular, este trabajo focaliza en una de las últimas producciones en la narr ativa del autor, Mae West y yo (2011). A partir del trabajo con una perspectiva queer en el texto mencionado, se abordan tópicos y dispositivos directamente relacionados con la disidencia sexual. En ese mar co, la novela funciona como ejemplo del conjunto de textos del autor, los que funcionarían como una “historia cultural” de la sexualidad disidente en España en las últimas décadas. Palabras clave: Mendicutti, Disidencia Sexual, España, Mae West, próstata.