Is sometimes credited with originating the Shimmy (a once-popular dance).
Mae West is caricaturized In the Walt Disney 1933 cartoon, Mickey's Gala Premier, directed by Burt Gillett. Mae West enters (costumed 'ala' the film She Done Him Wrong (1933)) and utters her famous line, "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"
Measurements: 36-26-36 (in 1933), 38-24-38 (fitting by designer Edith Head), 39-27-39 (self-described in 1956), (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Once when she was scheduled to play a theater in New Haven, CT, the theater's management refused to let her go on because her act was too "risqué" and canceled the show. Disappointed Yale University students rioted and wrecked the theater.
One of the first women to consistently write the movies she starred in.
Playing opposite Ed Wynn in Arthur Hammerstein's "Sometime," with music by Rudolf Friml, she introduced the shimmy to the Broadway stage in 1918. The dance requires hardly any movement of the feet but continuous movement of the shoulders, torso and pelvis. She had seen the dance at black cafés in Chicago.
She was famous for her morning enemas, which she claimed made her skin like silk and left her "smelling sweet at both ends". On the set of her last film Sextette (1978), co-star Tony Curtis claimed that she was given an enema after being made up, at approximately 11:00 in the morning, as the last step of her preparations before going before the camera.
She was with George Raft in both her first (Night After Night (1932)) and last (Sextette (1978)) film.
Singer Miss Beverly Arden, sister of Mae West.
Sister of Beverly Arden.
Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí created one of his most iconic works influenced by her: "Mae West's Lips Sofa" (1937).
The Coca-Cola bottle was said to have been designed with Mae West's figure as inspiration.
There is a photo in fundamentalist preacher Billy Sunday's autobiography (circa 1932) of Billy Sunday and Mae West pouring out a bottle of beer into the river.
Turned down a role in Elvis Presley's film Roustabout (1964), which eventually went to Barbara Stanwyck.
Was at one point Hollywood's highest paid star.
Was banned from NBC Radio after a guest appearance in 1937 with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy that was loaded with flirtatious dialogue and double-entendres. She returned to the network as a guest on the "Perry Como Show" in 1949.
Was in consideration for the part of Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. (1950) but Gloria Swanson, who went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, was cast instead.
Was named #15 Actress on The American Film Institutes 50 Greatest Screen Legends
Was not a smoker or a drinker.
When W.C. Fields called her "My little broodmare," she almost hit him.