Friday, March 8, 2024 at 8:30 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream now with the PBS App + Encore Monday, March 11 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TVto become a writer, performer and subversive agitator for social change. West achieved great acclaim in every entertainment medium that existed during
Doted on by her mother, a onetime corset model from Bavaria, hardened by her father, a former bare-knuckles brawler, “Baby Mae,” as she billed herself, soon left school to join a local theater troupe, playing nightly on the 10-cent stages that dotted working-class Brooklyn.West garnered attention as one of the best known performers of the shimmy dance, a sexually charged dance craze where she would “shake her chemise” to the delight of the audience.
After the success of her critical and commercial hit play “Diamond Lil,” Paramount Pictures offered West a contract and she became a movie star at age 39.