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Reluctant, young Sadye Marks becomes drawn into vaudeville and radio performance through marriage to Jack Benny. The character created for her by Harry Conn, Mary Livingstone, becomes a popular and unique character in American entertainment. As Jack’s sometimes-secretary and chief heckler, Mary criticizes men with remarkable freedom, yet also retains her independence and attractiveness, much like Hollywood heroines of the 1930s, and yet Mary never has to get married in the final reel. Mary Livingstone had great cultural impact, and star status, in the 1930s as a comic “Unruly Woman.” After World War II, however, Mary’s inhibitions drew her away from the microphone, and her delightfully tart tongue was heard less frequently. With a fascinating affinity for a feminist viewpoint, female characters in the Benny show narrative universe were tough and usually prevailed over the men.

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.

Through her slumming, like so many others both past and present, Mae West contributes to the ever-increasing visibility of the group identity of homosexuals in the United States as her controversial 1927 play, The Drag: A Homosexual Comedy ([1927] 1997), brings enigmatic bodies into sexual comprehension. This book explores the strategies undertaken by other slumming writers. Contrary to the generic expectations of slumming literatures such as The Drag, the book argues that a handful of U.S. writers and artists in the first half of the twentieth century queered the popular genre, turned the slumming narrative against itself, used it to manipulate homosexual identifications, and frustrated the compulsion to reveal underworld sexual knowledge. The cultures that the book examines sweep across three cultural and aesthetic movements: Progressive Era realism, the Afro-modernisms of the Harlem Renaissance, and expatriate Sapphic modernism.

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.

This chapter examines two musical comedies by Young: Lady Luxury and Sometime. Both shows demonstrate the hallmarks of musical comedy: they take place in the present, use common slang and topical references, use dance as entertainment (rather than to advance plot), and are lighthearted. Lady Luxury is one of Young’s funniest musical comedies and anticipates some of the characters and themes of the 1925 hit No, No, Nanette. Sometime, which Young wrote with Rudolf Friml, contains aspects of operetta and musical comedy. It featured Ed Wynn, who may have written his own dialogue. For both shows, the chapter provides a synopsis and analysis of the libretto and lyrics.