Jack

Meloche
Mae West The Final Years

In her later years, Mae West made occasional appearances on

Television shows (Mister Ed and The Red Skelton Show are both
examples), and she also recorded several rock and roll albums,
including: Way Out West, Great Balls of Fire, and Wild Christmas. Great
Balls of Fire was an album in which West covered many rock classics,
such as Rock Around the Clock, Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On, and
(of course) Great Balls of Fire. Meanwhile, Wild Christmas was host
to some of the usual Holiday classics, however it also included
noteworthy parody songs such as Santa, Come Up to See Me, and
Put the Loot in the Boot, Santa.
In addition to her musical endeavors, Mae West made a return to
motion pictures with Myra Breckinridge and Sextette both were
failures with the box office as well as the critics. Sextette was Wests
final film, and her age was beginning to affect her performance. One
example of this is the fact that she needed a production assistant to
guide her around the set, due to her failing eyesight. In 1980, Mae
West passed away after tripping while getting out of bed, and suffering
the effects of two strokes and pneumonia. She was laid to rest in her
familys mausoleum in Brooklyn.

Jack
Meloche
Works Cited
Clarke, Gerald. "Show Business: At 84 Mae West Is Still Mae West." Time. Time, n.d.
Web. 20 Jan. 2016.
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919666,00.html>.
Cullen, Frank, Florence Hackman, and Donald McNeilly. Vaudeville, Old & New: An
Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Print.
Derman, Lou, and Bill Davenport. "Mister Ed S4 | Mae West Meets Mister Ed." YouTube.
YouTube, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.
Kashner, Sam, and Jennifer MacNair. The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Print.
Louvish, Simon. Mae West: It Ain't No Sin. New York: St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, 2006.
Print.
"Mae West, Stage and Movie Star Who Burlesqued Sex, Dies At 87." Mae West, Stage
and Movie Star Who Burlesqued Sex, Dies At 87. The New York Times, n.d. Web.
20 Jan. 2016.
<http://web.archive.org/web/20080407064502/http://www.nytimes.com/specials/
magazine4/articles/west1.html>.
Watts, Jill. Mae West: An Icon in Black and White. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.
West, Mae. "Mae West - Great Balls of Fire." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2016.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ExGUVECIRXU&list=PLgpHSCXPTV91EK5B9QTKNruyGw5uXDbGc>.
West, Mae. "Wild Christmas." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2016.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=zQmkdayLK44&list=PLgpHSCXPTV91Kka0aBEVPvbC9CQa0EFP4>.