Though sugar coated and boastful, it covers a great deal with photos only she could/would provide. A must for any serious Mae West collector, especially if you can get it with it's original cover.

This is as close to a personal meeting with this remarkable woman as anyone could ever hope to get. Miss West's autobiography reads as though she were in the room dictating it word for word. It's all here; the humor, the wit, the history, and her life as she wanted it to be known. There are some great photos included as well. A lot of fun to read-I just wish it were longer!

This was an amusing and interesting autobiography by that goddess of sensuality and inventor of the innuendo, Mae West. If you like her, you'll love this book. If you're indifferent to her, you'll still appreciate this tale of life in the theatre and film industries from the early part of this century. If you don't like her, then all I can say is what's your damage?

This is a book Mae West tried to have stopped because she wanted a cut of the money. It went through THREE different editions! FILLED with photos and every saying she ever said, it is highly recommended.

I love this book and have worn out my original! It exemplifies just how quick-witted and lyrical Miss West was. Every page drips with her saucy sayings and gorgeous and alluring photos. Even if someone is not a Mae West fan, she will appreciate her wit and he will appreciate her beauty.

"It's not the men in my life that counts- it's the life in my men."

This is a bio-bibliography. So everything you read, you can verify by finding the original somewhere. Wonderfully researched, and of course perfectly accurate (how could it NOT be?). You are paying for all of the great research, and it is worth every penny. It is invaluable to anyone who is writing a book on Mae West, or researching her career.

This is an early Mae West bio, now apparently out of print. It is excellent, and written by two people who knew her fairly well. Great photos. Both authors have passed on from what I understand. It was my introduction into the world of Mae West, and it was life changing. Highly recommended.

This book gives you real insight into Mae West's life and personality. While there are some errors in the captions under a few photographs, it is all well researched and very entertaining. I have read it more than twice...

Mae West: Empress of Sex by Maurice Leonard is a spirited account of the wild, serenely-brazen, sex-drenched life of Americas's foremost 1930's sex goddess Mae West. Saucy Miss West was born in 1893 in Brooklyn, New York , a gal with nerve to spare. Although in many ways still a product of the times, West was an autonomous, calculating cookie that knew the power of image and scandal in generating a stage career. Leonard shows West at the black clubs of 1920's New York City studying the outrageously sexy dances of the black crowd, doing her best to capture their moves, and then introducing those moves as her own to a properly shocked, white Broadway audience. West wrote her own stage and movie material; she felt she knew what was right for her better than anyone else. She wrote plays, books, and screenplays dealing with the forbidden topics of homosexuality(The Drag), and sex (The Constant Sinner). She had a taste for musclemen, handsome black studs and wayward lawless thugs. She generally never met a man she didn't like. Leonard's tome on West shows a woman who liked to be in control, control of her career, her men, and delusionally time itself. (She believed she looked twenty-six while in her eighties.) This book is a must read for all West's fans.

The book about Mae West was good. I enjoyed all of it. It was funny, touching and very entertaining. I recommend it highly.

This book reveals West's beauty secrets and health regimens. A MUST for real Mae West collectors and is WAY out of print, and was never even released in the U.S.! It is ghost written, but very good. The ESP parts are fascinating.

Well researched and written. A little book, part of a series I think, but worth buying. No photos unfortunately, but a good addition to a Mae West book collection.

In this well-researched book Marybeth Hamilton offers a picture of an brave and individual performer/writer and her work. It was surprising to discover that Mae West was all but washed up by the 1940's, her legend seems so dominating in popular culture. I also learnt more than I could ever have imagined about burlesque theatre and life in early 20th Century America.

All in all, The Queen of Camp an interesting history of the fascinatin' Ms West and the world she inhabited.

Atrocious is the word for this horribly researched, terribly written piece of "fiction." This book in no way reflects anything very accurate about the true Mae West. It is totally unfair, and amounts to a vicious attack designed to assassinate the character of the legendary film star Mae West. No fan should read this disastrous hodge-podge of disinformation, and for that matter, no one should read such an unfair book at all. Having known Mae West and knowing a tremendous amount of information about her career and her life, I found this diatribe completely without any kind of merit. The "author" (if that is what one would call this nasty writer) has no sense of balance at all. This is one of the most unfair, one-sided, pathetic excuses for a "biography" I have ever had the displeasure of reading. It is no wonder than when this piece of crap was released it was stillborn. It was and is a colossal failure both in sales and in what it set out to do.

Very early in West's career in this book, the author loses all credibility by her constant and horrendous assault (and that is exactly what it is) on West. The whole second part of the book is nothing but an angry, bitter attack against West, which leaves out so much about West, but delves up nothing but one constant, angry attack after the other. It is NEGATIVE beyond comprehension!

When I finished reading this mess, I felt like I had been assaulted myself, and was ashamed that I even read anything so negative to the extreme. The "author" attacks West on ALL levels, for any and ALL reasons, and guesses at alleged "facts" rather than revealing anything new here. The entire book is just a simple-minded rehash of other previously published material and ALMOST entirely in the negative. No fair-minded person could give any credibility to a "work" so vicious, so obviously full of just plain hate! I was offended to the 9th degree. Never have I read a book full of such venom, untruths, and consistently inaccurate information. Anyone could have performed better research than this 4th rate writer. This mockery of an autobiographical account is submerged by the bitter, twisted and demented mind of the pathetic excuse for an author (not to mention human being). A TRULY, uncompassionate, possibly insane witch wrote this nasty piece of crap!!!

You won't find out anything that is true or accurate about the great Mae West here, but you will find distortions, countless information about other plays and actors (that have nothing to do with West) and an appalling lack of feeling and humanity. One of the LOWEST, CHEAPEST pieces of trash ever written, and one of the most UNSUCCESSFUL too!!!

This book uncovers every detail of Mae Wests early career. Though Hamilton seems to accent on the negative, those who love Mae West will relish in the new details and great photos. The author is the exact opposite of Mae West, one can easlily surmise, so every triumpth of West's is quickly dashed with a failure, indicating an almost peciliar jealousy on behalf of the author towards her subject! THAT is what makes this book so interesting.

My recent interest in Mae West started while viewing the play "Dirty Blonde" It led to watching her films, listening to her archival music, reading her autobiography, her "Wit and Wisdom" and her rewritten version of "Pleasure Man". From childhood I had viewed "Myra Breckinridge" and "Sextette" as well as listened to her albums "Way Out West" and "Wild Christmas". Marybeth Hamilton Ph.D. in history from Princeton University, has written the missing link in the West saga. Describing in accurate detail the origins and influence of a well known and well loved pioneer. "Her sheer inventiveness with materials makes her a percursor of the likes of Madonna and a forerunner of comic performers like Bette Midler and Sandra Bernhardt, women who deliberately manipulate camp humor rather than remaining naive objects of it. West rewrote her past in the service of her marketability and reputation. Crafted and recrafted by a shrewd judge of audiences who knew what she was doing at every step." This is a brilliant historical study, well researched and informative. Hamilton deserves honors for bringing Mae West and her career into the film history and gender studies perspective. Highly recomended!

Although this book has a decent selection of photographs of the great West, it's treatment of the subject is a little too light for me. It is definitely a good window into the times that produced this American Icon, but often it goes too much on a tangent about the times. I recommend that Mae West fanatics seek out the biography by Eels and Musgrove, or Mae West's own autobiography to get an entertaining insight into Mae West. If you've seen those, this will also sit well in your collection.

A fascinating account of the life and times of a self-made legend, who lived life by her own rules and celebrated her sexuality on an astonishing level. The book provided mcuh insight to the times, as well as the motives and cunning of Mae West. However, I would have liked to read more about her later life, seeing as she lived another forty years after where the book drops off. All in all, a really meticulous and well done biography.

Emily Wortis Leider has written a biography of Mae West that is more than a rehash of her films and a retelling of her famous lines. Leider writes well and entertainingly and has researched her subject conscientiously. The result is a clearer picture of who Mae West was as a person and how she "became" the character that became her. Leider states her intention early and clearly. While her bio does cover West's entire life, her films and her efforts to remain an icon, Leider is more interested in how the little girl from Brooklyn became a musical soubrette, a vaudeville star, a playwright and stellar star of stage and screen. Along the way we get revealing glimpses into the show business of the early 20th century, America's social attitudes and the personal rebellions that would emerge into movements. Highly recommmeded.