"Positively the same dame"
Review by Dominique Breckenridge
for
THE MOVIE PALACE PODCAST
for
THE MOVIE PALACE PODCAST
(included in a compilation of 14 short reviews about books on or about classic cinema)
And while I was curious where or how, if at all, Mae West would find her way into the conversation, admittedly, my first thought when, even before, reading the book, as stated by Maria just inside the first 100 pages, Mae was not as she puts it "part of the sisterhood that I celebrate." As a personal longtime fan of Miss West, my eyes popped at such a statement. No, I didn't think West a "fast-talking dame" in terms of pace and speed dialect, but, in her class-of-her-own, party-of-one way I've always regarded Mae as holding fast-talking court with a slow-talking manner, or, rather, better described in the way, as I saw further along as I kept reading, when Maria explains her justification, incorporating Kathleen Rowe's assessment that "for West "being a spectacle" as she terms West, "doesn't make her vulnerable to men but ensures her power over them" that, I think an accurate assessment. All the same, it isn't what Maria considers a fast-talking dame.
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