They don't make em like they used to. Just discovered Mae West. She's now become one of my all time favourite movie actors. Imagine if she was able to link up with Tarantino. Wish there was more actors like her. Gonna watch more of her stuff. This has been a great place to start. Some of her one liners are the best I've ever seen in the movies. Highly recommend.

Hollywood producers had been thinking for years of bringing Broadway bombshell Mae West on the screen (especially since after 1930, the audience was slowly getting tired of the 'old' stars like Mary Pickford or Pola Negri) - but they knew it would take a LOT of guts to make her a film star: her fame was (besides her prominent curves) mainly built upon the HOT subjects of the plays she usually wrote herself, full to the brim with suggestive dialogs and witty double-entendres.So was, of course, her biggest Broadway hit, running since 1928: "Diamond Lil". And since 1931, this play revolving around a prostitute and a Salvation Army officer (who is really an undercover detective) was on Will Hays' black list of 'restricted' plays - which meant plays that were by no means to be turned into a movie...And yet, right after the Paramount bosses had finally made the decision to invite her to start a film career in "Night after Night" alongside her old friend George Raft, they DID decide to make "Diamond Lil" a movie! Without even bothering too much with making changes to the plot, only making Mae a singer instead of a prostitute, and toning down a little the VERY obvious sexuality of the play, they shot it as "She Done Him Wrong" - with the famous tale, of course, that Mae, still looking for a co-star, stumbled upon young and still unknown Cary Grant at the parking lot and told her producer decidedly: "If he can talk, I'll take him!"...And so, we find ourselves in the 'Gay Nineties' (Mae's favorite era), in a rather shady saloon (when her boyfriend whom she visits in jail asks her what she's doing, she answers: "Singin' at Gus Jordan's!" - and adds immediately: "It ain't what you think!"...), where Mae (now called 'Lou' instead of 'Lil'), clad in shiny, sparkling tight-fitting dresses, croons her risqué songs, and is the star of the show, and of course always surrounded by a whole bunch of men... And as young Serge (Gilbert Roland), who seems to be just her cup of tea, seems a little shy, she delivers her famous line: "Why don't you come up sometime, see me?" And to the utterly decent 'Salvation Army officer' Cary Crant, she unmistakeably declares when he hesitates to come too close to her: "You can be had!" And although, in the further course of the movie, things finally take a more or less 'right' turn, with all the bad guys of the saloon gang ending up in jail, and Lou in a carriage with her detective (who in fact DOES have something of a Salvation Army officer in him: he makes Lou understand that she HAS got a soul, in contrast to all those diamonds!) with a modest engagement ring instead of all her huge diamond rings on the third finger of her left hand - this must have been something like a 'last straw' for Will Hays, who'd been trying to make Hollywood films more decent in order not to 'corrupt' the average American cinema-goer's character, and especially lately raging with the impudence of movies like "The Maltese Falcon", "Baby Face" and "Of Human Bondage": The Production Code, a kind of Hays' 'Ten Commandments' on film morale, HAD to be enforced.Mae West managed to push through another one of her great sex comedies before the Production Code was finally REALLY enforced: "I'm No Angel" - in my opinion, in some ways (especially concerning the clothing) even more daring than "She Done Him Wrong"; but one thing's for sure: they're both among THE great pre-Code classics today, a part of film history... and, even 80 years later, still JUST as entertaining as ever!!

I assume that Leonard Maltin's perfect **** out of 4 stars rating for "She Done Him Wrong" comes from a viewing several decades ago; perhaps it's time for a revision. Because, compared to, say, another **** comedy of 1933, "Duck Soup", this one comes up quite a bit short. While some of Mae West's lines are extremely bold for their time ("Haven't you ever met a man who could make you happy?" - "Sure, lots of times!"), few of them are funny enough to raise even a chuckle. Cary Grant is a little stiff in this early performance; only in the last 5 minutes do we get to experience the familiar (and celebrated) Cary Grant persona (if you can't instantly figure out who The Hawk is, this must be the first movie of your life). And the rest of the supporting characters are pretty nondescript. There is one memorable, surprisingly serious sequence (West's fight with Rafaela Ottiano, whose eye-poppingly voluptuous figure makes West's look almost flat!), but the consequences of what happens are then ignored. This movie is often regarded as a classic, but I can't give it more than ** out of 4.

Mae West definitely had a talent for keeping the attention of an audience,whether it be verbally or physically.If she wasn't tossing classic one liners around with the greatest of ease,she was constantly moving everything she had,and she had a lot (speaking from the typical male point of view).Then,we have young Cary Grant in only his second movie role.This film is a classic early example of that certain charm that made him a star.The film's story didn't exactly keep me riveted,but the screen presence of West and Grant more than made up for that.Mae,God Bless her,gave me a special surprise at the end with one of the funniest lines I have ever heard in a film.When Grant's character asked if he could hold her hand,she replies,"It ain't heavy,I can hold it myself." Classic!