Mae West is Banned from NBC Radio in 1930's Censorship

Mae West Banned from NBC Radio in 1930's Censorship

December 27, 1937

Before television, there was radio for entertainment at home. Shows as The Jack Benny Program, Lone Ranger, and The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were big hits. The entertainment included musicals, comedy, soap operas, and about anything you would see on television today; well...almost anything as we shall see in the Mae West story; a story about morality standards of the 1930's through the 1950's.

We have come out of our morality coma today as compared to the 1930's entertainment standards. Some would say we have gone far too far to the other side of the regulating pendulum.  But as you read on and even listen to the segment below I think you will agree, what happened to Ms. West is pretty laughable even to the most prudish today.

Mae West was a vaudeville actress and eventually moved to Hollywood where she became one of America's greatest actresses.  West was a comedian, actress, and a writer in the motion picture industry. She played in countless films and radio programs.

Mae West is known for her sexual innuendos and double entendre—or phrases that have double meaning—that brought sex out of the closet.

In 1937 a December skit on the Chase and Sanborn Hour Mae
West and 1930's morality all collided with the end result of Ms. West being banned from NBC radio. She would not do radio again until 1950.

The comedy and variety program was sponsored by Chase and Sandborn Coffee and was a popular show and in those days, it was also the public and the sponsors who flagged shows content if it went over the 1930's morality limits; and one thing is for sure, if anyone could go over that limit it was Mae West.

The Chase and Sandborn show were built around two segments and in this program, Don Ameche along with West was placed by radio magic in the Garden of Eden. Ameche played Adam and West Eve in a reversal of how we would remember the original story. Eve seduces the serpent so she and Adam could "leave this dump" and find some excitement outside of the garden.

The second segment is a dialogue between Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen’s famous ventriloquist doll, and Mae West. This is where the innuendo is cranked up by West and has some great lines as:

“come on home with me, honey. I’ll let you play in my wood pile”

It helps the joke to know that Charlie McCarthy is made of wood.  And one other pun where West tells McCarthy that she...

..."likes the smell of burning wood."

All in great fun, right?

Mae West, Charlie McCarthy, and Edgar Bergen, 1937

Apparently not to the Legion of Decency founded by the Roman Catholic Church, the Legion of Decency from other denominations that supported their mission of combating “indecency and propaganda”, and the Women’s National Radio Committee that kept an eye, or an ear, on radio programming to make sure “Christian values” were being maintained. 

In an editorial, one of the aforementioned wrote this:

“The home is our last bulwark against the modern over-emphasis on sensuality, and we cannot see why Miss West and others of her ilk should be permitted to pollute its precincts with shady stories, foul obscenity, smutty suggestiveness, and horrible blasphemy." 

The  FCC (Federal Communication Commission) even opened an investigation and censured the network. But NBC fought back and pointed the finger directly at Mae West arguing that is was not the content that was the problem but the way West's used her tone and the style of her performance that caused the issue.

This argument by the network did not go down well with everyone. The
Chicago Daily News, as an example: 

“NBC and the commercial sponsors of the program knew Mae West. They knew her technique. They'd heard her and seen her. They coached her in rehearsals. But when the public protests swamped them they pretended they had Mae all mixed up with Mary Pickford or Shirley Temple.”

 So it goes with the beginnings of cultural censorship of the1930's and further as it set the tone for the next few decades. The reformers, jubilant in their win over West, continued to work to tighten regulations as they met with religious groups, sponsors, and the FCC marginalizing the millions of Americans who held a more tolerant view.

So you decide, here are the two segments, listen to them both...enjoy!