Hollywood biographies are invariably indigestible slabs of cake, their chief ingredients being tedium, titillation and triviality, the icing flushed pink from the author’s hatchetry or hagiography and the reader’s blush of embarrassment. The star in question usually sinks under the sheer availability of detail. In this vein there have been a number of studies of Mae West, but this latest biography is well-researched, decently written and does not gush. Simon Louvish takes nothing on trust, questioning all Mae West’s and others’ accounts of her life, and arrives, give or take a few longueurs, at a compelling narrative.

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