Mae West

Mary Jane West started in New York vaudeville before heading west to film. By 1933 she was one of the country's biggest draws - Night After Night, She Done Him Wrong, I'm No Angel - and two years later her salary trailed only William Randolph Hearst's. But censorship tightened around her sexually suggestive humor, and by 1938 she'd landed on the "Box Office Poison" list. As the movies dried up she pivoted: books, plays, Las Vegas, London stages, radio, television. In the 1960s and 70s she cut rock and roll records - Way Out West, Great Balls of Fire - and returned to film one last time in 1978 for Sextette. She tripped getting out of bed in August 1980 and died three months later at 87.