For Mae West, it was sex and work, work and sex

As a child, she imagined her name up in lights and reveled in her reflection in a mirror.

As a young woman, she embodied sex and fought for sexual equality between men and women.

As an old woman . . . well, she never changed her outlook.

And in Charlotte Chandler's hypnotically readable "She Always Knew How," Mae West tells her own story, famous double entendres and all.

Chandler, the author of several Hollywood biographies, interviewed West in the months before her death at age 87 in 1980. The results, the vast bulk of which are West's answers to Chandler's questions, make fascinating reading, as West's "Diamond Lil" persona and the woman behind the image are equally -- and endlessly -- engaging.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1893 to a onetime prizefighter and a former corset model, West began appearing in amateur shows when she was 7. Determined and self-absorbed, she moved into vaudeville when she was 14 and quickly on to Broadway

But it was not until 1926 that West achieved notoriety with "Sex," a play she wrote and starred in as the madam of a brothel. The New York theater was raided, and West was convicted of producing an immoral theatrical performance and sentenced to a $500 fine or 10 days in jail. Deciding it could be an adventure, she opted for jail.

She was greeted as a celebrity, with one exception, and even then her sense of humor did not desert her:

"Would you believe, they made me strip. Naked. As naked as the day I was born. They said, 'Take off all your clothes,' and I said, 'I thought this was a respectable place.'"

A year later, her wildly successful "Diamond Lil" made her a star. But before she went on to even greater success in Hollywood, a personal tragedy intervened: Her beloved mother died in 1930 of liver cancer; she was only 56.

But Hollywood beckoned, and from 1932 to 1943, West made 10 movies. In 1932's "Night After Night," she responded to a hatcheck girl who exclaimed "Goodness! What beautiful diamonds!" by saying "Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie."

In 1933's "She Done Him Wrong" (in which she insisted on a young Cary Grant as her leading man), she uttered the immortal "Why don't you come up sometime, and see me?" (a phrase often misquoted). Seven years later, she faced off with W.C. Fields in the classic "My Little Chickadee."

West said her popularity saved Paramount Pictures. "They should've erected a statue of me," she said. "At least a bust."

By 1943 -- the year she turned 50 -- her career had peaked. But West was a workaholic, and she continued to act in plays and appear on television (including, improbably, an episode of "Mister Ed" in 1961). She returned to filmmaking in 1970's camp atrocity, "Myra Breckinridge," and made a final screen appearance in 1978's "Sextette."

By then, she was an American institution -- old, often imitated, seldom seen. She lived on, a monument to bawdiness -- but not tawdriness.

Chandler, whose previous books have included bios of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, has an uncanny ability to get her subjects to talk. "She Always Knew How" is her latest success -- and Chandler is wise enough to realize that it's West's voice, not hers, that readers want to hear. For further insights, Chandler interviewed people who knew West, including Davis, Grant, Anthony Quinn, Henry Fonda and George Cukor. The finished product is rewarding -- those whose interest in West has not dimmed will find this amusing, occasionally appalling and always evocative of Diamond Lil's brazen sexuality and Mae West's humanity.

An unconventional crusader for equality, West kept her focus. As she told Chandler, "Sex and work have been the only two things in my life, but if I ever had to choose between sex and my work, it was always my work I'd choose."

In a world in which the cult of celebrity has spiraled into insanity, the word "legend" has been cheapened, if not rendered meaningless. But Mae West was an entertainment legend -- and an American one -- and Chandler lets her tell us all about it in "She Always Knew How."

Why don't you sit down sometime, and read it?

Contact Jay Strafford at (804) 649-6698 or .