The Songs of Mae West's 'I'm No Angel"

Mae West was a buxom star of vaudeville, Broadway (her first play there was simply titled Sex), and the movies who prospered in Hollywood until the blue-nose police came along in 1934. Fortunately, the amusing comedy I'm No Angel arrived just before the Motion Picture Production Code made the merest hint of sex verboten.

I'm No Angel is generally remembered as being the second pairing of West and a good-looking English youngster named Cary Grant. (The first was She Done Him Wrong, earlier in 1933.)

The film is also notable for an excellent set of songs that are too little known these days. The music is by Harvey Brooks, reputed to be the first black American to have written a score for a major motion picture. The lyrics are by Ben Ellison and Gladys Du Bois.

Although young, Brooks had quite a lot of experience. He toured and recorded with Mamie Smith in the early 1920s. He then co-led the Quality Four with Paul Howard. He was the music director for West Coast bandleader Les Hite throughout the early 1930s.

Ben Ellison had written a few songs that were recorded by Leon René and Louis Armstrong in 1932. Du Bois had scored a major hit in 1931 with Russ Columbo's famous recording of "You Call It Madness (But I Call it Love)."

The I'm No Angel songs are well suited to Mae's cartoonishly sexy persona. In the title song, she assures us, "I can make it heaven when the shades are drawn / I'm no angel." But the real gem is her remarkable reading of "They Call Me Sister Honky-Tonk," which contains a miniature scenario of its own. It opens with a sleazy carnival barker extolling her virtues to a group of enthusiastic gentlemen, with bump-and-grind accompaniment. West then sings a chorus, moans and asks slyly, "Do you follow me, boys?" One spectator shouts, "Aw, we're way ahead of you!" and the barker adds, "Wrap it up and take it home with you, boys!"

"I Found a New Way to Go to Town" is the sort of double-entendre title that would later become the stock-in-trade of such entertainers as Ruth Wallis. "I Want You - I Need You" is more conventional, the kind of thing that would have been done by such red-hot mamas as Sophie Tucker.

West came out of that vaudeville tradition. You'll have to forgive her faltering intonation and erratic rhythm (although her comic timing in "Sister Honky-Tonk" is superb).

West did not record one of the five songs written for the film, "That Dallas Man." I've added it to the download in a very enjoyable performance by Allan Lane and His Orchestra. The "Allan Lane" pseudonym was generally associated with Al Mitchell. The anonymous singer was the ubiquitous studio vocalist Dick Robertson.

The "Dallas Man" arrangement was heavily influenced by Eddie Durham's work on Bennie Moten's "Moten Swing" in 1932 (a song later to become even more famous in the Count Basie remake).

In addition to Mae's recording, I've included one more version of "I'm No Angel" - that by the excellent Gus Arnheim Band and enthusiastic vocalist Shirley Ross, a blog favorite. This and its flip side were the earliest recordings by Ross and apparently the only ones she made with Arnheim.

Shirley Ross

I've included that flip side - "Like Me a Little Bit Less (Love Me a Little Bit More)" - even though it doesn't come from I'm No Angel. It is from the prize-fightin' film Palooka, which was certainly inspired by the "Joe Palooka" comic strip of the day (adapting comics for the movies is nothing new for Hollywood). The songwriters were a very young Burton Lane and equally young lyricist Harold Adamson. 

While "Like Me a Little Bit Less" didn't have much staying power (it's not a great tune), the film also introduced Jimmy Durante doing his signature song, "Inka Dinka Do," which did.

The download includes many cleaned-up posters, lobby cards and other ephemera from I'm No Angel. The sound files were sourced from Internet Archive and remastered by me.