When Sally met a little chickadee
The delectable Mr Dali never met the marvellous Mae West, but in 1935 she was iconic enough to become the subject – very much in the Warhol style that would follow – of his famous painting “Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment”. I’ve cropped in a photo of the star of “My Little Chickadee”, “She Done Him Wrong” and “Klondike Annie” to show that her lips were exaggerated in Dali’s mind (as was everything else in Creation).
Exaggerated to the extent, of course, that he also designed the Mae West settee that was pure pop three full decades ahead of its time. He also set up a Mae West Room in his museum in Spain.
What if he had met her? She was already 42 years old in 1935, had just made “Belle of the Nineties”, and still had a long way to go before giving up the ghost in 1980, at age 87. He was still a young contender. I imagine that if fate had got them on a collision course, it might have gone a little like this:
MAE: Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
SAL: Oh, Miss West! The only thing that the world will not have enough of is exaggeration. See the rest.
