Mr. Mae West

Voluptuous, invitational Mae West, public passion of 50 million movie-going males, had to do last week the one thing every middle-aged woman hates most to do: admit having reached her middle forties. And she had to admit the other one thing that Mae West least wished to admit: that she is married.

Her marriage was not entirely news to Mae West's fans. Two years ago a female WPA researcher flipped a marriage card out of Milwaukee's registry which attested the wedding of one Mae West to one Frank Wallace, April 11, 1911 (TIME, May 6, 1935). The Mae West then married was 18, would today be 44. Promptly Vaudeville Hoofer Frank Wallace popped up in Manhattan to boast that he was the man. But she would have none of him. "I've gotten a lot of bunnies on Easter," she retorted in her throatiest, breast-heaving contralto, "but this is the first time I've ever received a husband. I've never heard of the fellow. I'm a spinster and I'm not 42. I was practically a child in 1911 and I never was in Milwaukee until four years ago. They'll have me married to triplets next! Let this alleged Mr. Mae West c'm' up and see my lawyer sometime and prove it!"

Last week in Superior Court in Los Angeles it was as obvious as Mae West's best curves that Mr. Mae West had taken her advice. Even her most devoted fans chortled when they read that her now-admitted hoofer husband's real name is not Wallace but Willities or Szatkus and that the Szatkus family always knew her as Mamie. "Mrs. Mamie Szatkus" was scarcely box-office for glamorous Mae West.

Lawyers pondered the possible legal harvest of Mr. Mae West's suit. Under California law, property, except gifts, acquired by either husband or wife after marriage becomes community property, owned half & half by either spouse. Mae West's 1935 income was $480,000. Her current worth, mostly acquired since the 1911 wedding, is estimated as $3,000,000. Mae West's husband might not be tall, dark nor handsome but the inside of his head was apparently not as bald as the outside. He had said he wished to vindicate his honor, money was of secondary moment. Snorted Mrs. Szatkus last week, "We were married but we never lived together as man and wife." Snorted Mr. Szatkus' lawyer, "They offered us $30,000 to settle the case. . . . Mae West can have half of Wallace's [Szatkus'] possessions. . . . Next week we expect to apply for an injunction that will tie up all of Miss West's property in California." That his client's share-Mae-West's-wealth movement might be halted by California's community property law proviso that a separated wife's earnings are her own was poohed by Mr. Szatkus' Los Angeles lawyer who said the clause was discriminatory sex legislation and might be found unconstitutional.

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