Movies: Mae West

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Peter Fonda host an examination of the history of decency standards for movies from the early 1920s onwards....

Myron Breckinridge flies to Europe to get a sex-change operation and is transformed into the beautiful Myra. She travels to Hollywood, meets up with her rich Uncle Buck and, claiming to be Myron's widow, demands money. Instead, Buck gives Myra a job ...

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression....

Mae West achieved great acclaim in every entertainment medium that existed during her lifetime, spanning eight decades of the 20th century. A full-time actress at seven, a vaudevillian at 14, a dancing sensation at 25, a playwright at 33, a silver sc...

Glamorous silver screen sex symbol Marlo Manners is enjoying her honeymoon with Sir Michael Barrington, husband number six. As luck would have it, an international conference is at the same hotel and the Russian delegate is threatening to derail nego...

New York singer and nightclub owner Lady Lou has more men friends than you can imagine. One of them is a vicious criminal who’s escaped and is on the way to see “his” girl, not realising she hasn’t exactly been faithful in his absence. Help is at han...

The bold Tira works as dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. Out of an urgent need of money, she agrees to a risky new number: she'll put her head into the lion's mouth! With this attraction, the circus makes it to New York and Tira can pursue her...

For the first time one of Hollywood's greatest stars tells his own story, in his own words. From a childhood of poverty to global fame, Cary Grant, the ultimate self-made star, explores his own screen image and what it took to create it....

A documentary reflecting on women in film and the entertainment industry through the ages led and hosted by some of its most beloved female icons....

While on her way by stagecoach to visit relatives out west, Flower Belle Lee is held up by a masked bandit who also takes the coach's shipment of gold. When he abducts Flower Belle and they arrive in town, Flower Belle is suspected of being in collus...

A collection of vintage erotica from Hollywood movies is intercut with street interviews and newsreel footage....

A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934....

Cleo Borden grew up in a saloon, loves the men—and the men love her—but her aspirations lead her to enter into a contract to marry a wealthy man. When he dies and leaves her all of his fortune, she soon learns that although she has money, she is not ...

A San Francisco singer flees Chinatown on murder charges and poses as a missionary in Alaska....

Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had ...

Born in Mexico, Anthony Quinn became the family's main provider when his father died in an accident. Thus began the story of a man who had a thousand jobs before acting in a Cecil B. DeMille film…...

Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War....

Cabaret entertainer Ruby Carter shifts her operations to New Orleans and becomes exceedingly popular with the local men....

A retrospective of the life and career of actor Cary Grant, including clips from his films and interviews with his friends and co-workers....

From the A&E "Biography" series, a review of the birth, development and cinematic history of Betty Boop, the flapper cartoon character who has been a popular icon since the 1930s....