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If you accept the premise that a handsome man in his early thirties would be panting to go to bed with an 84-year-old woman, the movie proceeds logically enough. Before the happy pair can crawl between the satin sheets, they encounter (in no particular order) Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, Dom DeLuise, George Raft, Alice Cooper, Walter Pidgeon, Mr. Universe, Mr. U.S.A., Mr. America, Mr. California, Mr. Pennsylvania, and a man (Ed Beheler) who looks so much like Jimmy Carter that even Miss Lillian might set him down for a bowl of grits.
The bridal couple also stumble across some unforgettable double entendres from Mae's old pictures: "When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better," and the immortal "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" There are some new ones too. When her husband turns out to be a British spy, bigger, someone says, than 007, she sighs, "I never got a chance to take his measurements."
In a story on the making of the Sextette, a Los Angeles magazine suggested that Briggs and Sullivan had done her wrong. But the truth is that in Sextette Mae got just what she wanted. At one point the script called for her to cry. She refused, explaining that "Stars don't cry," and the scene was rewritten.
There is, in fact, none of the pathos of the aging star about Mae, none of the desperate anxiety of the character played by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Dressed in a white pants suit, her lips painted a bright, girlish peach, she is jollity itself. The famous laugh, which percolates leisurely to the throat, is young and vital still. Mae West is her own best invention, and no one believes in it or enjoys it more than she herself. "All I look for is harmony," she says. "If I argue, I get nasty, so I don't have anyone around who argues with me. I also don't smoke and I don't drink. I think drinking puts spots on your hands. I always drink bottled water. Water with minerals in it clogs your arteries, and I want to keep my insides clean."
She takes care of her insides, but the harmony is provided by Paul Novak, the man she has lived with since 1954. A native of Baltimore and a former muscleman in her Las Vegas act, Novak, who claims to be 45 but looks closer to 55, is friend, amanuensis, and bodyguard. Though two of the three huge diamond rings Mae sports are false, one is real, weighing in at 22 carats, and Novak never escorts her without a protective .38. He seems totally devoted to her and nods agreement at whatever she says. "I never argue with her," he notes, "because she is always right."
Like many people her age, Mae has a perfect memory for the distant past, but yesterday she can scarcely recall. Asked what she is working on now, she turns blankly to Novak, who tells her that she is working on a film version of her 1927 play, The Drag.