The Last Movie Mae West Was In Before She Died

Despite her extraordinary early success at the box office, Mae West's film career took a serious nose-dive after her heyday in the 1930s, with her roles in the 1940s falling to just two films — "My Little Chickadee" and "The Heat's On" (via IMDb). The '60s don't improve things much for the actress, as she makes guest appearances in two TV series, the talking-horse sitcom "Mr. Ed" and "The Red Skelton Hour" (per IMDb).

In the next decade, however, West staged a modest comeback, lending her by-now caricature-of-a-character to a pair of movies (via The Hollywood Reporter). In 1970, West was tapped to appear alongside John Huston and Raquel Welch in the motion picture adaptation of Gore Vidal's raunchy sex comedy "Myra Breckinridge," featuring Welch in the titular role. Then, in 1977, the actress was brought aboard as the star of director Ken Hughes' sex farce, "Sextette," marketed with the tagline: "The Sin-sational Mae West." Starring as a very Mae-West-like movie sex idol called on to act as the unlikely arbiter of a global political dispute, West is joined in the comedy by "James Bond" star Timothy Dalton and comic icon Dom DeLuise. And, as it turns out, "Sextette" was, in fact, Mae West's final big-screen appearance, as the actress died in 1980 following a pair of strokes (via Biography.com).

But audiences wouldn't soon forget the bombshell who captivated the world.