Sex (film) wrote: "Six years before Mae West dared to call her play 'Sex', Thomas Ince produced and Fred Niblo directed a 1920 film called 'Sex', starring pioneering screen vamp Louise Glaum as a New York cabaret star, the mistress of a married man. What gives the film its edge is that in truth she is simply a blunt, honest woman who doesn't realize her own vulnerability." The film's title and subject matter were the subject of controversy in some locations. Playing off of the film's provocative title, newspaper advertising urged readers to "SEE SEX SEE SEX SEE SEX". The Pennsylvania State
Sex (play) full audiences. "Sex" was the only play on Broadway that season to stay open through the summer, into the following year. There were 375 performances before the New York Police Department raided West and her company in February 1927. They were charged with obscenity, after 325,000 people had watched it, including members of the police department and their wives, judges of the criminal courts, and seven members of the district attorney's staff. West was sentenced to 10 days in a workhouse on Roosevelt Island (known then as "Welfare Island") and fined $500. The resulting publicity increased her national renown. The