Mae West's Play Is Banned on Broadway.

Mae West, who wrote and acted in the successful and notorious play Sex (1926), wrote what would become another notorious—and scandalous—play: The Drag: A Homosexual Comedy in Three Acts (1927). The Drag, written under the pseudonym Jane Mast, offered its audience a glimpse into the lives of the gay men of New York City’s infamous drag, or cross-dressing, balls. The publicity leading up to the anticipated opening of the play on Broadway in New York caused such a stir that legislation quickly was introduced to ban such plays in the city. The Society for the Suppression of Vice campaigned against it as well. Newspapers and entertainment magazines all condemned the play. West, who had been arrested for Sex, was forced to end production of The Drag before it opened in New York.