Celebrities are well-known for having scandals. Sometimes scandals supercharge a celebrity, sometimes they destroy them. Mae West was an example of where a scandal was a springboard to greater fame and fortune.
In 1926, she put on a play called simply “Sex” where she played (surprise) a sex worker. Newspapers were outraged. Mae West was thrown in jail for indecency. But the play was packed and audiences loved her for her bawdiness and fresh, edgy humor. She later quipped she “climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong” rather than rung by rung.
