Is MAME really that awful? I had a Ball watching it (1 Viewer)

[Towergrove]

I enjoy both versions of Mame. I enjoyed seeing Bea Arthur in the Ball version. Classic!

 

[classicmovieguy]

The film is worth it for Jane Connell and Bea Arthur reprising their 1966 Broadway performances. Although Connell felt she was too old to pull off her role by the time the film rolled around, playing opposite Ball it's not a huge issue.


I think, had not Lucy broken her leg some time before, she'd have been able to really throw herself into the physicality of the role. As it stands she delivers a very cautious performance. She is very 'Lucy', during a time when even this persona was beginning to grow stale. She approaches the songs well; if you compare the arrangements to how they were charted for the Broadway production, everything is disappointingly 'stripped back', almost as if to keep in step with Ball's limitations. "It's Today" doesn't have all those delicious brass riffs or pulsing pace in the film, as it does on the Broadway album (and stage production).


For Lucy (lit and filmed through gauze) to have pulled off the dance-heavy "That's How Young I Feel" number would have been one mountain too high, and I think it was a wise decision to chop it from the film. Sadly the film was a missed opportunity in many ways, but it does have charms that make for up the sum of it's parts.

 

[Vic Pardo]

I remember seeing the trailer for MAME constantly in late 1973 and early 1974. It seemed like every first-run theater was forced to show it. And it was a loooonnnnnnngg trailer, too! Audiences groaned during it. I can't imagine anyone who wasn't already inclined to see such a movie, by virtue of its cast or the property, would have been compelled by the trailer to see it. I mean, this was the era of SERPICO, THE LONG GOODBYE, LAST TANGO IN PARIS, MEAN STREETS, THE EXORCIST, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, SUGARLAND EXPRESS, PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, WALKING TALL, THE CONVERSATION, CHINATOWN, BLAZING SADDLES, Italian westerns, blaxploitation, chop-socky etc., etc., etc. The movie seemed so out-of-date. I was in film school at the time and we all wondered why the hell Hollywood was still making movies like MAME.

 

[Nick*Z]

The chief problem with MAME is it needed a Rosalind Russell or, even more desirably, Angela Lansbury to carry it off. Lucy, while a trooper (and a personal favorite during her early MGM glam-bam days, right up until and including her iconic I Love Lucy sitcom) was ill cast here. She croaks the Jerry Herman score with such disregard for punctuating a lyric, and can't dance worth a damn, forcing choreographer, Onna White to merely 'place' la Ball in the middle of other more accomplished dancers who leap about with all the frenetic energy Mame herself ought to have possessed.


The tragedy, of course, is that MAME is a movie imbued with stellar production values, some absolutely gorgeous costumes and some truly spectacular cinematography. Alas, like Hello Dolly!, the whole show rests squarely on the diminutive shoulders of an actress who can carry the load. Lucy in her prime could have done it. Lucy at this stage in her career is out of her element and it shows - badly! Instead of a melodic musical melange what we get here is a badly bungled pseudo-musical, like Ross Hunter's notorious attempt to update Lost Horizon.


I don't have the same contempt for Ray Stark/John Huston's musical version of Annie - not a stellar musical by any stretch, but one whose pint-sized protagonist is more than able to win over and bypass the shortcomings in the choreography and occasional miscasting choices elsewhere. But Mame is a stinker. So are the movie reboots of Camelot, Paint Your Wagon and Goodbye Mr. Chips, in my opinion.

 

[warnerbro]

I LOVE LUCY is Lucille Ball's greatest work. I never get tired of watching it. It is pure genius. Her version of MAME is no match for AUNTIE MAME with Rosalind Russell. Also, watching Angela Lansbury perform selected scenes on Youtube makes me wish she had done the movie.

 

[Jim*Tod]

Never been sure who, if not Ball, could have starred in MAME back in '73. Lansbury would now seem the logical choice, but she was not a big enough name at the time to star in a big budget film. The big names in terms of musicals at that point would have been either Streisand or Minnelli but I cannot imagine either in the role. And as another poster pointed out, at this time an old fashioned musical was very much out of step with the times.

 

[Panavision70]

Doris Day was the right age and had the talent.

 

[Rob_Ray]

Julie Andrews turned 38 late in October of 1973 and her career was at low-point where she may have jumped at the opportunity. She was approaching the right age and had the talent, but not the outrageously extroverted personality the role requires. It would have been a stretch for her from an acting standpoint, that's for sure.

 

[GlennF]

Well, I LOVE musicals, but this one passes me by. I watched it recently on TCM. It isn't as truly horrid as something like MAN OF LA MANCHA, but there is very little to recommend it.


Like Byron I don't like the new orchestrations and obviously the less said about the singing the better. That is a major problem when you have a musical and you want the musical numbers to end.


The script is a big problem - like the end when the Upsons are at her apartment. It uses devices that might have worked on the stage (the busload of women singing a reprise of "Open a New Window"), but it just doesn't work in a movie. Some of the continuity is weird too. A sign of editing?


I am not even a big fan of the costumes - some of them are overdone and this seemed to be one of those vanity productions where they tried to see how many different outfits they could fit it.


The direction is pretty lacklustre.


I didn't think Lucy was that bad in the acting part. The distance of time helps, but sorry, she is no Rosalind Russell. (Just to rub it in, TCM showed the Russell version just before.)


However, I think the thing that killed it is that it was considered old fashioned at the time. Musicals were in a very sad state, with the last hit one being CABARET, and this is about as far from that as a musical can get.


I'm happy for those who like it. I have my own group of films that I like, and no one else does, but sorry, as the thread at the top says....I think it is pretty awful.

 

[JohnMor]

I love the film orchestrations and find them head and shoulders above their Broadway counterparts, which gave zero feeling for the 20's and 30's, being essentially generic mid-60's Broadway charts. I think the main strike against it is Gene Sak's direction. It is the definition of blandness.

 

[Vic Pardo]

Never been sure who, if not Ball, could have starred in MAME back in '73. Lansbury would now seem the logical choice, but she was not a big enough name at the time to star in a big budget film. The big names in terms of musicals at that point would have been either Streisand or Minnelli but I cannot imagine either in the role. And as another poster pointed out, at this time an old fashioned musical was very much out of step with the times.

If Joan Crawford had played the part and it had been done as a gothic drama--no songs, no jokes--and it had Mercedes McCambridge and Eve Arden in supporting roles, MAME would have become a cult favorite. I know that I would have gone to see it.


The closest thing to it that actually did get made was MOMMIE DEAREST.

 

[Panavision70]

Here's a great essay on "Mame" by blogger Ken Anderson. His work is worth exploring.


http://lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2015/02/mame-1974.html

 

[GlennF]

Thanks for posting this Rick. I really enjoyed reading the essay on MAME and I have to say I agree with virtually all of what he has to say.

 

[KPmusmag]

Here's a great essay on "Mame" by blogger Ken Anderson. His work is worth exploring.


http://lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2015/02/mame-1974.html

Lots of fun stuff there in addition to the MAME post. Thanks for the link!

 

[Mikey1969]

I've always had an admiration for this film; like Helly Dolly! and Lost Horizon they are more easily enjoyed today outside of the context of the original releases. They are indeed better than their reputations, and are more entertaining that many of the films released alongside them. Ball really is out of her element here though, comedically and musically. Her sense of timing really seems old fashioned and not what the part requires. Saks direction is just as bad though. Flat and tedious.

 

[MatthewA]

What bugs me is that there were those who disliked it not because Lucy couldn't sing the role, but merely because they disliked the idea of an "old-fashioned" musical.

The script is a big problem - like the end when the Upsons are at her apartment. It uses devices that might have worked on the stage (the busload of women singing a reprise of "Open a New Window"), but it just doesn't work in a movie. Some of the continuity is weird too. A sign of editing?

In Auntie Mame, this doesn't even happen; Mame says she's bought the house next door to the Upsons to make it a home for Jewish children torn from their families by war. It was the musical that changed it to an unwed mothers' home. This film actually is a pretty faithful adaptation, all things considered, but Gene Saks' direction seems to drag in parts. I don't remember any weird continuity errors, only the sense that you could improve the pacing dramatically by lopping off the very ends of individual shots. Timing is everything in a comedy, and some reactions seem to come in too late, like Vera's reaction to the Crash of 1929. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with Bea's line reading, but the way the scene is paced, it feels like they're waiting for a non-existent audience reaction.* But without him in the mix, it is questionable whether Bea Arthur would have been in the film, and she's one of the best things in it. That's what's alternately so fascinating and frustrating about Mame: how good the good parts are (especially the title song and "Loving You"), and how bad the bad ones are (mainly Lucy's singing, and the slow pacing of scenes that need to be snappier).

But at least one good thing came out of it: after I saw it for the first time at age 13,** I promised myself I would never start smoking cigarettes. And I never did.


One thing about this film that just strikes me as bizarre is that when Here's Lucy did an episode promoting the film—the plot involved Lucy meeting Lucille Ball***—they didn't mention it by name. Why not? Could it have been the fact that ABC had a hand in producing it? And how did they get into the mix in the first place?


*This is another thing that made the 11th hour cuts to Bedknobs and Broomsticks hurt so much, not to mention the fact that they took them out again after putting back what they found.

**Hairspray was the other film I rented that day. But that's a story for another thread.
***The Doris Day Show did it first and Sanford and Son did it next.

 

[Eric Vedowski]

When Bea Arthur was in Chicago with her one woman show she told the Chicago Tribune that Gene Saks basically forced her to do the movie. She didn't want to do it and she regretted doing it.

 

[MatthewA]

If she didn't do it, Bette Davis would have.

 

[Dick]

I owned a record store in 1973-4 right beside a two-screen cinema in a Maine mall. At the time, because the economy was in a shambles (sound familiar?), I was looking for unique ways to promote LP's, and I made a deal with the theater manager to display soundtrack albums of films he was showing at their box office. He was gracious enough to ask for absolutely no compensation for selling these albums. It was a grand plan, but only lasted for two films: THE EXORCIST and MAME. I ordered 20 copies each of these soundtracks, and had to return 19 of them both times. The manager told me that pretty much everyone "hated" the MAME score (and those who liked any part of THE EXORCIST were buying the Mike Oldfield "Tubular Bells" album), because of the poor performances. People did not like this movie (at least in my city) back in the day.

 

[KPmusmag]

I owned a record store in 1973-4 right beside a two-screen cinema in a Maine mall. At the time, because the economy was in a shambles (sound familiar?), I was looking for unique ways to promote LP's, and I made a deal with the theater manager to display soundtrack albums of films he was showing at their box office. He was gracious enough to ask for absolutely no compensation for selling these albums. It was a grand plan, but only lasted for two films: THE EXORCIST and MAME. I ordered 20 copies each of these soundtracks, and had to return 19 of them both times. The manager told me that pretty much everyone "hated" the MAME score (and those who liked any part of THE EXORCIST were buying the Mike Oldfield "Tubular Bells" album), because of the poor performances. People did not like this movie (at least in my city) back in the day.

Interesting, thanks for sharing.


What kind of stock did you keep in Broadway/Soundtracks and how did they sell?