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

[Rick Thompson]

I saw Mame in original release; I even bought the VHS. But I admit it was a bad film. A few years earlier, Lucille Ball would have knocked it out of the park. Don't forget, she starred in a Broadway musical (Wildcat) and so was not a novice in the field. But the overuse of those gauze filters was embarrassing to watch. As a result, Robert Preston stole the film.


As for Annie, I was disappointed in the first one. I had no problem with the bridge scene, though I could do without Punjab and The Asp. But when Miss Hannigan rode in on that elephant as one of the good guys in the finale, it ripped the bottom out of the show. Why John Huston did that, I'll never know.


The sad thing is that the two remakes have been successively more awful. The most recent one makes Mame look like Singin' in the Rain.

 

[classicmovieguy]

The character of Miss Hannigan changes during the notorious bridge scene where she suddenly has an attack of conscience and starts screaming "She's just a baby!" as she realises her brother's murderous intentions. What follows in the finale is merely the next logical step, but it's not in keeping with the character at all.

 

[Rick Thompson]

I bought her trying to stop Rooster from killing Annie. Saying you'll kill someone and actually doing it, or allowing it to be done, are two entirely different things. But that doesn't make a good guy, just a slightly less bad one. She's still guilty of kidnapping and assorted other offenses involving her treatment of the children under her care at the orphanage. Maybe her trying to stop Rooster gets her a break; it doesn't get her welcomed into everyone's open arms. Annie had a tenuous hold on reality as it was; that bit ripped reality away entirely.

 

[Charles Smith]

If I had been living in Maine in 1973-74, you would have had to return only eighteen of those EXORCIST soundtrack LPs. (Still have mine.)

 

[JohnMor]

While Mame is hardly a stellar film musical, there are many, many worse ones, IMO. Camelot, Paint Your Wagon and Man of La Mancha are all worse film adaptations. NO ONE in those casts could sing. At least with Mame, it's only Lucy. Add to that the dreadful original film musicals At Long Last Love and Lost Horizon and Mame comes off like a camellia blooming in the mud of the film musicals of the time.


(And don't get me started on Grease and Annie which don't even have the intelligence of the other musicals on top of their poor productions!)

 

[classicmovieguy]

I have never enjoyed "Grease", mainly because I think it's core message is not very encouraging for girls ("Change everything about yourself to land that perfect boy").

 

[Rick Thompson]

I have never enjoyed "Grease", mainly because I think it's core message is not very encouraging for girls ("Change everything about yourself to land that perfect boy").

You're totally spot-on right. There's also, "If you find out you're not pregnant after all, go back to screwing around." I much prefer Legally Blonde. She gets her guy by graduating Harvard Law.

 

[Dick]

Interesting, thanks for sharing.


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

I was not a dealer known for stocking Soundtracks and Broadway shows, although I personally collected both in great numbers. I had a tiny space in the mall (about the size of an average diner, sans the kitchen, and about the same dimensions...long and thin), and so had to prioritize. Plus, '74 threw us small business owners into a recession, and folks were not spending much for commodities. The theater arrangement was less an attempt to stock soundtracks than it was to simply add a source of revenue for record sales in general.

 

[PODER]

A few years earlier, Lucille Ball would have knocked it out of the park. Don't forget, she starred in a Broadway musical (Wildcat) and so was not a novice in the field.
(I still think if someone enjoyed Lucy as MAME, no one should try to ruin it for him or her. But responding to the above quote, I just watched a clip from the old Ed Sullivan show, in which Lucy performed "Hey, Look Me Over" from WILDCAT. Oh, dear! She couldn't hold a note to save her life, which was probably all to for the best, since she didn't hit more than a few on pitch. She also seemed quite oblivious to the fact that the actress playing her sister was even on stage with her. Let's face it ... musicals were never her forte!(By the way ... the first paragraph above is a quote from Rick Thompson. Looks like I haven't quite got this "citing a quote" thing down yet.)

 

[Matt Hough]

The difference between Wildcat and Mame is that Wildcat was written with Lucy's vocal limitations in mind which is why songs like "Hey Look Me Over" and "Give a Little Whistle" don't have long sustains. The writers knew Lucy couldn't handle them. Mame was written for someone with a trained musical theater voice. Lansbury had been singing since her teens and, of course, had done Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle two years before Mame, so Jerry Herman knew precisely what she could do with a song.


And you want to know why Wildcat closed before it racked up fewer than 200 performances (while it was still selling out)? Lucy's voice simply gave out. She was not equipped to handle singing eight shows a week over a long run.

 

[classicmovieguy]

Lucy was also still suffering with a painful infection from a leg injury she'd sustained during the filming on "Facts of Life". This, combined with her vocal problems, forced her out of the run of "Wildcat".

 

[PODER]

WILDCAT was pretty much a misfire right from the beginning. Audiences wanted to see LUCY, not some character named "Wildie". From what I've read, it became more and more slapstick as the run progressed. I still like the score, and wonder if it's ever been revived anywhere.

 

[classicmovieguy]

Yes, and appropriately Lucy started injecting more and more of her 'Lucy' persona as the run went along. She looks visibly tired in this TV appearance, which was at the height of the "Wildcat" period...

 

[JohnMor]

And you want to know why Wildcat closed before it racked up fewer than 200 performances (while it was still selling out)? Lucy's voice simply gave out. She was not equipped to handle singing eight shows a week over a long run.

Yep. And her voice never fully recovered either. It lost a lot of its tonal expressiveness after "Wildcat."

 

[classicmovieguy]

Lucy talks with a lot of honesty about the "Wildcat" experience in her memoir.