A Few Words About A few words about...™ Mame -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[PMF]

I'm not clear how these objects would have been held ... she already had a riding crop in one hand ...

View attachment 52961

Costume inspired by The Night Porter ?

That's simple. The props department could have designed a riding crop that would also serve as an extended cigarette holder; thus freeing Lucy's left hand for the bottle.

 

[B-ROLL]

That's simple. The props department could have designed a riding crop that would also serve as an extended cigarette holder; thus freeing Lucy's left hand for the bottle.

Of course ... though I'm not sure it shouldn't have been a flask or mint julep cup ...

 

[MatthewA]

In that case then bring on Eydie Gormé !

When did she ever act outside of the 1980s TV version of Alice in Wonderland, whose teleplay was written by Paul Zindel?

Edit: her IMDb listing.

 

[Will Krupp]

It important to remember that Sondheim did not write the role of Desiree for a singer. Desiree was not a musical actress.
It was written for Glynis....

Yes! Which is why both "You Must Meet My Wife" and "Send in the Clowns" have such narrow range. Sondheim wrote them that way for Glynis Johns to sing.

 

[Will Krupp]

When did she ever act outside of the 1980s TV version of Alice in Wonderland, whose teleplay was written by Paul Zindel?

BROADWAY, darling!

 

[PMF]

Of course ... though I'm not sure it shouldn't have been a flask or mint julep cup ...
View attachment 52964

Judging by their size, this amount wouldn't get her through one bar of the title song.
I would suggest a stylish canteen with a leather strap; as there's bound to be less spillage.

 

[Matt Hough]

BROADWAY, darling!

You beat me to it. Judging by reviews at the time, her acting was not considered adequate.

 

[Will Krupp]

You beat me to it. Judging by reviews at the time, her acting was not considered adequate.

William Goldman, in his blistering book about the 1967-1968 Broadway Season, called the show washed garbage. Paraphrasing from Goldman, the problem with washing garbage is no matter how much you wash it and how pretty it looks, at the end of the day it's still just garbage!

I love her, though! (and it DID run a year!)

 

[Matt Hough]

William Goldman, in his blistering book about the 1967-1968 Broadway Season, called the show washed garbage. Paraphrasing from Goldman, the problem with washing garbage is no matter how much you wash it and how pretty it looks, at the end of the day it's still just garbage!

I love her, though! (and it DID run a year!)

AND the score is a lot of fun to listen to. I have it on a stereo LP.

 

[Matt Hough]

I also never tire of re-reading The Season. It is the most intelligent book ever written about the Broadway theater. Things have changed along the Great White Way in the decades since it came out, but there are still many truths to be unearthed in that book.

 

[Thomas T]

I also never tire of re-reading The Season. It is the most intelligent book ever written about the Broadway theater. Things have changed along the Great White Way in the decades since it came out, but there are still many truths to be unearthed in that book.

I agree ..... if you can stomach the book's rampant homophobia.

 

[Rick Thompson]

I also never tire of re-reading The Season. It is the most intelligent book ever written about the Broadway theater. Things have changed along the Great White Way in the decades since it came out, but there are still many truths to be unearthed in that book.

Ditto for Adventures in the Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade and Hype & Glory.

 

[Noel Aguirre]

When did she ever act outside of the 1980s TV version of Alice in Wonderland, whose teleplay was written by Paul Zindel?

Edit: her IMDb listing.

I meant using her voice recording of “If He Walked into My Life” while Lucy acts/thinks it out- afterall isn't hers the definitive recording? Could she belt or what?

 

[Rick Thompson]

I always thought Paul Zindel was an unusual choice for the screenplay, sort of like Edward Albee trying his hand at Breakfast at Tiffany's on Broadway. He was better known for dark subjects, especially his Pulitzer-winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds and And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little.

 

[octobercountry]

There has been so much written about the Lucy vs. Angela debate, as well as a heck of a lot of analysis as to why this film failed. Here's a series of very interesting short articles about Mame in general:
Mame Facts from I Will Regret This Later

And here's some discussion on Lucy's take on the part:
Is the Lucy Mame movie really that bad?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here, however, is that the film would never have been made without Lucy, because Ball put up part of the money to get it produced. Basically, she bought the role for herself; if she wasn't part of the deal, Warners wasn't going to finance the whole thing. Undoubtedly the film would have been MUCH better with Angela, but even with her I'm not sure it would have been a financial success, because musicals were so very unpopular by 1974 that the genre was basically dead at that point. Mame was always an old-fashioned show, even when it premiered in 1966, and old-fashioned Hollywood-type musicals were SO out of style by the early 1970s that the film probably would have failed no matter what. (This was long before nostalgia became such a profitable commodity in both the theatre and the cinema---the audience was focused on the future at that point in time, not interested in looking back at the past as they are now.)

 

[Garysb]

Lucy also missed quite a few performances of Wildcat due to illness because she didn’t have the physical stamina to keep up the rigors of a Broadway run.

From Wikipedia:
Ball quickly realized audiences had come expecting to see her Lucy Ricardo persona and began mugging and ad-libbing to bring her characterization closer to that of the zany housewife she had portrayed in I Love Lucy. It was clearly Ball who was drawing the crowds, and when she fell ill and demands for refunds ran high, the producers announced plans to close the show for a week in late March 1961 to allow her to recover her strength. The closure came sooner than planned when Ball, suffering from a virus and chronic fatigue, departed for Florida on February 8.[3] She returned two weeks later, but on April 22 she collapsed on stage.[4] It was decided the show would close for nine weeks at the end of May and reopen once its star had recovered fully,[5] but May 24 proved to be her final performance, as the musicians' union insisted on members of the orchestra being paid during the shutdowns. This ultimately made it financially infeasible for the production to remain active, forcing it to close permanently on June 3, 1961.

At one point they were going to do a TV special, "Lucy Goes To Broadway" an "I Love Lucy" type of show where Lucy and Vivian use their real names but act like their "I Love Lucy" characters. The plot was Lucy and Vivian both auditioning for the lead in "Wildcat". Lucy wins, of course, and Vivian is offered a lead in a non musical play. This was canceled due to Lucy's illness.

 

[Garysb]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here, however, is that the film would never have been made without Lucy, because Ball put up part of the money to get it produced. Basically, she bought the role for herself; if she wasn't part of the deal, Warners wasn't going to finance the whole thing. Undoubtedly the film would have been MUCH better with Angela, but even with her I'm not sure it would have been a financial success, because musicals were so very unpopular by 1974 that the genre was basically dead at that point. Mame was always an old-fashioned show, even when it premiered in 1966, and old-fashioned Hollywood-type musicals were SO out of style by the early 1970s that the film probably would have failed no matter what. (This was long before nostalgia became such a profitable commodity in both the theatre and the cinema---the audience was focused on the future at that point in time, not interested in looking back at the past as they are now.)

1974 was also the year "That's Entertainment", the compilation of MGM musicals was released and this was unexpectedly very successful. If a well made "old fashion" musical was released concurrently it may have been successful as there was clearly an audience for that type of movie.

 

[octobercountry]

Well now, after reading through this thread I'm quite ready for a re-watch of Mame, though I'll likely wait for the next 4 for $44 Warners sale before purchasing. (I already have the blu-ray of "Auntie Mame" at hand.) In the meantime, I've just ordered a copy of the book But Darling, I'm Your Auntie Mame!: The Amazing History of the World's Favorite Madcap Aunt, by Richard Tyler Jordan. It was published a while back, and got great reviews---full of stories of all the different productions of the Mame story in every form.

 

[octobercountry]

I confess I do find it extremely frustrating that this musical wasn't originally released in stereo; it could have sounded so much better! (As indeed it does on the stereo soundtrack record that was released at the time.) I can't imagine that this decision had anything to do with Ball's pieced-together vocals; when putting together the original mix, her vocal track wouldn't have made any difference as to whether all the orchestrations/sound effects/etc. were in stereo.

I think it's just that by 1974 the studio simply didn't care about stereo; they couldn't be bothered. Think of, for instance, Cabaret --- that was recorded in stereo too, but all the film prints were in mono. (And stupidly---the stereo tracks for that film were later discarded, so that when they wanted to do a stereo mix for video they had to artificially re-create one.)

 

[octobercountry]

"1974 was also the year "That's Entertainment", the compilation of MGM musicals was released and this was unexpectedly very successful. If a well made "old fashion" musical was released concurrently it may have been successful as there was clearly an audience for that type of movie."

Eh, perhaps, but I'm not sure of that, either..... "That's Entertainment" focused on nostalgia for films made many decades in the past, and I think for current releases the audience was really primed for more modern material, rather than anything that could be seen as old-fashioned. There was a huge backlash against traditional/classic Hollywood fare in the late sixties and early seventies; the whole industry was in turmoil, with most of the studios bleeding money and finally being sold off at that general time, to become small parts of big corporations. A few traditional musicals were still being made in the early seventies, though very few were of notable success apart from "Fiddler on the Roof." Edgier shows were getting more buzz and attention: things like "Cabaret" or "Jesus Christ Superstar"---and in the next year or so, "Tommy," "Rocky Horror," "Nashville," etc....