Pre-Order Mame (1974) (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Will Krupp]

I get now the skirt-lifting haters, but it has its charms.

I have to admit I've looked at this multiple times and I cannot fathom what you mean here. Can you enlighten me as to what "skirt-lifting haters" are? LOL... I'm stumped!

 

[KPmusmag]

As an adult I can acknowledge the flaws of this film, but as an 11-year old in love with Lucy it brought me great joy. When it played our neighborhood theater (on a double bill with The Great Gatsby) I boldly asked the theater manager for the poster. He gave it to me. I found the poster in a tube just a few weeks ago and after 40 years finally had it framed. Not a great pic, it is still in plastic wrap from the framers. The matting is a pale lavender that matches Lucy's dress. I am thrilled to have it on blu, and while I doubt it is possible, I am hoping for stereo sound as Ralph Burns' orchestrations are outstanding. How I wish I could have gone to the fashion show, but not only did I found out after the fact, I would have had to work really hard to get my parents to take me.

 

[Ethan Riley]

That's something to have. I think the black poster was actually the teaser poster version. And it's rare. Just try finding one on ebay or wherever.

I'm not naive about Mame's merits. It has a lot of good things in it. Of course, Bea Arthur and Robert Preston were Broadway legends already and they really did their best with what they had to work with. I think Robert's "Loving You" was a definite highlight of the film, and I am grateful they didn't do it as a duet. Lucy is silent.

They just shouldn't have trusted her vocals, they really are that bad. And I might as well blame the fact that she couldn't stop chain smoking. It freezes part of your vocal chords and she couldn't go anywhere with her voice. If she'd just stopped smoking for the run of the film, we might have got a few more notes out of her. As it was, they probably should have hired a Lucy sound-alike and ignored the fallout. I realize she had the most well-known voice on television at that time, and everyone would have known, but still. As it is, the producers seemed to cut out her vocals at the end of "It's Today" and let the chorus take over. And there's also some strange audio massaging going on in "Open A New Window" when she's with Patrick and she sings "When you wake every morning and you pull aside the shutters." It sounds like they had to combine about 3 different tracks to get one decent one out of it. I shudder to think if anyone ever releases her musical outtakes from that movie!

And that kid who played Patrick...I don't know what the heck was going on with him. He can't act, and that role requires a good kid actor. He's not just there to deliver lines like the kids on sitcoms--the whole story really revolves around him and they just didn't give him room to breathe. Bruce Davison was fine, but his younger version...I don't know. And he generated basically zero chemistry with Lucy, which was probably hard for any kid to do in the first place. I notice that same problem with all the kids who worked with her on television, and I include her real children in that mix. They all just seem to be feeding her lines, there's no life to them at all. Patrick's got to be so much more--you have to see the whole thing play out in his eyes.

I don't know what if anything could have ever saved that movie. It looks like Lucy's biggest, grandest vanity project and she just seems all ego, especially when she's trying to sing. It doesn't help that there's a sort of low-budget artificiality about some of the sets. They don't look real. They look good enough for tv, but not for a movie.

 

[JohnMor]

As an adult I can acknowledge the flaws of this film, but as an 11-year old in love with Lucy it brought me great joy. When it played our neighborhood theater (on a double bill with The Great Gatsby) I boldly asked the theater manager for the poster. He gave it to me. I found the poster in a tube just a few weeks ago and after 40 years finally had it framed. Not a great pic, it is still in plastic wrap from the framers. The matting is a pale lavender that matches Lucy's dress. I am thrilled to have it on blu, and while I doubt it is possible, I am hoping for stereo sound as Ralph Burns' orchestrations are outstanding. How I wish I could have gone to the fashion show, but not only did I found out after the fact, I would have had to work really hard to get my parents to take me.
View attachment 50965 View attachment 50966

GREAT poster.

 

[Bernard McNair]

I have seen Mame on film multiple times and always enjoy it. Is it one of the great film musicals? IMHO it isn’t but it does lift my spirits. I love musicals and celebrate any coming onto Blu Ray; I would welcome the other maligned musicals such as Paint Your Wagon and Half A Sixpence if Paramount would release or license them.
The music of Jerry Herman is always a joy; Mack and Mable is one of the great theatre scores; love the Grand Tour (but have never seen it).
Let’s hope that 2019 brings a great variety of musicals on Blu Ray to satisfy all fans of the genre.

 

[Matt Hough]

I agree. Robert Preston's "Loving You" is the best thing in the movie.

 

[PMF]

Any notes about the sound? I think they said on an older thread that it was recorded in stereo yet released in mono?

[...]They scrapped plans to remix it in stereo because although they had the music tracks, they couldn't find Lucy's exact vocals. The ones on the soundtrack album are different, and the orchestra sounds so much richer and fuller there than it does in the flat mono film mix. (They even mentioned this in a chat right here on HTF, IIRC.) As an arranger, Ralph Burns knew how to make the most of being saddled with less-than-perfect singers, but it sounds sublime when Lucy isn't singing. Never has a movie cried out more for an isolated score track on disc.

ANY and ALL orchestrations by Ralph Burns demands it.
The presence of Ralph Burns is, in fact, my only reason for purchase.
As an overall release, though, I'm very glad to see that "Mame" is now available;
as this is an encouraging sign that additional musicals from WAC shall more than likely continue.

 

[RobertSiegel]

Matt, the soundtrack wasn't mono, it was in stereo and is available on CD in full stereo. When I was younger, I used my VHS machine and the stereo soundtrack LP and combined 4 of the songs together and they synced perfectly, so I still have it and have 4 of the songs in true stereo with the video from the film. Unfurtunately, songs like the title song were shortened for the LP so it can't be used to make a stereo track for the film, songs anyway. In a HTF chat with Warner years ago, I was the one who asked thye question will the film ever be released on video in stereo, and George Feltenstein said that they tried but just could not put together everything they needed to make a stereo track for the film. Reading Jerry Herman's book "Showtune," he explains that Lucy sang so badly that they had to record one word and tag it onto the rest of a phrase, the song he mentioned was Open a New Window. Lucy was able to sing "Open a New window open a new", and could not get the minor note on "Door," so they had her record the word "door" separately and they spliced it together with the rest of the sentence. I imagine that is part of the reason they cannot do a stereo track, sounds like it was a mess to record the soundtrack, Jerry Herman mentioned how frustrating this process was.

Mame is my favorite of all the Jerry Herman scores, and he is my favorite Broadway composer aside from Rodgers and Hammerstein. I was always very saddened that Angela Lansbury was not given this movie role. Aside from Lucy's singing of this great score, the character of Mame was an eccentric classy woman, and in my opinion Lucy just fails miserably to convey this, I don't get any classy feeling from her. As Jerry Herman describes in his book, when he went to Warner Brothers studios immediately following his learning that Lucy was cast, he went to the top brass there and told them that Mame is a classy woman, Lucy is more of a clown, when Mame slides down the banister, it's funny because such a classy woman would do something like this, with Lucy it is something we expect her do do and I totally agree with this.

Now let me say here and now that I too love Lucy. I watch I Love Lucy, Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show all the time on Hulu, sometimes an episode every day, but (IMO) she should never have been in this movie. I've heard from many sources that she put $5 million of her own money into this movie, so of course Warner Brothers greatly considered this. But, in my opinion, she totally destroyed this great score. The only numbers in the movie, the title song and Preston's number and Gooche's song, are the only numbers that have any merit. I think they did a fantastic job with the title song. But watching Lucy sing "Open a New Window" and "If he Walked into my Life" and "It's Today" is really hard for me to get through. But because of those few numbers, that is why I will buy the blu-ray. I also like the overture, and I feel that they improved the song "It's Today" with the more accurate 20's orchestrations than the Broadway version had, but I think Lucy ruins that song too.

I am glad that there are people who like this movie, and I am glad Warner Brothers has decided to release it, and who knows, maybe they finally found a way to make it true stereo, after all the orchestra was certainly recorded in stereo, but Feltenstein never mentioned if they still have those studio masters. That said I have seen this on TCM and it looks very good so the picture quality should be quite good, with what remains of Lucy's face after the extremely soft filters were used.

I have always hoped that one of the new TV musicals that they are making (like The Wiz, Sound of Music, Annie and Peter Pan) would be Mame, so that they could make a different record of this property than just this film. I always thought Liza Minelli would have been great. When the TV movie Mrs. Santa Claus was being discussed, Jerry Herman wanted to do Mame with Angela Lansbury for TV, but at the time Angela felt she was too old. Her husband felt otherwise and tried to talk her into it. Jerry Herman was very sick with AIDS at the time, and she nonetheless wanted to do a TV movie for him, so when she turned down MAME, he wrote Mrs. Santa Claus for her. It turned out fantastic but I would have loved to have seen her do MAME for TV. I still hold out hope that someone will do this musical justice on film in some way.

 

[Garysb]

I don't think anyone has mentioned that Mame was supposed to be filmed a year earlier but Lucy broke her leg and they waited for her to recover rather than replace her. They really must have believed she was a box office draw or it was the money she supposedly invested.

 

[Matt Hough]

Robert, my comment about a mono soundtrack was in reference to The Pajama Game, not Mame.

 

[MatthewA]

This thread made the front page of HTF! Light the candles, get the ice out…

Matt, the soundtrack wasn't mono, it was in stereo and is available on CD in full stereo. When I was younger, I used my VHS machine and the stereo soundtrack LP and combined 4 of the songs together and they synced perfectly, so I still have it and have 4 of the songs in true stereo with the video from the film. Unfurtunately, songs like the title song were shortened for the LP so it can't be used to make a stereo track for the film, songs anyway. In a HTF chat with Warner years ago, I was the one who asked thye question will the film ever be released on video in stereo, and George Feltenstein said that they tried but just could not put together everything they needed to make a stereo track for the film. Reading Jerry Herman's book "Showtune," he explains that Lucy sang so badly that they had to record one word and tag it onto the rest of a phrase, the song he mentioned was Open a New Window. Lucy was able to sing "Open a New window open a new", and could not get the minor note on "Door," so they had her record the word "door" separately and they spliced it together with the rest of the sentence. I imagine that is part of the reason they cannot do a stereo track, sounds like it was a mess to record the soundtrack, Jerry Herman mentioned how frustrating this process was.

Mame is my favorite of all the Jerry Herman scores, and he is my favorite Broadway composer aside from Rodgers and Hammerstein. I was always very saddened that Angela Lansbury was not given this movie role. Aside from Lucy's singing of this great score, the character of Mame was an eccentric classy woman, and in my opinion Lucy just fails miserably to convey this, I don't get any classy feeling from her. As Jerry Herman describes in his book, when he went to Warner Brothers studios immediately following his learning that Lucy was cast, he went to the top brass there and told them that Mame is a classy woman, Lucy is more of a clown, when Mame slides down the banister, it's funny because such a classy woman would do something like this, with Lucy it is something we expect her do do and I totally agree with this.

Now let me say here and now that I too love Lucy. I watch I Love Lucy, Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show all the time on Hulu, sometimes an episode every day, but (IMO) she should never have been in this movie. I've heard from many sources that she put $5 million of her own money into this movie, so of course Warner Brothers greatly considered this. But, in my opinion, she totally destroyed this great score. The only numbers in the movie, the title song and Preston's number and Gooche's song, are the only numbers that have any merit. I think they did a fantastic job with the title song. But watching Lucy sing "Open a New Window" and "If he Walked into my Life" and "It's Today" is really hard for me to get through. But because of those few numbers, that is why I will buy the blu-ray. I also like the overture, and I feel that they improved the song "It's Today" with the more accurate 20's orchestrations than the Broadway version had, but I think Lucy ruins that song too.

I am glad that there are people who like this movie, and I am glad Warner Brothers has decided to release it, and who knows, maybe they finally found a way to make it true stereo, after all the orchestra was certainly recorded in stereo, but Feltenstein never mentioned if they still have those studio masters. That said I have seen this on TCM and it looks very good so the picture quality should be quite good, with what remains of Lucy's face after the extremely soft filters were used.

I have always hoped that one of the new TV musicals that they are making (like The Wiz, Sound of Music, Annie and Peter Pan) would be Mame, so that they could make a different record of this property than just this film. I always thought Liza Minelli would have been great. When the TV movie Mrs. Santa Claus was being discussed, Jerry Herman wanted to do Mame with Angela Lansbury for TV, but at the time Angela felt she was too old. Her husband felt otherwise and tried to talk her into it. Jerry Herman was very sick with AIDS at the time, and she nonetheless wanted to do a TV movie for him, so when she turned down MAME, he wrote Mrs. Santa Claus for her. It turned out fantastic but I would have loved to have seen her do MAME for TV. I still hold out hope that someone will do this musical justice on film in some way.

If they have the separate score sessions, why can't they just make a surround track with those on the left, right, and surround channels and the mono mix in the center? Would that cause phasing issues? I can't find the thread with the studio chat, but IIRC it was her vocals—no surprise—that they had trouble finding. Even so, the technology to separate individual sounds has much improved over the years; this would be the ultimate test of its effectiveness.

The pre-Dolby 1970s wasn't a great era for movie sound; the Great Recession pretty much was the last nail of the coffin for the Roadshow release model, and it was also the era when they started either tearing down a lot of those grand old movie palaces or dividing them in two or more, often at the expense of architectural interest of any kind. So to have stereo at all was still considered an event. Even so, this was not done across the board for musicals. Fiddler on the Roof* and Man of La Mancha got stereo mixes, but Bedknobs and Broomsticks didn't get one until it got restored, nor did Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory** which got a stereo remix for its 25th anniversary the same year; only their respective soundtrack LPs were in stereo. A lot of others were mono in theaters and stereo on their respective soundtrack LPs as well; the two Peanuts movie musicals, Rocky Horror Picture Show (IIRC remixed badly in the 1990s when the theaters' old prints were starting to give), Charlotte's Web, and most of the post-Disney Sherman Brothers musicals were that way. IIRC, Warner Bros.' first films in Dolby Stereo were Lizstomania and 1976's A Star is Born while A Clockwork Orange used the noise reduction process itself on a mono mix although no prints were decoded that way.

I have long heard rumors that they taped the show's 1983 revival for Showtime but for some reason never aired it. Visual confirmation of that fact would be nice. With all the remake-and-reboot mania these days and with WB getting back into musicals with Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, and another A Star Is Born, I think the time is ripe to try Mame again. Except the script won't be able to skirt over the racism of the post-Civil War, pre-Integration South even though Mame and Beau's marriage is a symbol that the war between North and South is over. Still, I think the Upsons are worse and attitudes like that are, unfortunately, not a thing of the past today. Given that kind of power and influence, I would have chosen to remake this instead of some of the ones they did redo instead.

That's something to have. I think the black poster was actually the teaser poster version. And it's rare. Just try finding one on ebay or wherever.

I'm not naive about Mame's merits. It has a lot of good things in it. Of course, Bea Arthur and Robert Preston were Broadway legends already and they really did their best with what they had to work with. I think Robert's "Loving You" was a definite highlight of the film, and I am grateful they didn't do it as a duet. Lucy is silent.

They just shouldn't have trusted her vocals, they really are that bad. And I might as well blame the fact that she couldn't stop chain smoking. It freezes part of your vocal chords and she couldn't go anywhere with her voice. If she'd just stopped smoking for the run of the film, we might have got a few more notes out of her. As it was, they probably should have hired a Lucy sound-alike and ignored the fallout. I realize she had the most well-known voice on television at that time, and everyone would have known, but still. As it is, the producers seemed to cut out her vocals at the end of "It's Today" and let the chorus take over. And there's also some strange audio massaging going on in "Open A New Window" when she's with Patrick and she sings "When you wake every morning and you pull aside the shutters." It sounds like they had to combine about 3 different tracks to get one decent one out of it. I shudder to think if anyone ever releases her musical outtakes from that movie!

And that kid who played Patrick...I don't know what the heck was going on with him. He can't act, and that role requires a good kid actor. He's not just there to deliver lines like the kids on sitcoms--the whole story really revolves around him and they just didn't give him room to breathe. Bruce Davison was fine, but his younger version...I don't know. And he generated basically zero chemistry with Lucy, which was probably hard for any kid to do in the first place. I notice that same problem with all the kids who worked with her on television, and I include her real children in that mix. They all just seem to be feeding her lines, there's no life to them at all. Patrick's got to be so much more--you have to see the whole thing play out in his eyes.

I don't know what if anything could have ever saved that movie. It looks like Lucy's biggest, grandest vanity project and she just seems all ego, especially when she's trying to sing. It doesn't help that there's a sort of low-budget artificiality about some of the sets. They don't look real. They look good enough for tv, but not for a movie.

You just explained one of many reasons why I don't consume tobacco in any form. Whoever edited the audio together should get some kind of award just for endurance. Even so, a Mame-like New York socialite of the era in which the film was made would likely have been consuming harder intoxicants than that and alcohol.

Film stock changed between the 1960s and 1970s; somehow the bright, colorful lighting schemes that looked fine prior to the end of the 1960s somehow started to look synthetic (for lack of a better word) once color TV became the norm. Yet Blazing Saddles uses the same aesthetic but looks less fake; it works there because it comments on the inherent artifice of movies themselves. 1974 was also the last year Technicolor made dye-transfer prints. The darker, grainier look of something like The Godfather Part II would not have suited this film.

I wasn't exceptionally impressed with Kirby Furlong, either. Jan Handzlik wasn't the greatest actor, but he seemed to bond more with Rosalind Russell. That's why you feel Roz's reaction to seeing him sent to boarding school more. To be honest, I thought the boys who played Patrick's son were better in both Auntie Mame (an uncredited Terry Kellman) and Mame (Patrick Labyorteaux), while for the adult Patrick I thought Bruce Davison was more natural than Roger Smith, who died last year at age 84 after 50 years of being married to Ann-Margret, who could have definitely been a more suitable choice for the title role here.

But one thing I wonder is whether it would even have gotten made without Lucy's money and clout. That probably helped make it easier to afford each sparkle and each spangle. The WB that made My Fair Lady and the WB that made Mame were two different animals. The former actually had a Warner Brother left.

*1979, the only full year of my parents' dating before they got married, must have been a strange year indeed in Hollywood. They put 20 minutes back into Amadeus in the 2000s, but they can't be arsed to look for film of Charlotte Rae and Nell Carter's Hair solos which only have been heard on LP. At least we never have to deal with the even-shorter-than-the-already-shortened-theatrical-cut of Bedknobs and the edited Fiddler again.
**The 1996 Wonka stereo remix also has an error: at the end of "I've Got a Golden Ticket," Charlie's mother says "wait, stop!" In the stereo remix, she just says "stop!"

 

[trajan007]

I remember reading years ago that Dan Wallin who worked on the sound for MAME either quit or got fired. So something was going on there.This man knows stereo--CAMELOT---FINIANS RAINBOW---CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG--ANNIE-- and a ton of others.

 

[MatthewA]

I remember reading years ago that Dan Wallin who worked on the sound for MAME either quit or got fired. So something was going on there.This man knows stereo--CAMELOT---FINIANS RAINBOW---CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG--ANNIE-- and a ton of others.

Indeed, what a list of credits. He did do another Bea Arthur movie: History of the World: Part 1. We were also talking about The Black Hole just the other day; he did that and The Black Stallion in the same year.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

MAME (1974)
NEW 2018 1080p HD MASTER
Run Time 131:00
Subtitles English SDH
Sound Quality DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English
Aspect Ratio 16 X 9 LETTERBOX, 2.40:1
Product Color COLOR
Disc Configuration BD 50
Special Features:
Theatrical Trailer (HD)
Vintage Featurette

You’re invited to party hearty – and in fabulous style – with this lavish 1974 screen version of the beloved Broadway musical. Lucille Ball brings star sparkle to the title role, a high-living grande dame who’s outlandishly eccentric and, when suddenly faced with raising an orphaned nephew, fiercely loving. Veterans of the New York stage original join her: Beatrice Arthur as best friend Vera, Jane Connell as prim governessAgnes, choreographer Onna White and director Gene Saks. As Mame’s husband Beauregard, Robert Preston (The Music Man) sings “Loving You,” written specially for the film. Jerry Herman’s songs, from “It’s Today” to “We Need a Little Christmas” to “If He Walked into My Life,” rank among the best show tunes ever. For a grand time, bring home Mame.

https://www.facebook.com/warnerarch...6ONEmTyaFOTPAD-NyrUKhVdx8-gv2FQ&__tn__=EEHH-R

 

[Mark Mayes]

I have to admit I've looked at this multiple times and I cannot fathom what you mean here. Can you enlighten me as to what "skirt-lifting haters" are? LOL... I'm stumped!

I just meant "prissy" in their distaste...like lifting their skirts in dismay if they saw a mouse, which sounds sexist now that I think of it.

 

[robbiesreels]

Below is some interesting info on MAME

1. Facts and Figures on Mame
2. 
   
3. Warner Bros, takes over Avery Fisher (formerly Philharmonic) Hall in
   
4. Lincoln Center February 25th 1974 for two special previews of "Mame".
   
5. The event is believed to be the first of its kind. Lucille Ball attends the
   
6. second screening.
7. 
   
8. World premiers the evening of March 7 at the Radio City Music Hall
   
9. with a near record breaking advance of $882,142. First days receipts
   
10. Friday March 8 is a stunning $33,500 with Variety proclaiming in their
11. Headlines "N.Y. Loves Lucy In 'Mame' and the biggest opening
12. week for an Easter attraction in the 42 year history of the theatre
13. at $260,050, a record one day figure of $69,220 Saturday March 23
14. and the biggest Easter week ever at the Music Hall, its 6th week,
15. a blockbuster all time world wide one week record of $402,241.
16. Mame completes a 10 week engagement at the world's largest
17. theatre grossing a phenomenal $2,707,097. At the time the third highest
18. gross at the Music Hall. (Odd Couple was #1, 1776 #2)
19. 
    
20. West cost premier is at The Cinerama Dome in Hollywood with
    
21. Lucille Ball in attendance at the premier on March 26. The first week
22. is a wow! $42,000, and has a 13 week run grossing $251,600.

U.S. Gross $14,600,000, according to Variety (January 1975)
U.S. rentals- $7,200,000, according to Variety (January 1975)
Budget- $10,400,000

 

[Matt Hough]

Interesting facts. Thanks for sharing them.

 

[RobertSiegel]

Thanks for sharing those facts. Well, thanks also to Ron for posting some of the details. I am surprised by the new 2018 HD master. I thought when they released the DVD, which was not really that long ago considering, that would have been mastered for high def. So I am actually excited to see the new master, and as I said while I am so disheartened that many of the songs just don't come anywhere close to the Broadway Masterwork Columbia remastered CD, there are a few treasures for me like the overture, the title song is awesome, Gooche's song and I do think Lucy and Bea did a fantastic job on Boosom Buddies.

I am really intrigued by the 2.0 DTS Master track. The DVD has listed Dolby Digital English Mono, but I have seen many listings for it as Mono 1.0. So perhaps with a new mastering they did figure out a way to do some kind of stereo for this time around.Matthew, I agree with you they should have the necessary sources to do stereo, maybe when they did the DVD they did not want to spend the money on it, but Warner seems to get much more serious when they do a classic on blu-ray. Heck, I would accept SOME of the songs in stereo, and at leasy 70% of them match the soundtrack LP one hundred percent, as I said before when I was a kid I mixed my own version of the film to stereo on VHS using the soundtrack LP and alot of it lined up perfectly.

Someone mentioned Willy Wonka here. I was actually surprised that on the blu-ray, the overture didn't sound all that great stereo, yet if you listen to the soundtrack album it matches perfectly but has excellent stereo separation. Well, here's hoping for a stereo Mame this time around.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I am really intrigued by the 2.0 DTS Master track.

IIRC, Warner usually encodes mono tracks for Blu-ray as 2.0 with the ProLogic flag to send them to the proper center channel.

 

[Will Krupp]

there are a few treasures for me like the overture, the title song is awesome, Gooche's song (emphasis mine) and I do think Lucy and Bea did a fantastic job on Boosom Buddies.

I'm actually happy that Madeline Kahn wasn't retained for the movie. Because of that we get to treasure her career-making turn in BLAZING SADDLES and ALSO get to savor Jane Connell repeating her Broadway role in THIS one. After Kahn was fired, Lucy was (reportedly) clamoring loudly that she wanted as much of the "New York show" as she could get (WITHOUT a trace of apparent irony) so Connell was hired, as I think she should have been from the start.