|
¡Ya lo decía yo! Auntie Mame is every lib’s favorite aunt as theatre, and by nearly every measure it’s what the 1958 movie is. Excepting the clumsy, elongated southern fried buffoonery beyond the confines of Beekman Place, director Morton DaCosta, who also helmed the play, stays close to author Patrick Dennis’s rootage of inclusiveness, with each act ending as a fadeout, an obvious blessing for TV stations clocking in the commercials. Rosalind Russell, recreating her Broadway success, has never seemed more mechanized; every line, every inflection, wave of an arm, adjustment of hair or scribble on a pad are fixed for posterity. The gamey role with its zany if not manic cosmopolitan appeal—imagine what Kay Kendall might have made of it in the West End—would inevitably be turned into a splashy stage musical. But with Santa Maria Martin, fattie Ann Southern and workaholic Lucille Ball as early contenders? Politely asked if interested, Roz wisely bowed out, saying she didn’t want to repeat yesterday’s bill of fare or, unmentioned, the kind of bruising she received for her “singing” in Gypsy. The Great White Way plum called Mame went to Angela Lansbury, in a personal triumph, facilitated by a direct intervention from composer/lyricist Jerry Herman as her champion, remembering the impact of her singing in the flop Anyone Can Whistle by Arthur Laurents and Stephem Sondheim back in 1964. As everyone knows, she didn’t get the chance to repeat her acclaimed version because Warner Bros didn’t think she had the box office power, despite the persistent long lines waiting for months to see her at the Winter Garden. In fact, she wasn’t even asked and, saying to Larry King how really “ticked” she was over the slight, never forgave WB, who purchased the rights to the musical for $3 million in January, 1969, in a partnership with American Broadcasting Company who would soon express dissatisfaction with the deal and withdrew. The purchase came without stipulation of an agreed-to star. What happened during the extensive negotiations between the studio and Broadway producer Robert Fryer and Herman is the backstory we can only conjecture about, but, similar to Angela’s repeated auditions for the producers of the stage Mame who were initially reluctant too, the pr battle to cast her started on the 40th Academy Awards telecast in April, 1968 when she in effect auditioned for the movie by singing the title tune “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” one of the nominees for best song. That concerted effort was enthusiastically applauded by the audience attending the show—available on YouTube—which ends with an ominous counter-reaction by an unidentified man seated near front stage. Her performance didn’t move Warner Bros either, nor did the successful tours of Mame which quickly followed in San Francisco, then in Los Angeles where it had a SRO 6/25/1968 to 8/31/1968 run at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In an August, 1968 Hollywood Reporter article, Fryer said he was hoping for Angela to be named; four long years later, in a November, 1972 Warner Bros Rambling Reporter column, it was announced that Lucy was cast in the lead. During those limbo years, Herman was said to be exerting strenuous pleas for Angela, even though the sale of the rights to the studio foreclosed any imperative to hear more entreaties. Safely assumed was Angela, aware of the screwy business logic of Hollywood, had relieved Herman of a lingering case of the guilts, middlingly alleviated by writing for her the 1969 musical of The Madwoman of Chailott called Dear World—closing on Broadway after 132 performances and 45 chaotic previews. Soon after, Angela signed with Disney to make a musical of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, based on Mary Norton’s The Magic Bedknob and Bonfires and Broomsticks published in the 1940s; the project was treated as the successor to Mary Poppins. Filming in March, 1970 and completed June, 1970, with five months of post-production, opening at Radio City Music Hall in November, 1971 and receiving at best lukewarm reviews and box office, it’s a disappointing musical experience if hopefully intended to induce Warner Bros to reconsider Angela for Mame, as there’s not much singing by the star, having songs cut to accommodate the annual live holiday pageantry at the theatre. There’s also a discernible lack of script cohesion about and interest in the three orphan children drifting in and out of juiced-up animation and a stilted WWII setting. Playing a guardian and recent graduate from a school of sorcery, Angela admits in the story to being “an apprentice witch,” pretty much a dead-on appraisal of her work in the movie. (Loyal to Disney, her curiously skittish interview with Dick Cavett at the time of the musical’s release might actually reflect fears it wasn’t up to snuff. A 1995 restoration of the 139 minute version Disney preferred was given a laser disc edition using unfinished post-production detailing; subsequent releases in DVD and Blu-ray return to the RCMH 117 minute jobbie, with the cuts provided as separate “extra” material.) The following March, 1973, Angela was the opening act for the 45th Academy Awards show with a pre-taped musical number, “Make a Little Magic” written by Billy Barnes, in which she entered in modernized Bedknobs and Broomsticks pedestrian attire and, as the song approached climax, appeared live on stage in swank Mame-ish couture. Another inadvertent cover for Warner Bros’s business acumen before Lucy decided to go skiing. How Lucy got Mame still remains the deeper dive into supposition. Possibly it was her own version of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” with Carol Burnett on The Lucy Show in December, 1967, that eased WB doubts; when not the redheaded clown-sap, she could get into a decent rhythmicity. Additionally, the surprise b.o. success of her 1968 movie with Henry Fonda entitled Yours, Mine and Ours boosted the foolhardiness of the studio in accepting a beloved conservative television matron to sashay around as an East coast progressive belter. (Three other elements conjoined: WB previously produced Lucy and Bob Hope’s moderate hit Critic’s Choice in 1963; her continuing strong sitcom ratings; the so-so box office for Bedknobs and Broomsticks.) I’d posit she watched Angela’s Oscar lark, reminding her of the lost chance to do the Broadway Mame. With a possible advanced wink as inkling from WB, and looking for a big career-capping vanity splash, she went to the Dorothy Chandler to see Angela and became eager, maybe driven, in wanting to make the movie version, maybe even eggoned by good friend/comedy partner Hope’s glowing Oscar MC introduction of the rival. The shock of Lucy being cast, in spite of famed George Cukor helming and Robert Preston, Beatrice Arthur and Madeline Kahn as co-stars, accelerated the anticipated N.Y. outcry in not selecting Angela. And the beginning of unceasing retaliative gossip: not unlike the way she spread the cash to control Wildcat!, she bought her way into Mame. The sum of $5 million often bandied about—by either depositing the amount as a guarantee to be considered for the role, or writing the check to assuage studio concern over a spiraling budget, or purchasing the rights from the studio. (The third possibility neutralized early as WB, holding the movie rights to Auntie Mame, had “first dibs” option to buy the rights for the musical, used later to keep Herman from mounting a planned TV redo with Angela.) Whatever the alleged facts about the money, they didn’t prevent Lucy, after seeing a performance of Mame, from visiting Angela in her dressing room to deliver praise. But there’s no factual substantiation Angela, during performance, saw Lucy in the wings taking notes, at which time she supposedly realized Lucy would be starring in the film version. (That kind of bitch scenario is from movies about theatre, or a wishful episode from Murder, She Wrote.) At the first sign of verifiable trouble in the making of the movie—Kahn fired over “creative differences” with Lucy about modernizing Agnes Gooch—the rumors swelled, reaching unstoppable levels when, early into production, Lucy took that brief ski holiday during which she broke a leg in several places causing filming to cease for almost 15 months. (The delay repeated the misfortune of Wildcat! when she suffered from a debilitating virus causing the show to fold after only 177 performances and Roz breaking an ankle during the first take of her opening scene in Auntie Mame.) With Cukor exiting because of other commitments, Arthur’s husband Gene Saks, the director of the original Mame, was assigned as conciliating caretaker. Resuming production with increasing anxiety, Lucy’s behavior, perpetually emphatic on any set, reportedly became dictatorial, as in frequently usurping Saks; lashing out at her makeup artists (who, it has been claimed, applied a glue on her face to squeeze together the wrinkles); didn’t want to allow blue lyrics already recorded to be included in the actual film but accepted a few of the script’s foul-mouthed zingers; requiring age-reducing camera tricks; rejecting the need for her musical recordings to be dubbed, probably by Lisa Kirk, who did Roz’s for Gypsy. Though studios have always given Hollywood queens latitude, and the otherwise circumstantial difficulties not unusual, collectively they augment the speculation she used her own cash—she had plenty, previously used to finance Y, M and O—in order to keep the musical afloat, thus explaining the lack of any intervention by Warner Bros execs. Beyond the end product itself, perhaps the more persuasive arguments for Lucy paying the bills were, one, successfully inveigling the studio to pull Roz’s Auntie Mame from public for a limited time to prevent embarrassing comparisons; two, getting access to the studio’s coveted distribution apparatus; and three, after the skiing accident, avoiding being replaced at the insistence of the insurance company. Appeasement to Lucy as a legendary comedienne is honorarium; ignoring her shortcomings, abundant before the accident, is an abject business decision making it easier to accept her money surreptitiously. Warners Bros must have shit when, on Phil Donahue during a media promotion blitz, Lucy said the following: “I thought Angela should have done the picture, and I said
In another TV interview, she said: “Actually, I didn’t want to play Mame Dennis. Besides, I had broken my leg...and felt apprehensive about fulfilling my commitment. The only reason I went through with it was that I felt obligated after giving my word to the producers.” The musical’s originating star publicly corrected the impression from Lucy that she didn’t want to do the movie: “I honestly don’t know where Lucy ever got such an idea.
Although there’s every likelihood of having made similar comment throughout the years but not widely disseminated, Lucy’s daughter Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, over at Cinema Society’s site on Facebook on May 20, 2025, has made a clear and trustworthy statement about the never-ending gossip her mother used her millions to keep Angela from getting Mame: “This is mean and it’s false. My mother adored Angela in this
Lucie sort of confirms the long-held suspicion about executives at Warner Bros having deep-seated and smuggy prejudices against Angela, some of which are (one) she would forever be considered a player of frumps and/or the super villainous mother in The Manchurian Candidate; (two) financial success on Broadway doesn’t always translate into huge movie box office; (three) movie execs too often obstinately cling to bad casting choices even in the face of obvious impairments and foreseeable calamity. Perhaps, in swimming with the WB sharks, Angela’s producers navigated with less guardianship on her behalf and floated more like chum in accepting the millions for the rights to the musical because they forgot the one smart move previously made by Herman and his legal team—the insertion of a penalty clause in the sale of rights for Hello, Dolly! to Fox that ameliorated not getting a guarantee to cast Carol Channing. Prohibited from releasing that movie before 6/20/1971 or until Dolly closed on Broadway, which ever came first, Fox could escape the waiting game by paying up to $2 million more to originating producers, on top of the $2 million paid for the rights. With the musical already in the can for over a year, and box office for expensive Hollywood musicals speedily moving downward, Fox paid the ouch. Evidenced by WB’s contempt in refusing Angela from the get-go, a demand for a legalese-heavy impairment clause might have worked in negotiating the sale of Mame, which WB, in traditional prerogative of “first dibs,” would likely have refused, thereby legally freeing up the musical’s producers to seek other studios. As bad as Mame is, it’s nevertheless a “don’t miss” curiosity, confirmed at NY’s Radio City Music Hall where naysayers helped set a then all-time weekly intake of $400,000, though elsewhere the response to the snickerfest was cool as the b.o. return was only $6 million on a budget of $12 million. But it has become a great party flick, during which we merrily lube it up watching our Lucy incredulously warble, tripping up the light fantastic, praying to survive the doctored closeups. (In The Hollywood Musical, author Ethan Mordden quipped she’s “not clearly seen through the mass of Ponce de Leon filters.”) Adding more viperous treats are Theadora van Runkle’s $300,000 + worth of costumes for Lucy and Bea Arthur, a mélange of Adrian gone drag queen bonkers on shoulder pads, elephantine hats, turbans, dinosaurfins and furs galore. Lucy is a startling misfit in that pink-lavender ensemble with blonde hair at Preston’s Peckerwood plantation, but Russell couldn’t save that section’s stretched jejunity, either, and some who saw Angela on stage were less than enamored by the over-stuffed staging during the coronation number “Mame.” Arthur is much luckier: a grotesque to begin with, she is every bit the match for the outfits; she gets the movie’s one real laugh when asked by Lucy if she’d like to imbibe; she hides any trace of distant bosom buddy favoritism. What became destructive for Lucy, rarely a bad actress, was the obsessive control of self-image. Always mindful the World Loves Lucy, she feared losing the public if challenging herself with material it might object to. So why do The Facts of Life with Bob Hope, which had opportunities for some grown up themes regrettably circumvented by idiot devices such as sneezing in Acapulco, a stuck car horn blaring at an outdoor movie drive-in and convenient rain sabotaging adulterous assignations? Watching the progressive Mame turn into an enhaloed lushed-up Lucy Ricardo, the mucilaged spider woman compulsively ensnared herself in the web of retardancy. She’d eventually have to face former husband Desi Arnaz, who, remaining a trusted advisor on her projects, cautioned against doing the role. We’ll forever hear “Ricky” babaluing the taunt “¡Ya lo decía yo!”
Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER (Revised 05/2025) All Rights Reserved.
|