Mame

“¡Te lo dije!”

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 a curtain fader, 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, intonation, wave of an arm, adjustment of the hair or scribble on a pad are fixed for posterity. Yet the role, with its zany if not manic freethinker import, has lasting appeal and inevitably would be turned into a splashy stage musical, with Mary Martin, Ann Southern and Lucille Ball narrowed as top candidates. Politely asked if interested, Roz wisely bowed out after her braying Gypsy.

The Great White Way plum called Mame went to Angela Lansbury, in a personal triumph, faciliated by a direct intervention from composer/lyricist Jerry Herman as her champion, having heard her sing in the flop Anyone Can Whistle by Arthur Laurents and Stephem Sondheim back in 1964 and never forgot her impact. As everyone knows, she didn’t get the chance to repeat her acclaimed version because Hollywood 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 Warner Bros., who purchased the rights to the musical for $3 million in January, 1969 without stipulating who would be the 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 and, similar to Angela’s repeated auditions for the producers of the stage Mame who were initially reluctant too, it all started with her appearance on the Oscar telecast in April, 1968 when she in effect auditioned for the movie by singing 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 Los Angeles. In an August, 1968 Hollywood Reporter article, Fryer said he was hoping for Angela to be named, but four years later, in a November, 1972 Warner Bros. Rambling Reporter column, it was announced that Lucille Ball was cast in the lead. During those limbo years, Herman was likewise exerting strenuous pleas for Angela, even though the sale of the rights to the studio foreclosed any imperative to hear more entreaties. Safely assumed is Angela, aware of the screwy business logics of Hollywood, relieving Herman of a lingering case of the guilts.

How Lucy got Mame is the deeper dive into supposition. Possibly it was the unexpected b.o. success of her movie with Henry Fonda entitled Yours, Mine and Ours that encouraged Warner Bros. to accept a beloved conservative television matron who couldn’t sing or dance to sashay around as an East coast progressive belter. (WB previously produced Lucy and Bob Hope’s moderately successful Critic’s Choice in 1963, and no denying she remained a top sitcom ratings winner.) With the release Y, M and O just a few weeks hence, she likely watched Angela’s Oscar lark, reminding her of losing out on the Broadway musical, deceiving herself into thinking she was still a hot theatre ticket after Wildcat! and, looking for a big career-capping vanity splash, became suspiciously persistent in wanting to make Mame, maybe unintentionally egged on by good friend/comedy partner Hope’s glowing Oscar MC introduction of her rival.

The shock of Lucy being cast, inspite 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 retaliative gossip: that she bought her way into the role—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 alleviate studio concern over a spiraling budget, or purchasing the rights from the studio. (Presumably WB held copyright for a set number of years, keeping Herman from mounting a remake.) Whatever the alleged facts about the money, she was piqued over not getting the stage version and, sounding plausibly bitchy, wanted to prevent Angela from repeating her smasheroo. And while entirely tenable for Lucy, after seeing a performance of Mame, to visit Angela in her dressing room to congratulate her, there’s little substantiation Angela would later see Lucy strolling around the backstage taking notes, at which time she supposedly knew Lucy would be starring in the film version. (If anyone has hard evidence, let me know.) At the first sign of verifiable trouble—Kahn fired over “creative differences” with Lucy about modernizing Agnes Gooch—the more 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 a year. Cukor exited because of other commitments, with Arthur’s husband Gene Saks, the director of the stage musical, assigned as conciliating caretaker.

Resuming production with increasing anxiety, Lucy’s behavior, perpetually emphatic on any set, became dictatorial. She frequently usurped Saks; lashed out at her makeup artists (who used a form of glue on her face to squeeze together the wrinkles); refused to allow blue lyrics already recorded to be included in the actual film; required age-reducing camera tricks; rejected 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 afloat the musical, thus explaining the lack of intervention by Warner Bros. execs. Beyond the end product itself, perhaps the more persuasive arguments that Lucy was paying the bills were, one, successfully inveigling the studio to pull Roz’s Auntie Mame from public view for a limited time to prevent embarrassing comparisons; two, getting access to the studio’s coveted distribution apparatus; and three, after the skiing accident, avoided being replaced at the insistence of an 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, she admitted Angela should have done the movie in the first place. In other interviews she contradicted herself and came close to lying about Angela not wanting to do the movie, saying, “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...I tried to talk them into signing Angela. But she would have nothing to do with it.”

The musical originator publicly corrected the falsity: “I honestly don’t know where Lucy ever got such an idea. I wanted to make the film of Mame in the worst way. But I was, quite simply, never asked. Look, I don’t think she was in a position to be offered the part, and I think she ran with the ball, no pun. I don’t blame Lucy a bit. I’d have done the same thing. But when I see those billboards and Lucy with that cigarette holder clenched between her teeth, I must admit I do wince. I think she plays Auntie Mame. I played Mame Dennis. Of course, we are totally different, and so are our approaches to Mame. [Warner Bros.] felt like they needed a big name. They didn’t trust my name to carry it...It was one of my bitterest disappointments. At the time, I was terribly careful not to let it hurt me too much. I forced myself to take it lightly.”

As bad as Mame is, it’s nevertheless a “can’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 so cool that 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 lub it up watching our Lucy incredulously warble, trip the light fantastic, endure 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 melange of Adrian gone drag queen bonkers on shoulder pads, elephantine hats, turbans, dinosaurfins and furs galore. Lucy is a particular misfit in that pink-lavender ensemble with blonde hair donned at Preston’s Peckerwood planation, but Russell can’t save this 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. Rarely a bad actress, what became destructive for Lucy is the obsessive control of self-image. Always mindful the World Loves Lucy, she constantly feared losing the public if challenging herself with material it might object to. So why do The Facts of Life and Critic’s Choice with Bob Hope, which had opportunities to do some grown up themes only to be circumvented by safety devices such as a leaky roof derailing an adulterous rendezvous in the former and amateur writing contests blocking implicit unzipping in the latter. Watching the lib Mame turn into an enhaloed lushed-up Lucy Ricardo, the mucilaged spider woman compulsively ensnares 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. Beating his bongo, we can hear “Ricky” singing the taunt “¡Te lo dije!”

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ralphbenner@nowreviewing.com