MAME: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1974) Warner Archive

In life, Mame Dennis made her everlasting impression on a nephew, Edward Everett Tanner III (whose nom de plume was Patrick Dennis) – so much, that in death, Tanner immortalized her into everyone’s favorite ‘Auntie Mame’; a glowing novelized tribute, first published in 1955, eventually, to become a hit Broadway show, then later, an equally impressive film extravaganza, starring Rosalind Russell in 1958. If life was indeed a banquet, then Warner Bros. glorious Technirama/Technicolor masterpiece was an edifying homage to both the lady and Dennis’ novel. That Mame Dennis should have made the rounds a second time with as much aplomb a decade later, as Jerry Herman’s smash hit musical, Mame on Broadway in 1966, speaks highly of the enduring appeal of its bohemian matriarch; especially as reincarnated this time by a luminous Angela Lansbury – in her ‘second’ career-defining role. That Gene Saks’ Mame (1974), should not have caught these tailwinds, either of the aforementioned film, or Lansbury’s razzamatazz, was therefore a sincere regret and colossal disappointment, especially since Lansbury’s name was not even considered to reprise the role for posterity on celluloid. Instead, the part went to TV’s favorite madcap, Lucille Ball – neither as light on her feet two decades after I Love Lucy had gone off the air, and decidedly never a singer – even, during her early years as that glamorous henna-haired MGM showgirl whose singing pipes always had to be dubbed. Ball campaigned heavily for the title role in Mame. Sadly, that she won it – or rather – defiantly beat out the competition, was to the picture’s everlasting detriment. Ball’s Mame Dennis is neither loveable nor charming. Indeed, there are instances in this glossy and gussied up big screen turkey when not even the sight of a frozen-smiled Ball, posturing in black riding habit amidst a red-coated gavotte of more accomplished ‘younger’ dancers, can mask the appalling stench of embalming fluid seeping in from the peripheries of the Panavision screen.  

The movie version of Mame has been described as ‘utterly ghastly in every way’ – at once an overstatement, and yet, rather befitting its epic thud at the box office; a final death knell to the big and bloated road show musical, received in a decade not generally known for its lithe and lyrical super entertainments. All could have been forgiven if Mame had not hailed from a superior stagecraft and pedigree, including a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, and Saks, who also had directed the stage show with Lansbury and superb foil, Beatrice Arthur, as diva, Vera Charles. The movie sacrificed Lansbury, but kept Arthur, who would later jokingly, though rather fittingly, refer to it as ‘Maimed’. For film-land insurance, Saks also hired everyone’s favorite ‘Music Man’ - Robert Preston as the pivotal romantic interest, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside. Preston’s warbling of the ballad, ‘Loving You’ (expressly written for the film and eloquently staged as a transitional piece) remains a highlight of the movie, as does the confrontational number, Bosom Buddies – a real showstopper on Broadway, in which Vera and Mame chide one another in semi-jest, clenched teeth and wicked little grimaces on full display. Tragically, Mame – the movie – is not just a wan ghost flower of that legendary Broadway show, but, by direct comparison, a grotesque bastardization of it.

And herein, the blame must remain with Ball, who looks ancient, even when photographed through heavy gauze by cinematographer, Philip H. Lathrop, and croaks the songs as though choking on a sack full of marbles, with a painful abandonment for fracturing each lyric.  Warner Bros. inexplicable passing on Lansbury (already a film star of considerable repute) was, in fact, in keeping with its misguided mid-sixties spate of Broadway to Hollywood hybrids. Virtually, all of the really ‘big’ musicals WB produced during this period were made without the participation of those titanic stage talents responsible for their rarefied iconography: Audrey Hepburn instead of Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady (1964), and, Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero instead of Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet in Camelot (1967). While one can argue, My Fair Lady actually benefited from Hepburn’s casting (as Audrey could always be counted upon to be ‘a lady’ – fair or otherwise) there is no denying the big screen adaptation of Camelot suffered immensely.  Mame, however, tops them all – and Lucy, having bullied her way into the role, never manages to dig herself out of it either. What is woefully absent herein is the frenetic energy of a daring and progressive madcap. I am reminded again of Rosalind Russell’s extraordinary incarnation of Mame Dennis in the earlier Warner Bros. super production; a joyous and devil-may-care screwball with genuine heart and a real soft spot for her orphaned nephew. The 58’ flick is still the greatest Mame of them all, minus songs, but with enough chutzpah and class to easily outclass Saks’ miserable efforts in ’74.

Gone is the excitement, not only of the early film, but the Broadway spectacle. One of the problems with Mame is that on screen it remains ‘a show’ – the songs that survived translation from stage to screen, presented as overly inflated rather than integrated into the story. Saks seems to have forgotten that what worked in a live theater needs considerable reworking to click on the screen. As such, he gives us a lot of musical flourish – submarined by Lucy’s lack of singing talent – and sandwiched between vignettes of dialogue, reworked by screenwriter, Paul Zindel as inconsequential connect-the-dots tissue to get from one song to the next. On screen, Mame’s virtues inexplicably become her vices for which no amount of money can offset the gargantuan misfires. Having spent $12 million to over-produce it, the studio’s payout would barely earn back half this amount in receipts. Of the big and splashy production numbers, only the title song survives with its Broadway-rooted iconography relatively unscathed; Onna White’s spirited choreography unimpeded by Ball’s stilted parading between a host of dancers, who effortlessly sail over boxwood hedges, fences and railings, mimicking the horse race having just taken place before it and capped off by what ought to have been a heart-warming reunion between Ball’s survivalist, and her young ward (Kirby Furlong, as the prepubescent, Patrick).

Where Russell’s middle-aged Auntie Mame possessed a buoyant, endearing and flighty scatterbrain life philosophy, seemingly with effortlessness to switch from bootlegging broad to bubbly matriarch, assimilating into a child’s world, as well as debuting as the dizziest dame about town, Lucy’s Mame is more Geritol-guzzling mature, and far less likely to get inside a young boy’s psyche to inspire him.  This Mame needs a good strong Mickey Finn to be beloved, or at least convince herself that she is, and, her occasional romps through seedy burlesques and local speakeasies just play like a neglectful and corrosive influence, contributing to the delinquencies of a minor. The picture’s plot – truncated to accommodate the Herman score, and veering wildly away from Tanner’s original novel – has young Patrick (Kirby Furlong) arriving with (not Nora – his nanny) but Agnes Gooch (Jane Connell). This apprehensive duo is introduced to the whacky maven of New York’s fashionable Beekman Place, Mame Dennis (Lucy) who is in the midst of one of her gloriously decadent parties. Mame tells Patrick she is going to open doors for him; doors into possibilities he could never even dream. Regrettably, only moments into this promise, Mame relegates Patrick to a few sordid debaucheries, exposing the youngster to gangsters, burlesque queens, free love, and, bathtub gin.

In the original film, the extroverted Rosalind Russell was able to make these less than stellar human experiences seem as the epitome of light-hearted good taste and humorous, if misguided Manhattan chic. Ball’s Mame is too worldly/too jaded, and, all-knowing of sin – appearing as more the aged pedophile who delights in corrupting tomorrow’s youth today. Patrick is introduced to his aunt’s ‘best friend’ – first lady of the American theater, Vera Charles (a notorious lush). Against the wishes of Patrick’s trustee, Dwight Babcock (John McGiver), Mame enrolls Patrick in The School of Life, a very ‘progressive’ institution where student run wild and naked. But when Vera inadvertently leads Babcock to the school, Mame's custody is revoked. Simultaneously, the stock market crashes, leaving Mame cash-strapped. Vera offers Mame a small part as a lady astronomer in her latest Broadway operetta, The Man in the Moon. Regrettably, Mame’s desire to be the center of attentions derails Vera’s opening night. She is quickly fired. To earn money to keep her apartment, Mame hocks her furniture and takes a job as a lowly salesgirl during the Christmas season, inadvertently meeting the amiable millionaire, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (Robert Preston), to whom she attempts to sell a pair of roller skates. As she cannot even write up a sales slip, Mame is once again fired. Dejected, due to her inability to pay either her manservant, Ito (George Chiang) or Agnes, both of whom have remained loyal during these hard times, Mame bucks up and decides to give the staff and Patrick their Christmas presents early. She is humbled when Agnes and Ito present her with all outstanding debts to the butcher paid with the money they quietly set aside for a rainy day.

Beau, who has been searching for Mame ever since her dismissal, now invites everyone out to dinner.  Having hopelessly fallen for Mame, Beau whisks his beloved and Patrick to his ancestral Southern plantation in Peckerwood, Georgia. The pair are frostily greeted by the enterprising Sally Cato (Joyce Van Patten), who has her own designs on Beau, and his extended family, particularly his overbearing mother (Lucille Benson) and cousin, Fan (Ruth McDevitt). Neither finds Mame suitable. After all, she is a ‘Yankee’.  To illustrate Mame’s unworthiness to Beau, Sally Cato sets Mame up for a spirited foxhunt. Despite never having ridden a horse, Mame accepts the challenge and, true to her creed of ‘opening a new door’ she survives the perilous adventure, even capturing the fox. Bewildered by her victory, Sally Cato storms off, leaving Beau’s stunned family to sing Mame’s praises. Mame and Beau are wed, their bliss short-lived when an avalanche claims him in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the adult Patrick (Bruce Davison) struggles in school, his future guided by the deeply principled but stuffy ‘Uncle Dwight’ who inveigles Patrick with the thoroughly snobbish, but socially affluent, Gloria Upson (Doria Cook-Nelson). Mame and Vera bury the hatchet – in each other’s backside – extolling the memories of all the men they have adored in their lives. When Agnes admits she has never even dated, Vera and Mame elect to give the dowdy Agnes a complete makeover, sending her out into a world of wolves with a complete lack of experience. This, so we discover, she gets elsewhere, returning to Mame’s apartment six months later, visibly pregnant.

Learning of Patrick’s engagement to Gloria, Mame elects to visit the Upsons (Don Porter and Audrey Christie) at their home in Connecticut. The Upsons, alas, may be ‘top drawer’ in Dwight’s eyes, but Mame finds them insufferable and bigoted.  Asked to help pay for a piece of property adjacent their own – a wedding gift for Patrick and Gloria, Mame instead secretly buys up the property to donate to her own worthy cause. She is deeply wounded when Patrick now considers both her and his past a sordid mess, he is willing and determined to expunge from the public record in his pursuit to just be as ordinary and boring as the Upsons. Mercifully, Patrick comes to his senses a short while later and he and Mame are reconciled. Presumably invested to make a ‘good impression’, Mame hosts a party for the Upsons, where Patrick is first introduced to his aunt’s new social secretary, Pegeen Ryan (Bobbi Jordan). The Upsons learn the property adjacent their own was bought up by ‘some Jew lawyer’. Meanwhile, Vera mistakes Pegeen for Gloria. Agnes reveals her pregnancy and Mame admits she bought up the land next to the Upsons to establish the Beauregard Burnside Memorial Home for Single Mothers. Insulted, the Upsons depart in haste, leaving Patrick to reconsider his future. Realizing he has fallen in love with Pegeen, immediately following WWII, Patrick and Pegeen are wed and have a child, Peter (Patrick Labyorteaux). Mame offers to take the boy on a trip to Siberia she is planning, and after some consternation, Pegeen and Patrick concur, nothing about Mame has changed. She is still ‘the Pied Piper’, encouraging each new generation to open their own doors or windows into opportunities they never could have even dreamed.

Arguably, Mame would have been ideal for Lucy in her prime, although as a former showgirl, I still cannot imagine Ball as maternal. Even on I Love Lucy (as domestic and charming as Ball’s on-screen persona ever was), her temperament was always better suited in the episodes where her fictional ‘housewife and mother’ is desperate for hubby and bandleader, Ricky Ricardo to allow her a big break into show biz. Regrettably, by 1974, age had significantly withered Lucy’s appeal and physical strength. Indeed, choreographer, Onna White excises Ball from the more strenuous musical numbers whenever and wherever possible. Though White’s somewhat mechanical choreography is an asset, Ball’s obviously hoarse vocal capabilities – or lack thereof – decidedly prove Mame’s undoing. It’s a musical, remember? You had better be able to sing – loud and good, preferably. Lucy cannot sing, nor does she even try; her talking on pitch (and woefully ‘off’ more often than ‘on’) makes a mockery of the best songs, ‘It’s Today,’ ‘Open A New Window,’ and ‘We Need A Little Christmas’, especially when giving the original Angela Lansbury/Broadway cast album a spin for nostalgia’s sake. While Robert F. Boyle’s production design, and, Harold Michelson’s art direction always give us something grand to look at, the core of the story is bereft of a towering and enigmatic talent to carry the load. The show is Lucy and Lucy is not up to it. If anything, Mame – the movie serves as a cautionary tale for hiring any over-the-hill actress. As one of the most expensive, flat-footed, tone deaf and utterly bloated Broadway to Hollywood hybrids, there is just no getting around the fact, Mame – as it was conceived on stage by Jerry Herman, Gene Saks and Angela Lansbury – deserved far better than it received on celluloid.  

The release of Mame on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) is, at least for me, a double-edged sword. While I sincerely do not think it deserves such consideration ahead of iconic musicals from Hollywood’s golden era (I mean, the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld, is not even out yet; ditto for Holiday in Mexico, That Midnight Kiss, Bathing Beauty, The Harvey Girls, Good News, Ziegfeld Girl, For Me and My Gal, Royal Wedding, Broadway Melody of 1936/38/40, Million Dollar Mermaid, Show Boat, High Society, all of the Fred and Ginger, and, Mickey and Judy masterpieces, and, on and on) it also means WAC is running out of musical turkeys to push, even with Thanksgiving just around the corner, and, finally may start getting around to releasing more of their superb backlog of bonafide smash hits from both their own and MGM deep catalog. At least, that is the promise and the dream. Predictably, WAC has done nothing less than their best on the Blu-ray release of Mame. Derived from a carefully archived interpositive given the utmost consideration and care, Mame looks utterly gorgeous in hi-def with rich, resilient colors. Just look at those blood-red and velvety black riding habits top hats. Contrast is superb and fine details abound throughout with a light smattering of grain looking very indigenous to its source. Nothing to complain about here. While rumor has always persisted Mame’s soundtrack could – and should – be remastered to take full advantage of 5.1 DTS (although not even true stereo could fix Lucy’s bungled vocals), what we have here is DTS 2.0 mono. The picture was originally released theatrically in mono.  Extras are limited to ‘Lucky Mame’ – a badly worn vintage featurette. Also, the original theatrical trailer. Bottom line: for me, at least, Mame will always be an artistic disaster. The Blu-ray is perfect, however, and should please the ardent (if misguided) fan base this movie continues to garner. But it isn’t Lucy’s finest hour. Not by a long shot.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

1

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

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