Mame

Mame was Lucille Ball's last movie, and to honest she was too old to be convincing in much of it. She throws away probably the best song in the musical - If He Walked Into My Life - but claws back a bit of class for Bosom Buddies (with the fabulous Bea Arthur, from the stage production), and the whole Southern sequence, starting with the hunt and culminating in 'Mame' the song. Lucy on roller skates is also pretty funny. I'd have liked to have seen someone like Angela Lansbury or Janis Paige, both who had done the role successfully in stage, star in it, but there are compensations (Jane Connell, who was Agnes on stage, is good here, as is Robert Preston as Beau). It's not bad - it just could have been just that bit better.

In general, critics have been much too harsh regarding their comments on MAME. It's simply an old-fashioned, entertaining musical that's fun to watch. Lucille Ball does a fine job in the title role. She gives a thoroughly professional performance and looks fantastic in all those wonderful costumes. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy Motion Picture. The rest of the cast is terrific. It makes a delightful addition to your video collection. MAME may not be great art but it is very enjoyable, especially if you are a Lucy fan.

Nearly 40 years later, this musical looks better than ever.

First off, the music and lyrics of Jerry Herman make this one of the great Broadway musicals, which happens to be based on a great play. The 1950s play and film version starred Rosalind Russell in one of the great roles of her estimable career.

The 1960s Broadway musical was a smash hit for Angela Lansbury, but Lansbury wasn't a big enough name to star in a lavish film version of the musical. In 1974 there were probably a lot of "middle-aged" stars who could have put this over, but Mame was a role Lucille Ball chased for years.

At the end of her long film and TV career, MAME should have been her crowning achievement, but nothing could mask the fact that she couldn't really sing, although in the final version they were able to piece a vocal performance together, Ball doesn't do Herman's music justice.

That aside, the 63-year-old Ball looks great and easily carries the comedy of the role, and she's in nearly every scene. The sets and costumes are lush and loud, and Ball gets great support from Beatrice Arthur and Jane Connell (Vera and Gooch from the Broadway show) and Robert Preston as Beau.

The rest of the cast is serviceable if not memorable. Don Porter and Audrey Christie as the Upsons, Bruce Davison as the grown Patrick, John McGiver as Babcock, Doria Cook as Gloria, Joyce Van Patten as Sally Cato, Lucille Benson as Mother Burnside, and George Chiang as Ito.

Ball and Arthur won Golden Globe nominations. Te film earned no Oscar nominations. The film opened to big numbers but fell off after a few months. Usually considered a bomb, the film did not lose money.

I wasn't surprised to learn that Lucille Ball bankrolled this movie adaptation of the Broadway musical MAME -- that explains her miscasting. Don't get me wrong: Ball looks gorgeous in the spectacular costumes and her slapstick is still up to par. But even her bullfrog singing voice (which proves that even the worst voice can't completely ruin Jerry Herman's wonderful songs. They *could* ruin Cole Porter's songs in AT LONG LAST LOVE, but that's a review for another time :-) didn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that Ball is too old and, worst of all, too *COLD* to play lovable madcap Mame Dennis. It's comical in the wrong way to see Lucy in soft focus in her solo shots and everybody else photographed crystal clear. She looks more like she's modeling than acting, and she has all the warmth and tenderness of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. She also tends to look like she's trying to seduce Kirby Furlong and Bruce Davison as, respectively, the younger and older Patrick -- creepy! Moreover, it's obvious the dances have been slowed down considerably to accommodate Lucy's rusty dancing skills (notice how people seem to dance *around* her rather than with her). Madeline Kahn, the original choice for Agnes Gooch, should've been playing Mame, not Ball. Luckily, Lucy's miscasting is balanced out by the terrific casting in the other roles, especially the hilarious Beatrice Arthur and Jane Connell recreating their stage roles as Vera Charles and Agnes, Joyce Van Patten as Sally Cato, and Robert Preston as dashing Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside. Worth a look for both its good and bad points, if you stumble across it on AMC in its letterboxed form.

It has been a puzzlement to me ever since seeing Mame in it's premiere run way back in 1974, that so many people have so many different views of this movie. It is either absolutely loved or positively hated by the people who see it. I believe Lucille Ball is, and always will be Mame. She plays the character exactly the way she should be played, hard, tender, funny, bitchy, loving, sophisticated and free-spirited.

This film has a bright cheery look and feel with big splashy production numbers which lovingly look back at the grand old Hollywood Musicals of the past. The production values are stunning, with beautiful sets and costumes that are truer to the period than the ones in Auntie Mame. The supporting cast is great, with Bea Arthur as Vera Charles and Jane Connell as Gooch. And concerning the complaints about the filming of Lucy through gauze, just go back to the MGM Musicals of the 40's and 50's and you'll see almost every major female star, young and old, filmed through heavy gauze.

I've come to the conclusion that this movie has been labeled a bomb for so long that some people already have their minds made up not to like it before the opening credits have ended. And the ones who see it for the first time without any idea of it's troubled history, end up loving it!