The song "Mame"- Page 2

[darquegk]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 1:26pm

No, the cigarette is there. And Mame becomes what's known euphemistically in the novel as a "college widow:" a somewhat older woman who makes her house a party destination for frat boys and offers them sexual favors. When she gets a little older and the boys stop hanging around after a few years, Mame reinvents herself again.

[artscallion]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 1:31pm

I had no idea the book was this dark. I'll have to check it out.

[darquegk]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 2:43pm

It's not dark, it's wildly farcical and hilarious, but decidedly edgier than you would expect from something as squeaky-clean and almost quaint as the musical "Mame."

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 6:46pm

Mame is just a song that stops everything to say "we think you're really cool" for way too many minutes. In the movie (which is awful) the grinding to a halt is even more apparent.

You are absolutely right, best12, and "Mame" is still my favorite of Jerry Herman's "leading lady" songs.

I think the song is proof that the rules of the musical play just don't apply to musical comedy. The latter gets away with a lot more freedom of structure. (Think Reno singing "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" for no apparent reason in any version of ANYTHING GOES.)

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 6:58pm

I don't at all mind the show stopping for the cast to say how much they love here. Especially when the Mame is someone like Angela or, in this clip, Ginger Rogers doing the original Gower Champion staging….

Thank you, Joey, I agree (though I see best12's point that the number is an interruption in the plot; the clip with Ginger Rogers isn't even the entire number, as it omits the "rap" section in the middle).

Thanks for the clip. Either they reversed the diagonal promenade for the mid-70s Lansbury revival or I had my left confused with my right. (Probably the latter.)

And a question: Onna White is credited with that choreography. Did Champion come in to do the title number?

Updated On: 1/13/14 at 06:58 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 7:09pm

Thanks, darquegk, now I want to read the novel again. I read it the summer I was 14 and I think a lot of it went over my head. I do remember my grandparents reading chapter or two and being horrified that I was reading it; I was visiting for the summer and they even went so far as to call my Mother to ask if they could confiscate it.

(My mother replied, "Take it away from him and you'll only make it more interesting. And so he'll find it at the library." This was surely a case where Mom was right.)

[broadwaybabywannabe2]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 8:43pm

JERRY HERMAN writes great Broadway songs...MAME isn't one of them..it is repetitive to no end...and yet the show MAME has some of my favorite Jerry Herman songs...OPEN A NEW WINDOW...IT'S TODAY..BOSOM BUDDIES and of course IF HE WALKED INTO MY LIFE...MAME literally stops the show and not in the good way...

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 9:50pm

^^^ "Mame" is the first act curtain, so the show is stopping regardless.

I agree the other songs you mention are better, but the title song was one of the last pop hits to come from a Broadway musical before such things became oddities.

And as a fan of Southern Gothic literature, I've always enjoyed Herman's satire of Southern stereotypes.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:09pm

I read it the summer I was 14 and I think a lot of it went over my head.

I think I was about the same age and had the same experience. I had found the book at my local library after being introduced to the show thanks to the local high school's production. No one raised an objections to my reading it though I doubt my parents knew the real content.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:19pm

Why did I say Gower? I must have had Hello Dolly on my mind.

Onna would have been unforgiving. Sorry, Onna!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:38pm

Well, PJ, you only make about one such mistake per year. How nice to get it out of the way in the first half of January!

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:52pm

Thanks for posting that clip! I loved seeing Ginger with the chorus and the staging, and even seeing Harry Secombe (Mr. Bumble from the movie "Oliver!") do the introduction!

I still wish something happened during the song, like Beau getting down on one knee and giving her a ring, or Sallly getting furious and storming off the stage ... or any bit of business that advanced the story.

As it stands, even with the great cast and Onna White staging, it's just seven really long minutes of strutting around the stage.

Ugh.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/14/14 at 5:40pm

best12, I don't have a single argument with what you have said here. I might only add that at least "Mame" has genuinely funny lines, unlike "Hello, Dolly!" or (God forbid) "When Mabel Comes in the Room".

But I got chills every time I saw the number with Angela, and the audience leaped to its feet when the same choreography was repeated in the curtain call.

I'm not an expert on dance, but I wonder if it's like the "Busby Berkeley Principle": one girl doing a time-step is boring; one hundred girls doing a time-step is genius. The "Mame" choreography is repetitive, but the numbers of dancers increase, the keys get higher, etc. and so forth.

Posted: 1/14/14 at 6:13pm

The book Auntie Mame is a must-read. Mame is not totally lovable- if you knew her in real life you'd probably see her as a phony at the very least. She does carry on with one of Patrick's friends, her much younger collaborator and a half-dozen or so other "Colorful" men. She is extremely manipulative and needlessly demanding of Patrick- and while she supports the unwed mother Agnes, she does it in an almost cruel way.

That said as a character I adore her and re-read the book probably once a year. I love it so much I tracked down an out-of-print copy of the the sequel which recaps the trip se ad Patrick took after his graduation from prep school.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/14/14 at 6:25pm

It seems obvious not only that I read the book before I could really understand it, but I was also influenced by having seen the Rosalind Russell film on TV and viewed the character through the lens of the (greatly sanitized, IIRC) movie.

[darquegk]

Posted: 1/14/14 at 7:14pm

Mame is a great anti-Don Quixote. She is genuinely convinced that she is a wonderful person and is making the world, her life, and the life of her various wards better, but is almost always doing the exact opposite. She decries racism and prejudice left and right but is constantly seen to be casually and almost subconsciously racist and prejudiced herself. Socially, sexually and financially irresponsible, emotionally manipulative and somewhat naive despite her apparent worldliness. She is ABSOLUTELY a phony and a hypocrite, but somehow remains lovable, especially when she is not around. Both novels end with similar scenes in which Patrick, Mame's now-grown ward, misses his Auntie Mame... until she shows up and begins captivating the people around her with her old snake oil.

I would love to see Jane Krakowski in an "Auntie Mame" television series based on the book.

Posted: 1/15/14 at 1:59pm

Well put Dar! And a Auntie Mame series would be golden- there are probably a hundred potential episodes contained in the two books.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/15/14 at 4:27pm

^^^ Sounds perfect for Lisa Kudrow or Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 1/15/14 at 8:08pm

I wonder if there have been All-Black productions of MAME? Or a black Mame? Diahann Carrol would have been great but the scene where Beau takes her home to meet his Southern family would have a new sub-plot.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/15/14 at 8:35pm

Perhaps Beau's family could have once been so-called gens de couleur? It's certainly not a Caucasian vs. African American sequence; I think it just needs a Yankee-Southerner divide to work.



Updated On: 1/15/14 at 08:35 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/15/14 at 8:50pm

The "Mother Burnside" character might need a rewrite in some details (though the essence of a strong, black, disapproving woman is already there), but setting the piece in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s strikes me as very interesting.

And the casual racism of Patrick's inlaws-to-be would be even more interesting.

One quibble, Mame Dennis was a real person (though I don't think that was her real name). Does that change our obligation to the character based on her?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/15/14 at 10:46pm

No.

Posted: 1/16/14 at 1:21pm

Mame WAS NOT a real person. "Patrick Dennis" (not a real person either) sometimes said the character was based on his own aunt but frankly he said a lot of things. He knew that made good press and he had an eccentric aunt who was more than glad to claim credit even though her own oddities ha nothing to do with Mame's far more charming ones.

Incidentally, the crew at Peckerwood- Mother Burnside and the several dozen cousins who lived there, all relied upon Beau for everything- the book makes reference to Beau supporting them all and Mame continuing the checks after Beau was gone despite the way she was treated there.

"Patrick" 's real life story is as interesting as his fictional one by the way- when his books went out of style, he left his long-suffering wife (he was pretty flamboyantly bisexual) and became a butler- most famously for the Kroc family, founders of McDonald's. The family never had any idea that "Tanner' was the internationally known author Patrick Dennis.

[darquegk]

Posted: 1/16/14 at 2:05pm

Patrick Dennis belongs to a brand of self-mythologizing, sexually ambiguous and flamboyant author-celebrity-culture figures of the 1950s to 1980s. His closest analogous figure is probably the epicene and gleefully bizarre Edward Gorey.

Posted: 1/16/14 at 2:57pm

I would love to have someone tell the stories behind "Little Me" which they wrote and photographed using their circle of non-traditionals and various assorted "Physique models". There is a shot of Dennis in Drag as a nurse- priceless!