MAME the movie.

What's so bad about it? I mean, I haven't seen it yet but I just know that a lot of people thought it was horrible. What was wrong with it?

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Why did they get Lucille Ball? Wasn't Angela Lansbury big enough of a name?

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BrodyFosse123, clearly you love her (and I do too) in her proper realm and this movie was not it. It just made me ill to see Lucy so miscast and SO ridiculously softlit and filtered in "Mame."

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Why didn't Angela do it?

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i much prefer rosalind russell in auntie mame to lucille in mame

I agree with samcd3 - Roz Russell is fantastic as Mame and no one else has come close to her performance (unless you count Charles Busch)...Lucille Ball was a very funny woman - but her delivery just pales in comparison to la Russell.

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I'm still going to try to watch it. Did they keep "Bossom Buddies" in?

There have only been a handful of movie musicals I couldn't sit through. The worst was the original Gypsy. I hated that. The remake was great.

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there's one great moment: bea arthur slaps her dresser and the dresser slaps her right back. after that i went back to sleep.

I find the film totally awful and totally fascinating in its awfulness.

Yes, "Bosoms and Buddies" is in the film, and it's one of the great, awful sequences. Lucy's Mame keeps jabbing Bea's Vera with such viciousness that you start to feel sorry for Vera, which I'm sure was not the intention of the song. In fact, Bea seems to play that Vera is hurt by Mame's viciousness, and I don't see how she could have played it any other way given how Lucy played it.

In addition, the number is set in a restaurant, so Vera's humiliation becomes public.

Poor Lucy was just unable to convey any sort of warmth by that point in her life, a fatal problem in this role. When Patrick wakes her from sleep, she looks at him like she wants to kill him.

The whole film is just one horrifying misfire in performance and staging after another. In addition, though a lot of money was spent, it somehow doesn't look good.

And some staging that worked onstage just looks weird on film. I find the "We Need a Little Christmas" staging, when they drape Christmas lights all over Jane Connell's Gooch and then light her up to be particularly odd. It looks like they're torturing her.

And according to Jerry Herman, some of Lucy's singing had to be recorded one note at a time, with him playing each note at the piano till she got it right, and then pieced together.

But I find it fascinating.

Updated On: 1/3/07 at 11:07 AM

What no one has mentioned is that Ball herself put up a good deal of the money too get the film made. It wouldn't have happened at all if she had not wanted to do it.

She was very concerned that it be done as close as possible to the stage play -- hence so many of the original cast, as well as the director and choreographer. (Even firing Madeline Kahn when she was not a copy of Connell, and rumor has it getting more laughs than Ball.) Robert Preston apparently didn't care much for her after Ball insisted he wear lifts in his shoes to make him appear taller and he refused.

ILUVTOMG-- I love that moment in the film. I think the film for me is a guilty pleasure, I was involved with the show once and I guess it just brought back pleasent memories. Granted Ball cannot sing the part very well, but she still gives the film some energy. The part where they drape the lights on Gooch's body is in the show. We did it with our production. It shows they had no tree so they placed Gooch up there to be the pretend tree. I think the Mame sequence and the Boosum Buddies scene are the best. However I do love "The Man in the Moon" sequence, I love when Ball and Arthur are hooked together and they try to pry them apart as the curtain rises and they bow. Hilarious!

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i saw it as a child on THE LATE LATE SHOW (i dont think they have those anymore, what with 24 hr cable) & it blew my mind, i thought it was the most terriffic thing...that was also long before internet, so there wasnt anyway for me to find out more about it. come to think of it, i believe it was a queer-awakening moment.

when i was a little older, i got to see the Roz Russell version & i loved it! though i didnt understand why they werent singing....

then i got to see the Lucy version again & with some context & age, it was painfully...sad? bad? i dunno. i felt embarrassed for her, & for myself for all those years i thought it was so great.

but I still love Bea Arthur & if nothing else, its be commended for committing her VERA to film!!!

but you can get whiplash from going back & forth from the regular lens to the vaselined Lucy shots.

btw, theres a great SCTV where Catherine O'Hara does a great LUCY-as-MAME...i think COUNT FLOYDS SCARY CHRISTMAS....she croaks out "chriiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaas"

"The part where they drape the lights on Gooch's body is in the show."

Which was why I preceded my description of it with "And some staging that worked onstage just looks weird on film."

Btw, according to some accounts, George Cukor was originally hired to direct the film. But then Ball had a skiing accident, breaking her right leg, shortly before filming was to start. By the time she had recuperated, Cukor was no longer available and Saks was hired.

Updated On: 1/3/07 at 01:20 PM