The song "Mame" — Page 2

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.

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."

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

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...

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.

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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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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!