I just watched the musical Mame for the first time.

It’s called “LucyMame” here bub.

If she didn’t try to sing it wouldn’t have been a bad movie. Also, it was a pointless remake not even 20 years after the first one.

Not a patch on Roz. Lacking in warmth - maybe that's the main problem?

Oh and the singing lead bass in a junkman's choir.

I thought it was great. It suffered due to being made in the wrong decade. And that whole issue that the soundtrack can't be remastered for a future Blu-Ray release is bull. Sound technology has come a long way since then.

Lucille Ball is MAIM! Someone posted it once, I had to post it again. Her ego, really...

she didn't get the character and just tried to do lucy at rehab

I think of it as MAIMED.

It's a genuinely charming musical with some great music....utterly fucked up at every turn. The fatal errors don't end with Lucy in the title role, but she is the deadliest among them.

It's a fucking terrible movie, OP.

I like how she croaks out "It's Today" like she just rolled out of bed after a weeklong bender.

It’s a show that deserves to be revived every now and again. With the right talent, of course.

^ "Kiddo, she's from Pittsbarg—a place that SMELLS LAHK GARBAGE!"

I actually love this gloriously shitty movie. I'd watch it over 'Auntie Mame' any day.

It should have been Angela!

The only scene I fast forward through is Lucy driving home from Connecticut, singing/croaking 'If He Walked into My Life' in her head.

That clip of "It's Today" just makes me cry. Lucy couldn't project any energy at all, so they tried to jazz it up (literally) with syncopation. What should have been a frenetic number became a soporific. That can't be laid entirely at Lucy's feet. It takes a lot of people to fuck up a musical this badly.

I never realized how much it looks like Lucy's wiping her ass, with relish, when she's first introduced. We see her "dancing" in the wide show, but then in medium shot it looks a lot different.

wide SHOT

r9 surprised king's academy christian school in west palm beach didn't have one. pity, the production value would have been higher and a lot more gay camp, too

not everything is meant to be a musical

Hey everyone, watch Lucy singing It's Todayon .25 speed. I dare you.

R14, I was taken aback when I heard Angela Lansbury belt it for the first time.

[quote]Hey everyone, watch Lucy singing It's Today on .25 speed. I dare you.

She seems a little tuckered out even at 2x. LOL

[quote]I just watched the musical Mame for the first time.

Why? If you're a DL regular, you've been warned about how awful it is.

On the other hand, the Cinerama Dome must be preserved as the location of its gala premiere. (Who thought turning it into a had was a good idea?)

had=hat

The material was dated and Lucy was never much of singer, even less after decades of bourbon and cigarettes.

If you watch It's Today at .25 speed, you can actually hear Lucy creaking from old age when she's at the bannister with the younger girls at 1:50.

OP, your poll is missing an "All Of The Above" option, just ahead of "Vivian Vance"

Christ, what a waste of a movie.

Why no vote option for "I loved it!"?

Well, OP, you might as well watch this guy's analysis about the miscasting of Lucille Ball in Mame. It should provide you with some insight about why so many people didn'tapprove of her in this movie.

Just put this on my Samsung TV YouTube thingie, R28...

One thing that always astonishes me is the awful set design. They created 3 Beekman Place on a soundstage, but they spent a lot of time and money on it so it looks fairly real, as opposed to the sets for the same place in "Auntie Mame," which look like soundstage sets. but at least those sets are open and inviting and seem like Mame Dennis's personality. In the film of the musical, it looks like Lucille Ball is throwing her big parties in Granny Mingott's 1870s Gilden Age mansion in "The Age of Innocence," except everything is extremely narrow. This is probably what a real rich woman's house on Beekman place would have looked like, but it seems dark and depressing and unpartylike.

Another thing hate about the film of "Mame" that goes all the way back to the musical stage show is that Gloria Upson is hardly in it. Joanne Barnes stops the show in the non-musical movie because the character is so hilarious (and she's perfect at conveying it), but in this the character hardly has anything to say.

Ugh, R28. In the "If He Walked into My Life" number, she looks like Greer Garson doing Eleanor Roosevelt in [italic]Sunrise At Campobello[/italic].

R28 is spot-on, though to be fair to Lucy her then-recently-broken leg played a part in her lack of physicality in "It's Today."

[quote]That clip of "It's Today" just makes me cry. Lucy couldn't project any energy at all, so they tried to jazz it up (literally) with syncopation. What should have been a frenetic number became a soporific.

Back when YouTube was still new and the Rhino remaster of the soundtrack had just come out, someone posted the audio of this and someone else replied, "Grandma got in the liquor cabinet again!"

Just found this in an old Lucy/Mame thread and it made me cackle:

[quote]My boyfriend in the '90s hated the Lucy version so much that I made a mixtape of his favorite songs with Lucy warbling "it hurts me" [at 1:42 below] in between every track.

r32 Pfffft! It never held me back.

- Jane Froman

With a song in my heart and a propeller blade in my upper thigh, r35...

r30 Even worse is the combination of Norah and Gooch into one character. It makes no sense at all.

It was a very big bomb at the time-

If made 10 years earlier, Lucy probably would have likely succeeded in the role.

It ranks up there with Showgirls as pure camp - especially when you know the background and Lucy’s egocentric drive to make it. Truly horrible - but turns Lucy into a camp icon. The original with Roz is perfection. But this deserves more attention as the train wreck of an out of control ego.

It was my first exposure to the story, so it has a bit of a nostalgic quality for me. That said, I know it's not very good and poor Lucy could never handle the score even in her youth. I think most of the problems go back to the book of the musical. It was always lousy compared to the script for Auntie Mame and that's probably one of the main reasons why it hasn't been revived on Broadway since Angie attempted that version in the early 80's.

The score is one of Broadway's best, but the book has never been very good and has little of wit and charm of Auntie Mame. A revival would need to basically start from scratch and revise most of the book.