Mame, The worst musical film . Ever.

Really, OP? I think you'll find your opinion is a distinct minority around here... At least among those here who've even heard of this film.

The material was creaky by 1974 and that was emphasized by the casting of a creaky leading lady.

Jane Connell was robbed of an Oscar!

OP, I know you feel alone in this moment, but many of us have lived through what you're experiencing now.

At the start of filming, Lucille invited Jane over for dinner. Gary was sitting there eating lobster and Lucille told her that the two of them would just be having leftovers.

R5 Because Gary talked her out of serving the lobster.

I like it. Bea and Jane are great and I don't think Lucy is the Trainwreck everyone says she is. It's not a great movie musical but it's not the worst.

Now just wait a goddamn minute! This Lucy dame and I are going to have it out!

star

Thank you, r8.

[quote] I like it. Bea and Jane are great and I don't think Lucy is the Trainwreck everyone says she is. It's not a great movie musical but it's not the worst.

R7 Exactly how i feel. I adore it. A ridiculous, campy romp.

Did she sing it as written? I hope so.

Oh god. I just saw an episode of “Good Times” last night on TVOne that featured Jane Connell. It was the episode when Thelma writes a play that’s going to be produced (despite that talent never being mentioned before or after) and Connell spends the whole episode saying, “Mr. Nicholson suggests this change” and “Mr. Nicholson wants you to change this” and she must say it 50 times. Terribly written role and this was AFTER “Mame”.

And of course she is playing Sybil Gooley in the “All in the Family” episode when Edith is nearly raped.

I wonder how Madeline Kahn would have fared as Gooch in this disaster. I guess she would have stolen scenes from Lucy which is why she was fired.

it would have been better with Barbara Cason as the rich bitch

I don't think Lucy's voice suits the score.

Barbara Cason

There's only two reasons to watch this abomination, Bea Arthur, who steals every scene she's in, & to watch Lucille Ball make a complete fool of herself.

I was NEVER in the chorus!

MY song!

Thanks r17!

godDAMN but I want those pink lounging pajamas she’s frolicking in at r4!

i want to be BURIED in them! OPEN CASKET!

I didnt realize that Andy Garvey was Mame's nephew.

It would've been better with Helen Lawson.

This topic is pretty well exhausted.

It was huge. HUGE, I tell ya!

"This topic is pretty well exhausted."

So was Lucy. That was the problem.

Dreadful.

R25. As is your attitude.

“Cut!”

“Get me a cigarette. Get me two!”

I was molested by a cool rider.

The ONLY movie version of Mame to watch, is the version with Rosalind Russel. Superior in every way.

R32. Except that wasn't a movie version of "Mame." That was "Auntie Mame"; two separate things.

The old, tired Lucy.

I rather liked the picture, actually.

It needed someone younger and more glamorous...like little Suzanne Cupito.

Lucy was the worst part of the film, but she wasn't the only bad thing. Neither Patrick was well-cast. The sets were lousy. The new orchestrations and musical direction were lacking (could "It's Today" be taken any slower???). And ultimately the direct is at fault for the total lack of energy throughout the film. It's hard to be screaming, "Live! Live! Live!" when you're in a wheelchair, attached to an IV line.

YOU BLOW THE SHIT RIGHT OUTTA MY ASS... MAME

A few challengers for worst movie musical of the Mame era:

the aforementioned Lost Horizon

Doctor Doolittle

A Little Night Music

Goodbye Mr. Chips

Star!

Also John Huston's Annie and Sydney Lumet's Wiz

The editing is a big part of the problem. Gene Saks was thinking too much like a stage director, leaving huge gaps for laughter and applause. It slows the pacing down.

[quote]Doctor Doolittle

DOLITTLE, as in "do little" -- get it?

R39 you forgot At Long Last Love

I was a boy when a lot of those musicals came out. I love musicals and I thought they were God awful even as a child. Though I would like to give Goodbye Mr Chips another look simply because I remember Peter O'Toole being very wonderful. Star didn't even make it to the suburbs where I lived that's how bad it was. I love the lp I thought it was pretty terrific. Then I got to see the movie much later and I couldn't believe it was as bad as everyone said it was. Anyway it produced a great soundtrack album and souvenir book.

I saw Mame at Radio City and it's as though it was so horrible that they did it on purpose. You can't try to make a good movie and come up with that. The same with Lost Horizon. It's as if literally everybody in pre-production meetings was saying let's make a truly horrible movie musical. I mean was anybody looking at the dailies? Of course there are the people who think both of them are good movies and they really enjoy them and God bless them.

The movie version of Mame has permanent place in my heart and I can watch it on an endless loop. My mom took me to see it in 1974 in Brooklyn. I was just a little kid and still remember that day like it was yesterday. It also lead to my interest in musical movies and musical theater. No I'm not a crazy theater queen but I do work in the entertainment industry on the finance side of the business. I've had a great career and met many amazing and famous people yes even Angela Lansbury many times but I never mentioned this movie to her. So thank you Lucy, Bea and Robert. I'm surprised it hasn't been remade. It's a great vehicle for some female star.

Did Lucy get all of Jerry Herman’s pauses in the right places?

Goodbye, Mr. Chips doesn’t really deserve to be mentioned with the other disasters. O’Toole gave a touching performance (different from Donat’s equally fine non-musical) and, while the score never really lifts, the school anthem is sweet and genuine (though I doubt a boys school would have “fill the world with love” back then), and Petula Clark is charming and moving by turns, and making her a music hall performer who can appreciate Chips’ qualities and life works for me. Sian Phillips (Mrs. O’Toole at the time) was droll playing an invented figure out of Beardsley and Firbank. It is a fair criticism to suggest the film didn’t need the songs, though it seems like a natural property for such adaptation. Am I right that John Mills did a stage version of the musical in England?

My guess is that Mr. Chips still has some charms, r44. I think its main problem was that it was such a small story to musicalize.

In Goodbye Mr Chips I hated the way Petula Clark was killed .

Man of La Mancha

And it was so compelling on stage.

OP, you'll find that while your view on Mame was fairly common 50 years ago. In the years following its release, saner heads have prevailed! Mame has been reassessed by a new generations who have appreciate it for the flawed masterpiece that it is. The biggest problem with Mama was a public who refused to allow Lucille Ball to play a New York sophisticate. They didn't want her singing Bosom Buddies with Bea Arthur, they wanted her working on a chocolate assembly line with Viv Vance. But with time and distance, critics throughout the world have reclaimed Mame for the warm and wonderful piece of family entertainment that it is. This does not mean that I am looking at the film through rose-colored glasses, and they primarily begin and end with Kirby Furlong! Where was Robbie Rist or Johnny Whitaker or even Brandon Cruz! Any of them would have been eons better than Kirby. Also, Jane Connell was way too old to be playing Gooch! Though, I think Madeline Kahn wasn't right for the part, certainly a younger musical theater trained actress such as Michele Lee or Beth Howland would have been terrific.

Was Lucy a little long in the tooth for the lead role? Maybe, but you have to admit the makeup, camera and lighting people did their work and made her look decades younger than her age. In It's Today Lucy doesn't look a day over 27 at least! Also, Lucy's excellent physicality and countenance gave the feeling of a much younger woman.

Michele Lee? God only one of them, Ball or Lee, would have made it out of production alive.

R41, exactly. When Bea Arthur makes her first appearance and speaks her guest line, it’s just dead air onscreen for several moments after.

R50, it sure doesn’t help that Sophia Loren was not a singer and talks her way through the songs.

R51 no—it was shit then, and remains shit to this day. So shitty that no one has bothered with any reassessment you claim to write of. From shit to shinola.

Lucy was a good ten years too late to do Mame. Angela never would have gotten the part either at that point. Streisand would have gotten first dibs, then it would have been passed on to Shirley Maclaine, Liza, maybe even Liz Taylor.

Bea only did it because her husband was involved as director and guilted her into doing it as payback because they moved out West so she could do Maude. He was pissed because he was a HUGE deal in the NYC theater scene and didn't want to leave.

The movie musical Bea should have done was reprise her role in Fiddler on the Roof.

R49. SPOILER ALERT!

Petula Clark received good reviews for both Mr. Chips and Finian's Rainbow.

She probably would have been better than Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

I am old and I will always love Lucy.....so I can take it.

Her scenes with the Upsons are fun.....and her scenes with the older Patrick when she lets him know how she really feels about what he has become have some bit and truth.....

And except for a few of the costumes - Lucy looks great.

Tell that broad to get her ass on that moon!!!

bitE and truth......

Mame is pretty bad but hardly the worst. CATS, MAN OF LA MANCHA, SONG OF NORWAY and many others are far worse.

R58. Pet Clark was a serious contender to play Neely O'Hara. No. Really. She was.

Song of Norway

R63. Mrs. Brady was a shit singer. I'm glad I put Drano in her coffee before her big Christmas Morning solo...

Mame was a shitty musical to begin with, but it did give us one of the all-time great torch songs.

Pia Zadora would've made a better Mame!

[quote]R56 Lucy was a good ten years too late to do Mame.

Far worse is the fact that she can’t sing, and croaks her way through the songs (?)

In his scathing review of the movie, Rex Reed wrote of Lucille Ball, "Cut her in half and count the rings!"

R44 here.

I've written here before that when I saw Mame at Radio City it was a Sunday afternoon. We waited on line for hours and got in and the place was packed. Imagine watching this thing with almost 6,000 people. Like being at an eagerly awaited public execution. I might as well have been a victim at the Spanish Inquisition. But and this is a very big but the audience enjoyed it immensely. They were singing and clapping along with the title number laughing throughout and even giving individual numbers applause. Then the movie went into general release and took a header off a cliff. Lucy never recovered.

You want an open casket wake? Watch Lucy singing It's Today on youtube.

The film version of A Chorus Line is pretty dreadful. The only saving grace is Vicki Frederick and her amazing head of hair.

R51 is either being ironic or delusional. This was an absolute turkey and I didn't first see it until a decade or so after it was released.

I'm guessing that during its Radio City run, it got the old Lucy fans who would watch her trying to deliver Chekov or Becket and therefore cheered on her attempt at singing---basically the old queens here who behave as though she was a great actress rather than a coarse B-movie filler.

R41 And there was so much of it!

[quote] Her scenes with the Upsons are fun....

In what way?

I saw it the summer of the year it came out, at a big, old movie theater at the beach in Maine. There was a fairly decnt crowd there (it was the only movie in town and people went to whatever was playing), but I don't remember their reaction to the movie. It ws pretty strange for 15 year old me to see an approximately 50 year old pregnant woman singing "What do I Do Now?"

[quote]Petula Clark received good reviews for both Mr. Chips and Finian's Rainbow.

"Finian's Rainbow" (directed by Francis Ford Coppola) is an underrated musical, and one of my favorites. Incredible score, and I loved three of the four main performances. The weak link is Tommy Steele, who hams it up as (and is MUCH too tall for ) Ogg.

Unlike a lot of people I don't think the movie would have been improved a lot with Angela Lansbury. I didn't see her in the stage version but I did her on stage. Only one time, in Gypsy. She was great in it. But the movie of Mame was not well made, anyway. They got all kinds of things messed up. Angela would have been a much better Mame, of course, even if she was ten years older by that time--she was still young. But I don't know if they could have gotten people to go to it. She wasn't a box office draw, in movies. Anyway, I don't actually think even she could have saved this turkey. Not even Rosalind Russell could have. Angela always regretted publicly that she wasn't cast but she didn't realize how lucky she was.

R75 The score and cast are good (and you're right about Tommy Steele) but they should have found a director who understood how to film a musical. From what I remember it wasn't a big budget, but I still think it could have been a lot better.

One thing I didn't get (but I saw this years ago, so I might be forgetting something). In the opening credits, why did Fred and Petula come from Ireland by way of the west coast, and travel across the US to get to a state in the south?

[quote] I didn't see her in the stage version but I did her on stage.

Oops. Haha.

[quote]why did Fred and Petula come from Ireland by way of the west coast, and travel across the US to get to a state in the south?

They got directions from the Von Trapps.

Yeah, it sucks, but John Huston's Annie and Sidney Lumet's The Wiz are incredibly bad.

I don't mean just misguided, they are inept and poorly done.

I blame Bernadette! She didn’t play the part, or sing, as written.

Oh Jesus, I forgot about Man of La Mancha.

I will say that one of the reasons we Generation Joneses went nuts over Rocky Horror in the late 70s was that for many of ud it was the first GOOD new(ish) movie musical we'd seen, and we could see it in the theater instead of on TV chopped up with commercials.

Xanadu wasn't too good, either, except about 5 or 10 minutes with Gene Kelly dancing with ONJ. And then there's Grease 2.

Grease (#1) was really horrible, too, in my opinion, though it seems to have become a "classic," now.

And there's At Long Last Love, and one From the Heart.

R82 Man of La Mancha is pretty much for James Coco’s Chubby Chaser Fan Club.

The remake of State Fair (1962) directed by Jose Ferrer...it was not good, but it's like a masterpiece compared to Mame.

Meh…

Another bad musical is Paint Your Wagon.

A couple of people above mentioned At Long Last Love, but I'm in a tiny minority that likes that movie.

Paint Your Wagon stunk. Clint made Lucy sound like Judy Garland

[quote]and one From the Heart.

I like One From the Heart, r84.

Lucy would have been great in HELLO, DOLLY!

r91 But Walter Matthau was fine in the role.

Call me a Big Ol' Mary, but I really like Mame and especially the big number at the grand house with all the men in riding costumes. It still gives me a thrill.

You’d fuck a horse in a barn, wouldn’t you?

Smarty r92! 😀

Dolly Levi would have been perfect for Lucy in 1968. The character is a schemer like Lucy Ricardo etc. and doesn't need to be a great singer.

Lucy was in fact included in Ernest Lehman's initial list of casting options. For Dolly, Lehman considered Lucy, Julie Andrews (probably trying to replicate his hit with her on Sound of Music ); Elizabeth Taylor, Maureen O'Hara and Carol Burnett. Crossed out on his list was Doris Day, who must have turned him down. Written in as an afterthought were Angela Lansbury and Deborah Kerr.

Lehman's list of Vandergelders is just as interesting: Jimmy Stewart, Rex Harrison, Richard Burton, Jackie Gleason, and Alec Guinness.

For Irene Molloy, Lehman considered Yvette Mimieux, Liza Minnelli, Mary Tyler Moore, Maggie Smith, Sally Ann Howes, Lee Remick, and Jane Fonda (!).

It would have been better with Shelley Hack R66!

[quote]Lucy would have been great in HELLO, DOLLY!

Lucy as Dolly and Gale Gordon as Vandergelder. Just imagine!

Talking about movie musicals, are Footloose and Flashdance considered to be musicals? They have singing and dancing, but none of the leads sing any songs.

They're movies featuring people on screen dancing not singing, r99. Musicals have people on screen singing.

R99 really?!

I liked Goodbye, Mr Chips......especially Petula Clark and Sian Phillips [then Mrs. Peter O'Toole]: "Oh, darling, I adore early English perpendicular."

The scenes when O'Toole & Clark are falling in love in Greece are beautiful...as is the song.

And of course London IS London!

Lucy croaking out the songs in her elderly, cigarette-ravaged voice was painful to hear.

[quote]“Cut!”

[quote]“Get me a cigarette. Get me two!”

Right away, Miss Ball.

Ann Margaret tested for Irene Molloy. Her screen test was up on YouTube for a bit.

R83- Grease (1978) was a fun B movie 🎥 musical but Can’t Stop The Music (1979) and St Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ( 1978) really were HORRIBLE.

Tommy

[quote] I've had a great career and met many amazing and famous people yes even Angela Lansbury many times

MARY!-est sentence of the month!

One of the weirdest things about the movie for me is the actual house they used for the Beekman Place apartment set. It was designed to look like a fucking mausoleum, so the scenes of people wildly having fun there look like they're in a horror movie.

Song of Norway

[quote]R95 For Irene Molloy, Lehman considered Yvette Mimieux, Liza Minnelli, Mary Tyler Moore, Maggie Smith, Sally Ann Howes, Lee Remick, and Jane Fonda (!).

I read that Ann-Margret really wanted that part. I don’t know why Gene Kelly went for an unknown instead. I’m not an AM fanatic, but she can sing and dance.

[quote] Paint Your Wagon stunk. Clint made Lucy sound like Judy Garland.

And Lee Marvin made Clint sound like Risë Stevens.

[quote]r107 - Tommy

Tommy was nominated for best picture. You may not like it, but it's not a bad movie.

She would have been perfect with an age-appropriate Dolly, r111.

R108 I was the asst. to the second barista who made cappuccino on the MSW.

Be careful!

I liked it r113. I threw it out there to see what others thought

[quote]Ann Margaret

Oh, dear.

No you didn’t R116

It's such a shame that Judy Garland wasn't in good enough shape to do the original Auntie Mame on Broadway and then the film. She would've been absolutely perfect if she'd been able to stay off the pills and keep her shit together.

Don’t you think the concentration of people who know Ann-Margret auditioned for a supporting role in HELLO, DOLLY! is probably higher here than anywhere else in the universe?

If the moon shit electricity, civilization would survive another 20,000 years. But it doesn’t, so we won’t.

Far be it from me to hold up Clint Eastwood as a singer, but pitted against Lucille Ball he wins hands-down. His voice is untrained, but musical.

He's no Lee Marvin, r122.

He's not even a Pierce Brosnan!

[quote]R119 It's such a shame that Judy Garland wasn't in good enough shape to do the original Auntie Mame on Broadway and then the film. She would've been absolutely perfect if she'd been able to stay off the pills and keep her shit together.

Conversely, she should have leaned into her addiction and done Mary Tyrone, Blanche Dubois, Martha in VIRGINIA WOOLF, etc. Why not? At least it would have been truthful.

Perhaps she could even stretch herself to sing alcoholic Birdie in Blitzstein’s opera REGINA.

Don't forget "At Long Last Love," another now lamented misunderstood "masterpiece." Another badly sung, acted, directed, and costumed cinematic turd.

Judy Garland as Martha in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Can you even imagine how insane that would've been?

I read that Judy was approached with a major revival of THE SHANGHAI GESTURE, with Liza to play heroin addict daughter Poppy.

The new songs wouldn’t come together, though.

The Little Prince (1974)

MARTHA …….. Judy Garland

GEORGE …….. Henry Fonda

NICK …….. Clint Eastwood and/or Burt Reynolds

HONEY …….. Connie Stevens*

——————————-

* Please Note: Miss Stevens must wrap production by May 15, as she is to go into “My Fair Lady” immediately after.

Connie got the part, but for Eliza, George Cukor also considered newcomer Donna Douglas.

Typical Cukor and his blonde casting couch...

I saw “Mame” at the historic Ohio Theatuh as a 9-year old in 1974. The mood was joyless and funereal as we exited, but I recall, and gave credit to our packed house that stuck it out. I never realized that Patrick Labyorteaux was the swearing grand nephew in the closing scene prior to watching on TCM. Why did they cast that blank slate tubby boy as young Patrick?!

Frankly, other than Robert Preston the entire movie was miscast!

Do you like gin, Mamie?

Love I it!

Great - after dinner we'll get out the cards and have a game!

Some of the best lines from the play were left out!

Barbra probably didn't want that cheap whore Annie Margaret to steal her thunder.

OP, the movie and Lucy's performance have many tremendous flaws, but it's simply not true that Lucy "mugs" through it. If anything, one of the big problems is the opposite: She plays much of the role with a somewhat tired "grande dame" affect, not enough life and youth and personality.

R8 I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical!

R126 It's been mentioned a couple of times.

R130 Henry Fonda was first choice and was offered the part of George in the original Broadway show but his agent turned it down. When he heard about it, he fired his agent.

I can't see Juidy Garland in the role of Martha at all. Maybe that's supposed to be a joke.

Edward Albee wanted Bette Davis as Martha. That would've been perfect since Bette pretty much WAS Martha IRL.

I tried to watch it. But I couldn’t take her hoarse voice and had to stop watching. She just sounded so bad.

OP Actually Scorsese's New York NY is worse. I couldn't make it to the end. In the first 5 minutes you want Minnelli to run away from De Niro. He's not the least bit charming or sexy. And over the next 90 minutes they're yelling, screaming and whacking away at one another. It's exhausting and not the least bit entertaining.

Also, unwatchable and therefore worse than Mame is Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love; it's embarrassingly bad and for the most part the acting is like something out of a mediocre high school production.

Ditto Xanadu which is headache inducing.

In comparison to all of the above, Mame seems professionally made

[quote]R140 I can't see Judy Garland in the role of Martha at all. Maybe that's supposed to be a joke.

It’s easier to picture after you’ve heard her drunken memoir recordings.

r143 I saw New York New York in its original release version. Supposedly it was 2 hours and 35 minutes, but I swear whatever I saw was much longer.

R144 there's a recording of Ura Hagen doing Martha and her drunk scenes sound very much like those Judy recordings

I think the problem with Xanadu is that it's so damn dull.

It’s dull and ONJ couldn’t act worth a damn.

[quote]Mame has been reassessed by a new generations who have appreciate it for the flawed masterpiece that it is

Only in your I Love Lucy fever dream. No one has reassessed except for those who say it's possibly worse than when it came out.

I like Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I didn't see a reason to update the timeline to the Second World War. But I love late Victorian, Edwardian, and WWI stuff.

I don't like Man Of La Mancha, but I didn't like the show either. But Peter O'Toole elevated every movie he was in.

[quote]Angela would have been a much better Mame, of course, even if she was ten years older by that time--she was still young.

Angela Lansbury looked old from the time she hit 25. And it showed up on screen. Rosalind Russell was too old. Mame was 35, tops. As with Rose in Gypsy, they keep casting women too old for the movie versions. What works on stage from a distance, never works in movies. Maggie Smith would have made an outstanding Mame. The movie still would have sucked because the musical mostly sucks, but she would have been great.

As for Judy Garland as Martha, it may have been thrown out there as a joke, but there's a real good chance she would have killed the part. You don't have to consider her problems with addiction to see her in the role. I never heard any of those tapes, but she proved her acting chops many times. If you can't see her as a love-starved, raging harridan with a very fragile core, you have a serious lack of imagination. Don't get me wrong, WAOVW is a phenomenal movie, and the cast is outstanding. But if were entertaining some alternative casting, Garland would have been a interesting choice.

As for Dolly? How old is she supposed to be. Streisand doing a Mae West imitation was cringeworthy. Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds were probably also too young. If you don't have a be a great singer, did anyone consider Ava Gardner?

Angela Lansbury looked old from the time she hit 18.

FIFY

R145 - NY, NY was later extended yet another 10 minutes a few years after its release.

There was an elaborate "Happy Endings" number near the end that was reduced to about a minute or two during the original release, but years later Scorsese got the number restored to the intended length.

Now the movie runs (some would say limps along) 163 minutes.

[quote]r149 As for Dolly? How old is she supposed to be. ... If you don't have a be a great singer, did anyone consider Ava Gardner?

I've always thought Dolly was living by her wits because she didn't have the luxury of relying on her looks. I think the role was originated by Ruth Gordon, who's no knock out.

I'd think Ava Gardner at any age is probably too beautiful for the role.

You're correct, r152. She opened on Broadway. Shirley Booth did the role on film.

[quote]As for Judy Garland as Martha, it may have been thrown out there as a joke, but there's a real good chance she would have killed the part.

If she had held on a little longer, how about Marylin Monroe as Martha? And it would have great if she could have teamed up with Jack Lemmon again, in "Days of Wine and Roses".

^ Marilyn

R154, I hope you're joking, because the idea of Marilyn Monroe (of all people!) as Martha in Virginia Woolf is beyond ridiculous.

R149 Judy Garland didn't have the right toughness for either Martha or Helen Lawson she was too tremulous and vulnerable.

Marilyn Monroe was too attractive for Martha, who was a slovenly frump.

R158 In 1966 Liz Taylor was too attractive for Martha. It was a shock when she was cast.

Albee wanted Bette Davis. And Uta Hagan played the role on B'Way and she was no beauty either.

But Taylor gained 30 pounds for the role and wore makeup designed to age her and gave a performance that was unlike anything she had done before.

The salt'n'pepper hair helped.

Yeah, Ava Gardner probably isn't a good choice. I was thinking of her in Night Of The Iguana. She was a "broad" in that movie, but yeah, still too pretty.

No one jumped on Maggie Smith for Mame? I still think that would have been a great choice.

She'd recently done Travels With My Aunt, r161.

Which was just on TCM, R162. She was great in that movie.

I read a press release in 1985, r163. They were going to renovate the Wiltern Theatre in LA and turn it back into a theatrical venue. The plan was to open with Maggie in Auntie Mame. They renovated the theatre but it's not used for theatrical productions. It's too bad that fell through.

[quote]In 1966 Liz Taylor was too attractive for Martha. It was a shock when she was cast.

Liz Taylor could do slovenly and unattractive, Marilyn couldn't.

I never like anything LB did except for ILL. She's not a good actress, and that movie especially was not a good fit. She was simply too old, and they did the whole thing in soft focus which was horrible. Ironically the Auntie Mame version with Roslin Russell is one of my all time favorite movies, and I thought she was amazing in it. She's one of those tired old popular actors that was given roles well beyond her range - like the number of songs Frank Sinatra sang that he completely ruined. Stay in your lane and thank the Universe you were given the chance.

I think Monroe was very shrewd about her image. When she finally produced her own movies, she chose to play gentle, winsome characters.

I don’t see her wanting to play a bloodthirsty barracuda like Martha.

Was NIAGARA the only time she played a villain?

R167, she also played the bad gal in Don't Bother to Knock

She wasn't bad, r168, she was disturbed.

"I'm sorry I was ever part of this movie."

"IT WAS A TOTAL HORROR!!!!"

-Bea being interviewed about Mame

R164 made that up.

R164. Nice to see Randy Rainbow sold out...

R169 ...she was just drawn that way.

[quote]Liz Taylor could do slovenly and unattractive,

Preaching to the choir.

[quote]Liz Taylor could do slovenly and unattractive, Marilyn couldn't.

Before Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, when did Liz Taylor ever play slovenly and unattractive in a film?

“Mame” cries for a more creditable remake, even if it’s with stunt casting and presented on Thanksgiving.

It would be good with age apropos casting with Beyoncé or Adele. Maybe even the “Wicked” girls.

1985, r171... it was in Drama-Logue.

Lucille Ball definitely could act when she was younger. She just didn’t seem to think she had to act in Mame. She basically just played Lucy with a brown wig.

Only a gravel voiced Lucy in that wig with her facial skin clipped back and seen thru a greasy lens was just pathetic. I actually feel kind of sorry for her because of the humiliation she went through… but she brought it on herself.

[quote] I can't see Juidy Garland in the role of Martha at all. Maybe that's supposed to be a joke.

Judy Garland could have been amazing in it. But you’re right, Judy’s distant cousin, Juidy, would have been lousy.

r180, I saw Juidy in Antigone and she was marvelous.

[quote] Before Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, when did Liz Taylor ever play slovenly and unattractive in a film?

Yes. It came later with the likes of X, Y, and Z.

And even later John Belushi characterized what everyone was thinking.

If there had been one titled-

Joanie Love Chaci- The Musical

That would be the worst musical film ever.