Mame * (1974, Lucille Ball, Robert Preston, Bea Arthur, Bruce Davison) – Classic Movie Review 9533

Director Gene Saks’s 1974 Mame is the way less than satisfactory movie of the all-time great Jerry Herman Broadway show, though even so it is a bit of a one-hit wonder – the title track ‘Mame’. But ‘Bosom Buddies’ and ‘Loving You’ are in there too, and maybe Open a New Window, We Need A Little Christmas, My Best Girl and If He Walked Into My Life are okay too.

In her last cinema movie, Lucille Ball left it too late to film Jerry Herman’s smashing 1966 Broadway show, so she is photographed out of focus or through gauze as the 1920s matron Mame Dennis interfering in everybody’s lives.

Nor could Lucille Ball sing, so they should have enhanced her voice on the soundtrack, but they didn’t and she sounds flat and off-key much of the time, shouting hoarsely and raucously. And, as producer, she shouldn’t have cut down Beatrice [Bea] Arthur’s joyous support performance as Mame’s bosom buddy Vera Charles, to the point of chopping out part of the show’s best tune, ‘Bosom Buddies’.

What’s left? Robert Preston performing ‘Loving You’, Onna White’s choreography, Theadora Van Runkle’s costumes and the ‘Mame’ fox-hunting finale are assets. But Mame is major disappointment.

Defending her singing, Lucille Ball said: ‘Mame stayed up all night and drank champagne! What did you expect her to sound like? Julie Andrews?’

Robert Preston and Bruce Davison also star as Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside and Older Patrick, with Jane Connell as Agnes Gooch, Joyce Van Patten as Sally Cato, John McGiver as Mr Babcock, Kirby Furlong as Young Patrick, Don Porter as Mr Upson, and Audrey Christie as Mrs Upson.

Also in the cast are George Chiang, Doria Cook [Doria Cook-Nelson], Bobbi Jordan, Patrick Labyorteaux, Lucille Benson, Ruth McDevitt, Burt Mustin, James Brodhead, Leonard Stone, Roger Price, John Wheeler, Ned Wertimer, Alice Nunn, Jerry Avres, Michele Nichols, Eric Gordon, Barbara Bosson and Sab Shimono.

As her farewell, Ball made the TV movie Stone Pillow in 1985 and a final TV series Life with Lucy in 1986.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9533

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