Mame (1974)

Film: Mame (1974)

Stars: Lucille Ball, Beatrice Arthur, Robert Preston, Bruce Davison, Jane Connell

Director: Gene Saks

Oscar History: Both Ball & Arthur were cited for Golden Globes, but neither of them translated to Oscar.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Lucille Ball click here to learn more about Ms. Ball (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week, we talked about Lucille Ball's tumultuous marriage to actor Desi Arnaz, which overlapped with the most successful period of her career, where she & Arnaz redefined television as the Ricardos on I Love Lucy, still considered one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.  I Love Lucy went off the air in 1957, and while the two appeared in the successful Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour specials, their onscreen & offscreen relationships dissolved in 1960.  Ball, though, stayed on television for the next 15 years, first in The Lucy Show and then with her children with Here's Lucy.  Not as well-remembered today (particularly Here's Lucy, which thanks to competition from I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show, struggled to gain a foothold in an already crowded "Lucy Reruns" syndication market), both series were massive hits in their days, and from 1951-1972, Lucille Ball had a Top 10 hit every single season (even when it went off the air, Here's Lucy was still in the Top 30).  During this time, Ball tried her hand at other industries, including theater & film, marking one of her bigger successes opposite her The Big Street costar Henry Fonda in the rom-com hit Yours, Mine, and Ours, which finally put Ball in the same stratosphere in cinemas that she had had for years in television.  But all careers have lows with their highs, and today we will talk about perhaps the lowest moment of Lucille Ball's career until that point, and one of the most infamous flops of the 1970's: Mame.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar with either the original Auntie Mame film with Rosalind Russell (which I had seen) or the smash Broadway musical which has been revived many times (which somehow I haven't seen), Mame is the story of Mame Dennis (Ball), an eccentric (and wealthy) spinster who is made the legal guardian of her nephew Patrick (Davison as an adult) after her brother's death.  Mame raises Patrick unconventionally, inviting him to the "school of life" rather than a more traditional, conservative upbringing given his status.  She also goes broke early in the film, but finds a loophole around that when she marries Beauregard Burnside (Preston), a wealthy Southern gentleman.  The back half of the film shows, after Beauregard dies in an avalanche, the once-again wealthy Mame trying to save Patrick from the doldrums of life by sabotaging his relationship with a snobby society girl who is only interested in money.  As this is a feel-good movie, Patrick eventually sees the light & marries Mame's Irish maid, with their kid now spending time with Auntie Mame, completing the cycle from Patrick's childhood.

It's important to understand a few things about Hollywood in 1974 when considering this picture.  For starters, musicals like Mame weren't really something that Hollywood was making anymore.  While there were films that had been made that had mirrored the level of success of previous generation's of musical, they weren't usually comedies (think Fiddler on the Roof or Cabaret, both pretty dramatic pictures), and so Mame already felt dated.  Warner Brothers also was sinking a fortune into the film, and as a result they wanted a known commodity.  Though they picked several key players from the Broadway production for the big-screen adaptation (including Bea Arthur & Jane Connell), for the lead role they felt that Angela Lansbury, who had been a Tony-winning sensation in the part, wasn't a big enough name to lead the film, and instead chose television's biggest icon instead.  There's a famous (potentially apocryphal) legend that Ball went to see Lansbury in the role, with Lansbury initially flattered before she noticed Ball watching the play while taking notes in the balcony...and that was when Lansbury realized she was never going to get to play the role for Warner.

Ball, though, was all wrong for the part of Mame.  In her early 60's at the time (a decade older than Lansbury), she couldn't sing (at all), and vanity seemed to get the best of her as she was frequently shot in soft focus to make her look younger (there are moments in the film that looks like the lens of the camera was covered in vaseline).  As a result, she was basically unwatchable & off-key in the musical numbers.  Even a part like Mame, which doesn't require a huge range (she's not Sally Bowles or Mama Rose), was too much for her, and it shows onscreen.  Ball isn't as bad in the scenes where's she's talking (she's still Lucille Ball-there's charisma to spare), and lord knows there are other problems with this movie (the sound mixing is excruciatingly bad), but the critics were right-Warner had made a foolish calculation in trading Lansbury for Ball, and what had looked like a potential Oscar player quickly became an industry punchline.  Ball would never work in movies again.

This was sadly not the last noted failure of Ball's career.  A decade later, despite having more money than she needed & her legacy firmly cemented thanks to her previous series playing in perpetuity in reruns, Ball wanted to take one last stab at television, which she did in 1986's Life with Lucy.  The show, though, didn't work-the jokes weren't funny and Ball's brand of humor felt dated in an era where Miami Vice and Moonlighting were hits (ironically, one of the biggest shows of that season was Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury in the role that would make her a global TV superstar).  It didn't last the season, and Ball would die three years later, with the unfortunate knowledge that her last two major projects had been high-profile flops.  Luckily for Ball, though, her legacy is secure.  Decades later, we're still in love with Lucy, an actress synonymous with television in the way Marilyn Monroe is with movies or the Beatles are with pop music.  Next month, we're going to take a look at a different star (and good friend) of Lucille Ball's whose brief career in film never took off, but that led him to become of the biggest names in radio & the early days of television.