The Darling Buds of May: All the Way Mae
Monday, May 12, 2014 at 3:45PM [Editor's Note: In the interest of keeping things fresh, we aren't doing the traditional "May Flowers" series this year but this spin-off, spearheaded by abstew (who you just heard on the podcast) though I'll also be chiming in, featuring characters named that way. - Nathaniel.]
Full Name: Mae Mordabito aka "All the Way Mae". It's not just a name, it's an attitude.
Film She Starred In: A League of Their Own (1992) The hit film from director Penny Marshall (Laverne!) about the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Co-stars include Geena Davis as Dottie, Tom Hanks (There's no crying in baseball!) as the drunken manager Tommy Dugan, a pre-Tank Girl Lori Petty as Dottie's sister Kit, Rosie O'Donnell as Mae's best friend Doris, and David Strathairn.
[more stats after the jump...]
Played By: Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, known simply as Madonna (perhaps you've heard of her?) and Eunice Anderson...
Occupation: Mae is the #5 Center Field player for the Rockford Peaches. Before joining the league she was a taxi dancer in New York. [Madonna Trivia Alert: the same profession Eva starts in when she hits Buenos Aires in Evita.]
Time and Location: The majority of the film takes place during WWII in 1943 when the female baseball league was formed due to the men going off to war. The team is based in Rockford, IL (but they travel around to various cities via bus for their games). Apparently, Madonna was not a fan of filming in the Chicago area writing to a friend while filming...
When God decided where the beautiful men were going to live in the world, he did not choose Chicago."
First Appearance in the Film: 23:01 After Dottie and Kit have arrived for try-outs, they meet Mae and Doris. Tough-talking, cigarette-smoking, New Yawk-accented, the duo don't exactly welcome the girls with open arms. In fact, Doris throws a baseball right at the girls' head.
Hobbies: Men, men, and, oh, yeah–more men. (She doesn't have the nickname 'All the Way Mae' for nothing...) In addition to baseball, she also enjoys swing dancing, teaching illiterate girls how to read with smutty books, poisoning dinners of chaperons in order to sneak out to meet, well, men, and threatening to kill annoying children with baseball bats. Oh, and she can catch baseballs with her hat!
Quotables:
Mae: What if at a key moment in the game my, my uniform bursts open and, uh, oops., my bosoms come flying out? That, that might draw a crowd, right?
Doris: You think there are men in this country who ain't seen your bosoms?
More About this May Flower:
Madonna has been criticized a lot for her actressing. And while she's not as bad as everyone says she does read too self-aware onscreen which can lead to wooden moments. But she's absolutely great in this movie. Perfectly cast in a memorable supporting role that plays to her strengths, the role riffs on the Madonna we already know (sassy, sexy, kinda slutty). At the time the film was released, she was at the height of her popularity and sex appeal coming off of "Vogue" and The Blonde Ambition tour and having just given her greatest performance the year before (as herself, naturally) in Truth or Dare.
Bonus Points: This film also gave us her Golden Globe nominated song "This Used To Be My Playground" which, 22 years later, is still as brilliantly sappy in all its Adult-Contemporary glory as it was when she donned that Rockford Peaches uniform.
Reader Comments (4)
This was always my favorite Madonna. Just great.
So quotable Dottie "yeah I have 5 just like him"
This was one of the very first movies I saw in theatre, and strangely enough, this is also my earliest memory of Madonna. I remember taping the song off of the radio and playing it over and over. Very fond memories!
I agree that Madonna is brillant in this movie...I'm pretty sure that if another actress hade given this perf she would have been considered for several awards...Madonna No Way...but thankfully she escaped Razzie that time, a noteworthy sign!