Almost There: Bea Arthur in "Mame"
Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 11:02AM 
This past Sunday, the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League celebrated the 75th Annual Tony Awards. Considering past intersections of Tony gold and Oscar success, it's fun to speculate which honorees might one day reprise their roles on the big screen and play a part in a different sort of awards season. Not that repeating an acclaimed stage performance for film leads to a surefire triumph with the Academy. For every Yul Brynner in The King and I and Viola Davis in Fences, there's a Robert Preston in The Music Man and Bea Arthur in Mame. That latter film saw 2022's Lifetime Achievement Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury ditched by Warner Bros. in favor of Lucille Ball, despite having originated the role to great acclaim on stage and already being a film star. It was a move everyone involved grew to regret.
Thankfully, the studios didn't replace Arthur from the original Broadway cast, so there's still something to love about the misbegotten Mame…
Besides being an adaptation of the 1966 Broadway hit, Mame is also a musical remake of 1958's Auntie Mame, itself a rousing success with theatrical and literary origins. However, the basic story remains intact throughout these many versions: At the end of the Roaring Twenties, young Patrick Dennis finds himself orphaned and left to the care of his eccentric aunt - the titular Mame. Together, they embark on myriad madcap adventures, going from wealth to potential penury, from courtship to widowhood. Patrick thus gets a bohemian education while his father's trustee, the rigid Mr. Babcock, tries everything in his power to lessen Mame's influence on the boy.
Playing second fiddle to Lucille Ball's tuneless auntie, Bea Arthur is Vera Charles, a working actress who happens to be Mame's best friend. Besides the glamorous costumes designed by Theadora Van Runkle and maybe Bruce Davidson's babyface, Arthur is the only reason to watch this train wreck. Her Vera is first presented to us as the First Lady of the American Theatre, a statuesque figure draped in velvet and crowned with a Louise Brooks bob. As soon as she appears, she's gone, drinking herself into unconsciousness at the sight of Patrick, promptly carried offscreen by a gaggle of obedient men. It's the movie's first successful joke, a piece of mannered physical comedy preluded by by Arthur's deep-voiced scathing delivery.
Henceforth, that shall be Arthur's purpose in Mame. She appears sporadically but always steals the spotlight and runs off with the scene, puncturing the badly sung musical with jabs of bitchy comedy. If there were any doubts about why Bea Arthur is such a beloved gay icon, her Vera Charles is enough to make them all vanish. The actress plays the part in drag queen fashion, a campy caricature through and through. Sure, she feels hopelessly stage-bound, but that's part of the charm. Whether downing a swig of champagne or soaking fully dressed in the shower, Vera is a creature of self-aware artifice. She's always posing dramatically and severe to the point of ridicule, but with an implied wink and dripping with irony.
Even when trying to charm Mr. Babcock and failing miseraby, Vera is an unflappable storm of dry wit and elegant deadpan. Only two things break the spell – genuine worry for her friend and professional indignation. In her first real showcase scene, Vera oscillates between tender regret over having caused Mame's unhappiness and fiery rage at the other woman's comments about her acting prowess. Then, squawking about the modernity of her latest operetta, Vera's devotion is put to the test. As she sits on the piano to better explain her new project and what part Mame can play in it, Arthur's Broadway-ready pipes take us from the salon to the stage.
Playing a pseudo-medieval lady astronomer cum convent school mistress, Vera is a vision of guffaw-worthy miscasting. Nevertheless, she's a consummate stage professional, all stylized gestures, hilarious fire and fury. Things only get better as they get worse, Mame's incompetence turning the bad melodrama into a circus of mishaps. At first, Arthur plays it cool, but the escalations of ineptitude are too much to bear. Thoroughly humiliated, she's incandescent. If looks could kill, Lucille Ball's Mame would have done a literal death drop right there. No such tragedy occurs, leaving Arthur's Vera to break into hysterical tears when she's finally away from the audience's view. It's viciously funny, not to mention cruel.
But of course, a good dose of cruelty is essential to Vera's character. Notice how, after Mame's husband dies, the diva is ready with vast ammunition of barbs – what better way to cheer a friend up than to insult them? The scene is a putative reunion and represents the high point of Arthur's performance. "Bosom Buddies" is a masterpiece of musicalized passive aggression, and nobody could do it like Arthur, full of panache and self-satisfied venom. There's also a stinging dimension to the moment, considering how the Tony-winner thought casting Ball over Lansbury was a terrible decision. Though Arthur also said she enjoyed working with Lucy, this insult-riddled duet might have been a tad cathartic for the embarrassed thespian.
While Lasbury alone wouldn't have saved the listless movie, it's impossible to deny that in scenes like "Bosom Buddies" the original Mame was sorely missed. Arthur does her to compensate for Lansbury's absence, but Ball can't keep up, no matter how wonderful she could be in other projects. When the (cut down) sequence goes past the zingers and into girlish rejoicing, it's difficult not to notice how precise Arthur's movements are, compared to her dancing partner. It feels unbalanced enough to spoil the comedy and dull the shine of Vera's malicious charm. Thankfully, during the movie's climax – a calamitous dinner party – Arthur is allowed to dominate with no attempt at feeble harmonizing or joint choreography.
Despite its abysmal reviews and box office numbers, Mame scored a pair of unlikely Golden Globe nominations. While Ball's nod might be indefensible, Arthur's was less controversial and, paired with her Tony gold, made her something of an Oscar contender. Stranger things have happened, both to worse movies and actually bad performances. And yet, the Academy chose to ignore the future Golden Girl. Maybe the fact that she was primarily a stage and TV star hurt her chances? Instead, the Best Supporting Actress nominees were Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express, Valentina Cortese in Day for Night, Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles, Diane Ladd in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and Talia Shire in The Godfather Part II. Bergman won, though even she didn't think the honor was deserved. As for Arthur, she was never nominated for an Oscar, though she earned nine Emmy nominations and two victories for her work in Maude and The Golden Girls.
You can find Mame, available to rent, on Apple iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, Vudu, and the Microsoft Store.
Reader Comments (9)
I watched this movie last year, it's really bad, Ball is over the top and Arthur is just ok. But it was a weak year for the category (except for the actual winner and Cortese of course), maybe Keaton (The godfather II). Isela Vega (Bring me the head of Alfredo García) or the ladies from Young Frankenstein (Leachman, Kahn o Garr) were better options.
I'm a Bea Arthur fan but have avoided this film due to it's notorious reputation but after this i'll be interested in giving it a look,if only to complete my 74 lineup which at the moment goes like this
Cortese an easy winner 2nd runner up Diane Ladd then Wendy Hiller for Murder on the Orient Express,Jennifer Jones The Towering Inferno Sylvia Sims for The Tamarind Seed with shout outs to Karen Black,Madeline Kahn,Cloris Leachman and Katherine Cassavettes.
Arthur was good here, but the whole movie was such a mess, or, as Arthur herself put it, a "tremendous embarrassment." She only did it because her husband, the director, told her that she "owed it" to him to play the part on film, but she made it through like the pro she was. I am also glad that Jane Connell was ultimately able to join the project as well, and I find Agnes to be a more interesting character than Vera, but flashier works better in musicals. And 1974 was such a wide open race, and Arthur was riding high on the success of Maude, so I'm not surprised that she was part of the conversation. Like last year, the Globe winner wasn't nominated for the Oscar and the Oscar winner wasn't nominated for the Globe, so the category remained fairly fluid. But I can't argue for the exclusion of any of the ultimate nominees in favor of Arthur's solid but not outstanding performance here, even though this sadly likely was the closest any of The Golden Girls got to an Oscar nomination.
The rights to Mame sold for $3M. Whispers at the time suggested Lucille Ball invested $5M to land the lead role. Angela Lansbury described herself as "ticked" for not being cast.
Prior to filming the TV icon went on a skiing holiday where she was badly injured. The original director George Cukor was unavailable a year later when the project went forward on the revised start date. Broadway director Gene Saks took the reins. Originally cast as Agnes Gooch, Madeline Kahn was fired in favor of Jane Connell who played the role on stage.
It's difficult not to wonder how the film adaptation of Mame would have fared under the skilled eye of Cukor and featuring the hilarious Kahn (who made Blazing Saddles instead).
She is definitely the most remarkable thing in this overlong mess!
The 1974 lineup is so weird, Karen Black and Wendy Hiller should have been there alongside Arthur.
Madeline Kahn losing the part of Agnes was probably great for her career.
Arthur is fun, but I don't see her as award-worthy. But it was kind of a weird year for supporting actresses and beyond Cortese I'm not entirely sure who I'd go with. But I guess maybe Cortese, Kahn for one Brooks and both Leachman and Garr for the other and ... sure, why not Jennifer Jones getting a 6th nomination 30 years after she won. Truffaut + Brooks + an Irwin Allen production feels very that time.
Bea absolutely deserved a nom! :)
Bea is terrific in this. I think she is very close to getting in for a nom. I do think the movie drags her down to a great degree. The 1974 Best Supporting Actress lineup is kind of fantastic but has a few blips. Madeleine Kahn, who I adore, does not deserve to be cited here. She is hilarious, but what she's doing is schtick and not acting. I would take her out. I have not seen Day for Night (a blind spot I need to correct) so I cannot comment on Cortese. But the other three deserve to be there. And Jennifer Jones should be in this lineup, and I think should be the winner. This is a tough call for me to make, as Ingrid was the first actress I was rooting for to win at the first ceremony I ever watched fully on TV when I was a kid. But several months later, I saw Jennifer in The Towering Inferno, and damn, that's a performance for all time. She would be my winner.
Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles is one of the all-time great nominations. "I'm Tired" is an absolute masterclass in comic timing and making every little moment count for maximum impact.
As for Bea, she's certainly the best thing in a very misguided movie. The whole project is a big "what if," and almost all the choices were the wrong ones. Imagine an entirely different project with Lucy and Bea. The contrast and the similarities in comic styles could have really worked. Again, what if?