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.