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| Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: bobby2 09:59 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| I'm sure this has been well covered but I was just watching a TCM interview with Angela Lansbury. She says she really had to fight for the role. Wikipedia says Mary Martin turned it down and Herman was talked out of wanting Judy Garland (whom he wrote it for.) It then says many other actresses were considered before Lansbury was hired. One thing Alec Baldwin gets wrong in the interview is he says she had never done a musical. She doesn't correct him but she had done Anyone Can Whistle. (I've never seen or heard that.) She then goes on a bit about she knew she had it in her to "take the stage" and do Mame. Was Anyone Can Whistle not that demanding a part for her? It sounds like she is saying she had untapped resources she knew she could deliver but had to convince them. (so I guess Anyone Can Whistle didn't deliver that?) |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: musicaldirny 03:28 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| In reply to: Who was offered Mame? - bobby2 09:59 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| Actually, Jerry Herman said that he go the idea to bring Angela in because he had seen her in "Anyone Can Whistle" where she was glamorous. Most people were typecasting her as older.. And I never read that he wrote "Mame" for Garland... although Garland was apparently interested in replacing Angela after she left.. but the producers knew that Garland was no longer reliable. |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: JohnDunlop 11:21 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
| In reply to: Who was offered Mame? - bobby2 09:59 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| Mary Martin wrote about turning down "Mame" in her 1976 Autobiography. | |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 10:58 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 10:57 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
| In reply to: Who was offered Mame? - bobby2 09:59 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| I believe I read that Nanette Fabray and Dolores Gray were the other two finalists for the role of Mame when the musical was being cast. At that time, Lansbury had been known mainly for playing mothers or matrons, sometimes of people she was within a very few actual years of, like Laurence Harvey in "Manchurian Candidate" and Elvis Presley in "Blue Hawaii". She has gone on record at the time saying that Mame Dennis was her dream role. I think she very much wanted to play a glamorous leading lady role. She started off in films as kind of sexy in "Gaslight" and "The Harvey Girls" and downright lovely in "The Picture of Dorian Gray, but MGM started to put her on a more character parts track and that's what stuck until Mame. Of course, she was back to leading character parts in "Dear World", "Sweeney Todd", etc. thereafter, but as a big Broadway star. Lee Remick had the more traditional leading lady role in "Anyone Can Whistle", while Lansbury was the charactery lady mayor. Since it was a quick flop, it's possible not that many people had seen her in the show or were really aware of her musical abilities, though Jerry Herman certainly championed her at her Mame audition and thereafter. | |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: Thom915 08:55 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Who was offered Mame? - PlayWiz 10:57 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| In a wonderful moment of unusual non-traditional casting, Lena Horne was briefly mentioned. Sadly she never played the role. | |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: Teesh 11:54 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Who was offered Mame? - PlayWiz 10:57 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| Mary Martin was the original choice but she turned it down after hearing the score. Original director Josh Logan wanted Nanette Fabray which didn't sit well with the rest of the production team. Once Gene Saks came aboard, Geraldine Page was the strongest contender but she sang badly at her audition out of nerves. Some of the producers strongly championed Dolores Gray and Ann Sothern was actually mentioned in gossip columns at the time as having the role. But Jerry Herman fought strenuously for Lansbury to have the role. | |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: bobby2 12:12 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Who was offered Mame? - Teesh 11:54 pm EDT 05/14/18 | |
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| I can remember the first time I heard Lansbury sing It's Today. I knew the movie but when I took the LP out of the public library I loved Lansbury's energy. You could just feel her commanding the song and stage. | |
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| re: Who was offered Mame? | |
| Posted by: Pokernight 05:06 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Who was offered Mame? - bobby2 12:12 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
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| Of the several MAME'S I've seen, including Angela, my favorite was CELESTE HOLM. | |
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| Lansbury's successors were more traditional musical theater stars; but her look was unique, too. | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 07:40 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 07:35 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Who was offered Mame? - Pokernight 05:06 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
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| One other very small point. I'm remembering the very specific way the Lansbury Mame re-minted the role away from the Russell prototype. She actually looked (more) like the character might've in the era, 1920s - 1940s. The costumes were designed for her, she had the short 20s bob, and with her large luminous eyes framed by the haircut, she took Mame Dennis back to a version of her roots. I think it's a small part of the equation, since her Mame had none of the Russell look and her performance was stylistically very different. She had the same elegance, but the Lansbury Mame wore the trappings with more period-specific flavor. Russell's Mame, brilliant, her line readings are iconic, mostly looked trapped in the era of the film, the 1950s. After Lansbury, the B'way Mames ran from Paige to Miller, and Miller looked like the 1960s Carlotta Campion, a role she finally played. I remember the shots of Miller with the trumpet. That's a different women; she had no trace of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Small thing, but the musical has always been about that first image, one that made an indelible impression in the Lansbury persona. The poster was not that 1950s flash. It has a 20s feel. By the time we got to Ball, in the garish costumes she wore, it was a different woman. I saw Edie Adams in stock, and she was very accomplished, but had that 60s TV hair and though she wore replicas of a few of the original designs, she was sort of a caftan Mame, like the show was being performed on the Dean Martin variety show. The character works best, to my thinking, when she brings her era onto the stage somehow. All those great ladies of song who wore their own hairdos made the character little outre versions of themselves, which Lansbury never settled for. |
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| re: Lansbury's successors were more traditional musical theater stars; but her look was unique, too. | |
| Posted by: bmc 11:21 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
| In reply to: Lansbury's successors were more traditional musical theater stars; but her look was unique, too. - Delvino 07:35 am EDT 05/15/18 | |
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| I( remember an Earl Wilson column in which he wrote that Mary Martin was coming back to broadway in MY BEST GIRL, a version of Auntie Mame.That album cover is one of the best Bway logos ever, sums up the show and is not unlike Miss Lansbry. | |
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