Mame Puts On New but Familiar Face
Vincent Canby
Strictly marshmallow. Paging Roz Russell or Angie Lansbury. This one's not for our Lucy.
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Some great characters of literature will not be still. They keep coming back. Dracula is one. Auntie Mame is another.This determinedly eccentric Beekman Place hostess, who was first introduced to us by Patrick Dennis in his 1955 novel, appeared next as a 1956 Broadway comedy, "Auntie Mame," which was adopted into a 1958 film and then as a 1966 Broadway musical called "Mame," which has now reappeared as a 1974 movie musical.It opened yesterday at the Radio City Music Hall, a little tired though certainly not out of breath. The newest "Mame," with Lucille Ball in the title role wearing a different colored wig for every Administration from Hoover's through Truman's is as determined to please in its way as Mame is in hers.The opening credits, which look like a Cubist collage in motion, are so good they could be a separate subject. The songs by Jerry Herman, when he isn't writing material ("Open a New Window") more fit for a lesser Walt Disney effort, are full of zest and sometimes wit. From time to time the dances by Onna White are allowed to take over the screen, a rare occurrence in most movie musicals these days.It's all relentlessly good-natured but unless you've been packed in storage some where it's so familiar that it puts a tremendous burden on its star. Miss Ball is a great comedienne who has spent the last 20 years creating an in-home image as a lucky nut whose worst-laid plans al-always turn out successfully.When the character of Lucy, an inspired slapstick performer, coincides with that of Auntie Mame, the that of Auntie Mame, the Big-Town sophisticate, "Mame" is marvelous. I think of Lucy's turning a Georgia fox hunt into a gigantic shambles, or of her bringing the curtain down on a New Haven first-night when, as a budding actress, she falls off a huge cardboard moon. I even treasure her prying loose the fingers of a sloshed Beatrice Arthur who won't give up her martini glass.Miss Ball has some great moments but she is not even a nonsinger who fakes singing very well, and as for the dances, well, she just more or less follows what the chorus people do with her, or she stands aside and sort of conducts them. What is worse is that she has been photographed in such soft focus that her face alternately looks beatific—all a religious glow—or like something sculptured from melting vanilla ice cream.Gene Saks, the director, has so protected Miss Ball's appearance that when the comparatively rugged Robert Preston, who plays Mame's Georgia millionaire, comes into the same frame, he too, becomes suddenly fuzzy of contour, as if he'd walked into a Nylon tent.Neither is the camera (or maybe its the customer) terribly kind to Beatrice Arthur, another fine comediienne who plays Mame's bitchy actress-friend. Miss Arthur ("Maude") has been dressed up to look like a football player in drag, which may be more in keeping with the kind of comedy "Mame" is than I remember from earlier incarnations.So much of it is insult or put-down comedy that when Mame undertakes to save her nephew Patrick (Bruce Davison) from the clutches of bigoted suburban bores, the effect is less funny than smugly rude.The movie does have two first-rate production numbers, one, early on, featuring Miss Ball and her 9-year-old nephew (KirbyFurlong), which becomes a salute to the nineteen-twenties. The other is the title song performed by the star and a chorus of what looks to be about 1,000 redcoated black-toppered fox hunters. Both numbers have a kind of plush, old-fashioned extravagance about them that takes us back not to the periods depicted in the film but to the innocent fifties when movie musicals hadn't yet thought of themselves as significant.I have great reservations about "Mame." but I suspect a lot of people couldn't care less. All things being equal. Mame's next metamorphosis could be as a television series, by which time most of us may be too old to remember that her story wasn't handed down to us on tablets.

MAME, directed by Gene Saks; screenplay by Paul Zindel, based on the Broadway musical by Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee and Jerry Herman, which was, In turn, based on the Patrick Dennis novel and the stage play by Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Lee; produced by Robert Fryer and James Cresson; director of photography, Philip Lathrop; editor, Maury Winetrobe; music and lyrics, Jerry Herman; choreographer, Onna White; presented in association with the American Broadcasting Companies; distributed by Warner Bros. Running time: 131 minutes. At the Radio City Music Hall. This film has been rated PG.Mame . . . . . Lucille BallVera . . . . . Beatrice ArthurBeauregard . . . . . Robert PrestonAgnes Gooch . . . . . Jane ConnellOlder Patrick . . . . . Bruce DavisionYoung Patrick . . . . . Kirby FurlongGloria Upson . . . . . Dorla CookSally Cato . . . . . Joyce Van Patten