Broadway Babylon (29 page)

T
he fabulous role of Auntie Mame in the eponymous 1956 Broadway play, based on the previous year’s novel by Patrick Dennis, was first incarnated by Rosalind Russell. Unusually, the veteran film and stage star next got to reprise her part in the 1958 hit movie version. Onstage, she was succeeded by Greer Garson, Beatrice Lillie, and Constance Bennett (once Hollywood’s top-paid actress). Sylvia Sidney and Eve Arden did national tours of
Auntie Mame
.

The 1966 musical version,
Mame
, made a belated leading lady of Angela Lansbury, who did not get to do the (non-hit) 1974 film version that was Lucille Ball’s screen swansong. Lansbury was followed by a veritable parade of stage Mames, from Ann Miller and Celeste Holm to Janis Paige, Jayne Morgan, and, in Las Vegas, Susan Hayward—also, in a 1998 New York benefit performance, Charles Busch (with Peggy Cass returning to enact her unforgettable Agnes Gooch).
Mame
revivals have starred Ginger Rogers, Juliet Prowse, Patrice Munsel,
Laugh-In
’s Joanne Worley, Christine Baranski, and others.

Even before
Auntie Mame
became a smash stage hit, people were asking whom the madcap character was based on. She purportedly derived from Patrick Dennis’s own aunt. Supposedly the novel was barely veiled reality, but the bestseller was more than mere veiling—a closet was involved. To begin with, Patrick Dennis was really Edward Everett Tanner III (1921-1976), raised in affluence by his parents, not by an aunt. Tanner’s other pseudonym was Virginia Rowans, and in all he penned sixteen frothy, today mostly obscure and out-of-print novels. He enjoyed more bestsellers on the
New York Times
list at one time than anybody else for decades to come.

Did anyone really believe that Mame Dennis, despite the story’s obligatory matrimonial wedding, would have a
heterosexual
ward and nephew? Tanner, though madcap and flamboyant, was content to let the world imagine that he was “little Patrick” all grown up. In the conservative 1950s, “Pat” tried hard to hang on to and increase his hard-won super-success. His first two novels had made no impact. Then
Auntie Mame
was rejected by nineteen publishers before seeing the light of print and spending two years on the bestseller lists.

Several women claimed to be the model for Mame Dennis, but once, in non-media company, Pat was asked who Mame
really
was? He smiled knowingly and pointed at himself. In 1958, there was a book sequel,
Around the World with Auntie Mame
. Like its precursor, it was less a novel than a collection of stories featuring Mame. The chief difference between the stage version and the books was that Patrick Dennis, an admittedly light and superficial scribe, kept the relationship and growing bond between aunt and nephew—which is the heart of the play and the musical—in the background. (A gay-straight duo, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, transformed the book into a play, and another gay man, Jerry Herman, composed and wrote the lyrics for the sometimes philosophic songs in
Mame
.)

Another of Dennis’s books,
Little Me
, made it to Broadway as a 1962 musical with TV star Sid Caesar enacting eight roles (a ’90s revival starred the even more versatile Martin Short). Another novel,
Guestward Ho!
, became a CBS sitcom pilot starring Vivian Vance in her attempt to break out from Lucille Ball’s shadow and get her own TV series. To her lasting chagrin, the series—short-lived, as it turned out—instead starred the younger and slimmer Joanne Dru, forcing Vance to resume second-banana status opposite her redheaded costar and boss.

By the early 1970s, Patrick Dennis was all written out. His gossamer style had become outdated and his sales were ghostly. He’d long since become an alcoholic, attempted suicide (in 1962), and been confined for eight months to a mental institution (electroshock therapy and all). Finally aware that he could never escape his true sexual and affectional orientation, he left his wife and kids and moved to Mexico for several years. He himself had been abandoned by a male partner who left him for a rich woman and a seemingly hetero lifestyle in Morocco, where that pair wound up alcoholic recluses.

Pat’s final transition was his most unusual, like something out of a novel. Always a big spender, though no longer on the bottle—for the most part—he was in need of a job.
Auntie Mame
had made him rich, but the contract he’d signed for subsidiary rights included nothing about a musical comedy adaptation, and so he drew very little income from the huge success of
Mame
, which ran five years on Broadway. To settle the matter, arbitration was sought, but the
situation wasn’t resolved until after the author’s death. He had declined to attend
Mame
’s opening and didn’t see it until summer 1967, while visiting New York City.

He wrote his sister: “I found it a crashing bore. Angela Lansbury was just too common for words, which is the one thing Mame cannot be. Celeste Holm should at least be a bit classier.” But the supporting actress from
All About Eve
and
Gentlemen’s Agreement
(for which she won an Oscar) proved far less popular and acclaimed than Lansbury.

And so, in what he couldn’t know would be the last few years of his life, Edward Everett Tanner III became a butler. One of the references given by Edwards Tanner—his new alias—to his first millionaire employer was from Patrick Dennis. “Who is Patrick Dennis?” asked the former ambassador and ex-owner of Brentano’s. Pat wrote his son, “Considering that
Auntie Mame
kept that defunct art-supply establishment in the black during both 1955 and ’56, I was a little miffed when he [asked].”

The once-famous writer sold most of his belongings and threw himself into his new lifestyle, glorying in a generous salary, privacy, and anonymity, authority over a household staff, and the fact that in between decorating, delegating, etc., he hardly had to spend a cent. He explained, “I am beautifully housed … and given anything I want to eat and drink. My laundry is done for me and even the dry cleaner gives a 50 percent discount just because so much work is thrown their way.”

As to his new role, “I simply love it. A ham at heart. And when I switch out to serve dinner every evening I feel half actor and half prop man. It’s fun. And it’s also terribly profitable.” Guests would often offer him tips. “Tipping doesn’t embarrass me at all, unless it’s lower than $50—and it never has been. I simply bow lower, say, ‘Modom is too generous,’ and tuck it into my jockstrap.”

He concluded, “I shall probably [keep doing this] until I drop, as I could never reaccustom myself to paying out money for such fripperies as food, rent, utilities, and telephone bills.”

His next employer was an elderly millionairess, for whom he headed up a staff of ten. Finally, he worked for Ray and Joan Kroc, the owners of McDonald’s. They were his favorite employers (his least: the Republican dowager). But then came the bad news: like his father and grandfather before him, Tanner contracted pancreatic cancer, a disease often associated with abuse of alcohol and tobacco. He retired of necessity, reunited with his wife and children, and died not long after at age fifty-five.

Although his name, like most of his books, is now all but forgotten, Patrick Dennis was instrumental in the mainstreaming of “camp,” or at least a mostly heterosexual version of it. Only in his last novel,
3-D
, published in 1972, did he venture partly out of the closet. His legacy to pop culture is Mame—whether
as an aunt, musical, or otherwise, a brilliant and enduring creation and self-reflection.

T
HOUGH
M
AME WAS A CHEERFUL
, giving, and open-minded spirit, not all of her thespic incarnations were too. The diva temperament sometimes got in the way. Case in point: Ann Miller of MGM and terpsichorean fame, also renowned for her big, black shellacked hairdo. She wasn’t the last actress to actively object to a younger, attention-getting actress playing the supposedly shapeless and sexless Agnes Gooch—the amanuensis whose other function is to make Mame Dennis seem younger, thinner, and more graceful by comparison.

In 1969, Ann Miller was the final Broadway Mame. Jerry Herman enthused, “She was very warm and funny and we added a special tap routine for her in ‘That’s How Young I Feel’ that stopped the show. Annie is a good sport and we became quite friendly. We always catch up when we run into each other at opening nights.” Miller may have been warm and friendly toward her composer and musical mentor, but not toward one supporting female player.

Laurie Franks had been playing Gooch when Miller arrived in 1969. (Screen rights had sold to Warner Bros. the previous year for $3 million, but no film version could be released before 1971, so as not to compete with the Broadway and national touring productions.) Mame was the first Broadway starring role for “Annie,” but upon meeting Ms. Franks she blurted, “She can’t play Gooch. Her complexion’s too good.” Miller determined to get a new Gooch, which didn’t happen overnight because Laurie was part of a tightly knit company and had her professional superiors’ backing—up to a point.

“[Miller] wasn’t really interested in her acting,” Franks recalled, “but in getting to the song-and-dance numbers. And she was terrific in those, and they put a tap number in for her, and they were giving her oxygen offstage.” Decades earlier, Miller had been clocked as the fastest-tapping dancer alive.

Mame
was a challenge for Miller, trying to prove herself in a new medium. However, rather than fall in with the company, she kept aloof and did things her way. Laurie Franks: “We weren’t really too pleased with her. In the scene when they were talking about getting me dressed, she would sometimes ‘tap dance’ with her fingers on the back of my neck.” Whether or not Ann was thinking with her fingers, the habit greatly disconcerted Laurie.

Behind the scenes, Miller was trying to banish Franks, which contrasted with Annie’s image as a southern-fried, friendly gal who’s a lady but can kick off her shoes with the low-down-dest of ’em. In the book
Sing Out, Louise!
(not to be confused with this author’s
Sing Out!
), Franks admitted that Miller tried to have her fired when the show moved to the Broadway Theatre. The star declared she would sign her contract if Laurie Franks were dismissed. The
producers stated they couldn’t do that. Miller responded, “Well, then, I’ll go back to LA.” So the producers agreed to demote Laurie to playing Cousin Fan, which was fine with la Miller.

“I gave my notice, but I had to stay for two months so they could replace me. It was breaking my heart to be out there onstage playing Cousin Fan. It was really rotten.”

M
ADELINE
K
AHN GOT A BETTER DEAL
than Laurie Franks when she came up against diva Lucille Ball for the 1974 movie of
Mame
. Coral Browne, British costar of the film
Auntie Mame
, recalled, “I heard that Miss Ball was leery of both her female supports,” including Bea Arthur, who had already won a Tony for her role of Vera Charles. (Bette Davis had campaigned for the screen role of Mame’s best friend, an acclaimed theatrical lush.) Browne, the 1958 Vera, added, “Miss Ball preferred to be the only funny lady in the cast.” Yet when
The Hollywood Reporter
intimated that Ball was trying to oust Arthur, Lucy threatened legal action.

“Lucy had no worries about playing Mame,” offered producer Robert Fryer. “Most star actresses, by that age, think they
are
Mame.… Lucy did worry somewhat about being upstaged.”
Mame
would have been Madeline Kahn’s second movie. Several critics had written that she almost stole her first one,
What’s Up, Doc?
, from Barbra Streisand. Lucille Ball wasn’t about to let the talented comedienne, thirty-one years her junior, steal
her
picture.

The star later professed that Kahn couldn’t cut it, that she’d waited five weeks for Kahn to create a characterization. “She got them [the producers] for fifty grand,” huffed Lucy, “and she knew that all she had to do was play it cool—she would get paid off and go to work immediately on
Blazing Saddles
. She had no intention of giving me Gooch.”

Mame
director Gene Saks said that Lucy turned on Madeline the first day of rehearsal, criticizing her voice and walk. Kahn stood her ground, which infuriated Ball, who had casting approval and complained to her director and wept in front of her producers. A devastated Kahn was eventually fired, but thanks to her contract, was fully paid. (
Blazing Saddles
was a hit and earned her an Academy Award nomination.)

Stage Gooch Jane Connell, circa fifty but completely lacking in sex appeal and slimness, was hired instead. Said Saks, “She was really too old for the part,” especially as Agnes Gooch gets pregnant. But Lucy liked her.

Despite Ball’s public disclaimers, she and Bea Arthur didn’t get along. Part of the friction was due to Arthur’s having become a TV star herself, via
Maude
, which ranked number four in the ratings compared to the long-running
Here’s Lucy
at number fifteen. In later years, Arthur remembered
Mame
as one of the worst experiences of her life, while Lucy disparaged Arthur’s second hit series,
The Golden Girls
, as being vulgar and near obscene.

Although several Mames had not been inherently musical, the beloved Lucy was in a category by herself. When she began recording “If He Walked into My Life,” the ballad that Eydie Gorme had a hit record with, composer Jerry Herman, in the recording booth, tore his earphones off in horror. For her part, Ball dismissed criticism of her voice, saying it was right for the character. “Auntie Mame drank and stayed up all night. Was she supposed to sound like Julie Andrews? Come on!”

Though reviewers carped at Lucy’s warbling in
Mame
, she’d have sounded worse if not for Jerry’s help. He revealed, “One day, she was trying to sing the line ‘Open a new window, open a new door,’ but she just couldn’t hear that half-tone on
door
. I managed to teach her every other note, but she just couldn’t get that half-tone. The poor woman was in agony. So was I.”