Madeline Kahn (7 page)

They performed in eveningwear, tuxedoes for the men and long black gowns for the women. The dress code relaxed somewhat in summer, when the women wore shorter skirts and traded in their black pumps for white ones, “to make our legs look longer,” Tomlin says, recalling going shoe-shopping with Madeline. Formal dress was meant to reinforce visually the sophistication of the material, and it’s one reason patrons, including Madeline’s family members, recall the Upstairs as elegant. But cast members say the room was narrow, the performing space cramped, the dressing rooms mostly a state of mind rather than a physical reality.

Under producer Julius Monk, the Upstairs revues won acclaim (and thriving business), but by the time Madeline got there, Monk had decamped to start his own club at the Plaza Hotel. Many critics, and Madeline herself, considered the material in the Upstairs revues produced by Monk’s successor, Rod Warren, to be inconsistent at best, and business fell off—a fact owner Irving Haber reminded Warren about continuously. As Haber saw it, only revenue from the Downstairs kept the Upstairs running.

“When I entered that job, I did not know what a revue was,” Madeline told Gavin. But she soon developed reservations about the material, which she found “arch,” “sarcastic,” and often “effete,” aimed at the club’s largely gay clientele. “I had to be very smart in picking from the material Rod presented at the beginning of the season. You had to make these things work, and it was hard. At first I did whatever he asked me to. But then I got more savvy and realized, be sure you have a very good solo, be sure the other material is stuff you really feel you can make work. Rod gave his opinions, but it was basically up to you.”

Though Flagg and Tomlin wrote some of their own sketches, Warren wrote much of the material himself and took contributions from freelancers, as well. He got away with paying writers even less than performers, as the market for comedy writing was limited (the few alternatives included supplying jokes to television comedians and sketches to other revues). Political humor and social commentary aimed gentle barbs at figures such as President Lyndon Johnson and California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan. In
Just for Openers
, Madeline impersonated Lady Bird Johnson, mocking her “beautification” of American highways: “I go seeking buttercups, dear little buttercups, though I find practically none.” But the same show included a less-gentle tirade by Flagg as a bigoted Southern waitress, and a prescient sketch in which Madeline and Aberlin played bored operators at “Dial-a-Deviate.” As Aberlin observes, phone-sex lines hadn’t been invented yet.

Listening now to the recordings of Madeline’s three revues, it’s easy to pick out the material aimed at gay audiences. In
Just for Openers
, the three women sing a proto-
Forbidden Broadway
number called “The ‘Dolly’ Sisters,” spoofing three stars of
Hello, Dolly!
(Ginger Rogers “can’t sing,” Mary Martin “can’t dance,” and Carol Channing “can’t act”).
Mixed Doubles
featured an entire song about the Spoleto Festival, and
Below the Belt
offered a song called “Camp,” in which Madeline, Carter, and Tomlin learn from antique dealers and fans of Bette Davis. “After a while, I didn’t feel very feminine,” Madeline told Gavin. “I started to feel that parts of me were not seen or regarded highly at all.”
²⁴

Madeline’s “very good solo” in her second revue was “Das Chicago Song,” and it earned her praise in the
New York Times
review of the show, at the same time stealing some of the spotlight from Janie Sell, who replaced Flagg (the
Times
critic loved Sell, though Madeline found Flagg more impressive).
²⁵
But in her third revue, Madeline was dismayed to discover that the big comic solo—“Love’s Labour Lost,” about a bride’s use of then-controversial contraceptives—went to another classically trained lyric soprano, Dixie Carter. In another number, “The Great Society Waltz,” Carter again took the operatic chores, notably a vocalise on the Kermesse from Gounod’s
Faust
. And in “Suburbia Square Dance,” about wife swapping, Carter sang quotations from
West Side Story
and took all the highest notes.

Years later, Carter told Gavin that she found Madeline intimidating and that the two didn’t hit it off. What’s clear is that Madeline found Carter equally intimidating. For the first time, she’d found someone who could sing what she could sing and get just as many laughs. The newcomer was slimmer and arguably better looking than Madeline, too. Meanwhile, Carter’s fiancé, businessman Arthur L. Carter, was trying (successfully) to steer her away from show business. Surveying the company of
Below the Belt
, he told her, “None of these people are going to make it.” Those words would haunt Dixie when she sat at home watching Madeline and Tomlin on television a few years later.

Madeline formed lifelong friendships with Aberlin and Tomlin. In the mid-1960s, many people found Tomlin’s comedy utterly mystifying. Already her characters included Lucille the Rubber Freak and the Very Tasteful Lady, which were unlike anything else and invested with specific, sharply observed and convincing detail. Even Madeline didn’t quite understand what Tomlin was doing, but she liked it, appreciating the influence of Ruth Draper on Tomlin’s work. Tomlin, in turn, admired Madeline’s talent. “Everything seemed to spring from her natural comedic
center,” Tomlin says. “Everything about her gestures—she was inherently comedic—I can’t say anything more. If she wanted the material to be comedic in her hands, it would be. Just tipping the attitude one way or the other. Even on a talk show, she’s comedic, just talking, because she has that kind of musicality to her voice—her inflections.” One of the world’s most gifted mimics, Tomlin continues, “I can’t possibly imitate it. It was the way she might ruminate over something while she’s talking.”

Madeline’s approach to character was subtle, Tomlin says. “She didn’t have to lay something on or find another voice for it, I never thought”—though she does cite a Santa Claus song from
Below the Belt
, in which Madeline used a little-girl voice. (With variations, the voice would resurface on
Saturday Night Live
and
Oh Madeline
, and in
Young Frankenstein
.) Several of her friends have observed that whether in conversation or onstage, Madeline might use an accent or alter the tone of her voice, and only later would they realize that she had just taken on a different identity, as specific in her mind as any of Tomlin’s characters.

Aberlin bonded with Madeline in part because both were Jewish New Yorkers, and both their fathers walked out on them. Onstage, there was no competition, Aberlin says, not least because in numbers like “The ‘Dolly’ Sisters,” each had her own business—though she does feel that, because she trained as a dancer, not a singer, Michael Cohen gave Madeline better songs in
Just for Openers
. She and Madeline remained close over the years, sometimes going to dinner together with Cohen, and Aberlin was among the few permitted to see Madeline at the end of her life. She describes Madeline as “a
neshuma
, a precious soul.”

Aberlin has fond memories of going out with cast members and friends after
Just for Openers
finished for the night. They’d play girl-group songs on the jukebox and sing harmony. This kind of socializing had important benefits for Madeline, since the Upstairs shows attracted other talented performers who wanted to see their prospective colleagues (or rivals) performing current material. Among the connections Madeline made at this time were George Coe and Robert Klein, with each of whom she would work many times, and Jim Catusi, a comic who waited tables at the Upstairs, with whom she began an affair.

By the time Madeline started seeing Catusi in 1967, she’d gone back to live with her mother in Queens. Freda had taken secretarial jobs, first at a company called 21 Brands, then at Actors Equity. She hadn’t given up her theatrical ambitions, though she had given up her first name (on the advice of a numerologist, she later said). She was now Paula Kahn, and she had headshots and résumés printed up, listing many credits—some
honest, some exaggerated, and some entirely fabricated. When Paula ran low on money, Madeline demonstrated her sense of responsibility, relinquishing her independence and her apartment in Manhattan to move back to Romeo Court and help support her mother. Jef Kahn remembers that he had taken the larger of the children’s bedrooms during Madeline’s absence, and when she returned, she allowed him to keep it.

Living with Paula complicated Madeline’s love life. Jim Catusi complained to his friend Brandon Maggart that after a bender, he’d call up Madeline at five o’clock in the morning only to spend the next hour talking to Paula. Maggart remembers that for a while Madeline moved in with Catusi. If so, it was the only time she lived with a boyfriend. But his alcoholism “was not her thing,” Robert Klein says, and the relationship couldn’t survive.
²⁶
Catusi was “the only person I ever knew that was funnier drunk than sober,” Maggart says. “Usually, it’s the other way around: a drunk person thinks they’re funny and they’re not. But he was unfortunately not at his best when he had a few drinks under his belt.” (Both men later went into recovery.) In 1969, the two joined a revue at the Upstairs, where producer Jon Stone spotted them and signed them for a series of vaudeville-style sketches on a new children’s show,
Sesame Street
. As “Buddy and Jim,” they taught kids how
not
to get through a door with an ironing board, and how
not
to hang a picture.

Catusi and Maggart—like Aberlin and Graubart—found a berth in children’s television, as did many other veterans of New York’s nightclub revues, and their sensibilities informed the shows in which they appeared. On the straitlaced
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
, Aberlin sang frequently, but her comedic gifts found few outlets.
Sesame Street
and
The Electric Company
, however, took a zanier approach. Had Madeline not pursued her other options so avidly, then she, too, might have wound up on children’s television in the 1970s as a regular, not as a guest star. Such a gig could have translated into steady work and the enduring affection of a generation or more of children, but the tradeoff was typecasting, as both Aberlin and Graubart would discover. In 1997, Graubart even lost a plum role in the film
Judy Berlin
to a better-known actor, her former Upstairs co-star, Madeline Kahn.

Upstairs at the Downstairs provided Madeline with an extraordinary showcase. The shows there garnered raves from Judith Crist (first at the
New York Herald Tribune
, then at the
Times
), the two record albums, and a few television appearances, including those on
The Today Show
and
The
Ed Sullivan Show
. But Madeline never saw the revues as a permanent or even lasting gig, and as soon as Aberlin and Flagg left
Just for Openers
, she began looking for other options.

One came from David Hoffman, her friend from Hofstra. Already a budding filmmaker in college, Hoffman would go on to make award-winning documentaries. In 1967, he’d been hired to co-direct an industrial film for Metropolitan Life Insurance. Intended for insurance agents, medical professionals, and patients,
A Song of Arthur, or How Arthur Changed His Tune and Solved a Weighty Problem
addressed the diet of a suburban father. To keep things lively, it was through-composed, with every line of dialogue sung to music and lyrics by Stan Freeman. The role of Arthur’s wife isn’t large, but it involves some comedy, and Hoffman considered the score “operatic.” He immediately thought of Madeline.

They shot on Long Island in winter, 1967. On the set, Hoffman found Madeline easy to work with. He still considered her extremely attractive, though she seemed no more interested in men than she had seemed at Hofstra. On screen, she looks quite chubby, and her character, like Arthur, goes on a diet. Despite Madeline’s persistent concerns about her appearance, she recognized the movie’s value as a promotional tool. For the next few years, she used it to demonstrate her proficiency both as a screen actor and as a singer.
²⁷

Her next break came not from
A Song of Arthur
, but at the Upstairs several months later. “What you hoped for in those shows,” she told James Gavin, “was that [Broadway producer] David Merrick would come in and say, ‘Have I got a part for you!’ And that’s exactly what happened.” As New York’s cabaret scene faltered, unable to compete with television, rock‘n’roll, and turbulent social change, “It was the right time to leave,” she said. “I had gotten in right under the wire. I felt, ‘This is gonna end soon.’ I didn’t miss it.”

How Now, Dow Jones
(1967)

MADELINE’S REMARKABLY BAD LUCK IN BROADWAY MUSICALS STARTED
with her first. A swinging, topical farce,
How Now, Dow Jones
featured a book by Max Shulman (best known for
Dobie Gillis
), lyrics by Carolyn Leigh (
Wildcat, Little Me
, and many of Frank Sinatra’s best-known songs), and music by Elmer Bernstein (fresh from his Oscar for the score to
Thoroughly Modern Millie
). The plot, which Leigh suggested, focuses on a young woman who works on Wall Street and whose boyfriend refuses to marry her until the Dow Jones average tops one thousand; naturally, she winds up with someone else. Produced by David Merrick and bound for Broadway,
How Now
stopped first in Boston.