We’re back, y’all! And to celebrate, we decided to go with the biggest piece of shit musical we could find!
Yes, it’s Mame! The musical story that proves once and for all that no matter how much vaseline you smear on the lens, you can’t revisit a classic if you cast the wrong person in the lead.
Our story starts here, in 1920s Greenwich Village at the home of Mame Dennis (Lucy, bien sur) who’s throwing yet another of her famous shindigs. She puts out her 50th cigarette of the night and croaks her way through an opening number.
Great comedienne. Shitty singer.
Suddenly Agnes Gooch shows up with Mame’s recently orphaned nephew, Patrick. In her gin-soaked haze, she greets them warmly.
Mame’s friend Vera feels about children much the same way we do.
Honestly, Bea Arthur and the costumes are just about the only reasons to sit through this mediocrity.
The drunken revelers torture poor Patrick and force him to slide down the banister again and again to amuse them. They ignore his crying.
The next morning, Mame wakes up with a hangover, although you can’t really tell what with the impeccable makeup, pearls and about 10 pounds of grease smeared on the camera lens.
She tells Patrick that she’s going to show him the world, which in her alcohol-addled brain means…
…taking him to abortion rallies,
and generally just scaring the shit out of him for fun.
This bitch is crazy.
She is surprised to find out that Child Services doesn’t agree with her parenting techniques. They take him away on the same day the stock market crashes.
Vera takes pity on the poor old drunk and tells her she can have a part in her latest play to make some money.
She’s Lucy. It goes about as well as you’d expect.
Fortunately, Patrick ran away from his boarding school and shows up to make her feel better…
…by smearing a pork chop on the lens.
Mame tries her hand at being a shop girl while inexplicably wearing one half of a nun’s habit. Robert Preston plays Beauregarde Jackson Pickett Burnside, who apparently has a nun fetish. Unfortunately, their open flirtations gets her fired.
So she goes home and croaks out another song while abusing her servants.
Beauregarde shows up to take her out to dinner…
…and the next thing you know, Lucy’s got a new hair color and she’s taking the lead in the Vagina Hat Sweepstakes.
Beauregarde invited her down to the family plantation and for some reason, she decided to dress like Mae West for the occasion.
She meets her rival, Sally Cato. This being the south, they pretend to be best friends even though they hate each other on sight. Sally convinces Mame to ride in the fox hunt the next day.
Comedy ensues, but it’s a little hard to make out exactly what’s going on because they shot all of Lucy’s closeups through a bag of ice, apparently.
This being a musical, everyone suddenly loves Mame and breaks into song. Somewhat creepily, in fact.
Suddenly they’re married, she’s got a new hair color, and she looks like Jiffy Pop.
While the forgotten Patrick bypasses puberty completely and sits in his dorm room wondering why he has no friends.
Probably because he has an 8 by 10 of Lucille Ball hanging on his wall.
Beauregarde dies off-camera and Mame mourns for about 6 seconds.
Then, it’s time for yet another hair color change and a drunken duet with Vera.
“Bosom Buddies” is a great little song, but Lucy, while a first class comedienne, simply can’t deliver the bitchy lines the same way Bea Arthur can.
The two old broads drunkenly stumble home and decide to sexually abuse poor Agnes for kicks.
They force her into a shitty prom dress and tell her not to come home until she’s good and fucked.
Meanwhile, Mame goes out to meet the Upsons, the family of Patrick’s fiancee, all of whom are J Crew models.
Lucy silently judges them for having a black maid.
Because mistreating your Asian butler doesn’t count as racism.
She tells Patrick that he’s marrying into a family of bigots and they have a big fight.
So she goes home and dresses up like a drag queen.
Hey, it works for us.
She has the Upsons over for a little get-together. They all comment on her superior foundation garments.
Bea Arthur makes the kind of entrance that we vow to make before we die.
And Mame invites over 500 pregnant women to shock the Upsons into storming out.
Suddenly Patrick’s married to the (apparently properly white) maid, Mame finally lets herself go gray, and they’ve handed over their son to her so she can abuse him like she did his poor shell-shocked father. The end.
Roz Russell is laughing her ass off somewhere.
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