Madeline Kahn (53 page)

37
. Eric Myers,
Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis
, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000).

38
. Richard Tyler Jordan,
But Darling, I’m Your Auntie Mame!
(Kensington Books, New York, 1998, 2004).

39
. “The Kaleidoscopic Madeline Kahn.”

40
.
Valentines & Vitriol
.

41
. Warren G. Harris,
Lucy and Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple
(Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991).

42
.
Hollywood Reporter
, “Bea Arthur Quits ‘Mame’ Film After Role Disagreement,” Radie Harris, December 22, 1972.

43
. At the Golden Globe Awards in 1975, Arthur won the prize for best supporting actress in a motion picture for her work in
Mame
, beating Madeline, who was nominated for
Young Frankenstein
.

44
. “The Kaleidoscopic Madeline Kahn.”

45
. The movie is sometimes referred to and marketed with its UK title,
The Hideaways
.

46
.
Charlie Rose
, December 16, 1996. On a few occasions, Madeline alluded to her meeting with Brooks in the commissary, but their encounter made no lasting impression on him. In our interviews, he consistently said he didn’t know her before her
Blazing Saddles
audition.

47
. “Woses Are Wed.” Ellipsis in the original.

48
. “The Kaleidoscopic Madeline Kahn.”

49
.
NYT
, “Movie Review: ‘Blazing Saddles,’” Vincent Canby, February 8, 1974.

50
. Helen Epstein,
Joe Papp: An American Life
(Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1994).

51
. Kenneth Turan and Joseph Papp,
Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told
(Doubleday, New York, 2009). Bovasso preferred Jill Clayburgh, who auditioned for Chrissy and eventually married Rabe.

52
. Ibid.

53
. Ibid.

54
. Ibid.

55
.
NYT
, “Joseph Papp at the Zenith—Was It ‘Boom’ or Bust?” Patricia Bosworth, November 26, 1973.

56
.
Free for All
.

57
.
Time
, “Shallow Soul in Depth,” T. E. Kalem, November 19, 1973.

58
.
New Yorker, Boom Boom Room
review, Brendan Gill, November 19, 1973.

59
.
NYT
, “‘Boom Boom Room,’” Clive Barnes, November 9, 1973.

60
. “Woses Are Wed.”

61
.
Washington Post
, “The Non-Perils of Playing Pauline: She’s the Counterpoint on ‘Cosby,’” Simi Horwitz, December 21, 1997.

62
. WOR Radio,
Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane
, interview with Madeline Kahn conducted by George Bettinger, circa 1997, courtesy of George Bettinger.

63
. “Madeline Kahn Looks Beyond Funny Roles.”

64
. Gene Wilder,
Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art
(St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2005). In correspondence with me, Wilder confirmed the recollections he shared in the book.

65
.
Kiss Me Like a Stranger
.

66
. Ibid.

67
. Pauline Kael,
Reeling
(Little, Brown, Boston, 1977). The essays contained in the book originally appeared in the
New Yorker
.

68
. David Black,
The Magic of Theater: Behind the Scenes with Today’s Leading Actors
(Macmillan, New York, 1993).

69
.
Newsweek
, “The Mad Mad Mel Brooks,” Paul D. Zimmerman, February 17, 1975.

70
.
The Paul Ryan Show
, undated, 1979. Found on YouTube and cited in
American Masters
, “Mel Brooks: Make a Noise,” PBS, 2013.

71
.
Washington Post
, “Madeline Kahn, On the Road Back to Broadway,” Joe Brown, October 26, 1988.

72
. “Madeline Kahn Looks Beyond Funny Roles.”

73
. Kreuger quotation from liner notes to the
At Long Last Love
soundtrack album, RCA recording ABL 2-0967.

74
. Burt Reynolds,
My Life
(Hyperion, New York, 1994).

75
. Not until Tom Hooper’s adaptation of
Les Misérables
in 2012 would another big-screen musical be shot with live sound. Hooper’s claim that his was the first film ever shot this way was either ignorant or fraudulent.

76
. Reynolds,
My Life
.

77
. Ibid.

78
. Gould demonstrated his musical comedy skills in the
Saturday Night Live
episode in which Paula Kahn made her network television debut in 1976.

79
. Pauline Kael,
Reeling
.

80
.
NYT
, “‘At Long Last Love’ Evokes Past Films,” Vincent Canby, March 7, 1975.

81
.
Time
, “Playing Taps,” Jay Cocks, March 31, 1975.

82
. Ibid.

83
. Kael,
Reeling
.

84
. Madeline possessed drawing talent, though she didn’t keep many samples of her work. The opening pages of her script for
Two by Two
are decorated with elaborate doodles, including her design for the Temple of the Golden Ram, topped off with curling horns.

85
. Director’s DVD commentary,
Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother
, 2006.

86
.
NYT
, “Adroit ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother,’” Vincent Canby, December 15, 1975.

87
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, “Gene Wilder,” Roger Ebert, June 3, 1979.

88
. Bruce Dern,
Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have: An Unrepentant Memoir
(with Christopher Fryer and Robert Crane; John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2007).

89
. Leibman won the Tony for his portrayal of another historical, closeted homosexual, Roy Cohn, in
Angels in America
in 1993. Both Leibman and Valentino deserved better than they got in
Won Ton Ton
.

90
.
Things I’ve Said
.

91
. MK personal notebook.

92
.
NYT
, “Miss Kahn Lifts ‘Won Ton Ton,’” Richard Eder, May 27, 1976.

93
.
SNL
’s first music director, composer Howard Shore, describes the process by which he selected material for guest-hosts in Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller,
Live from New York: An Uncensored History of “Saturday Night Live” as Told by Its Stars, Writers & Guests
(Little, Brown, Boston, 2002).

94
. Archive of American Television, Bucky Henry interview, February 26, 2009.

95
. Though Radner later married Gene Wilder, she met him not through Madeline but on the set of
Hanky Panky
(1982). See
Kiss Me Like a Stranger
.

96
. Madeline’s copy of the
Carol Burnett
script contains an additional musical sketch, in which streetwalkers visit a used clothing store. The Jeanette MacDonald costume was later worn by Madeline’s Upstairs co-star Dixie Carter in an episode of
Designing Women
.

97
.
NYT
, “What Happens When the Scenery Tells Us a Lie,” Walter Kerr, May 5, 1977.

98
.
NYT
, “Language Alone Isn’t Drama,” Walter Kerr, March 6, 1977.

99
.
NYT
, “‘Marco Polo Sings a Solo,’ a Play by John Guare, Opens at the Public,” Clive Barnes, February 7, 1977.

100
.
NYT
, “Song Pushes Song in ‘She Loves Me,’” Richard Eder, March 30, 1977. Eder disliked both the material and the concert staging. His review of
She Loves Me
effectively doomed the rest of the concert series, Hayward-Jones says.

101
.
Time
, “In Love with Love,” T. E. Kalem, April 11, 1977.

102
. Later, Whitlock appeared in
History of the World, Part I
, for which he painted the mattes that permitted Brooks to depict ancient Rome while shooting scenes “with a few sticks of furniture on the back lots of Universal,” Brooks says. Whitlock’s artwork is also featured in two films of particular interest to readers:
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
(1973), and
Mame
(1974).

103
.
People
, “Picks and Pans,” unsigned, January 23, 1978.

104
.
NYT
, “Mel Brooks in ‘High Anxiety,’” Vincent Canby, December 28, 1977.

105
. “A Conversation with Neil Simon,” DVD featurette produced and directed by Michael Gillis,
The Cheap Detective
, Columbia Pictures DVD, 2000.

106
.
NYT
, “Simon’s ‘Cheap Detective’: Everybody Revisited,” Vincent Canby, June 23, 1978.

107
. As of this writing, the Internet Movie Database still lists among Madeline’s credits for 1977 a television production,
Once Upon a Brothers Grimm
. She is neither seen nor heard at any point in the program, though Teri Garr, Chita Rivera, and Cleavon Little participate.

108
. Milholland was also an actor who worked with Ryan O’Neal in
So Fine
(1981). He reportedly based Oscar’s character on the impresario David Belasco, author of the source play for Puccini’s
Madama Butterfly
.

109
.
NYT
, “A New Head of Stem for the Old ‘Twentieth Century,’” Betty Comden and Adolph Green, February 9, 1978.

110
. Ibid.

111
. Eddie Shapiro,
Nothing Like A Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater
(Oxford University Press, New York, 2014). All quotations from Judy Kaye are derived from Shapiro’s book; she declined an interview with me.

112
.
Boston Globe
, “‘Twentieth Century’ Limited,” Kevin Kelly, January 22, 1978.

113
.
Time
, “Monorail,” T. E. Kalem, March 6, 1978.

114
.
NYT
, “Stage: ‘On Twentieth Century,’” Richard Eder, February 20, 1978.

115
.
NYT
, “Aboard the ‘Twentieth Century’—Lots of Brio and a Few Bumps,” Walter Kerr, February 26, 1978.

116
.
New York
, “Charming Choo-Choo, Leaden Lulu,” John Simon, March 6, 1978.

117
. MK personal notebook.

118
. Andy Propst,
You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman
(Applause Books, New York, 2015).

119
. MK personal notebook.

120
. See Gould’s obituary,
NYT
, “Dr. Wilbur J. Gould Dies at 74; Throat Surgeon to Famous Voices,” Richard D. Lyons, February 6, 1994.

121
. See Johnson’s obituary,
NYT
, “Beverley Peck Johnson, 96, Voice Teacher,” Anthony Tommasini, January 22, 2001.

122
. Produced by the J. Walter Thompson agency, the television ad for
On the Twentieth Century
was one of the first for a Broadway show and extremely expensive, requiring construction of new sets that were destroyed after shooting ended. (This was less expensive than shooting on the real sets in the St. James, where stagehands would be paid overtime.) There was no question of reshooting for Judy Kaye, the ad’s art director, Arthur Korant, says.

123
.
Downstage Center
, American Theater Wing, interview with Cullum recorded December 28, 2007, found at
http://americantheatrewing.org/downstagecenter/detail/john_cullum
.

124
.
People
, “‘High Anxiety’ Isn’t Just a Film Title to Madeline Kahn, Newly Derailed on Broadway,” Shaun Considine, May 15, 1978.

125
. Kaye has won Tonys for her work as featured actress in the musicals
Phantom of the Opera
(1988, directed by Prince) and
Nice Work If You Can Get It
(2012). In the same category, she was also nominated for
Mamma Mia!
(2002).

126
. Madeline weighed 117.5 lbs. when she left her apartment on Thursday, May 4, and must have been surprised to discover that she weighed 120 lbs. by the time she got to New Age, later that day. At the end of the first stay, her weight had dropped to 113 lbs. For those who aren’t women, or actresses, or—more specifically—Madeline Kahn, the difference hardly seems worth troubling over.

127
. This wasn’t a problem when Madeline worked with Big Bird on
Sesame Street
, several years later.

1
.
Washington Post
, “Madeline Kahn, On the Road Back to Broadway,” Joe Brown, October 26, 1988.

2
.
NYT
, “Screen: ‘Simon’ by Marshall Brickman,” Vincent Canby, February 29, 1980.

3
. Rosenberg went on to play a character based on Peter Bogdanovich in Cybill Shepherd’s sitcom for Carsey-Werner in the 1990s.

4
. Grant went on to play gay men in landmark productions: Joe Pitt in the original Broadway cast of
Angels in America
, and Russell on
thirtysomething
.

5
. Henry already had co-directed
Heaven Can Wait
with Warren Beatty, in 1978, with a script by Beatty and Elaine May.

6
. Rivers and Ullman in
American Masters
, “Mel Brooks: Make a Noise,” PBS, 2013.

7
. Comment from
IMDb.com
as of June 2013.

8
. Kurt Vonnegut, foreword to
Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
(paperback edition, Dial Press, New York, 1999).

9
.
People
, “Madeline Kahn of Manhattan Is Now on a Santa Fe High and That Town’s Blithest Spirit,” Robert Goldstein, July 25, 1983.

10
.
Santa Fe New Mexican
, “Festival Theater to Open June 29,” June 17, 1981.