Same Mame, different Name
Alan from Miami, FL writes –
“Okay, first of all I love your show, but I have to get this out before my head explodes. Its Saturday night and I am listening to your show in Miami, and I am screaming at my radio in my car in the most loving and respectful way I possibly can. It is because of your Broadway question at the top of the show. I will just get to the point. Ok, Auntie Mame and Mame are two completely different shows that are both based on the same woman and the same book called Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. Auntie Mame is the non-musical version that preceded the musical version that is simply called Mame. Both shows had broadway runs and Auntie Mame definitely starred Rosalind Russell on Broadway AND the amazing film version that followed. Mame the musical version came later and starred Angela Lansbury on broadway and when it came time to make the film version of the musical they went with Lucille Ball in the title role.
So, the question that you asked in its original form, the correct answer would have been Rosalind Russell in Mame because Rosalind Russell was never in Mame because she was in Auntie Mame.”
While the panel got stumped on semantics we did issue a correction at the end of that very same show. To say the least, everyone here at Says You! has been sent a directive to watch the original Auntie Mame! Thanks to Alan for the clarification and reaching out.
I greatly enjoyed the “Music Trip Around the World” segment of the show recorded in Woodstock, VT that I heard September 28 but was surprised that the panelists had so much trouble with it. I think that the panel had some difficulty with the example question, the answer to which was from the U.S.A.’s own national anthem. The quotation from the verse I wish were regularly sung in place of the first one: “And thus be it ever when free men shall stand between their loved homes and a war’s desolation: blest we victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must — when our cause it is just — and this be our motto: “In God Is Our Trust”. And the star-spangled banner . . .” Of course, this might be regarded as an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
The real shocker was that no one on the panel correctly identified “Our hope is not yet lost” as coming from Israel’s national anthem, Ha Tikva (“The Hope”). I would have gotten that one right when I was a high school student — I’m 73 now — for two reasons, and I’m not Jewish. There were two reasons for that, one being that it was part of one of the “Fireside” books of songs published by Simon & Schuster.
The other question I answered immediately but puzzled the panel quoted the United Kingdom’s anthem, “God Save the Queen [or King, depending on who the reigning sovereign is]”. In fairness to the panel, the verse about other countries containing “Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks” is not, I think, sung often today. It’s been replaced with one starting, “Nor on this land alone, but be Thy mercy shone from shore to shore . . .” (I’m not sure whether most singers pronounce the “shone” to rhyme with “alone”.)
Not incidentally, the post-World War II German national anthem still is set to Haydn’s tune, originally used for the old Austrian anthem “Gott Erhalte”, a prayer for the Habsburg emperor, but with words very different from those of the former “Deutschland Ueber Alles”.
Please pardon a few errors in what I just now posted. I didn’t reread it carefully enough before pushing the Post button.
In the first paragraph, the quotation WAS from . . . and it should have included Blest WITH victory.
In the next paragraph, I shouldn’t have repeated “two reasons”.
Sorry about that. (And that’s a phrase that may bring back sad memories to those of us who lived through the Sixties.)