Word: madams
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...been the work of veteran songwriters like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe. They found it possible in the '50's to treat familiar tales of high society or backstage life which might have spelled doom in the hands of their juniors. Call Me Madam ,Can Can, The Sound of Music and Camelot were triumphs of technical genius, the net products of their creators rather than of their subject material...
Cutting Capers. Then a fairy gold-mother appears, a working madam (Beatrice Straight) willing to aid a matron in distress with a part-time afternoon job as a $100-an-hour call girl. Barbara is appalled-but not for long. When a packet of almost $5,000 arrives addressed to Nelson, it is clear to the audience, if not to him, that his wife is making good in the oldest business...
Soon, Nelson is shocked to learn the truth about the mystery money. Yet by Act II, he and Barbara are using it to throw a party for neighbors whose style of living they ape and envy. When the madam suddenly appears at the party to announce that the police are on to her, it becomes clear that all of the wives have been cutting capers in her beds. And their husbands are in the know. With baleful urbanity, the men band together and make plans to protect their tax-free sincome...
...essentially impotent, and to Mayer--as to Welles--this is not a small part of the American myth, for their impotence is both a driving source of power and an ultimate source of failure. In a whorehouse scene just before Fisk is shot, Claudia, a whore, says to her madam, "I would rather be Mr. Fisk's whore than the President's lady." Listening, Fisk answers gently, "I would rather be Claudia's hero than President," and then follows Gould to a business conference...
...smaller parts, mostly of parasites and people Fisk attracts into his whirlwind way of life, Joan Tolentino as a madam and Andy Weil as a barber and several drunks are funny and invariably interesting to watch. Arthur Friedman is top-notch as Drew, also as a lunatic Indian fighter speaking half in words, half in pidgin sign-language. Stephen Kaplan doing two numbers in blackface is revolting, and when revolting, Stephen Kaplan is invariably magnificent. Dominic Meiman as Fisk's secretary, among other parts, is consistently excellent, as are can-can dancer Lindsay Crouse's legs...