Madeline Kahn (13 page)

Eunice was “my great good fortune, and sort of a blow to my spirit,” Madeline said in 1989. “I knew that Eunice was as far removed from my essence as she could be—as opposed to what Streisand got to do, which was to play herself. And her first role [Fanny Brice in
Funny Girl
(1968)] encompassed many wonderful features—comedy, singing, adorableness. So she was always perceived that way. And here I am the ugly stepsister, which was absolutely not true! So then, what do I do? Continue to be the ugly stepsister to everyone—Cybill Shepherd, Tatum O’Neal, and everyone else in the entire world?”
¹⁴

“Ugly” is a key word. Eunice isn’t supposed to be pretty. In the screwball paradigm, it’s the woman who chases the man, and in
What’s Up, Doc?
O’Neal is the object of desire. Bogdanovich and his production team heighten the contrast by making Eunice as unattractive as her fiancé is tanned and tempting. Her wig was bad enough, but her costumes gave her still zaftig figure barely any shape at all. And while the world hadn’t yet learned to apply the word “beautiful” to Streisand’s distinctive features, in the film as in life, she gets the man (O’Neal had dated Streisand just before shooting began). Now Madeline grew concerned that she really was unattractive and that people were laughing
at her
. Every night, she called her brother “Is this really how people see me?” she would ask, in tears. She wound up in therapy.

Funny women are often insecure about personal appearance, Martin Charnin says. “They never think they’re pretty, until they learn that part of what makes them attractive is that they’re funny.” Madeline hadn’t reached that point of understanding. What made her attractive, so far as she could see, was her best behavior, her carefully polished exterior. In her personal life, propriety (one of Eunice’s pet words) had been her first defense. Comedy was a way to make a living, and always before, she’d looked pretty when she did it. Now she looked awful, and the cast and crew—and, later, audiences—reacted uproariously.

Charlie Rose once asked Madeline whether she thought she was “naturally funny.” “I’m very smart,” she replied. “I’m very understanding. I’m
serious
. . . . I always see sort of the tragedy beneath what’s funny. And that’s only important to me. Then that tells me how to make
something work, or I think it’s what makes something work, beneath it all. The gravity. And I also
am
funny. I also can see the humor.”
¹⁵
Yet until the end of her career—on the set of
Judy Berlin
in 1997—Madeline still expressed surprise when she got a laugh. As her friend David Marshall Grant observes, her quest for the “gravity” of a character enhanced her comedy, because she took ridiculous situations so seriously. But that same empathy sometimes blinded her to the reality that the character herself might be ridiculous, as Eunice is. In private, Madeline had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh, but as an actor she remained “someone who said things funny, not someone who said funny things,” as Lily Tomlin describes her.

“Why are they laughing?” Where Eunice Burns is concerned, Madeline also wondered: Are they laughing because that’s what they really think of me? Bogdanovich, who found Madeline perfectly attractive and who knew little if anything about the fathers who left when she was ugly, didn’t detect the anxiety underlying her question. He did become increasingly aware that “She didn’t like the way she looked in our pictures.” Her unhappiness would become a bigger problem for him with each successive film.

At the first table read, Bogdanovich says, Madeline’s every line—even “Howard! Howard Bannister!”—provoked laughter from the entire cast, “except Barbra and Ryan, who were not amused, because she got a laugh on everything she said, and they didn’t get one laugh.” Though O’Neal says both he and Streisand did laugh, Bogdanovich later found Streisand crying in her dressing room and saying, “I’m an extra in this picture, I’m an extra.” She generally disliked the script, he says, and O’Neal remembers her complaining, “It’s not funny, it’s not funny. I know funny.”

Sensitive as always and scrutinizing Streisand closely, Madeline picked up on the star’s lack of confidence in the material. From the first read-through, however, O’Neal believed that
What’s Up, Doc?
would be a hit. “I thought Madeline was sensational,” he says. “She was naturally funny. It was her instinct. She could make you belly laugh.” He’d never have guessed this was her first feature; already she held her own with pros like Streisand and Mars. “We had to keep up with
her
.”

Despite her misgivings, Madeline threw herself into her role. Her performance is supremely vocal, a delirious display of inflections and intonations that instantly proclaim Eunice’s character. As Bogdanovich says, audiences laugh whenever she says “Howard Bannister”—not in itself a funny name. But she didn’t limit herself to language. For the scene in which gangsters on the waterfront confront Eunice, Bogdanovich
wanted her to back away in fear. “Make funny noises,” he told her. We hear the result, a tightly suppressed whimper, three times in the picture, with slight variations: first, when Eunice is reading
The Sensuous Woman
(much dismayed); next, when she meets the gangsters; and later, during the chase scene, when she’s taken hostage. She needed little direction, Bogdanovich says, citing her shrieked “I’m coming in!” during the extended scene in Howard’s hotel room. She got big laughs, though on the page it’s a simple declaration. Later in that scene, when the room catches fire, Eunice’s shrieks are different: Madeline was standing too close to the burning curtains. “We had fire marshals on the set, and it was terribly controlled,” O’Neal says, “but she got scared. You can tell, that’s not acting. We had to hold her; she was trembling.”

Madeline’s physical characterization is almost equally accomplished. Most notable is the scene in which she forces her way into the musicologists’ dinner party, swinging her arms and fighting off one and all, whether or not they try to stop her. In subsequent films, she was seldom called on to perform this kind of broad, physical comedy, since most directors preferred to use her as a (physically) calm center of the high jinks. Yet in
What’s Up, Doc?
even Madeline’s basic posture, a sort of fallback manner of carrying herself, is expressive. As Eunice, Madeline clenches everything. She keeps her arms close to her torso, and she seems to swell upward from her toes. It’s as if she’s always inhaling, puffing herself up to seem more intimidating.

Madeline would work again with several
What’s Up, Doc?
cast members, including Liam Dunn, Kenneth Mars, and Austin Pendleton. Pendleton says that Madeline was “incredibly easy to act with, the kind of actor where you think, ‘That actor is so open that if I can’t act with her—or him—I should seek guidance for another vocation.’” Over the years, he says, she didn’t change much, except that she grew less shy. Owing to her shyness at the time, neither Pendleton nor O’Neal had any idea Madeline was unhappy playing Eunice.

The set was a heady environment for any young actor. Bogdanovich consulted with Howard Hawks by phone, and O’Neal remembers that John Ford, King Vidor, and Samuel Fuller visited the set. However, the greatest star—by far—was Streisand. Before shooting started, Madeline had been “petrified” of Streisand, whose personality clashes on the set and whose ruthlessness in the editing room regularly made gossip headlines. However, Bogdanovich assured Madeline she wouldn’t be cut from the movie. As she recalled, “It was a movie about three people, and there’s only so much you could cut out of it and still have the movie
make sense.”
¹⁶
On the set, Madeline and Streisand got along reasonably well, though Bogdanovich stresses that they’re seldom in the same shot. Pendleton found that they “had a lovely rapport.” Streisand sometimes offered advice on screen acting, which Madeline took well. “There was no sense of competitiveness on Barbra’s part at all,” Pendleton says.

O’Neal believes Madeline and Streisand were, to a degree, kindred spirits. The death of Streisand’s father and her relationship with her stepfather left her with a need for paternal approval similar to Madeline’s. “That’s what makes these women so good,” he says. Streisand respected Madeline as a performer, as well, he recalls. Once, between takes, Madeline started singing and dancing, little realizing that Streisand was watching behind her. When Madeline turned around, Streisand smiled. “That was good,” she said. “I must have listened to a different radio station.” A few years later, Madeline told O’Neal she’d seen Streisand in concert doing the same routine she’d performed on the set of
What’s Up, Doc?
“Barbra always looked to see what people were doing, and then would steal it,” he says. “She could do that because she could do anything.”

“I really liked her and we had some good talks,” Madeline told Rex Reed, “and I thought we could really be friends, but she has so many pressures, and she’s unavailable a lot on the set, and we never became close or anything. I got a glimpse of what it’s like to be a really big superstar. I don’t think I’d like that.”
¹⁷
“I understand now what being in her position must be like,” Madeline told another reporter. “Everything Barbra does is so noticed and so important: every look, every word, every gesture. That’s got to be terrific pressure. And I don’t think you can control it.”
¹⁸

What’s Up, Doc?
opened at Radio City Music Hall on March 9, 1972. Bogdanovich called O’Neal from the lobby and held out the phone. “Can you hear it? Can you hear the laughter? There’s a thousand people here and they love the movie!” A hit was born.

Madeline received third billing in the closing credits and mostly favorable reviews. One eminent exception came in
Time
magazine from Jay Cocks, a fierce detractor of Bogdanovich’s work. Describing “a comedy made by a man who has seen a lot of movies, knows all the mechanics, and has absolutely no sense of humor,” Cocks rounded up the “singularly strident” supporting players in a paragraph. Madeline, he wrote, “rolls over her part like one of Patton’s tanks.”
¹⁹
Writing in the
New York Times
, Vincent Canby was more appreciative and more representative of the consensus. “The people who give the film its particular style are the superb (and largely unknown to me) new character actors . . . most
especially, Madeline Kahn. Miss Kahn, who has a voice that sounds as if it had been filtered through a ceramic nose, just about walks off with the movie.”
²⁰

When he saw the movie, Jef Kahn was so anxious that he could barely enjoy it. He wanted the audience to like his sister, but her late-night calls made an impression on him. “I couldn’t allow her to be the character she was playing,” he says. Even later, seeing Madeline in other movies, “I got used to her being a celebrity, but I was always thinking of her as a person, as well as the character. I was robbed of the experience other people had of her movies.”

For Madeline, the most meaningful response may have come from the audiences at Radio City Music Hall. “I used to go there every day just to see the people’s reactions,” she remembered. “I loved it. I could have sold programs in the lobby—no one knew me from Eunice.” She thought she’d never make another movie, she said, and she showed the interviewer all the memorabilia she’d collected in California, from the back of her canvas chair with her name on it, to the plaque for her parking space on the Warner lot.
²¹
But Hollywood loves a hit, and in its first release,
What’s Up, Doc?
earned sixty-six million dollars at the box office, making it the third-highest grossing film of the year. “Only
The Godfather
and
The Poseidon Adventure
did better,” Bogdanovich proudly recalls. It was inevitable that Madeline would be asked to make another movie, and Bogdanovich asked.

Missing
Candide
(1971)

ACCEPTING
WHAT’S UP, DOC?
FORESTALLED MADELINE’S CONTINUED
association with
Candide
, the major stage revival that had grown out of Bernstein’s birthday gala. Through her agent, the
Candide
producers had “put a hold” on Madeline: They’d given a verbal commitment to hire her. “Holds” were standard practice, to secure performers whom producers really wanted, while steering around Equity rules for auditioning. After other actors had been seen for a role, the “held” actors would be given contracts. If another engagement came up before the show went into production, agents were expected to contact producers to obtain either permission or a contract.
²²

Because of the scheduling conflict with
What’s Up, Doc?
Madeline’s “hold” stipulated that she would join the
Candide
cast only on the final leg of the tour, which began in San Francisco, then continued on to Los Angeles and to Washington, DC. Thereafter, she and the production would head to Broadway. For the tour, producer Edwin Lester wanted Mary Costa for Cunegonde. The voice of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Costa had already sung Cunegonde in an American concert tour and in the first British stage production, in 1959. She was qualified and exceptionally attractive. But she’d recently turned forty, and Sheldon Patinkin’s concept accentuated the youth of the characters. Bernstein had an extra reason to prefer Madeline over Costa, as Theodore S. Chapin, a production assistant during the San Francisco leg of the tour, explains: Costa had difficulty with the coloratura in “Glitter and Be Gay.” “When she sang it, by her admission, she used to get gook on her cords,” Chapin says. “What that would mean was simply that the notes would not come out.” He imitates the “gooky” singing, then adds, “But she was a great trouper and she was a great spirit.”

What’s Up, Doc?
had begun location shooting in San Francisco when
Candide
started rehearsals, and Madeline came in to apologize for not being able to do the show. Visiting the rehearsal was excellent strategy, because it gave her a chance to check out the production without having to tell anyone that she expected to replace Costa. Since she was already in town, it was entirely like her to observe the propriety of saying hello to Patinkin, with whom she hoped to work again, whether in
Candide
or another project. But as the shoot went on and her anxieties increased, Madeline yearned to reunite with her friends and to play the pretty leading lady once more.