Madeline Kahn (36 page)

Lobue confirms that Madeline disliked Sloyan, and he echoes Mandabach’s criticism. “I found Jimmy overly broad,” he says. “He was a good actor, it’s just that he had never done this kind of comedy. It was difficult for Madeline.” He remembers the camping episode, and a scene in which Madeline sat on Sloyan’s lap and smiled at him. “We’re going to be okay,”
Lobue thought at the time, “because there’s been no chemistry here, and at least there’s a moment.” He recalls that Madeline was “difficult” whenever she and Sloyan shared an important scene—as happened in nearly every episode. But she was conscientiously professional on the set, Mandabach and Lobue agree. “I saw her come to work unwilling, but never unprepared,” Lobue says with a chuckle. Despite her singing background, he says, she never displayed any “diva” behavior. “Once she committed, she committed in every way,” Mandabach says. “She was amazing in rehearsals. There was nothing more joyous than watching her musical approach to comedy, which was particular and high-minded, as if she were conducting herself in an opera or an aria. She had no peer, I thought, in that kind of approach to comedy, which was astonishing for television.”

Lobue, who has played keyboards professionally, also praises Madeline’s musicality. However, he says, “We got into a little bit of trouble on the series, because Madeline, for a woman who was innately, hysterically funny, she didn’t understand why she was funny.” During the run of
Oh, Madeline
, her long-standing doubts led to anxiety that Lobue and the rest of the team had to address. “We were constantly trying to reinforce the things that she did so well, and try to lead her through the physical things, which she wasn’t good at but
became
good at, because of the work she did.” Madeline “could read the phone book and make it funny, but she wasn’t totally comfortable with physical comedy,” says Lobue. Nevertheless, each week she found herself in “mega-scenes” such as a recreation of
Lucy
’s chocolate-making scene (but with newspapers), or an ice-skating scene, though she’d never skated before. Much of Lobue’s work with her, especially in physical comedy, entailed improvisation. “I’d give [the actors] full rein . . . at least the first time through. I found over time that as soon as they exhausted their imagination, they were far more ready to receive direction.” As always, Madeline wanted to find the “truth” in a scene, and Lobue would offer suggestions. “For any actor–director relationship,” he says, “the real key is to have the actor believe it was their idea.”

He tried not to pry into Madeline’s concerns about her appearance, but he told the cinematographer, “I don’t care if it’s dark on the set, as long as Madeline looks good. Care for her as if she’s your girlfriend,” he recalls. “And she looked beautiful. Even when she had her hair messed up, we made sure the makeup was perfect, the lighting was perfect, so that the hair was like a funny hat.”

Madeline’s keen critical perceptions developed as early as her time at the Upstairs, where she judged material and co-stars shrewdly. By
now she was a seasoned veteran, and thus a tougher critic. Ordinarily she remained circumspect about the shows she did and the people she worked with. But by Christmastime 1983, Madeline was on the brink of open rebellion. In a feature story for the UPI that ran on New Year’s Day, 1984, she said, “I have the distinct sense that there were many concerns voiced by people which have, shall we say, clipped my wings? Someone is making a lot of decisions—people who have nothing to do with the show [i.e., network executives]. The thing has to go through a carwash practically before it gets on [the air].” She continued: “They start to fix it up, neaten it up, clean it up and they strip it of everything they originally loved.” She’d proved herself, she said, and if the show failed—or if it “continue[s] in its present form, let’s say”—then she was not to blame. She pointedly told the reporter that she had no intention of giving up her New York apartment.
³²

At the time the article appeared,
Oh Madeline
was “generally in the top 20” in the ratings, Lobue says, and as the season progressed, the writing grew sharper. Changes kept coming. During its run, the show went through three different opening credit sequences, with different theme songs, the last of which featured Madeline’s vocalise. And in the final two episodes, Madeline’s sidekick Doris got her own sidekick, played by Randee Heller. Given the way Francine Tacker was eased off the show, Heller’s arrival looks like a cast change in progress, but by this point the ratings had declined, and everyone knew the series was ending.

With a few episodes yet to be shot, ABC told Carsey and Werner that it was canceling
Oh Madeline
before the end of the season. Alerted to this news, Madeline remained committed to the show, Lobue says. But she was also more adventurous, asking the producers to find a role for her classmate from Hofstra, Charles Ludlam. His theater work—campy, gender-bending, and crammed with references to drugs, sex, old movies, and high culture—resembles nothing seen on television, even today, but Madeline was determined to use to good purpose what was left of her show. She began conferring with Ludlam frequently by telephone, and he signed for the penultimate episode in the series. His television debut, “Play Crystal for Me,” aired February 28, 1984.
³³

Lobue remembers considerable resistance from the network, and in his biography of Ludlam, David Kaufman reports that ABC executives changed the plot of the episode at the last minute. As Charlie’s rival romance writer, Ludlam was obliged not to play a woman, as the script originally prescribed, but to play a man playing a woman, along the lines of the hit movie
Tootsie
(1982).
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The idea was that men who write
romance novels must go to extraordinary lengths to appeal to women readers. Charlie prevails upon Madeline to don a blond wig and incarnate his nom de plume, “Crystal Love,” while Ludlam’s character, “Tiffany Knight,” has only his own resources to draw on. The writing, especially for Ludlam, is exceptionally sharp, but the funniest scene in the episode—in which Ludlam’s character, still in drag, critiques Madeline’s “Crystal Love” and instructs her on how to walk like a woman—didn’t make it into the broadcast.
³⁵
At this remove, it’s anyone’s guess whether the scene was cut for time or for content.

“Play Crystal for Me” might have steered
Oh Madeline
to a more artistically satisfying path, but it didn’t. The last episode, “A Little Fright Music,” aired on March 13, 1984, and while it gave Madeline the chance to work again with Brandon Maggart, it hardly pushes any boundaries. Stage fright has been a staple of sitcoms for as long as the form has existed. Ralph Kramden got it when he appeared in a television commercial; Little Ricky Ricardo got it when he played drums with a student orchestra.

Had
Oh Madeline
survived, Lobue believes the comedy would have gotten broader, not smarter, “and Madeline would have been asked to do more and more zany, physical things. It would not have been fun, because she rebelled toward the end. The ratings were slipping, you’re on that boat, and it’s sinking. Those of us behind the camera move on to the next project. But the stars are visible, and they take the fall.” Nevertheless,
Oh Madeline
made a lasting impact on Carsey and Werner’s next show,
Cosby
, where they stayed true to their vision—and they recycled the
Oh Madeline
sets.

City Heat
, Ludlam, and Beyond (1984–85)

TWO DAYS AFTER THE FINAL EPISODE OF
OH MADELINE
AIRED, MADELINE
won the People’s Choice Award as the favorite female performer on a new TV program. “That looked so light when the other people had it,” Madeline remarked when she picked up her award at the podium. Alluding to the public opinion surveys that determine the awards, she expressed gratitude for the connection she’d established with audiences by “portray[ing] something about a woman which most of the time is amusing.” In a career, she said, actors can become overly concerned with the opinions of critics and producers, thus losing sight of their connection with the audience. “So I’m very grateful that you’ve acknowledged me this year, so that this will remind me of that, when the other opinions vary—as they do, you know.” The audience laughed, but Madeline, aware that this would be her valedictory speech, continued with a few words about the challenge of working in television, and she thanked Carsey, Werner, and Mandabach, and “those people at ABC who have been so supportive.” There was not a trace of irony in her voice.

Victory at the People’s Choice Awards afforded her the singular chance to pose for press photographs with the winner of the award for favorite male performer on a new TV program, Mr. T of
The A Team
. She earned one other token of recognition for
Oh Madeline
, a Golden Globe nomination as best actress on a musical or comedy series, but lost to Joanna Cassidy for her performance in another short-lived show, the cult favorite
Buffalo Bill
.

A few months later, Madeline went back to moviemaking, reuniting with Burt Reynolds for
City Heat
, which co-starred Clint Eastwood. An old-fashioned crime caper set in 1933, it’s something like
The Sting
,
but liberally splashed with modern violence. Bullets and punches fly, and vintage cars are destroyed at a furious rate. Reynolds plays Mike Murphy, a fast-talking gumshoe and retired policeman who must rely on his former partner, Lieutenant Speer, played by Eastwood. Longtime friends, both actors got their starts in TV westerns, and for a long time their careers followed similar trajectories, action movies interspersed with comedies.

City Heat
played Reynolds and Eastwood off each other in something more than time-tested “buddy picture” fashion. They bicker like old lovers, to the point that Murphy’s beleaguered secretary, played by Jane Alexander, pointedly asks each, “Why do you both go at it so hard?” The script consciously evokes the dynamics of films from the 1930s, in which a gangster interacts with his best friend, who is either a cop or a Catholic priest. Blake Edwards, who had directed the recent hit
10
, wrote the screenplay, originally entitled “Kansas City Blues,” and signed on to direct. According to Reynolds, Eastwood nixed Edwards and proposed that Richard Benjamin (fresh from the success of
My Favorite Year
and
Racing with the Moon
) replace him.
³⁶
Without Edwards,
City Heat
became “a pitch that was a little gone awry,” Jane Alexander remembers. She signed on purely for the chance to work with Eastwood. Today she doubts that even he, as a director, could have made the movie work.

A last-minute addition to the cast, Madeline replaced another actress at Reynolds’s suggestion. She plays Caroline Howley, a spoiled socialite who’s sleeping—and falling in love—with Mike Murphy. A glamorous foil to Alexander’s levelheaded character, Caroline becomes a plot device when she’s kidnapped by gangsters. Caroline plays the stereotypical damsel in distress just long enough to break a vase over a thug’s head in time-honored fashion, but her overarching concern is getting Murphy to admit that he loves her. It’s not much of a role, but from Madeline’s perspective, it had several advantages.
City Heat
meant a short shoot and fourth billing in a likely hit opposite two of Hollywood’s biggest stars. She spent most of her time in a cleavage-exposing white satin negligée and a curly blonde permanent wave, and she looks slim and sexy—not bad for a woman who turned forty-three several months before shooting started.

The movie also gave her the opportunity to reconnect with Reynolds and to share a bedroom scene with him, as well as an extra reason to participate in a television special with him. Her crush hadn’t abated much, if at all, but his name appears nowhere in her appointment book during the weeks of filming
City Heat
. He’d been severely injured during
the movie’s first fight scene. In pain and on medication, he lost fifty pounds during the shoot and contended with the after-effects of his injury for years.

Madeline also looked forward to working with Alexander, whom she knew socially, but the two share only two scenes and didn’t see much of each other on the set. They discussed costumes and makeup for the movie, and Alexander recalls that Madeline wanted certain changes and got them. Calling her “the most professional person I ever worked with,” Alexander observes, “Madeline was very good at knowing what she wanted, how she wanted to look, and how she looked best. . . . She would get what she needed. And I really admired the way she went about it.” The two would work together closely, and for much longer, in
The Sisters Rosensweig
eight years later.

Opening on December 7, 1984,
City Heat
performed modestly at the box office, taking in $38,300,000. The film earned back its budget but fell short of the blockbuster expectations based on the two leads’ drawing power. The movie does offer some pleasures, notably in the contrast between the two stars: Reynolds cracks wise, while Eastwood barely speaks; Reynolds winds up in the thick of almost every fight, while Eastwood stands back until directly provoked. For action fans, there’s a third icon, Richard Roundtree (
Shaft
). But the clash between comedy and violence is difficult to reconcile, and
City Heat
is difficult to enjoy.