needed the right roles. To exercise control over her repertory, “You’d need money like Onassis.”
Several associates say Madeline determined that in opera she would fall inevitably short of her own high standards. Her last voice teacher, Marlena Malas, says that, “in her kooky, wonderful way, I could see her experimenting” with leading roles such as Gilda in
Rigoletto
and Lakmé, but both Malas and Madeline preferred to focus on lighter fare. While Matthew Epstein, an unrivaled guide for singers, believes Madeline might have found a berth in Mozart and operetta, Pasatieri disagrees—to a point. The composer used to play and sing through the score of Strauss’s
Salome
with her, for example, in addition to attending her public performances. “Her voice was a coloratura,” Pasatieri says, “but it was not what one would consider a first-class instrument, and she would not have made a first-class career as an opera singer. Her dramatic [and] comedic talent was so great that her path as a Broadway and film star was evident.”
Yet Madeline’s turn away from the opera house was largely the result of circumstance, dictated more by other people’s casting choices and by her need for income than by her own predilections. This state of affairs naturally led to uncertainty, especially in the early years of her career, and Pasatieri remembers that she returned from shooting
Paper Moon
with souvenirs of the film, “as if she thought she’d never be asked to do another movie.”
-12-
The City Slickers’ Goodtime Hour
Comedy Tonight
(1970)
FOR MADELINE,
COMEDY TONIGHT
, A SKETCH-VARIETY SHOW ALONG the lines of NBC’s
Laugh-In
, marked a number of auspicious reunions and first encounters. Robert Klein, the show’s star, invited her to join a cast that included Judy Graubart, as well as a recent graduate of Second City, Peter Boyle, with whom Madeline had never worked. Staff writer Thomas Meehan had just wrapped
Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man
, the first of many projects with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, and producer Joe Cates worked closely with lyricist Martin Charnin. Referring to the old Sid Caesar show, Klein calls Madeline “my Imogene Coca—except she’s much prettier.”
An early salvo in CBS programming executives’ “rural purge,” a shift away from countrified programs toward more urbane fare,
Comedy Tonight
was a summer replacement for
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
. It resembled
Laugh-In
in many ways: the grouping of sketches by theme, blackouts, topical humor, songs, monologues, and unusual guest stars (baritone Robert Merrill, novelist Jacqueline Susann). Although satirical targets included Washington politicians, Madison Avenue, the military, and hippies, the writers steered clear of the kinds of material that had gotten the Smothers Brothers into trouble with CBS the previous year. The show was videotaped and employed a laugh track rather than a live studio audience, a challenge for a stand-up comic and a cast of nightclub and stage performers.
Madeline generally took part in sketches featuring the entire cast, but she did sometimes get the spotlight. In one “Man Against . . .” segment about parents and children (August 23), she played the domineering mother of a comic-book superhero, played by Boyle. 5 For Klein, Madeline’s most memorable sketch was “Oh, When Times Were Bad inVienna” (August 2), another Weill-flavored song. Madeline threw her leg up on a table and shrieked, “Garbage! We ate garbage!” “I died, even in rehearsal,” Klein says. “You can’t buy that, and you can’t write that. She was the kind of performer—there are a few out there, all virtuosos—they can give you invaluable laughs that were never written, that they can find by instinct.”
Unfortunately, Klein says, “All the tapes to the ’70s shows drowned in Joe Cates’ basement.” The connections Madeline made and remade on the show would prove far more enduring, with almost
Several associates say Madeline determined that in opera she would fall inevitably short of her own high standards. Her last voice teacher, Marlena Malas, says that, “in her kooky, wonderful way, I could see her experimenting” with leading roles such as Gilda in
Rigoletto
and Lakmé, but both Malas and Madeline preferred to focus on lighter fare. While Matthew Epstein, an unrivaled guide for singers, believes Madeline might have found a berth in Mozart and operetta, Pasatieri disagrees—to a point. The composer used to play and sing through the score of Strauss’s
Salome
with her, for example, in addition to attending her public performances. “Her voice was a coloratura,” Pasatieri says, “but it was not what one would consider a first-class instrument, and she would not have made a first-class career as an opera singer. Her dramatic [and] comedic talent was so great that her path as a Broadway and film star was evident.”
Yet Madeline’s turn away from the opera house was largely the result of circumstance, dictated more by other people’s casting choices and by her need for income than by her own predilections. This state of affairs naturally led to uncertainty, especially in the early years of her career, and Pasatieri remembers that she returned from shooting
Paper Moon
with souvenirs of the film, “as if she thought she’d never be asked to do another movie.”
-12-
The City Slickers’ Goodtime Hour
Comedy Tonight
(1970)
FOR MADELINE,
COMEDY TONIGHT
, A SKETCH-VARIETY SHOW ALONG the lines of NBC’s
Laugh-In
, marked a number of auspicious reunions and first encounters. Robert Klein, the show’s star, invited her to join a cast that included Judy Graubart, as well as a recent graduate of Second City, Peter Boyle, with whom Madeline had never worked. Staff writer Thomas Meehan had just wrapped
Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man
, the first of many projects with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, and producer Joe Cates worked closely with lyricist Martin Charnin. Referring to the old Sid Caesar show, Klein calls Madeline “my Imogene Coca—except she’s much prettier.”
An early salvo in CBS programming executives’ “rural purge,” a shift away from countrified programs toward more urbane fare,
Comedy Tonight
was a summer replacement for
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
. It resembled
Laugh-In
in many ways: the grouping of sketches by theme, blackouts, topical humor, songs, monologues, and unusual guest stars (baritone Robert Merrill, novelist Jacqueline Susann). Although satirical targets included Washington politicians, Madison Avenue, the military, and hippies, the writers steered clear of the kinds of material that had gotten the Smothers Brothers into trouble with CBS the previous year. The show was videotaped and employed a laugh track rather than a live studio audience, a challenge for a stand-up comic and a cast of nightclub and stage performers.
Madeline generally took part in sketches featuring the entire cast, but she did sometimes get the spotlight. In one “Man Against . . .” segment about parents and children (August 23), she played the domineering mother of a comic-book superhero, played by Boyle. 5 For Klein, Madeline’s most memorable sketch was “Oh, When Times Were Bad inVienna” (August 2), another Weill-flavored song. Madeline threw her leg up on a table and shrieked, “Garbage! We ate garbage!” “I died, even in rehearsal,” Klein says. “You can’t buy that, and you can’t write that. She was the kind of performer—there are a few out there, all virtuosos—they can give you invaluable laughs that were never written, that they can find by instinct.”
Unfortunately, Klein says, “All the tapes to the ’70s shows drowned in Joe Cates’ basement.” The connections Madeline made and remade on the show would prove far more enduring, with almost
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