| Don Ameche and Alice Faye as Mack and Mabel | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 07:46 pm EST 11/27/24 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 07:33 pm EST 11/27/24 | |
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| Well, almost. I watched the gorgeous Technicolor non-musical "Hollywood Cavalcade" from 1939 the other day, and the roles Ameche and Faye are playing are very much based on Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand. Mack Sennett himself appears at one point, speaking a line or two. Ameche's character discovers Alice as an understudy going on in a melodrama on Broadway and sees something special in her, signs her up, and they head out to Hollywood. He makes her into a star, but he pays too much attention to making films and innovating and not to her, even though Alice cares for him. She eventually marries her leading man (a very handsome Alan Curtis), and Ameche can't handle it or their fame without him. Being a 20th Century-Fox technicolor 1939 film starring Alice Faye and Don Ameche, it doesn't go into Mabel having a drug habit (although another tragedy befalls her). However, I think perhaps Jerry Herman might have used this story to base "Mack and Mabel" on; this could even be something of a template or version to base a rewrite on -- as William Desmond Taylor's attachment to Mabel didn't have to be told in musical terms. They could still find a way to use "I Promise You A Happy Ending" perhaps after a failed reconciliation at one point. Buster Keaton is wonderful in support as himself and he and Alice Faye seem to be having a ball (well, you never know with his famous stone face) doing a big pie-throwing scene. Ameche was a wonderful actor who would have been great in the musical, too. Again, Alice Faye doesn't sing in this, yet her acting is so good, she didn't have to. |
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