Madeline Kahn by William V. Madison Read Free Book Online Page A

Musetta’s waltz from
La Bohème
, Michael loved Madeline’s voice. Before the summer was out, he’d written “Vocalise for Soprano and Piano,” which was “dedicated to Miss Kahn.” They performed this piece at a classical concert, at which Madeline also sang Schubert’s coloratura Lied “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen,” and the aria “Steal Me, Sweet Thief” from Menotti’s
The Old Maid and the Thief
.
    “We became fast friends because of the musical connections,” he says. “But then it turned out during all of our work sessions she was extremely funny, too.” Cohen recalls that not all their time was spent making music. Cast members met in the Green Mansions barn to work on improvisations almost every day, and as a result, Madeline’s status changed. “Miss Kahn was hired as the company opera singer, but she soon becamethe company comedian,”
Newsday
noted in 1969. 19 Offstage, she could be prankish, Cohen says: “She used to burn my T-shirts ironing them—on purpose.”
    Working closely with her on music, Cohen discovered that “Madeline always had a subtext when she sang. She had to know who this person was, why she was singing these notes and not some other notes, analyzing what she was singing. Especially if you take a song out of context, she would find something in it to make it relevant. She’d get the technical challenges out of the way first, then interpret.” Like Madeline, Cohen had been classically trained; he would go on to write operas and several music-theater pieces. He found Madeline’s approach an excellent match for his own.
    When Green Mansions presented an evening of Kurt Weill songs (an appropriate choice, since Weill worked with the Group Theatre), Madeline and Michael came fully prepared. Like many New York liberals of their generation, both developed an early affinity for Weill’s music. The revival of his
Threepenny Opera
, starring his widow, Lotte Lenya, had opened at the Theatre de Lys in Greenwich Village in 1954, and over its seven-year run pretty much established the concept of Off Broadway. A social satire by Bertolt Brecht,
Threepenny
seemed an oasis during the McCarthy era, and its cast included many blacklisted actors. Three decades after
Threepenny
’s premiere in Berlin, Weill’s German songs became rallying cries for members of a new liberal intelligentsia whose parents knew him only as the composer of “September Song.”
    For Madeline, Michael Cohen composed “Das Chicago Song,” a parody pastiche of easily recognizable Weill themes from
Threepenny
and
Happy End
. Tony Geiss’s lyrics take particular aim at “Surabaya Johnny” and “Bilbao Song” as the singer recalls her affair with Max, who broke her heart and stole her lunch while they “tangoed the night away . . . in old Chicago, by the sea.” Rhapsodic recollections are punctuated by disgusted outbursts (“Ptui!”), and the song culminates in the plaintive cry, “Max, come back! You forgot your whip!” 20
    “Das Chicago Song” would be Madeline’s ticket to Broadway in 1968, and it was one of her audition numbers for Mel Brooks in 1973. She was still singing it in the 1990s. To listen to her imitation of Lenya is to confirm her claim that Marlene Dietrich wasn’t the only Weimar star she was mimicking in
Blazing Saddles
. Though the accents are different (Lenya was Viennese, Dietrich Berlinerin), the attitudes are comparable, and Brecht’s “alienation effect”—the sense that the performer is standing outside the drama—likewise informed Madeline’s work in Brooks’sfilms. At the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Madeline said, “Everything I’ve ever done in the movies, I’ve drawn from my work on the stage, whether it has been in plays, or in opera, or concerts, or anything like that. Even
Blazing Saddles
, I based entirely on my knowledge of Kurt Weill, really, more than anything else. I mean, I looked at a Marlene Dietrich movie or two because Mel wanted me to. But