25: Mrs. Musburger & Mrs. Braithwaite
There is a certain irony that can come with being groundbreaking and distinctive, which is that uniqueness breeds imitation. That imitation can then become commonplace, which in turn over time turns what was originally distinctive into something commonplace, ultimately becoming clichéd and not very distinctive at all. Sometimes it can be in the way that art is created, in the way that the immediacy and artlessness that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones brought to rhythm and blues classics such as “Twist and Shout” and “I Just Want To Make Love To You” is now regarded as the most boring baseline of rock & roll music; or the way that post-studio-system filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg remade what movies could be with films like Taxi Driver (1976) or Jaws (1975) creating what were at the time inventive and new ways to tell stories that seem hackneyed now with every retread of the same themes as we slog through Joker (2019) and Bird Box (2018). The cruelest of these however is the strange game of telephone that goes with distinctive human voices as they go from a unique and interesting way of speaking into a caricature, as Orson Welles’s dignified baritone becomes the buffoonish Brain from Pinky and the Brain*, as Truman Capote’s effete disaffectedness becomes the bored Droopy Dog, and as Eleanor Roosevelt’s refined elegance becomes the irritating Mrs. Musburger and Mrs. Braithwaite from The Hudsucker Proxy, using the character and timbre of her voice as a shorthand for wealth and a shallow kind of social power.
Mrs. Musburger and Mrs. Braithwaite are effectively one character, flanking a visibly uncomfortable Norville Barnes at the Hudsucker Fancy Dress Christmas Ball. in not-quite-identical but also very purposefully similar evening gowns in pink silk and chiffon with floral accents. They pepper him with patter, talking over him about things about which he does not care. He attempts to interject with some level of casual conversation at multiple points, each time the other character interjecting rather than letting Norville finish a single sentence. As Norville becomes more and more visibly uncomfortable he is finally rescued by Sidney Musburger, directing him towards further different uncomfortable situations. The two women have no more dialogue, just a brief swoon at the incredible, the unforgettable, Mr. Vic Tanetta. They then disappear for the remainder of the film but for one brief reference.
Despite their striking hairdos, chiffon accessories and fancy (slightly ill fitting) dress, the most striking thing about Mrs. Braithwaite and Mrs. Musburger is their speaking voices. Their timbre is high and loud and singsongy, but what really stands out is the accent. Their long “o”s and non-rhotic “r”s point to a kind of refined but distinctly American way of speaking. It simultaneously brings to mind the “mid atlantic” accent of early American cinema, designed to be both quasi-British and American and thus comprehensible to both, and also the method of speaking of the old money families of the Hudson Valley and the southern New England coast such as Fairfield County, Connecticut and Newport, Rhode Island. During the 1930s (and even into the 1950s) the most visible and noteworthy of these titans of old American wealth was the Roosevelt family, headed by president Franklin and first lady Eleanor.
While FDR’s new deal policies and Eleanor’s human rights campaigning made them individually harder to mock than others in their peer group, they were still visibly and audibly aristocratic, making their speaking voices and their associated unique vocal tics a shorthand for the buffonish and out of touch upper classes, which is how the speaking voice of one of the most esteemed women of the 20th century can be slowly, turn by turn be twisted into a grotesque of the mid-century upper class in a 1994 film. It is an unfitting legacy for the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, but alas, it is what it is. The two women’s speaking voices exist as a shorthand for what passes for women from old money in America in 1958, everything else about them being a statement on that particular social class and its emptiness, focussing on perceived societal connections and superiority over all else.
The shooting script for Hudsucker does not include Mrs. Braithwaite. The plan of the scene was for it to open with Norville and Mrs. Musburger dancing, and her supplying the same kind of over the top high society banal chit-chat as they twirled about the ballroom. Mrs. Musburger is described as “a large middle-aged woman of the Margaret Dumont-mold in an elaborately flowered and old-fashioned evening gown.” Margaret Dumont was a fixture in the films of the Marx Brothers of the 1930s. She was tall and aristocratic in appearance, and was primarily a straight lady to the Marx’s zany antics. She existed as a stand-in for the kind of high society stuffiness that the Marx Brothers were there to subvert.
The actresses who ended up with the parts of Mrs. Braithwaite and Mrs. Musburger are definitely in this vein. They both have few credits to their name. Kathleen Perkins who plays Mrs. Braithwaite has four IMDB credits of which Hudsucker is the most notable, and just retired a year ago as I write this from being a teacher in the dramatic arts at Columbia College Chicago. Eleanor Glockner has three IMDB credits. Outside of Hudsucker she has the two ultimate hallmarks of a part time New York City actor: guest spots on All My Children and a Law & Order property. She also has several Broadway and other notable theater credits, including originating the role of the talking wardrobe Madame De La Grande Bouche (literally Mrs. Bigmouth) in the stage run of Beauty and The Beast, a role for which she used a similar loud and brash speaking tone.
One can easily imagine an open casting call for the role of Mrs. Musburger and finding two women whose entire type is this exact minute type. Given that both of them are perfect for the role, they rewrote the scene for two brash women rather than one. It’s a smart decision, as it allows the two women to talk past Norville to each other, and in a weird way to objectify him as a status symbol. They wish to not so much interact with Norville as be seen interacting with Norville.
The two women in their brief screen time say things of little import. They wish to know of Norville’s connections. While they only ask “do you know him?” only twice in their time with Norville, of Mrs. Braithwaite’s husband Sears and of a private french teacher “Pierre of 5th Avenue”, but one imagines in the unseen minutes prior to the camera landing on the three of them crammed on the ballroom chaise that they’ve asked the same question of Norville a dozen times, each time not letting him answer. Once again, the decision to have the part be two women rather than one is a smart one, as each repetition of “do you know him” done twice creates a kind of hollow echo effect, underscoring that they do not truly care if Norville knows them, simply that they wish to list their connections, and thus underscore their own social superiority. The only response Norville is able to give to the two women is that he and Amy are not in fact engaged but rather that she works as his secretary, to which Mrs. Mussburger launches into a tirade of her own, using Norville’s brief answer as an excuse to talk about something else only tangentially related. Their conversation has no flow to it, and while party chit chat often is a little aimless, the women talking to Norville seem to be playing a game of free association with themselves. You’re a company president, so is my husband, do you know him? I just spoke French and I’m taking french lessons from a man named Pierre, do you know him? You know a young woman who works in an office? I was once a young woman who worked in an office! His responses of course are unimportant; if it were they would let him answer. Norville is effectively an object of their conversation more than he is a participant in it. Nonetheless he is a valuable object to them, as when Sidney Musuburger comes to take Norville around to meet the shareholders the women protest his leaving.
Norville’s painted-on dead-inside smile indicates that Sidney’s interruption is incredibly welcome. The women love talking at Norville because they enjoy the presence of youth and power, and more than anything they doubtless wish at some future point to tell someone else that they know the Norville Barnes, idea man of the Hudsucker Corporation, do you know him? Norville sticks around because of his midwestern politeness, and also knowing he can’t offend his new colleague’s wife.
While the empty conversation leading to the discomfort of Norville Barnes is certainly funny, the most interesting thing about Mrs. Musburger happens with her off screen. During their conversation at the Hudsucker Fancy Dress Gala Mrs. Musburger tells Norville that she “once ran the mimeograph for Sidney, though engaged at the time to quelqu'un d’autre**”. Much later, as Norville has been frozen in time roughly 20 feet above Madison Avenue, speaking with the angelic ghost of Waring Hudsucker, he reads the following from Hudsucker’s Blue Letter:
I have let my success become my identity. I have foolishly played the great man and watched my life become more and more empty as a result. My vanity drove away she who could have saved me. I loved a woman once, as you well know. A beautiful, vibrant lady, an angel who in her wisdom saw fit to choose you instead of I…
At which point he is cut off by the sobbing of the Angelic Hudsucker. Waring Hudsucker killed himself over this woman.
Truly the heart wants what it wants.
* Voice actor Maurice LaMarche got his gig as The Brain in part because of his habit of warming up in the vocal booth by doing a beat for beat recreation of a well known recording of Welles talking back to his directors while recording a frozen food commercial
LaMarche’s skill in recreating the tapes led to it literally being recreated in animated form in an episode of the cartoon.
Just in case you thought that Brain sounding like Welles was coincidental.
** “Someone else” in case you haven’t been taking lessons from Pierre of 5th Avenue.
“Show me how you can say ‘IN July’ and I’ll make cheese for you.”