Mothers Of Invention Coeur D’Alene’s Red Hot Mamas Are The Life Of The Party Wherever They Go

The saggier the hind end, the better. Wrinkles rate raves. Thunder thighs are rhapsodized.

“All I want for Christmas is my behind lifted, my behind lifted, my behind lifted,” sings Marilyn Smith as she pats extra poundage protruding in her white stretch pants. It’s not all hers. As the kids say, she stuffs - for the sake of the act.

Smith struts across the makeshift stage at The Coeur d’Alene Resort with three other caricatures of seniors. They sing to Santa to return their memories and dentures, reduce their breasts and stop their hot flashes.

Rouged cheeks in the audience blossom into big smiles. Gray heads and bald heads bounce with laughter. Time-worn hands spontaneously applaud.

“Even the prizes can’t top the Red Hot Mamas,” says the ticket taker at the Festival of Trees’ senior social. “They just love ‘em.”

What’s not to love about Coeur d’Alene’s drilling and dancing Red Hot Mamas? These daring ladies gleefully poke fun at every mold that’s thrust on aging women. They flaunt their faults and spotlight their shortcomings - and they have a ball doing it.

“We’ve done the work. Now it’s our time to have fun,” Mamas director Claudia “Mikki” Stevens tells her troupe a few minutes before showtime. “We get to show off, be hams. This is our moment.”

Her hams range from 35-year-old Kim Brown, a food server and aspiring singer, to 81-year-old Ida Bell Sundler, who first waltzed across the stage at 73.

The Mamas are Brown’s opportunity to sing on stage.

“I like the applause,” Sundler chirps. “I’ll stay with them as long as I’m able.”

The Mamas’ mix is as eclectic as Stevens hoped in 1992 when she formed the group.

“I thought it’d be neat to have a group of older women where someone who’s 25 with a perfect body and theater training wouldn’t fit in, would be the oddball,” she says.

Stevens is nearly that oddball. She’s a lithe 49, with a dancer’s carriage and grace. She left Coeur d’Alene 30 years ago for college and an acting and dancing career in Los Angeles.

For three years, her childlike voice was the sound of the Flintstones’ teenage daughter, Pebbles.

Stevens performed until her husband couldn’t handle the Golden State’s pace anymore. They moved to Kent, Wash., where she had her daughter, began body building and taught aerobics.

A few more moves landed her back in Coeur d’Alene in the mid-1980s. She taught dance in elementary schools and coached drill teams at the middle schools.

But her artistic streak demanded more satisfaction.

The middle-aged performance troupe idea had percolated for months. In 1992, she persuaded friends to wear goofy clothes and march with her in Coeur d’Alene’s Independence Day parade.

Stevens taught them a funny routine. Spectators laughed. Everyone had fun.

The idea might have ended there if Stevens’ audition for a local musical company that summer had earned her a callback. When it didn’t, she decided to form her own group.

“I said, ‘Lord, I’ve tried a lot of different things. I’ll try this. If it doesn’t work, at least I tried.”’ Her audition ad was unique.

“Thunder thighs welcome. Ladies 30 and above, mamas, grandmamas, great-grandmamas or just plain great. Ever want to perform? No experience necessary.”

She offered no pay. Her group was all volunteer and non-profit.

“That ad jumped out at me and said, ‘You have to do this,”’ says Kiki Miller, a 38-year-old independent publisher in Coeur d’Alene. “Certain people are born to give comedy and have that need to watch people laugh.”

Fifty women from belly dancers to ballerinas showed up to audition. There were waitresses and counselors, teachers and bank managers, and even a former child star. They were all shapes and sizes and energy and talent levels. Their bond was their desire to perform.

“It was the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney syndrome,” says Stevens, mimicking a young Judy Garland. “‘I know, let’s do a show in the back yard!”’

The three-hour afternoon practices weeded out all but about 20 women. Most were ages 40 to 55.

They were busy, caring for their kids or their parents or both. Their hormones raged worse than a teenager’s.

Some suffered from chronic tardiness or lack of rhythm. Others wanted to direct the action. They gabbed during rehearsals.

They came down with cancer and missed practice during chemotherapy. They got pregnant.

The professional in Stevens worried about the quality of the performances. She hated that she couldn’t take the group beyond a fairly basic level.

“The show was most important then,” she says. “To survive, I had to learn to loosen up. I finally realized that progress didn’t matter.

“I know now the people are more important than the product.”

Nearly 100 women have worn the Mamas’ straw hats piled high with empty Cheez-It and Jell-O boxes, Skippy peanut butter jars and bread crumb canisters. They’ve come from as far away as Spokane and Sandpoint. Most are intensely loyal to their sorority of silliness.

“I don’t get to use this part of my personality very much,” says Mama Anne Wagstaff, a 49-year-old mental health counselor in Coeur d’Alene. “Most of my life is very responsible. In this, I get to be in junior high again.”

The Mamas have marched in parades in Seattle, Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. They’ve performed their revues at the Spokane Indians stadium, fairs, reunions, conventions and festivals.

“They’re as entertaining as anything I’ve ever seen in this area,” says Debbie Parkins, who booked the Mamas for this year’s Festival of Trees senior social.

“They’re not professional performers, but they’re able to pull off a show professionally. We loved them.”

The Mamas love their work.

“It’s another opportunity to get up and be a ham,” says former Mama Pat Kelly.

Sixty-two years ago Kelly was offered a movie part as the bad girl opposite Shirley Temple. Kelly’s parents didn’t want their daughter pigeon-holed and turned down the role.

She never shook the acting bug and signed up with the Mamas soon after they formed.

“There’s something about that electricity that flows between you and an audience that you can’t get anywhere else,” she says.

Arthritis forced her to retire after three seasons.

“It really tore me up,” she says.

The night the Mamas gather for Coeur d’Alene’s Christmas parade, Karen Welts is nervous. She’s 53, a Mary Kay consultant and about to perform for the first time.

“I can be more outgoing under makeup,” she says and pushes glittery glasses over her eyes.

The night’s routine is to an upbeat version of “Joy to the World.” The Mamas wear striped housedresses and their trademark grocery hats and carry evergreen branches as pompoms.

“They are so cool, definitely one of the highlights of the parade,” says Londa Cydell, one of many spectators laughing and cheering as the Mamas kick their legs and wave their branches.

“I’ve never seen anything like them,” says Ken Vanderweil, an amused visitor from Alberta, Canada.

It’s 40 degrees, and a brisk wind is whipping off the lake, but Welts is soaked in sweat at the parade’s end.

“I’m exhausted. I think I need my husband to bring the wheelbarrow to get me home,” she says, then smiles. “I had a ball.”

And she did everything right, another Mama tells her, although accuracy isn’t a must. Fun is, which Stevens stresses in her pre-performance pep talk the next day at the resort.

“Have fun. This is what we do this for,” she says. “Don’t beat yourself up if you wreck a routine. Shake it off and have fun with the next routine.”

Amy Bartoo beams her enjoyment to the audience. She’s 36, a new mother and the director of Idaho Drug Free Youth.

She’s so busy but can’t make herself quit the time-consuming Mamas.

“Where else would I have the opportunity to do cartwheels?” she says.

Even husbands admit that the Mamas are good for their wives.

Lee Smith sneaked into the resort to watch his wife, Marilyn, perform at the senior social. He told her he couldn’t get there, then surprised her with flowers after she awed him at the performance.

Molly Habenicht wishes her husband were still alive to see her perform.

“He’d be so happy and so proud of me,”she says.

In the wake of his death in 1992, Habenicht planned to revive herself by joining the Mamas. Triple bypass heart surgery, then a double leg amputation 10 days later after she reacted poorly to medication delayed those plans.

Eighteen months ago, two Mamas excited Habenicht with their visions of what she’d add to the group in her wheelchair.

She was sold.

She wields a toilet plunger and leads the ranks of Mamas in parades. She wears crazy hats and diverts the audience’s attention during scene changes at shows.

“By seeing me out there crazy and laughing and smiling, I hope it encourages other people faced with similar situations,” says Habenicht, who’s 56. “It’s a relief for me to laugh and be with the Red Hot Mamas. To be recognized is fun, too.

“And the women are priceless.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Color photos