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Mouth of the movies is mugging it up in the role she likes best—as TV’s ugly duckling. Martha Raye is one of the great low comediennes. Her routines are boisterous, rowdy affairs, full of slap¬ stick, wild plot lines and fantastic mugging — with appropriate crossed eyes, crooked arm and other contor¬ tionist business. But she’s one of only a handful of clowns who can pull it off. This season that little band of un¬ wavering skeptics, the TV critics, did everything but sing Hallelujah in Rocky Graziono and Martha Raye: for¬ mer thamp is perfect foil for the goil. praise of her shows. A good slice of credit for Martha’s metamorphosis goes to director Nat Hiken who, with Billy Friedberg, has written and directed all of Martha’s own shows. The team knows its girl. Nat pushed up a few eyebrows last year when he cast Rocky Graziano as her TV boyfriend. But the ex- middleweight champ turned in an amazingly funny performance. Now The Rock is a stock foil for the goil. Martha is ever playing the patsy. Like Durante teamed with Traubel, Martha is incongruous with the peo¬ ple around her. She’s a guest at a veddy, veddy formal dinner which she and The Rock turn into a free-for- all food slinging contest; .she is Mar¬ garet Truman’s unwitting roommate in a Brooklyn flat or the fourth Gabor sister, described by Mama Gabor as “the most beautiful of my daughters.” .Sofa, So (io»Hl Martha’s love-making scenes with a suitable male “pursuer” are old fash¬ ioned wrestling matches. Using her favorite prop, a .sofa, she contorts her¬ self into a few dozen implausible posi¬ tions while her date looks on per¬ plexed. With her legs every which way, arms snaked around her own neck, eyes fluttering and expressions running the gamut, Martha woos. A 90-minute diet of this brand of clowning, plus jazz and ballad singing and comedy dancing is too much for most men. With Martha, who had a rough bout with a kidney ailment last year, it’s a real problem. The little Irisher, Maggie O’Reed— that’s her real name—is the daughter of vaudevillians Pete Reed and Peggy Hooper. She was singing and hoofing at age three. At 14, an accomplished trouper, she played an inebriate in the musical, “Calling All Stai s.” “Here she was, a young kid playing a drunk,” said a close friend, “who had to fall down a flight of stairs every performance. And on opening night she breaks her arm, but doesn’t say a word for fear she’ll lose the part.” Hollywood beckoned when producer Norman Taurog cast her in “Rhythm on the Range” where she scored with her famous comedy song, “Mr. Paga¬ nini.” Quickly dubbed “The Mouth,” she frolicked through a couple of flickers. “Then,” says Martha rather rue¬ fully, “somebody discovered that I had a pretty good pair of legs. So they made me a glamor girl.” For two years running Martha took the gam championship away from such Holly- 16