From Warner Bros.
Directed by Morton DaCosta
Starring
Rosalind Russell
Forrest Tucker
Coral Browne
Peggy Cass
Roger Smith
Jan Handzlik
Fred Clark
Patric Knowles
Joanna Barnes
Pippa Scott
Lee Patrick
Willard Waterman
Robin Hughes
Connie Gilchrist
Yuki Shimoda
Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death. Auntie Mame says the film's most-remembered line which serves as her personal anthem for how to live life. The fact is though that this movie has so many funny lines and it is recognized the world over for one of the funniest movies ever. I've never featured many comedies in these pages because, frankly, I think most of them are embarrassingly not very funny at all. Here is a grand exception and it is a perfect film to end our tribute to the 1950's.
It's had quite a history, too. In 1955 Patrick Dennis' autobiographical book, Auntie Mame, was published. It was turned into a Broadway play in 1956 which ran for two years. Rosalind Russell, Jan Handzlik (playing young Patrick), Peggy Cass and Yuki Shimoda appeared in the play and the 1958 film. In 1966, as you know from the last post on Angela Lansbury, Auntie Mame was turned into a Broadway musical, simply called Mame, to phenomenal success. Russell was offered the role first but declined it saying she'd done all she could with the character. Then, finally, in 1974, Mame was turned into a musical film with Lucille Ball terribly miscast and the film was a disaster.
The film opens with young Patrick arriving at his aunt's Beekman Place apartment. His father, Mame's brother, has just passed away, and Patrick is going to live with his aunt. Just prior to the boy's arrival, the audience is treated to a passage from the father's last will and testament...
The expenses of his upbringing shall be supervised by Mr. Babcock (Clark) with the full power to keep that crazy sister of mine from doing anything too damned eccentric and bringing him up to be anything like her. Ok, there's the plot outlined in one paragraph.
Patrick knocks on the front door, carefully avoiding a giant dragon that spews smoke from its nostrils and has two holes for eyes which have been filled with the butler's eyes checking out arriving guests.
Patrick enters an apartment bursting with guests, most of them of the showbiz ilk and all of them rich or pretending to be. Most are tipsy, chatty and self-centered. The spacious, high-rise apartment has a decor of sort of modern, ornate bohemia. It's one of a kind as is its hostess who is about to make her entrance, swirling down a spiral staircase, dressed in a series of colorful, flowing garments. Her hair is piled on her head and she waves her arms dramatically, one of which has a long cigarette holder at the end of it in such a way that one supposes she's conducting an orchestra.
She calls everyone darling as she descends and briefly pretends to be interested in their lives. The party is all she's thought about for days and she's quite forgotten her nephew is arriving. He's not to have arrived until October 1 and today's just September 31, she tells the gathering crowd. Oh Mame... you are such a hoot
She shoos Patrick off to be mingle among the nutty crowd, giving him paper and pen, and telling him to write down any words he hears and doesn't understand and they will discuss later. He will make her somewhat red-faced when he offers up such words as libido, inferiority complex, blotto, free love, bathtub gin, monkey glands, Karl Marx, neurotic and heterosexual.
Bug-eyed she is as she sends him off without giving him a single definition. But we know she will. Mame is not built to hold back. In no time at all aunt and nephew become as close as family can be. Their love for one another is undeniable. Affectionately she treats him as a child but in all other ways she treats him as a peer.
Babcock, her eternal nemesis, likes not what he sees. He thinks she's from weirdsville but he knows of their tight relationship. She may have been given physical custody but the old stick-in-the-mud, by-the-book Babcock controls the purse strings and just about everything else.
In time he will meet the full cast of characters:
Vera Charles (Browne) is Mame's oldest friend, a drunken actress who usually is sleeping it off in one of her friend's spare bedrooms.
Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (Tucker) is an oil-wealthy southerner who woos and wins Mame as his wife. They meet when she is at her lowest financially and after he falls off the Matterhorn she is left a very wealthy woman.
Agnes Gooch (Cass) hysterically plays Mame's live-in secretary, brought on board by the adult Patrick to help his aunt write her memoirs. Gooch is rather homely, naive and sadly horny for another layabout houseguest who gets her pregnant.
Brian O'Banion (Hughes) is that layabout guest. He is there to collaborate on the book and while Mame is initially attracted to him, we soon see him for the hanger-on he really is.
Lindsay Woolsey (Knowles) will not only publish Mame's book but will showcase it in such a way that Mame Dennis will become the toast of America. They use to canoodle a little until he found her to be a little too eccentric for a wife but fine as a friend.
Patrick as a child is delightfully played by Handzlik in only one of two movies in which he appeared. The fact that he had played the part for two years on the stage made him letter-perfect for the screen. He is played as an adult by the handsome Smith, who seems a little more naive than his childhood version.
Gloria Upson (Barnes) is the grown Patrick's fiancée. She is from waspish parents who have a great deal of money. Minutes before she arrives at Beekman to meet Mame for the first time, Patrick begs his beloved aunt to not be as outrageous as he's always encouraged her to be. We know this will not go well even before they meet but once they do and we see that Mame sees right through Gloria's phoniness (top drawer), we can't wait to see it all unfold.
Claude and Doris Upson (Waterman and Patrick), Gloria's bigoted, obnoxious parents, are in the film's two funniest scenes and therefore their contribution to the overall success of it all cannot be diminished. The scene when virtually the entire cast is in the apartment, with the seats that go up and down, makes me laugh my ass off to this day.
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| Clark, Patrick, Waterman & Barnes in my favorite scene |
Nora (Gilchrist) is the starchy housekeeper and the one who accompanies Patrick when he first arrived.
Ito (Shimoda) is the butler who cannot stop giggling and who obviously has the most wonderful time being at the center of things when his boss and her friends let loose.
Pegeen (Pippa Scott) becomes Mame's newest secretary after Agnes is retired due to impending motherhood. She also is the woman who ends up marrying Patrick and we're all so happy... a far better choice than that snotty Gloria.
The final scene is with Auntie Mame, Patrick, Pegeen and their son Michael, Mame's great nephew, and the one who will get to take a walk on the wild side with his outlandish Auntie Mame.
The acting is uniformly great. This is one of the zaniest and best supporting casts of all time. Behind the scenes, everyone got on well... apparently no display of temperaments. One incident did halt production for awhile when Russell, in descending that spiral staircase, tripped and broke her ankle
I was neither a big fan nor a non-fan of Russell's but there is no doubt in my mind that no one has ever played this character better. Despite her star turn in Gypsy and memorable roles in Picnic, His Girl Friday and The Women, never has Russell been better than as Auntie Mame. She received a well-deserved Oscar nomination but was beaten to the podium by Susan Hayward for I Want to Live.
Director Morton Da Costa also helmed the Broadway version. He directed only three movies ever... The Music Man and the unsuccessful Island of Love were the other two. He knew this material back and forth but still brought a freshness to the production. One thing he so cleverly did at the end of most scenes was to have the entire scene go black except for a small, centered shot of Mame's face. The process was developed by a Warner Bros. technician.
Kudos must go to Betty Comden and Adolph Green for their strong and vivid screenplay, a great nod to comedy and touching sentiment. One could never downplay the importance of the production design and art direction of Malcolm Bert and the set design of George James Hopkins. A big wow to all.
Orry-Kelly handled the costume design for the entire cast but there can be no doubt that he pulled it off for Mame's glamorous clothes.
If you haven't ever seen this superb comedy in awhile or you never have, give up a couple of hours and allow yourself to laugh and feel good. It's such a good time.
Here's a tease:
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