Auntie Mame
Directed by Morton DaCosta
Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from the novel by Patrick Dennis
1958/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Auntie Mame: Live! Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death![/box]
Rosalind Russell IS Auntie Mame and this is an entertaining film in the 50’s brash Technicolor mode.
Patrick Dennis’s father was writing a will and saw no other option but to leave the boy in the care of his eccentric sister Mame, his only living relative. He also provides for a banker to supervise his son’s education. No sooner is the ink dry on the will when the father drops dead. Patrick is soon welcomed to New York by his larger-than-life aunt, who provides him with an upbringing that is one part bathtub gin, one part bohemian society, and one heaping helping of genuine love.
When the banker gets wind of the nudist school Patrick is attending, the boy is shipped off to a conservative boarding school. He continues to enjoy weekends with his aunt. She loses everything in the stock market crash but meets an oil man and proceeds to travel the world with him. While she is gone, Patrick’s conservative education takes hold and she fears she has lost him for good. With Peggy Cass as an unwed mother in Mame’s household and Forrest Tucker as the oil man.
The plot summary doesn’t sound as funny as the movie is. You can’t help but fall in love with Russell’s character. Her rapid-fire repartee is a bit remiscent of His Girl Friday and she looks wonderful in her Orry-Kelly wardrobe.
Auntie Mame was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actress; Best Supporting Actress (Cass); Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; and Best Film Editing. How it missed a nomination for its costumes is beyond me.
Trailer
Don’t forget Coral Browne (the wife of Vincent Price) as Mame’s best frenemy! The show they’re doing (where Mame messes up her very very small part) is called “Midsummer Madness,” but it bears more than a passing resemblance to Oscar Wilde’s “Vera; or the Nihilists.”
I’ve loved this movie for a long time because I saw it in segments for many years. It was only two or three years ago that I finally saw the whole thing from start to finish.
And Russell wasn’t finished with her career yet! She still had The Trouble with Angels and Mrs. Polifax – Spy left. And also Oh, Dad Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad with Robert Morse and Jonathon Winters. (Which I’ve never seen. I wonder if it’s on YouTube?)
Russell also has Gypsy coming up. I’ve always loved her in that one, though I suppose she’s no Ethel Merman. I played the Peggy Cass part in an amateur version of the musical Mame and have always had a soft spot for this movie – but not the Lucille Ball musical version.
I loved MAME as a child. As a young adult, I saw it on the big screen at the Tiffany in Los Angles. The audience was full of Roz fans. Everyone was happy.
This performance always comes to my mind as the image of Rosalind Russell, even before His Girl Friday.