| Collector's Corner December 2007
 Auntie
Mame
- Starring: Rosalind Russell, Forrest Tucker,
Coral Browne, Fred Clark, Roger Smith, Patrick Dennis, Patric Knowles, Peggy Cass, Jan
Handzlik, Joanna Barnes, Pippa Scott, Lee Patrick, Willard Waterman, Robin Hughes, Connie
Gilchrist, Yuki Shimoda, Brook Byron, Carol Veazie, Henry Brandon
- Directed by: Morton DaCosta
- Theatrical release: 1958
- DVD release: 2002
- Video: 2.35:1 (widescreen)
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono
- Released by: Warner Home Video
"Live, live, live. Life is a banquet, and most poor
suckers are starving to death!"
So says Auntie Mame (Rosalind Russell), the classic
gourmand of life. Whether rich or poor, up or down, she was worldly, sophisticated, and
treacherously gorgeous, with the energy of a tornado and enough love to unite her family
and friends.
Auntie Mame starts this film as a flapper in love
with the Bohemian underbelly of the New York City intelligentsia. Her brother has just
died and sent his young son, Patrick (Jan Handzlik), to live with her, despite the fact
that he considered his sister a crackpot. He decided to protect Patrick from Mame’s
crazy ways by hiring a stodgy trustee, Dwight Babcock (Fred Clark), whose job it is to try
to make Patrick into an East Coast Brahmin: boring, self-satisfied, smug, and class
conscious. Mame wants just the opposite for the boy, and sends him to an experimental
school where students and teachers spend the days nude. She even teaches Patrick how to
take care of a hungover houseguest by making perfect dry Martinis. Then the Great
Depression hits. Mame loses everything, including Patrick, and has to fight her way back.
The story may sound like a drama. In fact, it’s a
divine comedy peppered with vignettes that let us in on Mame’s heart, her cunning,
her foibles, and her fierce determination.
The American public had fallen in love with Mame Dennis
long before the film was released, late in 1958. First came the book by Patrick Dennis
(the pseudonym of Edward Everett Tanner III), published in 1955. By naming the fictional
nephew after himself, Dennis convinced 90% of his readers that they were reading an
autobiography. The book spent a phenomenal 112 weeks on the New York Times
best-seller list and sold over two million copies, thus guaranteeing two things: Patrick
Dennis would be very rich, and Broadway and Hollywood producers would soon come
a-knockin’.
Broadway got to him first. Working fast, they had the play
written, cast, and ready for Manhattan audiences by Halloween of 1956. The show ran for
almost two years and made everyone millions of dollars. Then the Hollywood producers had
their shot, plucking from the Broadway production its star, director, and several bit
players. By the time the film premiered at Radio City Music Hall, two days after Christmas
1958, the world had already had three-and-a-half years of learning to love Mame. And
again, everyone made millions. Auntie Mame was a critical and popular hit.
 All three versions of the
story were successful for three reasons. First, the supporting casts were wacky but all
had well-placed hearts, even if they didn’t all agree with each other. Second, each
of Dennis’s short, wild, ingenious chapters ends in a howler or a tear-jerker. But
the towering achievement, the big reason everyone loved book, play, and film, is that the
character of Mame. Dennis created a towering fictional presence -- the aunt all of us wish
we had.
The producers of the Broadway show needed an actress who
could bring to life everyone’s fantasy of Mame, and they couldn’t have done
better than Rosalind Russell. Watching her breathe fire into this character is half the
fun of Auntie Mame. And, after two years of playing to the back rows on
Broadway, Russell had morphed Mame into a glam superwoman complete with arch, dramatic
gestures and imperious tones, who twisted her faux-London accent around subtle bons mots.
She is so completely absorbed in the role that we forget Russell and concentrate on Mame.
I listed more than the usual number of actors in the
heading of this piece because they are all, to a person, outstanding. Peggy Cass (who was
nominated for both a Tony and an Oscar) is hilarious as the frump that Mame, as you will
see in the film, made blossom in more ways than one. Fred Clark’s trustee is the
villain who makes everyone sneer, even if he does have Patrick’s best interests at
heart. Coral Browne plays Mame’s pal Vera Charles, who’s almost always drunk and
passed out in one of Mame’s bedrooms -- but when she wakes, she is a sweet,
magnanimous friend to Mame and Patrick. And Joanna Barnes is side-splitting as Gloria
Upson, the older Patrick’s prim fiancée.
The rule of thumb is, if one actor is great, thank the
actor; if all are great, thank the director. Because there is nary a weak actor anywhere
in Auntie Mame, let’s thank director Morton DaCosta. Hollywood was able to
lure DaCosta away from the New York stage only three times, and the first two -- Auntie
Mame and The Music Man (1962) -- were huge hits that he’d already
directed on Broadway. In Hollywood, success breeds opportunity, so you can imagine the
money the producers must have dangled before him. He came back only once more, to direct Island
of Love (1963), then spent the rest of his career directing live theater.
Edward Everett Tanner III was by now a multimillionaire.
Still writing as Patrick Dennis, he now had, in addition to Auntie Mame, two other
books on the New York Times best-seller list, a record that still holds today. His
other books, The Pruitts of Southampton and Guestward Ho!, became 1960s TV
series, and he even wrote a hit play. But neither the adulation nor the money could cure
Tanner’s hidden problem.
Tanner was terribly depressed, apparently due to his fear
of being outed: Though married with children, he was secretly homosexual. In 1962, when he
seemed to be leading a charmed life, Tanner met and fell in love with another man. He was
planning on leaving his family, but he snapped. After a near-successful attempt at
suicide, he spent eight months in an insane asylum. When he got out, he had changed. He
became a party animal, and was so profligate that he ended up squandering his entire
fortune. Penniless, he longed to be back in the world of the wealthy, so he took work as a
butler. People knew Patrick Dennis as the successful author; those who hired Edward
Everett Tanner III (including McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc) had no idea they were
getting Dennis as well. Tanner died of pancreatic cancer in 1976, at the age of 55.
Auntie Mame was nominated for six Oscars, including
Best Actress (Rosalind Russell), Best Supporting Actress (Peggy Cass), and Best Picture.
But 1958 was a strong year for Hollywood, and the big awards were taken home by Gigi,
I Want to Live!, and Separate Tables. Auntie Mame was shut out.
Warner Home Video has done a pretty good job with this DVD
transfer. As usual, they’ve created a clean picture and clear sound. There are no
extras to get excited about unless you’re a film-music freak, in which case you can
watch the entire film with only Bronislau Kaper’s score coming through the speakers.
Otherwise, there’s the original trailer as well as one for the execrable film musical
version, Mame, released in 1974. (Lucille Ball had been a major star for years, but
she was no Mame Dennis.) Hopefully, when Warner releases its high-definition version,
we’ll get some more in-depth extras. I’d especially like a commentary by author
Chris Chase, who helped Rosalind Russell write her autobiography, Life Is a Banquet
(Random House, 1977). Or a commentary by Jan Handzlik, who’s now 62, out of show
business, and working as a lawyer.
For some reason, the public has lost interest in Auntie
Mame as novel, play, or film. Perhaps audiences no longer care about the foibles of
the rich. Maybe they don’t understand -- or don’t want to understand -- the
conceits and episodic structure of a Broadway production, something that spills over into
both book and film. Maybe it’s too subtle. I think it’s a shame Auntie Mame
is only a fictional character. The world would be a better place with more Mames.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
