Christmas is about a week away so today's Cinema Sunday is about a movie that gets trotted out around the holiday season even though it is not ostensibly a Christmas movie.
It's like how Meet Me In St. Louis gets shown around the yuletide season even though only one part of it takes place at Christmas. (And it's the most depressing part!) '
This week's post goes back to a thrice told tale a flamboyant and exuberant woman whose life is changed when she becomes entrusted with the care of her orphaned nephew.
This week's movie is from 1958, Auntie Mame.
The story of Mame Dennis was first told in a novel published in 1955.
The 2nd time was in 1956 when the book was adapted as a stage play starring Rosalind Russell who had optioned the rights to the book.
The 3rd time around was the 1958 Technicolor film which Russell, who had originated the role on Broadway and held the adaption rights to the book, arranged to take the starring role.
(The story of Mame gets told a 4th time on Broadway in 1966, this time as a musical and a 5th time as a movie adaption of the musical from 1974 starring Lucille Ball.)
So what is it about this story that keeps getting told and retold.
Perhaps that can be expressed in this quote from the movie.
"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." - Mame Dennis
We begin Auntie Mame with a tragedy. In 1928 young Patrick Dennis is left orphaned after the death of his father, Edwin. He specified in his will that Patrick would go live with his aunt Mame but Edwin figured that would never happened as he eats right and exercises every day at the club and living with Mame would be a disaster.
(We see a headline about a wealthy businessman dying while exercising at the club.)
Patrick goes to join his aunt Mame in her lavish apartment in Manhattan where she is throwing a wild and free spirited party for her friends (artists, writers, actors, etc). Mame is immediately taken with this young boy who has arrived on her doorstep. She joyously wants to give Patrick broad and wild ranging experiences in life, to teach him how to not just live but experience the endless opportunities that life has to offer.
Dwight Babcock, a very conservative bank officer and trustee of Edwin's financial estate, has other ideas and per instructions left by Edwin is determined that Patrick receive a proper and disciplined education. So Babcock enrolls Patrick into a super conservative, uptight boy's school, the kind of strict structured education that is anathema to Mame's perspective on life. And she has limited options to counter that strict influence as she can only see Patrick on holidays and the summer.
Uh oh! It's the 1929 stock market crash and with her wealth all but evaporated, Mame takes a series of jobs which all end badly.
During one such job as a Macy's sales girl during the holiday season (Hey, look! It's Christmas!), Mame meets Southern oil baron Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside.
Well, gosh darn tootin' if Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside doesn't get all twitterpated over Mame and she in turn falls in love with him.
Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside wants to go travelling around the world with Mame on their honeymoon.
Which is ever so much fun until Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside falls off the Matterhorn. Don't worry! All he does is get a boo-boo when he scuffs his left knee.
No, I'm lying. Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside is dead.
While watching this with Andrea, she was really gobsmacked by this turn of events. Other than Patrick's dad dying and Mame losing all her money in the 1929 stock crash, Auntie Mame has been an otherwise fun lighthearted film.
Then good ol' Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside falls off the Matterhorn which kills him and Andrea is all bummed out.
So is Mame who is despondent and in mourning over her lost love. And the letters she's getting from Patrick are not helping her spirits. Babcock's influence is guiding Patrick into a more conventional personality.
And also into a different actor. Well, time has passed since little boy Patrick first turned up at Mame's door. He's a young adult now.
Patrick thinks having Mame work on her memoirs might be the perfect way to get her out of her funk. So he sets her up with a dictaphone, a typewriter, and a secretary, Agnes Gooch. He also arranges for a collaborator/ghost writer for Mame, Brian O'Bannion but he turns out to be a pretentious dick who's out for a quick buck.
Agnes Gooch hooks up with O'Bannion and gets pregnant. Mame continues to look after Agnes but does secure a new secretary Pegeen to help her with the book.
Meanwhile, Mame has another matter to contend with: Patrick's engagement to Gloria Upson. Upson is the sort of cookie cutter wife conservative men are supposed to go for: pretty, not too bright and ready to be impregnated with 2.5 children to fulfill her part of the American dream.
Mame is not happy with Patrick's choice for a wife but hey, if he's happy, she doesn't want to get in the way of that. Then Mame meet Upson parents in their "restricted" (meaning "no Jews") community in Connecticut and then Mame decides she is going to get in the way of that.
Mame throws a party and invites the Upsons. It's the sort of wild and free spirited party for her friends like we saw at the beginning of the movie and boy, Gloria Upson and her uptight, prejudiced parents are really offended by everything going on here, especially when they meet the very pregnant and (presumably) unmarried Agnes Gooch.
(Hays Code rules still apply and we find out Gooch and O'Bannion did get married even if both were too inebriated to remember it. But it's a plot contrivance that sorts out the arbiters of morality in the Hays office.)
Anyway the engagement is off but Patrick's OK with it. He's met Pegreen who is pretty AND very bright. They have so much more to talk about than he ever did with Gloria.
By 1946, Patrick and Pegeen are married and have a son Michael. Meanwhile, Mame is a successful publisher author and life is good and wonderful for everyone.
Except perhaps for Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside.
The film ends with Mame and Michael persuade his parents to let Mame take the child on a journey to India and the movie fades out as Mame tells Michael of all the wondrous sights they will see.
Rosalind Russell is perfect as the titular Auntie Mame, a woman with such an energetic passion for all that life has to offer. She is capable of feeling low and hurt as she does when the 1929 stock market crash leaves her broke and the gravity that pulls Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside off the Matterhorn leaves her alone. But she finds her way back to embracing the life.
I'm not one for doing that myself but I usually find such stories about people who do as abhorrently sweet. But Auntie Mame has an edge to it with Mame's repulsion at conservative standards on who can do what and where and when. Mame is not just about enjoying life for herself but seeing to it that others can share in the joy as well.
Or to quote Mame from the movie,"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."
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