Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame
December 27, 1958
Warner Bros.
Comedy, Historical
DVD
B-

This is based on the Patrick Dennis novel, by way of the hit stageplay that Rosalind Russell starred in.  (My review of the book is here
http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/06/auntie-mame-irreverent-escapade.html.)  It's much more sentimental, and much more of a star vehicle than the book, with Patrick often offscreen and the focus, sometimes literal, on Mame.  (Many scenes end theatrically, with the spotlight on Mame.)  The movie also isn't as racy as the book, as seen with the most outrageous word on Patrick's vocabulary list being "heterosexual."  Still, for its time it's pretty out there, and it's interesting to contrast the almost casual "unwed" pregnancy of Agnes Gooch with the coyness of the handling of Trudy Kockenlocker's dilemma in Miracle of Morgan's Creek about fifteen years earlier.  The timeline is somewhat different in AM-the-movie than AM-the book, including mistakenly starting things off in 1928 and having the Crash happen a few weeks later.  Still it's a reasonably faithful adaptation and author Patrick Dennis himself approved.  (His good friend Cris Alexander has a small role in the film and apparently played many roles in the stage production.)

I will admit to sometimes finding the 1974 movie musical Mame, with an offkey too old Lucille Ball, more fun because of it's so-bad-it's-goodness, but I'll discuss that when we get there.

Adolph Faylauer, who plays the sleeping audience member at the play, was part of an onscreen audience more than twenty years earlier, in A Night at the Opera.  Margaret Dumont allegedly plays the noblewoman in the play, but I didn't notice her.  (And IMDB is sometimes wrong.)  Frank McClure was in His Girl Friday and Citizen Kane.  Sam Harris was also in Citizen Kane.  Thomas Martin was in All About Eve.  Rand Harper was in Sabrina.  Lee Patrick (Mrs. Upson) was in There's No Business Like Show Business.  I'm pretty sure Colin Kenny and Carl M. Leviness were in some of my earlier movies, although I don't know which ones offhand.

Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane and would appear in Some Like It Hot.  Harold Miller would be in Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Willard Waterman (Mr. Upson) in The Apartment, Peter Bourne in I'll Take Sweden, and Louise Land in Dear Brigitte.  Fred Clark was in Sunset Blvd. and would do Sgt. Deadhead, among other movies.  Peggy Cass, who plays scene-stealing Agnes, would be a very different mother in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.