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AUNTIE MAME

© Barbara Ann Lyons

With all that's going on now in the U.S. and the WORLD, I want to take a breath and lighten up. There are wonderful, enduring, and charming novels that exist which are pure entertainment. We certainly need a few doses! My prescription for this week, and I will highlight several others in the future, is the story by Patrick Dennis - AUNTIE MAME.

Patrick, as himself in this story, which unfolds in a memoir style manner, is the 10-year old nephew of flamboyant, free-spirited Mame, who is also value conscious, as witnessed in her passionate defense of tolerance, and an "I've gotta be me" personna.

Young Patrick, along with his Irish nanny, Norah Muldoon, arrive in New York City to live with his "Auntie Mame". Feisty Mame is a long way from the ideal mother, but teaches Patrick what's really important in life.

In 1928 Chicago, Patrick is privileged and wealthy. His father is a successful, though emotionally cold figure. When his father dies, a fortune is placed in trust for him. The trustee, Mr. Babcock, displeased with Mame's lifestyle of constant parties and benefits, sends Patrick off to boarding school.

Meanwhile Mame is forced out of her Beekman Place residence when she loses "big time" in the 1929 stock market crash. Things look bleak until she meets and marries Beauregard Burnside, a southern oilman awash in money. Her in-laws and the southern locals tag her as a gold-digging Yankee, but our heroine manages to charm even this crowd. Married for only a year, husband Beau dies in a riding accident and Mame is now a wealthy widow.

Centerstage in the story is when Patrick grows up and proposes to Gloria Upson, upsetting the disapproving Auntie Mame. The Upsons are part of an "exclusive" Connecticut suburb, rife with bigots and narrowminded socialites. Mame confronts this in an eye-opening speech that endures even to today.

Auntie Mame's activities are funny. She is eccentric, fearless, involving herself in frauds and fads, bordering on irresponsibility. Despite all this she remains loved and admirable for the stands she takes. A famous line from the Rosalind Russell movie of the same title is: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death".

Writer Patrick Dennis' real name is Edward Everett Tanner III (1921-1976), and was the son of a Chicago stockbroker who considered him a sissy. He married a NY debutante and fathered two children. He was a WW II veteran and worked at the Council on Foreign Relations. In researching, it appears that Auntie Mame was written around Tanner's own experience as an artistic, imaginative, sensitive boy raised in a stodgy Midwestern family.

The copyright of the article AUNTIE MAME in Classic American Literature is owned by Barbara Ann Lyons. Permission to republish AUNTIE MAME in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.