AUNTIE MAME (1958)
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At the risk of sacrilege, my husband and I recently re-watched AUNTIE MAME and while we both found parts of it still hilarious, I couldn't help noticing how creaky it seems with a very weak 3rd act ...
the DataLounge
I love it. Its' the height of 50s movie glamour in sets and costumes, and Roz gives a perfectly delicious performance.

It was wonderfully avant garde for its time, such as showing two lesbians in tweed in the opening party scene. There are many more gay touches throughout, including the giggling houseboy Ito, and Coral Browne, who shows her lesbian power as Vera Charles.

And who can forget little Gloria Upson, who has been imitated by every faggot since 1958. Her pingpong saga has been memorized and repeated countless times over the years. It was ghastly, just ghastly. All I can say is ghastly.

Come to think of it, Auntie Mame may be the gayest movie ever made.

I watch it occasionally when I'm in the mood, but to tell you the truth, while I agree with your assessment that parts were maybe a little tedious, as a geeky little gay boy growing-up in suburban Ohio, I immediately adopted the "life is a banquet..." line as my mantra. I adhered to it in every aspect of my life, and still do, now that I'm 66. I've traveled and lived all over the world, done things that almost got me killed, met amazing people, eaten things that the average person would throw-up, and seen things that were both amazing and shocking. When I was in my forties, my father made the comment, "why can't you just be normal?" I can't because I'm not. So to me, "life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death" is exactly my life philosophy, and I owe some part of who I am today to that movie. I hope some other kids watch it, and get what its saying.

I was stunned by the alternative school scene last time I watched it! It looked so creepy to modern sensibilities, like some pedophile ring.

Gloria’s nouveau riche trashy parents always amuse me, since Gloria is trying so hard to be top drawer, but it only takes a tiny scratch in the surface to see from whence she came. Her parents are like the Trumps from Queens.

The fox hunting scene always makes me laugh. What a great bit of slapstick, with the ridiculous boots and the madcap romp across the Georgia countryside!

Patrick’s mainstream phase seemed pretty typical, but not the swiftness with which he relinquished it!

Overall, I can watch this over and over and it always makes me feel better.

It's much beloved, but there are problems with it as a film. For one thing, it's done in a very stagey artificial way that doesn't always work (such as with the spotlights on Mame's face, or her back bow, at the end of scenes). And it's tough today to know exactly what Patrick Dennis (and the playwrights) were doing with the Brian O'Bannion character--he doesn't really gel with the other plots very well. (And of course Ito is super-offensive)

Although I have some exceptions here and there to what she does, Roz Russell is nonethelesshilarious. Her inflections for "spitting distance... how vivid..." in the phone call with Mr. Babcock, and the way she weakly corrects Mrs. Upson that her name is Mame, not "Mamie" crack me up every time... also the long pregnant pauses she makes every time Gloria says something inane, which just kill me. But sometimes she's a bit over-rehearsed, like she played the part a few too many times (such as when she says "Even chosen my gift!" to the Upsons and lets emotion break through too patly). This was a common problem for people who did great stage performances after long Broadway runs in the part; sometimes Rex Harrison also lets the surprise go out of his lines in "My Fair Lady," for example, and of course all Dataloungers know that Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack have problems with this to a much greater extent than either Russell or Harrison in the film of "The Bad Seed." Even so, Russell's is still a great performance.

r31 He actually did a pretty good job of being even-handed with the characters. I didn't detect homophobia in it, in fact Mame was pretty defensive of any marginalized groups. The people who looked awful in the books were usually the society types who made that their life goals. Remember the self-hating Jews who were living like kings in Lebanon but changed their last name and pretended to be French? Or when she blew up the Schloss to try to retard the Nazis?

She was also rebelling against what was expected of women - to be demure and meek and snag a good husband - and living her life the way she wanted.

Ito's a stereotype but "Chinamen" like him were common in films at the time so it's not all that unusual. Plus he's a memorable character.

There's some stereotypes, sure, but there's a reason that stereotypes exist - to ignore them isn't being honest either.

Mame as played by Russell an insufferable, know-it-all cunt. She was OK as someone for a young, impressionable child to have in his life, but completely unsuitable as a guardian and caretaker. She was more concerned with being outrageous and avant garde than with the welfare of the child.

The character in the film was able to get away with irresponsible behaviour because of her wealth and privilege. Had she been poorer she'd have been jeered and locked up.

I haven't read the books, so I don't know if Russell's portrayal matches the character in the book, but the woman Russell played was basically a selfish attention whore. In today's world she'd be a YouTube influencer or someone equally grotesque.

I think this discussion is missing the point that "Auntie Mame" was never intended to be anything more than a shiny bauble - there was no deeper significance to be found in the characters or their attitudes. We keep referring to Patrick Dennis as the creator, but his original book was adapted as a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and that was subsequently adapted into the 1958 screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Greene. So there were a lot of hands at work on what we ended up with on screen.

Mame Dennis is a fiction, although she was very loosely based on an aunt of Patrick Dennis, Marion Tanner. Marion Tanner was not the fabulously rich, Beekman Place-dwelling character we meet in the book and play/film adaptations. She was a Greenwich Village free spirit who knew lots of interesting people and did lots of partying, starting in the 1920s. She eventually lost her money and her row house in the Village, and ended up living on the generosity of others.

So please stop looking for significance in "Auntie Mame" and just enjoy it as great entertainment that reflects, for better or worse, the time and attitudes of the era in which it was created.

[R73] OP here and I really appreciate your very knowledgeable perspective - and the perspectives of so many other well-informed and intelligent men. You guys are great!!!! I wanted to add one thing that I remember from reading Roz' autobiography, LIFE IS A BANQUET. To paraphrase, she said that Mame was also based on an older sister of hers (she was from a large Irish Catholic family from Waterbury, CT - ?). The defining anecdote about the glamorous older sister went something like this: Roz and her older sister are walking down 5th Avenue when a very attractive man who obviously knows them approaches them. They say all kinds of nice things and Roz' sister makes sure to ask after his mother ("she's well, thanks"). He politely excuses himself and walks on into the streets of New York. Roz' sister turns to Roz and asks, "Who was that?", Roz answers: "Your first husband."

I'm a huge fan of Dennis' original novels. The poster who said to stop looking for deep meaning and just enjoy is correct. Dennis wrote to entertain -He had no illusions that he was writing the Great American Novel. In fact, he was laughing at the very idea. Over the decades the character of Mame Dennis Burnside has been overtaken by the "life is a banquet" idea, to the point that it misrepresents her. Mame embraced anything that was new. Not from a goal of being seen as cultured or stylish, but because she craved novelty. She would take up a new idea or cause and embrace it with everything she had. For a time. Or at least until something new and interesting caught her attention. Whether that meant Japanese culture before the war, taking in refugee children during the war, or studying yoga in India after the war, Mame was all about living large in the present moment. What made her endearing in the novels was the fact that she was actually intelligent, educated, generous, and had taste. She was equally at home dining with a duchess or her maid. She abhorred pettiness, prejudice, and pretense. Yes, she was sometimes rash, always self-indulgent, and occasionally blind to things going on around her. But the privilege she so easily assumed was something that she was perfectly willing to share with anyone.

In many ways Mame is a female Peter Pan who refuses to grow up or grow old. She constantly reinvented herself. She also felt perfectly comfortable "dating" younger men, much to her nephew's chagrin. Another of Mame's charms -especially for her gay fans - was her attitude about sex. To her it was something wonderful and fun that society made too much of a fuss over with silly taboos and proscriptions. People accuse Patrick Dennis of internalized homophobia -But how many of the novels from his period included gay and lesbian characters at all? And a closer look reveals that the disdain often shown was towards a character's greed, stupidity, or attempts at social climbing, rather than his sexuality. Many of those characters were only gay when there was something to be had from it (Tony in Tony, Bruce in Genius).

Dennis is worth a re-read.