Auntie Mame
Warner Bros. (1958) Dir. Morton Da Costa
143 min. / Technicolor / Technirama / 2.35:1
DTS-HD MA 2.0 theatrical mono, and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround / SDH
Warner Archive 4K UHD + BD $29.98
Available from our partner Movie Zyng
Ah, Mame's story – a show biz legend. The novel Auntie Mame appeared in early 1955, written by “Patrick Dennis,” detailing his life growing up with an aunt who was… well, the word “unconventional” is apt, to say the least. Patrick Dennis was actually a pen name for Edward Everett Tanner III, who always denied that the book was based on his real-life wacky aunt, but nobody believed him. The book was not only uproarious but also tremendously popular (a sequel would soon follow) and within two years had been adapted by Jerome Lawrence and Bob Lee for the Broadway stage starring Rosalind Russell as Mame Dennis, and the play ran for nearly two years. After its run, a tremendously popular film version was produced by Warner Bros. with Miss Russell, Peggy Cass, and Jan Handzlik reprising their stage roles. Eight years after THAT, a musical version entitled Mame opened on Broadway starring Angela Lansbury, and played for almost four years, and after THAT becaame a film starring Lucille Ball that, well, the less said the better on that one.
So, the 1958 film version has just been released by Warner Archive, which promises that there won’t be a flood of 4K UHD releases from their vault but that the ones that they DO put it out will be extremely special and worth the effort, and so far – including The Searchers, High Society, and The Curse of Frankenstein – they ain’t kiddin’. How does Auntie Mame look in 4K? If you’ve seen the film, you know the opening credits are all sparkles and spangles and Technicolor dazzle, and with the remixed 5.1 sound on, this is a UHD to wow your friends as you show off your home system, it’s that beautiful.
As with the book and the play, the film’s a series of vignettes and set pieces. Young Patrick’s widowed father dies suddenly, and the boy becomes the ward of his aunt, a kooky Greenwich Village fireball with unconventional friends and décor and a highly flashy sense of personal design. When banker Fred Clark, who is guarding the boy’s interests, discovers Auntie Mame has enrolled him in a co-educational nudist school (whose dean is Henry Brandon, looking 20 years younger than he looked 20 years earlier in Our Gang Follies of 1938), he takes control of the boy’s education and ensures that Patrick grows up to be an insufferable bore with a fiancé who’s so annoying that everyone in the cast (and everyone watching the movie) wants to push her off a cliff. Can Auntie Mame save the boy’s life – and his soul – from such an unendurable fate?
Roz Russell owned this part and it’s great to see her brought in to do the film, along with the hilarious Peggy Cass as her personal secretary, the ever-suffering Miss Gooch, who seems to never know how she got herself into the fixes she’s in. Forrest Tucker shows a real flair for romantic comedy in his surprisingly brief turn as a beau for Mame; Jon Handzlik and Roger Smith are respectively Patrick the Younger and the Older.
Nominated for 6 Academy Awards and winner of 2 Golden Globes, Auntie Mame is one of the greatest Broadway-to-film adaptations, and the Warner Archive UHD (which includes the film on Blu-ray, too) is spectacular in its Technicolor, Technirama glory: you’ll want to watch the film again as soon as it’s over.
Bonus material includes a new interview with Mr. Handzlik reminiscing about making the film at the TCM Classic Film Festival earlier this year, a before-and-after restoration reel, and the trailer, plus a handy scale reprint of the original exhibitor’s manual, in a slip-cover. Warner Archive really does treat its special releases special.
A must-own.
