Auntie Mame

Chapter One

Auntie Mame

and the Orphan Boy

It has rained all day. Not that I mind rain, but this is the day I promised to put up the screens and take my kid to the beach. I also meant to daub some giddy stencils on the composition walls of the place in the cellar which the realtor called a Rumpus Room and to start finishing what the realtor called an Unfinished Attic, Ideal for Guest Room, Game Room, Studio or Den.

Somehow I got sidetracked right after breakfast.

It all started over an old issue of the Digest. This is a magazine I rarely read. I don't have to, because I hear all of its articles discussed every morning on the seven-fifty-one and every evening on the six-oh-three. Everybody in Verdant Greens--a community of two hundred houses in four styles--swears by the Digest. In fact, they talk of nothing else.

But I find that the magazine has the same snake-bird fascination for me, too. Almost against my will, I read about the menace in our public schools; the fun of natural childbirth; how a community in Oregon put down a dope ring; and about somebody whom a famous writer--I forget which one--considers to be the Most Unforgettable Character he's ever met.

That stopped me.

Unforgettable Character? Why, that writer hasn't met anybody! He couldn't know what the word character meant unless he'd met my Auntie Mame. Nobody could. Yet there were certain parallels between his Unforgettable Character and mine. His Unforgettable Character was a sweet little New England spinster who lived in a sweet little white clapboard house and opened her sweet little green door one morning expecting to find the Hartford Courant. Instead she found a sweet little wicker basket, with a sweet little baby boy inside. The rest of the article went on to tell how that Unforgettable Character took the baby in and raised it as her own. Well, that's when I put the Digest down and got to thinking about the sweet little lady who raised me.

In 1928 my father had a slight

Patrick Dennis, the fictional narrator of Auntie Mame and Little Me, was the pen name of Edward Everett Tanner III (1921 1976). One of the most eccentric, celebrated, and widely read authors of the 1950s and '60s, Tanner wrote sixteen novels in all, a majority of which were national bestsellers.

"I reread and study Auntie Mame like a hilarious, glamorous bible where, among other wise lessons, one learns that true sophistication and innocence are two halves of the same glittering coin."
--Charles Busch, author of The Tale of the Allergist s Wife and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom

"Auntie Mame is the American Alice in Wonderland. It is also, incidentally, one of the most important books in my life. Its witty Wildean phrases ring in my mind, and its flamboyant characters still enamor me. Like Tennessee Williams, Patrick Dennis caught the boldness, vitality, and iridescent theatricality of modern American personality. In Mame s mercurial metamorphoses we see American optimism and self-invention writ large."--Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae

"Mame Dennis is the grande dame of grand dames and I, for one, am thrilled that she s back among us. She is still hilarious, sparkling, and utterly indestructible despite the best efforts of time, neglect, and Lucille Ball."
--Joe Keenan, Emmy-Winning Writer/Producer for Frasier, author of Blue Heaven and Putting on the Ritz

"Auntie Mame is a unique literary achievementa brilliant novel disguised as a lightweight piece of fluff. Every page sparkles with wit, style andthough Mame would cringe at the thoughthigh moral purpose. Let s hope Patrick Dennis is finally recognized for what he is: One of the great comedic writers of the 20th century."
--Robert Plunket, author of Love Junkie