Auntie Mame (1958)

Directed by Morton DaCosta. Starring Rosalind Russell, Fred Clark, Roger Smith, Coral Browne, Forrest Tucker, Jan Handzlik, Joanna Barnes, Peggy Cass, Patric Knowles, Pippa Scott, Yuki Shimoda, Lee Patrick.

“Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death,” goes the famous line, and no one’s going hungry if Rosalind Russell has anything to say about it. She made the central role her own on Broadway with the stage adaptation of Patrick Dennis’ book, and it translates to film as a “photographed stage show production” in the hands of producer/director DaCosta and screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Wearing a litany of hats—here she’s a woeful telephone operator, now she’s a Macy’s shopgirl, etc.—Russell is the whole show, and while I hesitate to call it overacting since it’s calculated to be loud and exaggerated and theatrical, the old adage “never let ’em see you sweat” is shattered by so much effort being expended, especially when Russell has to turn on a dime from comedy to melodrama. Worse, it’s a character best taken in small doses, yet this piece of fluff has been pulled like taffy to an exhausting (and borderline-interminable) two-and-a-half hours, and for a movie with so few surprises, so few control settings, and so much, well, Auntie Mame, that’s a grave misjudgment. Still, at least Russell keeps restocking that banquet for us; most of her co-stars provide next to nothing (the actors who play her “adopted” son as a child and adult are feeble), and she ain’t Lucille Ball, so chow down! Look for Groucho’s old foil, Margaret Dumont, in a cameo.

58/100