Auntie Mame: A movie that never gets old

Pocket Review, Title Auntie Mame, Studio Warner Bros., Rating 4.0, Peggy Cass Rosalind Russell

	Auntie Mame (1958) Director: Morton DaCosta Pocket Review

Clip: I'm a bride!

Mame is a free-spirited woman who believes that 'Life is a banquet - and most poor suckers are starving to death.' She is given care of her nephew when her brother unexpectedly dies, and raises him in her very unconventional world, against the wishes of his legal guardian, an often perplexed conservative banker played with great comic style by Fred Clark . It is Rosalind Russell's best role.

My wife Cindy suggested we watch this movie one night, and I was skeptical that a late 50’s comedy would hold up. What did I know? Both the dialog and the performances were excellent, delivered with impeccable comic timing.

Forrest Tucker plays a kind Southern oil tycoon. Peggy Cass is hilarious as Agnes Gooch, a personal assistant to Mame, who becomes pregnant, to her bewilderment, and does the best physical comedy around late pregnancy I have ever seen; this was also her best performance.

Some of the plot is a rather obvious play of exaggerated liberalism vs. conservatism, but there is no harm done.