Patrick Dennis
Patrick Dennis (1921-1976) was born Edward Everett Tanner III in Chicago. In World War II he was wounded twice while serving as an ambulance driver in the American Field Service. After the war he moved to New York and began writing comic novels. Auntie Mame, the story of an orphan who comes to Manhattan to live with his eccentric aunt, was the best-selling book of 1955. It became a Broadway play and movie starring Rosalind Russell and a musical (Mame) starring Angela Lansbury. In 1961 he wrote the camp classic Little Me, a movie star memoir parody, with photographs.
Auntie Mame
With a wit as sharp as a vodka stinger and a heart as free as her spirit, Auntie Mame burst onto the literary scene in 1955—and today remains one of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction.
Wildly successful when it was first published in 1955, Patrick Dennis’ Auntie Mame sold over two million copies and stayed put on the New York Times bestseller list for 112 weeks. It was made into a play, a Broadway and a Hollywood musical, and a fabulous movie starring Rosalind Russell. Since then, Mame has taken her rightful place in the pantheon of Great and Important People as the world’s most beloved, madcap, devastatingly sophisticated, and glamorous aunt. She is impossible to resist, and this hilarious story of an orphaned ten-year-old boy sent to live with his aunt is as delicious a read in the twenty-first century as it was in the 1950s.
Follow the rollicking adventures of this unflappable flapper as seen through the wide eyes of her young, impressionable nephew and discover anew or for the first time why Mame has made the world a more wonderful place.
Around the World with Auntie Mame
Genius
Following in the tradition of Auntie Mame, bestselling author Patrick Dennis turns his wicked satirical pen on the insane world of fictional film director Leander Starr. Fleeing the IRS, creditors, and jilted lovers, Starr holes up in a Mexico City apartment—Casa Ximenez—with his faithful valet, Alistair St. Regis. Soon others descend on the villa—Starr’s ex-wife, his estranged socialite daughter, a shady Mexican film producer, a tax collector who has chased Starr around the world, and a dim young widow sitting on a fortune in laxative stock. Starr concocts a plan to distract them all: an abbreviated cinematic epic covering the history of Mexico titled Valley of the Vultures, starring them. Will the scheme work?
Little Me
For Belle Poitrine, née Mayble Schlumpfert, all the world’s a stage and she’s the most important player on it. At once coy and coercive, with a name that means "beautiful bosom" in French, she claws her way from Striver’s Row to the silver screen. Recalling Belle’s career, which ranged from portraying Anne Boleyn in Oh, Henry to roles in both Sodom and its sequel Gomorrah (not to mention the classic Papaya Paradise), Little Me serves up copious quanitites of husbands, couture, and Pink Lady cocktails, with international adventures and a murder trial to boot.
A runaway bestseller that made its way to Broadway, starring Sid Caesar in 1962 and Martin Short in 1998, Little Me is now reprinted–with all of the 150 historic, hysterical photographs depicting the funniest scenes from Belle’s sordid life, including cameo appearances by the author and Rosalind Russell. Considered a collector’s item, the first edition of Little Me was like a performance in book form.