Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, and Rosalind Russell were known as the three saints of Hollywood, all of them huge stars and active in charitable works throughout their stardom and beyond. The film careers of all three had dried up by the mid-1950s, Dunne having made her last film in 1952, Young in 1953, and Russell her last film before playing her first supporting role in a film since the 1930s in Picnic.

Young had turned to TV where she became one of that medium’s biggest stars for more than a decade. Dunne did occasional TV work and went into politics as a U.N. representative appointed by President Eisenhower in 1957.

Russell found renewed stardom in the 1953 Broadway smash hit, Wonderful Town, the musical version of My Sister Eileen for which she received her first Oscar nomination nine years earlier, winning a Tony for her efforts.

Columbia, which owned the rights to My Sister Eileen made a musical version of their own in 1955 with Betty Garret in Russell’s role, the same year Russell played her one and only supporting role in Picnic. The following year, she was back on Broadway in an even bigger hit with Auntie Mame for which she was nominated for a Tony. In 1958, she brought Wonderful Town to TV, and Auntie Mame to the big screen. Auntie Mame received six Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Actress, and Supporting Actress for Peggy Cass who had won a Tony for her role on stage.

Auntie Mame began life as a novel by Patrick Dennis, the pseudonym of Edward Everett Tanner III whose semi-autobiographical work was based on his eccentric real-life aunt.

Russell, Cass, Jan Hanzlik who plays Patrick as a child, and Yuki Shimoda, who plays the butler Ito, were the only cast members from the play to make it to the film version. There are wonderful performances by the entire cast including Forrest Tucker, Patric Knowles, Roger Smith, Fred Clark, and Henry Brandon, but for this exercise my concentration is on five fabulous female cast members, one of whom I met, and one of whom lived down the road from me at the time of her death.

ESSENTIAL PLAYERS

ROSALIND RUSSELL (1907-1976)

Rosalind Russell began her career as MGM’s backup to Myrna Loy. Initially cast in supporting roles, her starry career began with the title role in 1936’s Craig’s Wife, and included such films as Night Must Fall, The Citade/, The Women, His Girl Friday, My Sister Eileen, Sister Kenny, Mourning Becomes Electra, and Picnic pre-Auntie Mame, and A Majority of One, Gypsy, and The Trouble with Angels post-Auntie Mame. Nominated four times for a Best Actress Oscar, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for 1972. She was also nominated for five Golden Globes, winning all five.

CORAL BROWNE (1913-1991)

The Australian-born London stage star made her Hollywood film debut playing Mame’s best friend, the acid-tongued actress Vera Charles based on Tallulah Bankhead. She was equally memorable in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, The Killing of Sister George, The Ruling Class, and Theatre of Blood, on the set of which she met second husband Vincent Price. She subsequently won a BAFTA playing herself in the 1983 TV movie, An Englishman Abroad, followed by numerous awards for her portrayal of the elderly woman who as a child was the basis for Alice in Wonderland in 1985’s Dreamchild.

PEGGY CASS (1924-1999)

Delightful Peggy Cass did not find fame easily. Her breakthrough role was as a replacement for Jan Sterling who replaced Judy Holliday as the star of Born Yesterday when the 1946 show went on the road in late 1948. Her big Broadway triumph came with Agnes Gooch, Mame’s nearsighted secretary, for which she won a Tony, followed by an Oscar nod for the film version. Her only other major film role was in 1968’s If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. Her encyclopedic mind led to her appearances on many TV quiz shows. I used to run into her in a Broadway bookstore in the early 1970s. I even helped her find a book on one such occasion.

CONNIE GILCHRIST (1895-1985)

Versatile Connie Gilchrist began her film career in 1940. She was in 123 films and TV shows, a standout in many of them. Among her best remembered roles in addition to her superb portrayal of Patrick’s nanny, Nora Muldoon in Auntie Mame, were those in Presenting Lily Mars, The Valley of Decision, A Letter to Three Wives, Thunder on the Hill, Say One for Me, A House Is Not a Home, and Sylvia. On TV she had guest starring roles on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Dr. Kildare, Perry Mason, and The F.B.I. .

LEE PATRICK (1901-1982)

Character actress Lee Patrick excelled as tough broads in such films as The Maltese Falcon, In This Our Life. Now, Voyager, Mrs. Parkington, and Caged before emulating Billie Burke’s twittery style in Burke’s role in the TV version of Topper from 1953-1955. In 1958, she was the woman James Stewart mistakes for Kim Novak in Vertigo before she was Patrick’s would-be mother-in-law in Auntie Mame. Her last film was 1975’s The Black Bird in which she reprised her role from The Matlese Falcon. I never met her, but she died in her home down the road from where I lived at the time.

AUNTIE MAME AND OSCAR

• Jack L. Warner – nominated – Best Picture
• Rosalind Russell – nominated – Best Actress
• Peggy Cass – nominated – Best Supporting Actress
• Harry Stradling, Jr. – nominated – Best Cinematography
• Malcolm C. Bert, George James Hopkins – nominated – Best B&W Art Direction, Set Decoration
• William H. Ziegler – nominated – Best Film Editing