Synopsis
The madcap life of eccentric Mame Dennis and her bohemian, intellectual arty clique is disrupted when her deceased brother's 10-year-old son Patrick is entrusted to her care. Rather than bow to convention, Mame introduces the boy to her free-wheeling lifestyle, instilling in him her favorite credo, "Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death." Also figuring in the story line are Mame's personal secretary and nanny-in-law, Agnes Gooch; her "bosom buddy" Vera Charles, the baritone actress and world's greatest lush; and Dwight Babcock, the stuffy and officious executor of Patrick's father's estate. Mame loses her fortune in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and tries her hand at a number of jobs, with comically disastrous results, but perseveres with good humor and an irrepressible sense of style.
Mame eventually meets and marries Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, a Southern aristocrat with a Georgia plantation called Peckerwood. The trustees of Mame's late brother (Patrick's father) force Mame to send Patrick off to boarding school (the fictional St Boniface, in Massachusetts), and Mame and Beau travel the world on an endless honeymoon that finally ends when Beau falls to his death while mountain climbing. Mame returns home a wealthy widow to discover that Patrick has become a priggish snob engaged to an equally priggish debutante, Gloria Upson, from a bigoted family. Mame brings Patrick to his senses just in time to introduce him to the woman who eventually will become his wife. As the story ends, Mame is preparing to take Patrick's young son Peter to India (Siberia in the 1974 film version) with her usual flair.
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