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Rosalind. The scene in which Hogan, Robin s voyeuristic landlord, is con-
versing with Dave in Robin s apartment as he waters her plants was both
needlessly expository and humorless. Rosalind had an idea: the traditional
setup-payoff formula. Suppose the plants were artificial. Setup: Dave (to
Hogan), Look, I hate to tell you this, but those plants aren t real. Payoff:
Hogan (to Dave), Doesn t matter, the can was empty. Rosalind s contribu-
tion brought one of the biggest laughs in the play. Under the Yum-Yum Tree,
which ran for 173 performances in New York and enjoyed a long afterlife in
summer stock because of its small cast and single set, became a 1964 film
with Jack Lemmon as Hogan, grossing $10 million.
As an actress-writer, Rosalind had no qualms about offering sugges-
tions to playwrights, nor did it matter whether or not she was appearing in
their play. There is no doubt that she contributed to the Auntie Mame drama-
tization, although her additions were not as numerous as she led others to
believe. Lance Brisson recalls his mother working away at her desk, chang-
ing and inserting lines, some of which would be used, and others discarded.
In Banquet, Rosalind alluded to a few of her contributions stage business,
mostly which were then incorporated into the script. Rosalind s brother-
in-law, Clara s husband, Chet La Roche, once told Rosalind about the way
martinis were made at the Yale Club. The standard martini consists of two
ounces of gin and one and one-half ounces of dry vermouth. At the Yale
Club, the vermouth was only used to rinse the glass, into which straight gin
was then poured from an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Early in the first act,
Mr. Babcock, the trustee appointed to oversee Patrick s education, pays
Mame a visit. While Mame is upstairs, frantically trying to affect a matronly
appearance, Patrick offers Babcock a martini, which he proceeds to make in
exactly the same way. A ten-year-old offering a cocktail to a middle-aged
man guarantees at least mild laughter. But when the cocktail is prepared
unconventionally, and the man is a conservative banker staring in astonish-
ment at the young but experienced bartender, the laughter intensifies.
However, the martini bit is merely the setup for another down-the-staircase
186 AUNTIE ROZ AND MAMA ROSE
entrance from Mame in a tailored brown suit and ready to deliver the pay-
off: She proceeds to chide Babcock for drinking during business hours but
promises not to tell anyone.
There is another, more significant addition that Rosalind does not men-
tion in Banquet but may well have been her own. In the novel, Mame s
husband, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, affectionately known as
Beau, dies after being kicked in the head by a horse. Since the novel has
declared itself to be irreverent, Beau s death seems like the punch line of
a cruel joke. But then, nothing is sacred in the novel except race; every-
thing else, including pregnancy, is treated so lightly, and at times flippantly,
that Beau s death seems no less bizarre than the experimental school where
Patrick and the other children romp around in the nude playing fish fam-
ilies, or the fox hunt in which Mame, unable to ride because of a sprained
ankle, participates by car, injuring horses and running over the fox.
Beau must also die in the stage version, so Mame can play the merry
widow, but not one whose husband perished from a lethal kick in the head
by a horse. Apart from being more ludicrous than comic, the incident would
have to be recounted, causing either a guffaw or shocked silence, depending
on the audience. In Roughly Speaking, Louise Randall Pierson warmly recalls
her mountain-climbing grandfather, who fell to his death from Mont Blanc
but at least died doing what he loved best. Whether Rosalind s memory of
the film prompted the change, which she then suggested to Lawrence and
Lee, is unknown. Regardless, in the play Beau dies taking a picture from atop
an alp. There is no other way that the scene can be played, except for laughs.
But better a fall from a mountaintop than a kick in the head by a horse. And
yet the audience knows something is bound to happen after Mame warns
Beau not to climb any higher. Determined to take a picture, Beau starts
yodeling; then the yodel becomes an echo as he falls not to his death,
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