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Back up North, hubby Beauregard comes to an equally sad end. He is "kicked in the head by a horse in Central Park." Chin up, Auntie Mame goes indefatigably on, whether dictating to a secretary ("Agnes . . . shave under your arms. You look like King Kong") or matchmaking for Pat ("A perfect peach of a girl and born for motherhood—look at that pelvis!") or helping the war effort ("I sold more bonds than any woman who's ever worked El Morocco").
On the Horizon. Only once does Auntie Mame lose her aplomb. Pat catches her in a flagrant infatuation with one of his Ivy League classmates and bawls her out: "You just happened to end up at the Junior Prom with a boy who could very easily be your son." Shamefaced for an instant, Auntie Mame cracks back: "That's not true, unless you're referring to some unhappy prank of nature like that little girl down in Peru." At novel's end, Auntie Mame is old enough to be a grandmother, but still spirited enough to go barreling off to India in native dress, "her sari floating out behind her."
Patrick Dennis is a nom de plume for Edward Everett Tanner III, 34, promotion manager of Foreign Affairs magazine. Socialite Tanner refuses to get excited about his book's climb up the bestseller list ("The damn thing will probably sink next week") and regards his writing as an after-hours prank. But Auntie Mame looks as watertight and unsinkable as anything on the horizon. The producers of Wonderful Town hope to star Rosalind Russell as Mame in a Broadway stage adaptation. And major Hollywood studios are bidding warmly for the screen rights.