MAME Glossary and Notes

Glossary

Act I, Scene 1 : Somewhere in New York, 1928

• Beekman Place is a short street running north to south from 51st to 49th streets, on the east side of Manhattan; it is just north of the UN headquarters and near the Trump Tower. Beekman was originally spelled Beeckman from the name of a Dutch settler; one of his descendants built his mansion there.
  • There is a drink called a Beekman Place Cooler: combine 1½ ounce gin, 1 ounce sloe gin, 3 ounces grapefruit juice, and ½ ounce sugar syrup in a shaker or blender with cracked ice; shake or blend; pour into a chilled Collins or highball glass; fill with club soda.
  • There is also a Beekman Place Cocktail: in an old fashioned glass, layer 1 ounce sloe gin, then ½ ounce gin, then finally 1 ounce grenadine.
• St Bridget—The details of the life of Brigid of Ireland are somewhat obscure. She probably lived in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. She is patroness of Ireland and also of travelers. Her feast day is February 1. Presbyterians do not pray to saints.
• Agnes Gooch is probably named for St Agnes of Rome, virgin and martyr, patroness of chastity (!), and also gardeners, girls, engaged couples, rape victims, and virgins. The details of her life are also somewhat obscure. At the time of the persecution under the emperor Diocletian, when Christianity was outlawed and actively suppressed, she was a nobleman’s daughter who was sought in marriage by various young men, but she refused them all. For that she was humiliated, accused of being a Christian, and martyred. (Her name in Spanish is Ines or Inez. The name Agnes is derived from Greek meaning "pure" or "chaste"; it is similar to the Latin word agnus, meaning "lamb", and she is often depicted in art with a lamb.) Her feast day is January 21, on which day two lambs are blessed. There is also a St Agnes of Assisi, St Agnes of Bohemia (referred to in the song "Good King Wenceslas"), and St Agnes of Montepulciano.
• Dixieland, or more properly, "hot jazz", is the earliest style of jazz that was known outside of New Orleans. A hot jazz combo usually consists of a "front line" of cornet or trumpet, clarinet or saxophone, and trombone, with a rhythm section of piano, tuba or string bass, banjo or guitar, and drums. There are now three distinct styles of dixieland. The original form developed in New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century, and was revived beginning in the 1940s. Chicago style began around 1910 when New Orleans musicians began migrating there. It features faster rhythms, string bass instead of tuba, trumpet instead of cornet, guitar for banjo, and more featured solos rather than an emphasis on ensemble. West coast Dixieland began in San Francisco in the late 1930s and was a partial return to the original New Orleans style.

Act I, Scene 2 : Mame's apartment

• The people named in the script as Mame’s guest at her affair include the following.
  • A Lithuanian bishop would probably belong to the Roman Catholic Church. However, Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire from 1793-1918. (It was incorporated into the Soviet Union from 1940-1990.) So it is possible that the bishop is from the Russian Orthodox Church.
  • Floyd Gibbons (1887-1939) was the war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune during World War I, and later a radio commentator and narrator of newsreels. He was known for his style of fast talking. He lost an eye at the Battle of Belleau Wood in France: while trying to rescue an American soldier he was hit by German gunfire.
  • Marian Anderson (1897-1993) was an American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the 20th century. Although recruited by many European opera companies, she preferred to perform in recitals in the United States. In 1939, she was refused permission to sing in Constitution Hall before an integrated audience by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), so President and Mrs Roosevelt arranged for her to sing to an open-air audience at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to a crowd of more than 75,000 people and to a radio audience of millions. Later she became the first black person (male or female, American or foreign) to to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1955.
  • Radclyffe Hall (born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall: 1880-1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness.
  • Paul Robeson (in full: Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson; pronounced ROBE-son,  1898–1976) was an internationally renowned American bass-baritone concert singer, scholar, actor of film and stage, All-American and professional athlete, writer, multi-lingual orator and lawyer who was also noted for his wide-ranging social justice activism. In 1930, Robeson starred in the title role in William Shakespeare’s Othello in England, when no U.S. company would employ him for the part. He reprised the role in New York in 1943, and toured the U.S. with it until 1945. His Broadway run of Othello is still the longest of any Shakespeare play. He won the Spingarn Medal in 1945 for his portrayal of Othello. Robeson also played the role of Joe, which was written for him, in the 1928 London production of Show Boat, and repeated his performance in the 1932 Broadway revival of the show, the 1936 film version, and a 1940 Los Angeles stage production. His rendition of "Ol’ Man River" is widely considered the definitive version of the song. Robeson sang the song as written whenever he appeared in a production of Show Boat, but in later recitals he made alterations to the lyrics to transform it from a song of black lament to one of defiance and perseverance
  • Elsie de Wolfe (also known as Lady Mendl: 1865?–1950) was an American interior decorator, nominal author of the influential 1913 book The House in Good Taste, and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society.
  • Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933) was an American illustrated song slide "model," silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd. He mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. He was one of the most popular stars of the 1910s, and soon became one of the highest paid, signing a contract to make $1 million a year in 1918.
  • Robert Charles "Bob" Benchley (1889–1945) was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from New York City and his peers at the Algonquin Round Table to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.
  • Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan (1884–1933) was a saloon keeper, actress, and entrepreneur. The bartender in 10-Forward in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, played by Whoopi Goldberg, was named for her.
  • Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943) was a wit, drama critic for the New York Times, columnist for the The New Yorker, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. He was the inspiration for the character of Sheridan Whiteside in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The character of Waldo Lydecker in the 1944 film noir Laura is also based on him. One of his best-known quotes is "All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening." Also: "Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn’t spend half our time wishing." And, "There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day."
• Bathtub gin was made in the United States during the era of Prohibition, 1920-1933. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation, but not the consumption of, intoxicating drinks.
• A canapé is a kind of open-faced sandwich: a cracker, or thin piece of bread or toast, topped with cheese, caviar, anchovies, or some other savory food.
• The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York writers, critics, actors, and others that met for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel daily from 1919 to 1929. Eventually they were assigned a waiter named Luigi, and started calling themselves "Luigi Board". Later they met at a round table, and called themselves "The Vicious Circle". Eventually the name "The Round Table" stuck.
• St Patrick’s Day is March 17; the scene takes place on December 1, 1929. St Patrick was born somewhere in Roman Britain, and was kidnapped around age 16 and forced to work as a shepherd in Ireland. He escaped, and return home, but he had a religious conversion. He felt called to return to Ireland  He was consecrated a bishop, and preached all over the island. He dedicated springs and hills and other places that the Irish people had already regarded as sacred and gave them Christian meaning.

Act I, Scene 4 : Mame's bedroom

• The Spirit of St Louis is the name of the plane Charles Lindbergh flew solo nonstop from New York to Paris May 20–21, 1927 to win a $25,000 prize. He was then nicknamed "Lucky Lindy", and the Lindy dance was named for him. His fame was so great that he could not write checks: recipients considered his autograph too valuable to cash them!
• St Boniface (c. 680-754) was an Englishman with the original name of Winfrid. He preached the Gospel throughout the Frankish domains and became the first archbishop of Mainz, the primatial see for Germany. He is called the Apostle to the Germans.
• St Frances Xavier Cabrini, also known as Mother Cabrini, was the first American citizen canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Born in Italy in 1850, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of which she became the superior general. Her good work came to the attention of Pope Leo XIII. The pope urged her to go to America to work among Italian immigrants there. She founded 67 institutions to care for the poor, sick, and orphans in the United States, Europe, South America, and China. She died in 1917 and was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1948. Vera must be a good actress to play someone so completely different from herself!
• A recipe for a sidecar is: 2½ fl. oz brandy, 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 1 tbsp Cointreau (or Grand Marnier or other triple sec), shaken with ice, and strained into a chilled cocktail glass, the rim coated with sugar. (Some recipes use equal parts brandy and triple sec.) Brandy is the traditional base of a sidecar, but whisky or some other spirit can be used. The Ritz Hotel in Paris claims to have originated the drink. The Classic Cocktail, Olympic Cocktail, Jack Rose, and Margarita are considered variations on the sidecar. Other variations include: Chelsea sidecar (gin instead of brandy), rum sidecar, and Pesco sidecar.

Act I, Scene 5 : Mame's living room (and all around New York)

• Knickerbocker was the adopted name of Herman Jansen van Wyhe, a Dutch settler of New Amsterdam. (In contemporary Dutch it would be spelled Knikkerbakker.) Washington Irving used the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker. Then Knickerbocker came to mean a New Yorker. One of the first baseball teams was the New York Knickerbockers. That is now the name of the New York NBA team. It also means a kind of boy’s or men’s baggy knee-length trousers, usually called Knickers. By extension it has come to mean women’s undergarments.
• Bully, as used by such as Theodore Roosevelt, means "excellent" or "splendid". The word chap is used in England much as guy is used in the United States. I assume Babcock is so aristocratic that he would use such words as bully little chap.
• Darien is a town in southwestern Connecticut. It is one of the richest places in the United States, with a median home price of around $1 million. The locals pronounce the name of the town Dairy-ENN, with accent on the last syllable. It is part of Fairfield County, the Connecticut county closest to New York City. There is a Darien, Georgia, which is pronounced DAIRY-un with accent on the first syllable. They were both (probably) named for Darién, Panamá, where it is pronounced (something like) dah-ree-AIN.
• A typical recipe for a Martini is 3 fl. oz gin and 1 tbsp dry vermouth, mixed with ice, strained into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnished with an olive or lemon twist.  Despite James Bond, most mixologists prefer clear drinks such as Martinis stirred, never shaken. (Shaking adds air bubbles to the liquid and clouds it.) This recipe uses a 6:1 gin to vermouth ratio. Some drinkers prefer a dryer version, 12:1, 20:1, or as Patrick makes it, merely coating the glass with vermouth before adding the gin. Winston Churchill is said to make it by pouring the gin while merely glancing at an unopened bottle of vermouth; this is called a naked martini.
• Mr Woollcott says somewhere the sun is just below the yard-arm: a yardarm is long piece of timber tapering slightly toward the ends, hung by the centre to the top of a mast (upon which the square sails are traditionally hung). The suggestion that one can have a drink as soon as the sun is over the yardarm is thought to have its origins in the custom aboard ship whereby once the sun had sunk enough over the horizon and no longer struck the yardarm officers could retire below for their first tot of spirits for the day. The expression is now used to mean around 5:00 p.m. or the end of the working day; i.e., time to mix the drinks! (Whether this quote was actually by Woollcott, I cannot verify!)
• Greenwich Village, or simply The Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of lower Manhattan. During the late 19th to the mid 20th centuries, it was known as a Bohemian capital, and was the center of the Beat movement. The name was originally Dutch Groenwijck, but the name was close enough to the name of the borough of East London. Because of its Bohemian association, it has now undergone gentrification, and today is mostly a middle-class residential area.
• Babbitt is the name of a novel by Sinclair Lewis published in 1922. It is largely a satire of middle-class American life and culture. The name Babbitt denotes one slavishly conforming to middle-class stereotypes.
• Scarsdale, located in Westchester County, just north of New York City, is perhaps the richest suburb in the country.
• lamé—an ornamental fabric in which metallic threads, as of gold or silver, are woven with silk, wool, rayon, or cotton.
• A paddy wagon (also called a patrol wagon) is a vehicle for taking arrestees to jail. The name comes from the use of Paddy as slang for policeman, because so there  were so many Irish policemen, Paddy being a diminutive of Patrick. (Alternatively it might have been so named because many of those being taken to jail were Irish, probably for drunkenness.).

Act I, Scene 6 : Mame's apartment

• Lindsay Woolsey—Lindsey-Woolsey is a kind of woven fabric with a linen warp and woolen woof. The Bible specifically forbids Jews from wearing garments made of both wool and linen: Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together. –Deuteronomy 22:11
• A Bohemian, is, technically a Czech, Bohemia being the old name of the western part of the Czech Republic. But gypsies were assumed to come from Bohemia, so it has been used for a name for gypsy. The story of Samson and Delilah is told in Judges 16:3-31. Samson marries the Philistine woman Delilah who betrays him to the Philistines. So the name Delilah has come to mean a dangerous temptress. John Milton personified her as the misguided and foolish but sympathetic temptress, much like his view of Eve, in his 1671 work Samson Agonistes. By the time of Camille Saint-Saens’ Samson et Dalila (1877) Delilah had become the eponym of a "Delilah", a treacherous and cunning femme fatale. See the article on Delilah in Wikipedia.
• Jezebel was the queen of King Ahab of the (northern) kingdom of Israel, as told in the biblical 1 and 2 Kings. She was the daughter of the king of Sidon, and actively promoted the worship of Baal in Israel. Her name has come to mean a wicked woman.
• Much has been made of stockbrokers jumping out of windows after the stock market crash in 1929. It turns out that there were actually fewer suicides in the Depression than in the decade before.

Act I, Scene 7 : Shubert Theatre, New Haven

• New Haven is one of the cities where shows would hold out-of-town try-outs before opening on Broadway. The Shubert Theatre was named for the Shubert brothers, Lee, Sam, and Jacob, from Syracuse, NY, who were Broadway theatrical producers and theater owners. They currently own or operate 16 Broadway theaters.

Act I, Scene 9 : Mame's apartment

• Tiffany & Company is known for diamonds. Located at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street since 1940, from 1905 to 1940 they were at 401 Fifth Avenue, at 38th Street. Their store at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa was, in 2006, their most profitable.
• Walgreens is the largest drug store chain in the United States. Founded in Chicago in 1901, they operate in all 50 states, D. C., and Puerto Rico. They really did not suffer during the great depression.
• Patrick notes that "But Auntie Mame, It's one week from Thanksgiving Day now." In those days, it was considered almost sacrilegious to put up any kind of Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving Day, which, in those days, was the last Thursday in November, and most people did not put up Christmas decorations earlier than about the week before.

Act I, Scene 10 : Peckerwood

• Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside—all names of Civil War generals.
  • Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was the first prominent Confederate general officer. He took command of the army in Charleston and ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War. He was the victor at 1st Bull Run (1st Manassas). He was trained as an engineer at West Point, and distinguished himself in the Mexican War. He was instrumental in keeping the Union army from capturing Petersburg in 1864. When Petersburg fell nine months later, he helped persuade other Confederate leaders that the war was lost. After the war he was one of the few Confederate generals to become rich.
  • Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson entered West Point with a very poor education, and started at the bottom of his class. But he studied very hard, and graduated 17th of 59 in the class of 1846. He distinguished himself at the battles of Vera Cruz and Chapultepec in the Mexican War. At the start of the Civil War, he became Colonel of infantry in Virginia of what became known as the Stonewall Brigade, because of his policy of never retreating. In 1863 he was killed by Confederate soldiers mistaking his party for Northerners. Lee considered his death a great blow.
  • George Edward Pickett graduated last in his class from West Point in 1846, just after the Mexican War broke out. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Chapultepec, hoisting the U. S. flag over the fortress. He is best remembered for Pickett’s charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, for which he never forgave Lee.
  • Ambrose Everett Burnside graduated from West Point in 1847. In the Mexican War he arrived too late at Vera Cruz to be involved in the battle, and ended up mostly in garrison duty in Mexico City. As a Union Army general in the Civil War, he conducted successful campaigns in North Carolina and East Tennessee but was defeated in the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of the Crater. His distinctive style of facial hair is now known as sideburns, derived from his last name.
• Crinoline is a type of petticoat or structure to keep a woman’ skirt in the desired shape. It was worn mostly in the 19th century, and today is worn only as very formal dress.
• A mint julep — start with a julep cup filled with crushed ice, add 2 tbsp sugar syrup, stir well, add 3 oz bourbon, stir until ice forms on the outside of the cup. Garnish with three large mint sprigs. Variations include a brandy julep, peach brandy julep, Champagne julep, and Irish julep (use Irish whiskey).
• A cakewalk is a style of dance developed among black Americans in the South, probably in the time of slavery. The style probably originated in slaves and later free blacks strutting around in mock imitation of plantation society. It was done in contests, and the winner received a cake.
• The black-eyed pea is a kind of bean of the species Vigna unguiculata, brown with a prominent black spot. Originally from India, it was introduced to the Caribbean, and from thence to the American South.
• Grits is a food common to the South made from coarsely ground corn, usually eaten as a porridge, hot or cold, and often fried.
• The Ritz is a hotel founded by Swiss hotelier César Ritz noted for its ostentatious display.
• Georgia is known as the Peach State, Alabama the Camellia State, and Mississippi the Magnolia State. Bougainvillea, pecan fries, and chicken fries are other symbols of the South.
• The Robert E. Lee was a Mississippi riverboat named for the Confederate general and launched in 1866 for service between Natchez and New Orleans. In 1870 it won a famous race with the then speed record holder, the Natchez VI, from St Louis to New Orleans. But in 1882 it caught fire.
• I came, I saw, I conquered is the English translation of what Julius Caesar is reported to have written about a short war in 47 bc.

Act II, Scene 1 : Prep School and College (and Singapore)

• Pago Pago (usually pronounced "pahng-go pahng-go" [IPA: 'paŋgo 'paŋgo] by Americans, but "pahng-o pahng-o" ['paŋo 'paŋo] by Samoans) is the capital of American Samoa. Shanghai is the largest city in China. Singapore was established by the British East India Company in 1819, led by Sir Stamford Raffles. It remained a British colony until 1963 (except for Japanese occupation 1941-45) and joined the federation of Malaysia. It was kicked out of Malaysia in 1965, and has since been an independent republic. The Raffles Hotel was built in 1887 by four Armenian brothers in the grand colonial style. It was closed for renovations 1989-91.
• Deb is short for débutante, from the feminine French word meaning "beginner". It refers to a young lady who has reached the age of maturity and is now introduced to society in her début. Originally it announced that a girl was now ready to marry, and she was introduced to eligible young men. This might happen at a débutante ball, at which several young ladies were introduced, or at a coming-out party for her only, or her and her sister. Under Babcock’s trusteeship, Patrick would probably be introduced to débutantes, and expected to seek one in marriage. (It seems likely that Patrick met Gloria Upson through their mutual acquaintance with Babcock.)
• Horn is slang for telephone. The earliest telephones resembled horns, as do outdoor loudspeakers even today.

Act II, Scene 2 : Mame's apartment

• Dictaphone is a trademark, but has become generic, for a device to record speech for later playback. The first such device was built by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. The Dictaphone® was first marketed in 1907; it used wax cylinders to record. In 1947, this technology was replaced by recording in a mechanical groove on a plastic belt. Later, this was replaced by magnetic tape, and eventually, a hard drive.
• Typewriters were used from around 1870 to 1990, until being replaced by word-processing machines and personal computers.
• Damon and Pythias were two friends in the ancient Greek world. Pythias was sentenced to death by Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. He asked for permission to return home to settle his affairs. Dionysius refused, until Damon volunteered to remain as hostage for Pythias. When Pythias did not return at the appointed time, Damon was about to be executed when Pythias returned at the last moment. Dionysius, moved, pardoned Pythias, and both men remained at his court as his trusted counselors. The names Damon and Pythias have become proverbial for steadfast friendship. MGM released a film of this story in 1962.
• Daphnis and Chloë is an erotic romance written by the 2nd century bc Greek writer Longus. Daphnis and Chloë are two abandoned orphans raised separately by two shepherds. When they are grown they meet and fall in love, but do not understand what is happening. After a number of adventures where they are almost separated forever, they eventually get together. A modern story based loosely on this is the film The Princess Bride.
• Amos 'n' Andy was a radio sitcom and serial about two black Southerners who move to Chicago and struggle to make a living there. The show was so popular that movie theaters would stop the film for 15 minutes and play the broadcast so that viewers would not have to miss the program in order to see the movie.
• Peg o’ My Heart is a popular song written by Alfred Bryan and Fred Fisher for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1913.
• Alice Babette Toklas (1877-1967) and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) were life partners and hosted a salon in Paris that attracted many American writers, including Ernest Hemingway and Thornton Wilder, and such avant-garde painters as Picasso and Matisse.
• Romulus and Remus are the twin mythical founders of Rome. They were said to be orphaned, and were suckled by a she-wolf. When Rome was built, they quarreled, and Romulus killed Remus. Romulus then became the first of the seven kings of Rome. In the Aeneid, Virgil adds that the twins were descended from Aeneas after he had fled from the fall of Troy.

Act II, Scene 4 : Upson farm

• Blue Barron was the stage name of the band leader Harry Freidman (1913-2005), in the 1940s and 50s. His music was described as "sweet" rather than "swing", being more sedate.
• A daiquiri is a cocktail made of rum, fresh lime juice, and  sugar syrup, stirred or shaken, often with fruit and ice, served in a chilled cocktail glass. It is named for the town of Daiquirí near the original Bacardí distillery near Santiago in eastern Cuba. (Since the communists took over Cuba, Bacardí has moved to Puerto Rico.) There is a legend that Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders first encountered the drink when they landed near the town. But it was first popularized by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920s in Havana. A frozen daiquiri is made in a blender with the above ingredients and 8 oz ice and poured into a chilled wine glass. Another variation is the banana daiquiri. A whisky sour and its variations can be considered variations on the daiquiri.
• The bunny hug was an early 20th century style of dance done to ragtime music mostly by young people. It probably originated in San Francisco.
• Lindy hop and jitterbug are variations of swing dancing.
• A rumble seat was an upholstered seat on some automobiles before World War II, opened where the trunk is on most modern autos. The passengers were outside the protection of the car’s roof, and thus exposed to the elements. The name is short for rumble-tumble seat, located on some (horse-drawn) carriages.
• Coonskin coats became popular as automobile coats in the early 20th century, and were worn by fashionable college students.
• Rudy Vallee (1901–1986) was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer. He was a pop superstar for his time, and he is perhaps best known as a "crooner", one who sings softly, as into a radio microphone, as opposed to a "belter", a voice needed before microphones. (Other well-known crooners include Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como.) He appeared as Mr Biggley in the original Broadway cast of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and reprised the role in the 1967 film. He had a house on Pyramid Place in the Hollywood Hills, and Mayor Yorty proposed renaming the part he lived on Rue de Vallee.
• A mountebank is someone who sells quack medicines or other such things, as from a platform in a public place; by extension, any charlatan. I suspect the authors of Mame are making a pun on bank for the seat of Gloria’s family.
• The Schlitz brewing company was the largest brewery in the world, beginning around 1902. They used the mottos "The beer that made Milwaukee famous", "When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer", and "Go for the gusto." During Prohibition they made soft drinks and used a modified motto "The drink that made Milwaukee famous." But in the 1970s the company attempted to increase production while cutting costs by changing to a high-temperature (and hence high speed) brewing process. (Lager beer is traditionally slow fermented from the bottom, around 45º F for 6-10 days, and then matured over a few weeks.) The new formula beer was unpopular, and sales declined. Schlitz was acquired by the Stroh Brewing Company of Detroit in 1982, which was itself acquired by Pabst in 1999. A reformulated 1960s style beer was reintroduced in 2008 in select markets.

Act II, Scene 5 : Mame's apartment

• The name Pegeen is an Irish variant of Peggy, or Margaret, and means "pearl". The name is not common in the United States, according to the census bureau.
• The film title Reflected Glory does not appear in the Internet Movie Database. The title may be a pun on Gloria’s name.
• Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968) was a controversial American actress and bon-vivant. Roles included Constance Porter in Hitchcock’s film Lifeboat and as the Black Widow in the Batman television series. The character Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians was partly based on her.
• Upjohn was a pharmaceutical company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was acquired by Monsanto and today is part of Pfizer. Upjohn’s best-known drugs before acquisition by Pfizer were Xanax, Motrin IB, and Rogaine.

Act II, Scene 6 : Mame's apartment, 1946

• Sahib is originally an Arabic word meaning "master" or "proprietor" that passed into Farsi and the major languages of India. It was often translated "your grace."
• Salaam is the Arabic word for "peace". It is used as a greeting and is frequently heard in India.
• Literally, the term antediluvian means "before the Flood", i.e. the Flood of Noah’s time, mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 6-8. Figuratively, then, it means "archaic", or very much out of date.
• India in 1946 was on the verge of independence, which happened in the summer of 1947. Unfortunately, independence resulted in the partition of the country into India and Pakistan, with much communal violence, leading to an estimated 500,000 deaths. Over 7,000,000 Muslims migrated from India to Pakistan, and another more than 7,000,000 Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan for India. It would not have been a good plan for Mame and Peter to go there in 1947!
• LaGuardia airport (LGA), located in the Flushing area of the borough of Queens, used to be the main airport for New York City, but in the jet age was superseded by JFK, which was formerly known as Idlewild (IDL).  JFK airport is located in the Jamaica area of Queens. Today LaGuardia still is a major airport, handling passenger traffic on short- and midrange flights.  The airport was named for Fiorello La Guardia (1882-1947), mayor of New York from 1933 to 1945; his life and loves are the subject of the musical show Fiorello!
• TWA was Trans World Airlines. 1946 was a big year for TWA. They began flying the fast new elegant Lockheed Constellation, and also began flying internationally, breaking into what had been Pan Am’s "turf" as the United States’ sole international airline. Howard Hughes controlled TWA in those days, from 1941 to 1956. Unfortunately TWA did not react well to deregulation in the 1980s, and went bankrupt in 1992. Their assets were acquired by American Airlines in 2001. Since the flight to India in 1946 was before the introduction of commercial jetliniers (1958), it would take over 50 hours, with more than one stop.

Events of 1929

• May 14: Charlie Stowe was born
• October 29 was known as Black Tuesday, because of the large number of shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange that day (16 million) and the loss in value ($14 billion).
• Thanksgiving Day fell on November 28.
• Christmas Day was a Wednesday.
• The "sixteen shopping days till Christmas" would be December 9-24.

Index

drinks

• Beekman Place Cocktail
• Beekman Place Cooler
• daiquiri
• Martini
• mint julep
• sidecar
• Schlitz beer

locations

• Beekman Place
• Darien, Connecticut
• Greenwich Village ("The Village")
• La Guardia airport
• New Haven
• Pago Pago
• Scarsdale
• Shanghai
• Singapore

saints

• St Agnes
• St Bridget
• St Boniface
• St Frances Xavier Cabrini (Mother Cabrini)
• St Patrick

• Much information here from Wikipedia.
• Some definitions are from dictionary.com
• Read about Patrick and Agnes’s trip from Des Moines to New York.
• Fun Trivia about the movie Auntie Mame and the show Mame

• Updated 04/19/2010; revised 04/30/2020
• More on cocktails
• McQ’s theater home page
• Please send additions, suggestions, comments, or corrections to tf_mcq <at> yahoo.com.