Edward Everett Tanner III, nicknamed Pat, was an American author born in 1921. Working under the pseudonyms Virginia Rowans and (as he was best known) Patrick Dennis, he wrote sixteen novels before his death in 1976. Although Patrick Dennis was a household name in the midcentury, his books are largely forgotten today, with the exception of Auntie Mame.

Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade (1955) is the story of an orphaned boy being brought up — sort of — by his rich New York socialite aunt, who’s hard to describe in a nutshell. The adjective “madcap,” which you don’t hear a lot, is popular. Patrick, as narrator, says, “There was a kind of up-and-at-’em spirit of a speak-easy Girl Scout to my aunt.” She’s generous, impulsive and easily obsessed. When she goes through an aesthetic phase — Japanese, Southern, literary Irish — she puts her heart and soul into it. She’s a drama queen and a gay icon. She puts up with no nonsense from bigots and bores.

It’s usually said that Tanner based the character largely on a real aunt of his, Marion Tanner. But it’s clear that she’s partly a wish-fulfillment vehicle for his own values and views. His son Michael Tanner wrote in an afterword for the novel, “He hated snobs, bores, intolerance, the suburbs, anti-Semites, parsimony, and people who use ‘I’ as the object of a preposition. In a word, the Upsons. He loved generosity, Democrats, theater people, New York City, and people who smoke and drink.” The Upsons are narrator Patrick’s ill-chosen first fiancée and her family. Siccing Auntie Mame on them, in chapter eight, must have been as fun to write as it is to read.

Pat Tanner grew up an artistic, theatrical kid in Evanston, Illinois. He was known throughout his life for his sense of humor and sophistication. During World War II he served as an ambulance driver in the American Field Service, but after about a year and a half, he suffered a psychiatric breakdown and was honorably discharged. He would attempt suicide several times during his life, but ultimately died of pancreatic cancer. He married Louise Stickney and had two children, but led a double life in New York’s gay scene (he was probably bisexual). In a final eccentricity, he quit writing two years before his death to become a butler; he worked for three families, including McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc’s, with none of them knowing that he was the famous author “Patrick Dennis.”

Sources: Uncle Mame by Eric Myers; Auntie Mame, afterword by Michael Tanner