LITTLE ME
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Is it Nancy Reagan rebutting Kitty Kelley’s biography? No, it’s Belle Poitrine (nee Schlumpfert)–star of stage (OK, burlesque) and screen, destined to leave acting for the lifetime role of a politician’s wife. She was born on the wrong side of the tracks in Venezuela, Illinois, where her mother settled after coming north “from the finest house in New Orleans”–that’s house, not home. Later, Belle made her way through a series of bizarre incidents, including a murder charge (unjustified, of course), the sinking of a Titanic-like ocean liner, war work (she did all she could for the brave boys who fought in World War I), and several marriages and romances, nearly all of which proved strangely lethal to the men involved. With the aid of her faithful ghostwriter, Belle intends to put forth the true account of the action-packed career that finally led her to find God and happiness in Southampton.
Belle Poitrine (the French name means, essentially, “nice tits”) is the heroine of Little Me, the elaborately funny 1961 novel by Patrick Dennis, the Chicagoland-bred humorist best known for his Auntie Mame. Dennis made a career of spoofing the gauche noncharm of the bourgeoisie of the 1920s and ’30s, and Little Me was his masterpiece–a brilliant sustained joke in which Belle’s self-serving first-person narrative reveals all the avarice, pettiness, and trampiness she has spent a lifetime denying.
That’s especially true in Candlelight Dinner Playhouse’s current revival. Director William Pullinsi–who has overseen the bright, bouncy, but rather bland production there–knows his audience; this Little Me has had its hemline lowered and its bodice raised even higher than on Broadway. It could almost be named You’re a Good Girl, Belle Poitrine.
