The Man Who Came to Dinner ***** (1942, Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley, Jimmy Durante) – Classic Movie Review 2718

George S Kaufman and Moss Hart’s acerbic famous evergreen classic Broadway play (1939) comes to the screen with all its acid and hilarity intact in Julius J Epstein and Philip G Epstein’s screenplay for director William Keighley’s 1942 vintage comedy movie.

It’s a splendid satire on the then famous media legend and part-time ogre Alexander Woollcott. Here he is called Sheridan Whiteside and is superbly played by real-life gay former Yale University professor Monty Woolley, re-creating his stage role.

The acerbic critic and lecturer Whiteside sets in to enjoy his epic lengthy recuperation at the Ohio home of the Stanleys (Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell), an innocent family of fans, who invite him to dinner. But they end up having to put him up – and put up with him – when he slips on some ice on the front steps of their stairway and breaks his hip. He insists on recuperating in their home during the Christmas holidays.

Whiteside starts to relish meddling in the lives of everyone in the prominent businessman’s household and bribes the doctor to stay quiet after he tells him there is nothing wrong with him after all. He encourages young adults Richard (Russell Arms) and June (Elisabeth Fraser) Stanley to pursue their dreams, much to the dismay of their conventional father.

In star support, Bette Davis relishes the specially enlarged role of Woolley’s long-suffering secretary Maggie Cutler, a part she took to help the film get made, after seeing and loving the Broadway stage show. She is naturalistic, unmannered and appealing. However, she wanted John Barrymore to star, but Warner Bros passed on him after a screen test where he was struggling with the  fast-paced dialogue.

Davis never let it go: ‘I guess I never got over my disappointment in not working with the great John Barrymore. I felt the film was not directed in a very imaginative way. For me it was not a happy film to make. That it was a success, of course, did make me happy.’

There is also super support from the whole stupendous cast, with extra applause for Mary Wickes as the nurse, Miss Preen. Wickes also reprised her role from the original Broadway production. Ann Sheridan, Jimmy Durante, Reginald Gardiner, Richard Travis and Ruth Vivian also star.

Frasier TV show star John Mahoney played the Woolley Sheridan Whiteside role on the London stage in 1998.

Also in the cast are George Barbier, Edwin Stanley, Betty Roadman, Charles Drake, Nanette Vallon, John Ridgely, Herbert Gunn, Creighton Hale, Pat McVey, Laura Hope Crewes, Frank Coghlan Jr, Vera Lewis, Frank Moran, Chester Clute, Roland Drew, Sam Hayes, Eddie Chandler, Jack Mower and Fred Kelsey.

Whiteside was inspired by celebrated critic and Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott, who eventually played the role on stage. Three other of the leading characters are also based on real-life personalities: Lorraine Sheldon (played by Ann Sheridan) by musical stage actress Gertrude Lawrence, Beverly Carlton (played by Reginald Gardiner) by playwright and renowned wit Noël Coward, and Banjo (played by Jimmy Durante) by Harpo Marx.

The authors asked Alexander Woollcott if he would like to play the part of Whiteside when the play opened on Broadway. He declined. The authors then approached Monty Woolley, who at that time was a professor at Yale. They wrote him: ‘Would it amuse you to play the part of Whiteside?’ To which Woolley replied: ‘It would amuse everyone.’

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2718

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