From the 1940s: The Man Who Came to Dinner

1942 Comedy

From Warner Bros

Directed by William Keighley

Starring

Bette Davis

Ann Sheridan

Monty Woolley

Richard Travis

Jimmy Durante

Billie Burke

Grant Mitchell

Reginald Gardiner

Mary Wickes

Elizabeth Fraser

Russell Arms

George Barbier

Ruth Vivian

For those who like movies that are funny and vicious, here you go.  There is so much crazy stuff going on in these 152 minutes that it's sometimes hard to keep up or understand what's been said although a rewind button could help.  Most everything falls into the lap of character actor Monty Woolley.  If you know his work then you know where this is all going.

The film is based on a 1939 play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman that ran on Broadway for 739 performances.  Kaufman was a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table (they originally called themselves The Vicious Circle), made up largely of writers of one stripe or another.  Critic and radio personality Alexander Woollcott was another member.  The very colorful Woollcott asked Kaufman and Hart to write a play about him but they could never come up with a plot.

One time Woollcott spent the night at Hart's and he turned the house, the host and the staff upside down with his crazy antics, demands and insults.  The men realized shortly thereafter that they had the plot of the play.

When it became a play they asked Woollcott to play the lead, himself, but he declined.  So larger-than-life Monty Woolley was asked to take the part and he made a rollicking success of it... so much so, frankly, that he essentially played the same part for the rest of his career.  I never minded.

Sheridan Whiteside was born out of Alexander Woollcott.  The authors didn't go too far afield as they typed out their pages.  Some have called the character acerbic and I say that doesn't go far enough.  Rude, blistering, dismissive and haughty come to mind as better ways to capture the man's delightful personality.  (Think Clifton Webb who could easily have played the role.)

The future hosts meeting the great man

In this laughfest Whiteside is a critic who's giving a lecture in a small Ohio town as part of a cross-country tour.  A gimmick has sprung forth whereby Whiteside is supposed to have dinner at the home of a prominent resident.  During the photo-op on the family's front steps, Whiteside falls and injures his hip.  In his agony and inability to navigate out of a wheelchair, he decides he's moving in while he recuperates during the Christmas holidays, no less.  

Once he does, nothing is ever quite the same.  He is so dominant and over-bearing and loud that everything else withers in his presence.  He takes over the entire main floor of the residence, moving furniture, barking orders, demanding he will decide his menu and insulting the high volume of guests.  He will continue to work while in residence and that comes with a whole set of demands.  He announces he also plans to sue his reluctant hosts.

The head of the house (Grant Mitchell) is a fussy man.  Of course he is... it propels the comedy as a fussy man gets all jerked out of shape  over a bossy, unwanted houseguest.  The wife (Billie Burke) is a total nitwit, enamored of meeting such a celebrity and fawning over his being in her home.  She would allow Whiteside to do anything and the husband says no to everything.  Whiteside, of course, does what he wants.

There are two grown children he encourages to be disobedient, a nurse he scares to death, a doctor he rejects, four penguins running throughout the house and a live octopus is delivered... and oh so much more.

In this madness is Whiteside's normal, efficient secretary, Maggie (Bette Davis).  She's been traveling with him for about 10 years.  She knows him well, likes him in his better moments, find him humorous and respects his talent but she never shies away from standing up to him and sometimes apologizing for him when she thinks it's the right thing to do.  

Apart from all the silly antics along the way, the story concerns the love-at-first-sight relationship between Maggie and a newspaper man (Richard Travis) who has come to interview the great man.  He has also written a play that he asks Whiteside to look over.  Maggie decides she is going to quit her job and marry her reporter and raise babies and chickens.  Whiteside sets out to sabotage the relationship.  He needs Maggie for her efficiency and for running interference.

He asks an actress-friend (Ann Sheridan) to fly to Ohio and read the reporter's play.  Whiteside tells her there's a great role in it for her.  His intent to is to have the actress and budding playwright get cozy over studying the play.  Things, however, go wrong (hilariously for Sheridan), with the aid of a Whiteside friend (Jimmy Durante) who flies in to stir the cauldron of mayhem.

Woolley, Davis & Sheridan

The host has also gone wild with fury and hires some cops to enforce an order for the recovered Whiteside to leave the premises.  The lovebirds end up as lovebirds should and as Whiteside is leaving and out on the front steps, what do you suppose happens?

Davis saw the play on Broadway and apparently loved it.  The truth, however, is that she envisioned John Barrymore, an actor she longed to work with, in the Whiteside role.  Some at the studio, including the boss, couldn't understand why she wanted to be in a comedy and a supporting role.  But that was how much she wanted to work with Barrymore.

So she signed on and although the studio had Barrymore do a screen test, he simply was not... as they say... camera-ready.  It all had to do with his extreme alcoholism.  It had ruined his face and he was unable to memorize lines.  So he was out.  The studio hired Cary Grant (!) for the role but Davis nixed it.  So the studio decided to go with the star of the Broadway play... a very fine idea, except to Davis.  She did not like Woolley at all and most agreed she was her usual temperamental self throughout the production.

Sheridan, though most effective in her role, was another odd choice because she only has three or four scenes and doesn't come into the story until halfway through.  Additionally she was also making King's Row (her best film) at the same time.  It's lucky both were filming at the studio but the running back and forth was taxing.

Both actresses were billed above Woolley, despite his being the indisputable star of the piece, because some name value was needed.  Nonetheless, he is nothing short of brilliant.

I was struck by some language which caused me to wonder if the censors, awfully hyped up about their jobs in 1942, were working.  Most especially there was the scene where Whiteside says to Maggie... don't look at me with those great cow eyes, you simpering sappho.  Say what?!?!

The funny Mary Wickes

Everyone is good in the film but Woolley and Wickes as his flustered nurse are by far the best and Sheridan is great fun.

Davis claimed that William Keighley directed the film in an unimaginative way although she acknowledged it was a big success.  She was directed by him the year before in another comedy, The Bride Came C.O.D., and she didn't think he handled that one very well either.

Perhaps a more experienced director, someone particularly adept at comedy, a Preston Sturges, for example, might have turned in a more exciting version but I was mighty happy with this one.  I actually could say it took a lot of imagination to pull this crazy thing together.  The Epstein brothers, Julius and Philip, did a great job adapting this sharp-as-a-tack screenplay.  It is, of course, grounded in something most of us are familiar with... the guest who won't leave.

Yep, comedy and vicious... nothing quite like it.

Here's a clip:

Next posting:

Trained to perform;

 why didn't she do it longer?