While passing through small-town Ohio during a cross-country lecture tour, notoriously acerbic New York radio personality Sheridan Whiteside injures his hip after slipping and falling on the icy steps of the house of the Stanleys, a prominent family with whom he's supposed to dine as a publicity stunt. He insists on recuperating in their home during the Christmas holidays, to which they agree to avoid a threatened $150,000 lawsuit with Thomas E. Dewey as his attorney.
The overbearing, self-centered celebrity soon comes to dominate the lives of the residents and everyone else who enters the household. He commandeers the most prominent rooms in the house and restricts his host and hostess to the upper story of their house. He cons the doctor to exaggerate his recovery time by promising to read the doctor’s unpublished “magnum opus", which he promptly disregards. He runs up long-distance phone bills to and from important personages like Winston Churchill and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. He receives intrusive presents from prominent naturalists such as live shipments of four penguins and an octopus. He invites to a luncheon convicts, including murderers, from the “Sheridan Whiteside fan club” from the state penitentiary. He bullies and exasperates his nurse to the point that she quits, declaring she has changed her mission in life from relieving the suffering of humanity to working at a munitions factory.
Whiteside encourages young adults Richard and June Stanley to pursue their dreams, contrary to the wishes of their conventional father. He declares that Ernest Stanley’s odd sister Harriet is “right out of the Hound of the Baskervilles”, trying to recall where he has seen her face before.
Meanwhile, Whiteside's assistant Maggie Cutler finds herself attracted to local newspaperman Bert Jefferson. When Bert reads his play to her, she is so impressed she asks Whiteside to show it to his contacts. After a few dates, she announces she will quit Whiteside’s employment to marry Bert, though Bert doesn’t know it yet. Bert gives her a gold charm bracelet as a Christmas present and they flirtatiously banter.
Loath to lose such an efficient aide, Whiteside does his best to sabotage the blossoming romance. He exaggerates the effects of his injuries to extend his stay in the house to further his sabotage. Luring glamorous actress Lorraine Sheldon with the prospect of a leading role in an “important” new play by an "upcoming playwright," he intends Lorraine to steal Bert away from Maggie. Lorraine convinces Bert to spend time with her to fix up the play.
Threatened by Lorraine's presence, Maggie conspires with Whiteside’s friend Beverly Carlton, a practical joker and accomplished mimic, to impersonate Lorraine’s wealthy would-be prospect, Lord Cedric Bottomley, who Lorraine has pursued relentlessly for months, luring Lorraine back to Palm Beach with a telephoned proposal from “Lord Bottomley”. When Lorraine discovers the ruse, she vows to take Bert from Maggie.
When Maggie realizes Whiteside is behind the underhanded scheme with Lorraine, she quits. Somewhat chastened, Whiteside concocts a plan to get Lorraine out of the way, with the help of his friend Banjo. Appealing to Lorraine’s vanity, they trick her into acting out a scenario and stepping into an Egyptian sarcophagus, slam it shut, and ship her off to Nova Scotia.
Finally fed up with his shenanigans, meddling, insults, and unbearable personality, Mr. Stanley swears out a warrant ordering Whiteside to leave in 15 minutes. However, with seconds to spare, Whiteside recalls that Stanley's sister Harriet has a past as an infamous axe murderess, and blackmails Stanley by threatening to expose her. He forces Mr. Stanley to drop the warrant, and further to allow his children to do as they please.
As Whiteside departs, First LadyEleanor Roosevelt calls on the phone. Distracted by the last-minute notification, Whiteside falls on the Stanleys' icy steps again and is carried back inside, much to Mr. Stanley's consternation. Meanwhile Eleanor Roosevelt is forgotten, left unattended on the phone in the commotion.
Four of the leading characters are based on real-life personalities. Sheridan Whiteside was inspired by celebrated critic and Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott, who eventually played the role on stage; Lorraine Sheldon by musical stage actress Gertrude Lawrence; Beverly Carlton by playwright and renowned wit Noël Coward; and Banjo by Algonguin Round Table member Harpo Marx.[7][8]
When Bette Davis saw the Broadway production of The Man Who Came to Dinner, she decided the role of Maggie Cutler would be a refreshing change of pace following her heavily dramatic role in The Little Foxes. She urged Jack L. Warner to purchase the screen rights for her and John Barrymore. He tested for the role of Whiteside but was deemed unsuitable when, as a result of his heavy drinking (or perhaps encroaching Alzheimers), he supposedly had difficulty delivering the complicated, fast-paced dialogue, even with his lines posted on cue cards throughout the set.[7] The screen test was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in the early 21st century prior to a screening of the film, making the reason for Davis' subsequent rage at the studio's decision not to cast the superb Barrymore quite apparent.
Both Charles Laughton and Orson Welles, who wanted to direct the film, campaigned for the role, and Laird Cregar and Robert Benchley made screen tests; but executive producer Hal B. Wallis thought the former was "overblown and extravagant" and the latter "too mild mannered." Warner suggested Cary Grant, but Wallis felt he was "far too young and attractive." Although Monty Woolley, who had created the role on the Broadway stage, was not familiar to movie audiences, Wallis finally cast him in the role, despite Warner's concern that the actor's homosexuality would be obvious on screen.[8] Orson Welles would later play Whiteside 30 years later in a television adaptation of the play.
Bette Davis detested the casting of Woolley; she fought hard to cast John Barrymore but was overruled by the studio. In later years, she observed, "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. I guess I never got over my disappointment in not working with the great John Barrymore."[7]
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times observed, "Any one who happened to miss the original acid-throwing antic on the stage – and any one, for that matter, who happened not to have missed it – should pop around, by all means, and catch the cinematic reprise. For here, in the space of something like an hour and fifty-two minutes, is compacted what is unquestionably the most vicious but hilarious cat-clawing exhibition ever put on the screen, a deliciously wicked character portrait and a helter-skelter satire, withal." He added, "Woolley makes The Man Who Came to Dinner a rare old goat. His zest for rascality is delightful, he spouts alliterations as though he were spitting out orange seeds, and his dynamic dudgeons in a wheelchair are even mightier than those of Lionel Barrymore. A more entertaining buttinsky could hardly be conceived, and a less entertaining one would be murdered on the spot. One palm should be handed Bette Davis for accepting the secondary role of the secretary, and another palm should be handed her for playing it so moderately and well." In conclusion, he said, "The picture as a whole is a bit too long and internally complex for 100 per cent comprehension, considering the speed at which it clips. But even if you don't catch all of it, you're sure to get your money's worth. It makes laughing at famous people a most satisfying delight."[10]
Variety made note of the "superb casting and nifty work by every member of the company" and thought the "only detracting angle in the entire film is [the] slowness of the first quarter. [The] portion in which the characters are being built up, before the complications of the story actually begin, is overlong."[3]
Time stated, "Woolley plays Sheridan Whiteside with such vast authority and competence that it is difficult to imagine anyone else attempting it" and added, "Although there is hardly room for the rest of the cast to sandwich in much of a performance between this fattest of fat parts, Bette Davis, hair up, neuroses gone, is excellent as Woolley's lovesick secretary."[8]
Time Out London said, "It's rather unimaginatively directed, but the performers savour the sharp, sparklingly cynical dialogue with glee."[11]
According to Warner Bros. records, the film earned rentals of $1,666,000 in the United States and Canada and $899,000 foreign for a worldwide total of $2,565,000.[2]
Home media
Warner Home Video released the Region 1 DVD on May 30, 2006. The film has an English audio track and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French. Bonus features include The Man Who Came to Dinner: Inside a Classic Comedy, the Joe McDoakes comedy short So You Think You Need Glasses, the musical short Six Hits and a Miss (directed by Jean Negulesco), and the original theatrical trailer.
^ abcWarner Bros financial information in The William Schaefer Ledger. See Appendix 1, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (1995) 15:sup1, 1-31 p 22 DOI: 10.1080/01439689508604551
^ abcStine, Whitney, and Davis, Bette, Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis. New York: Hawthorn Books 1974. ISBN0-8015-5184-6, pp. 153-154
