The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
Based on the play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart. Directed by William Keighley
When I was a freshman at Princeton, one of my best friends had ambitions as a comic actor, and he told me that he had played the lead role in “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” In those days, my familiarity with classic films was scatter-shot, so I looked puzzled, and he said, “You know, an obnoxious critic and lecturer and writer slips and falls on an icy step and breaks his leg — except the leg isn’t really broken — and he ends up taking over the whole house where he was supposed to visit, meddling in everybody’s lives and insulting people left and right, and when the father of the family tries to throw him out, he threatens to sue him for everything he owns. A Christmas play, you know. And a love story! And there’s a penguin, an octopus, and a seal in it too.”
You can’t go wrong with that combination: Christmas, romance, a thoroughly insufferable wit you can’t dislodge from your whole downstairs, and a penguin, an octopus, and a seal. Oh, and a group of convicts from the local prison. And Chinese businessmen. And an Egyptian sarcophagus. And a crazy old lady with an ax in her past. And ice skating. And Eleanor Roosevelt.
Does that sound crazy? How about this? The Man Who Came to Dinner is one screwball comedy that is based on real life. Moss Hart had gotten a visit at his estate from his friend — if you can call it that — Alexander Woollcott, an acerbic wit and radio personality. Woollcott made everybody in the house miserable, insisting that he wouldn’t go to bed unless he got served freshly baked cookies, calling Hart’s house staff a bunch of incompetents, and then saying that he had had the most unpleasant time in his life. And Woollcott was Hart’s friend! He had, apparently, wanted Hart to write a play for him, and when Hart was telling his collaborator George Kaufman about the incident, Kaufman said, “Just imagine if Aleck had broken his leg and had to stay.” Uproarious laughter — that was it!
The romantic plot of the film cuts across the grain of Sheridan Whiteside’s comic snobbery and superiority complex. His loyal but hard-worked secretary Maggie (Bette Davis) falls for Bert Jefferson (Richard Travis), a young newsman in town who has written a fine play and who wants Sherry to read it, to get it some attention. Bette Davis is cast wonderfully against type; we can certainly imagine the cheerful, honest, witty Bert — the only character who isn’t afraid of Sherry or bullied by him — falling for her. The scene where they go ice skating out among the ordinary young people, and enjoy some piping hot sweet potatoes, gives us a quick flash of middle-Americana, far removed from the circles that the great Whiteside travels in. But when he finds out about it, and he is faced with losing Maggie and all the many services she provides for his convenience, Whiteside schemes to bring a ravishing and none too scrupulous actress into the picture (Ann Sheridan), to turn Bert’s head and get in Maggie’s way.
This is an original 1942 Warner Brothers Trailer.
The one-liners come fast — and they are so outrageous, you almost can’t take them entirely seriously. “Stand back, please!” cries Whiteside. “I have several contagious diseases.” Says the much harried nurse (Mary Wickes) hired to take care of the supposed invalid, “I can’t be in two places at once.” “That’s fortunate for this community,” says Whiteside. In the end, though, we know that Maggie and Bert will be together, but we have no idea how it can possibly come to pass, and I won’t give away any spoilers. The film is set during the Christmas season, and it is filled with rambunctious humor and a love of life, and forbearance toward that creature odder than any penguin or octopus or seal — a human being.