DIRECTOR: William Keighley from a screenplay by Philip G. Epstein and Julius J. Epstein.
Monty Woolley delights both himself and his audience as the impossibly pompous Sheridan Whiteside in William Keighley’s excellent 1941 adaptation of the George S. Kaufman–Moss Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner. While passing through small‑town Ohio on a cross‑country lecture tour, Whiteside slips on the icy steps of the Stanley home—where he is meant to dine as a publicity gesture—and promptly breaks his hip. He then commandeers their house for the entire Christmas season, terrorizing the family with his demands, insults, and parade of eccentric visitors.
I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on , anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross! (sic)
Nurse Preen (Mary Wickes)
Whiteside is famously modeled on Kaufman and Hart’s friend, the acerbic—and very gay—theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, and Woolley plays him with a delicious blend of hauteur and malicious glee. Bette Davis is perfection as his long‑suffering yet deeply loyal secretary, one of her rare comedic turns and a reminder of how deft she could be when allowed to play light.
The supporting cast is a joy: Ann Sheridan, slyly parodying her own star persona; Richard Travis as the earnest newspaperman who captures Davis’s heart; the irrepressible Jimmy Durante, belting out Did You Ever Have the Feeling That You Wanted to Go, And Still Have the Feeling That You Wanted to Stay?; Mary Wickes as Nurse Preen, who endures Whiteside’s abuse with mounting martyrdom; Reginald Gardiner doing a wicked parody of Noël Coward; and Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell as the hapless Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, whose home becomes a battleground of theatrical chaos.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Tony Gaudio
