Gay darling dears! I love this movie, don't you?

You may find this closed thread of interest.

This film (and play) have such a bizarre premise that a complete stranger, even one slightly injured would just set up shop in someone's home in the middle of nowhere and stay there when clearly they want him gone.

It makes no sense to me.

It's a farce, r2. Absurd situations are par for the course in those, it would be odd if they weren't a bit bizarre.

Go back an reread your Jane Austen, R2. There was a time when decent manners and family pride meant that you never sent away someone who was ill or injured.

There's a very funny old French film farce called (in its English version) "Bizarre, Bizarre."

I have a friend who refers to this film as "The Gentleman Who Came to Dinner". His saying that makes me want to slap him.

Thank you R1!

R2 had you been paying attention you would have known that he threatened to sue the family if they kicked him out.

It was funny.

Ann Sheridan had some dazzling Orry-Kelly hats in this one.

I love semenal gay films.

Bette Davis said she wanted John Barrymore to play SW. She thought Monty Wooley to be monotonous. I have to agree with her.

Usually don't care for Ann Sheridan. Her harsh manner suggests that she's really a man. But I like her in this, from the moment where she's abruptly yelling at a manicurist.

John Barrymore, if sober enough to do the role, would have been a great choice.

Stanwyck would have put a bullet in his head on day 2.

I understand this humor’s appeal at the time the film appeared. Yet I’ve known and disliked a few characters like Sheridan Whiteside, so I never enjoyed the film. I try every so often to watch again, but always switch it off when the Penguins appear.

One of the best film comedies of the 1940s. Always makes me laugh

This collection of Warner breakdowns of 1942 has some for the film from 3.00.

[quote]Her harsh manner suggests that she's really a man.

What does that even mean, r11?

[quote] John Barrymore, if sober enough to do the role, would have been a great choice.

I wonder if he was in any kind of shape to make the film. He died in May 1942 and the last few years were hard for him.

I mentioned this movie in another thread about houses in old-time movies that I'd love to live in. The living room and kitchen, the woodwork on the stairs, and overstuffed furniture in front of the huge fireplace is loaded with Gemütlichkeit. I liked the feeling of skating on the pond and someone selling baked potatoes. And Ann Sheridan was magnificent, though Durante was overbearing -- probably the only time I didn't love him.

There’s a musical version. It has only one halfway decent song. The rest is trash.

Monty Woolley, Mary Wickes, and Ruth Vivian reprised their roles from the 1939 Broadway adaptation.

DL fave, Coral Browne, who played the Bette Davis role in the 1941 West End production of "The Man Who Came to Dinner," supposedly purchased the rights to the play and collected royalties from all future productions.

My wife, the actress, Coral Browne.

Monty Woolley in that film looks like Raul Esparza's older self.

Bette certainly seems to be enjoying herself in those blooper moments at r16. She even seems to like Monty Woolley.

Oh yes-this is the best movie and everyone was in it.

The director John Schlesinger said that when his friend Coral Browne was dying in California, he called her from London and asked her if he could come to see her. She told him she didn’t want visitors, and that all she had the energy to do was eat. Thinking he might send some food, he asked her if there was anything she was craving, and she sighed, “Yes, a big cock!”

Why are these movies not available for streaming?

The Man Who Came to Dinner is my favourite Christmas movie.

It's' on the Internet Archive.

It's.

"Just let him take you to dinner, have a few drinks with him, go dancing. You're an actress - how did you get all of those other parts?"

"Well!! Wild horses couldn't get me out of here now! Hold on to that bracelet, Maggie. It will be something to remember him by!"

I think there was a video that had a couple of test scenes with John Barrymore in the role....it was very sad.

Kind of like this.

[quote] & Monty Woolley was gay!!!

Omigod! Stop the Presses!

Was Clifton Webb as well

Clifton Webb played Whiteside in a live TV production in the '50s.

This movie is pretty good, but the play is better. Davis and Sheridan are good, but both are cast against type. Maggie is more of a Rosalind Russell or Eve Arden type and Lorraine was modeled on Gertrude Lawrence. Durante's part was based on Harpo Marx (a pal of Alexander Woolcott), hence the name, "Banjo."

Pass it along: I heard Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift both smoked pole!!!!!

If Sheridan married Ann Sheridan he might have been Sheridan Sheridan.

The "semen-al" gay film should be "The Man Who Came AT Dinner"

Monty Woolley and Cole Porter used to cruise for sailors together

How very dare of Maggie to think Sheridan would deign to sit down to dinner with midwestern barbarians.

To R38-Isn't that the white sauce for dinner?

The only cast problem was that dim witted boyish would be playwright. No way a sophisticated Bette Davis would go for him.

would-be

I swear I wrote Brandy Alexander Woollcott before I saw this post.

Beginning in 1939, Monty Woolley's partner was Cary Abbott, who was Black. While relationship was a secret to the community at large in Saratoga Springs, New York, Woolley's inner circle knew . Abbott died in 1948. Wooley in 1963 Buried together in Greenridge Cemetery.

Once when I directed a production of this at a community theatre and was giving notes, one of the young boys who was playing one of the choir boys who come in at the end of Act Two when Sheridan does his Christmas broadcast raised his hand.

I said: "Yes?"

He said: "My Mom said to tell you I can't be in the show because we are going to be on vacation."

I said: "Okay....well then you don't have to come to any more rehearsals."

He said: "Oh no, I can come to all the rehearsals, I just can't do the show."

I said, feeling like Sheridan Whiteside himself: "Have your mother call me."