The Man Who Came to Dinner

Monty Woolley created the role of Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner

The play is set in the small town of Mesalia, Ohio in the weeks leading to Christmas in the late 1930s. The exposition reveals that the famously outlandish New York City radio wit Sheridan Whiteside ('Sherry' to his friends) is invited to dine at the house of the well-to-do factory owner Ernest W. Stanley and his family. But before Whiteside can enter the house, he slips on a patch of ice outside the Stanleys' front door and injures his hip. Confined to the Stanleys' home, Whiteside is looked after by several professionals: Dr. Bradley, the absent-minded town physician, Miss Preen, his frantic nurse, and Maggie Cutler, his faithful secretary. He is also visited by the eccentric Professor Metz, who brings him a glass-encased cockroach colony.

Confined to the house for a month, Sherry drives his hosts mad by viciously insulting them, monopolizing their house and staff, running up large phone bills, and receiving many bizarre guests, including paroled convicts. However, Sherry manages to befriend the Stanleys' children, June and Richard, as well as Mr. Stanley's eccentric older sister Harriet.

He also befriends local newspaperman and aspiring playwright Bert Jefferson but soon learns that Maggie is in love with Bert, and plans to leave her job to marry him. Unable to bear losing his secretary, Sherry invites his friend, the glamorous and loose-living actress Lorraine Sheldon, to Mesalia to look at Bert's new play, hoping she can break up the marriage plans. Dr. Bradley tells Sherry he was mistaken in his diagnosis, and Sherry is well enough to leave. Sherry buys the doctor's silence by pretending to want to work on a book with him, and for the rest of the play keeps brushing him off.

As Christmas Day nears, Sherry encourages June Stanley to elope with a young union organizer whom her father disapproves of, and Richard to run away and pursue his dream of becoming a photographer. Lorraine arrives, and Maggie instantly suspects Sherry's involvement. They receive a visit from their friend, noted British actor and playwright Beverly Carlton. Maggie learns Beverly can do a great impression of Lord Bottomley, an English lord whom Lorraine is hoping to marry. She gets Beverly to call Lorraine and pretend to be Lord Bottomley proposing, to get Lorraine to leave. However, Sherry soon sees through the ruse. When Lorraine realizes Maggie's involvement she starts to seduce Bert as revenge.

The next day, Christmas, Bert is enthralled with Lorraine, and Maggie, hurt by Sherry's betrayal, tells him she is quitting. Feeling guilty, Sherry tries to think of a way to get Lorraine out of Malia. He gets help from an unexpected visit by his friend, movie comedian Banjo. Mr. Stanley, however, furious at Sherry's interference with his family, has now ordered Sherry's eviction from the house and gives him fifteen minutes to leave. All looks hopeless until an Egyptian mummy case is delivered to Sherry (a Christmas gift from the Khedive of Egypt). Sherry and Banjo manage to trick Lorraine into the mummy case and shut her inside. Sherry then sees a photo of Harriet Stanley when she was younger, and recognizes her as a famous murderer. Using this information, he blackmails Mr. Stanley into helping them get the case onto Banjo's plane.

Sherry now stands, telling Maggie she is free to marry Bert and prepares to return to New York by train. Unfortunately, as he is leaving the house, he slips on another patch of ice, injuring himself again. He is carried back inside the house screaming as the curtain falls.

Kaufman and Hart wrote the play as a vehicle for their friend Alexander Woollcott, the model for the lead character Sheridan Whiteside.[2] At the time the play was written Woollcott was famous both as the theater critic who helped re-launch the career of the Marx Brothers and as the star of the national radio show The Town Crier. He was well liked by both Kaufman and Hart, but that did not stop him from displaying the obnoxious characteristics displayed by Whiteside in the play. Kaufman and Hart had promised a vehicle for Woollcott but had been unable to find a plot that suited them until one day Woollcott showed up, unannounced, at Hart's Bucks County estate, and proceeded to take over the house. He slept in the master bedroom, terrorized Hart's staff, and generally acted like Sheridan Whiteside. On his way out he wrote in Hart's guest book, "This is to certify that I had one of the most unpleasant times I ever spent." Hart related the story to Kaufman soon afterwards. As they were both laughing about it, Hart remarked that he was lucky that Woollcott had not broken his leg and become stuck there. Kaufman looked at Hart and the idea was born.

A plot point mentions actress and Broadway producer Katharine Cornell. The character Bert Jefferson writes a play, and Whiteside promises to give it to Cornell for her to star in. The character of Professor Metz is after Gustav Eckstein, MD, a physician writer from Cincinnati who studied animal behavior and was a long-time friend of Alexander Woollcott.

Woollcott was delighted with The Man Who Came to Dinner and was offered the role for its Broadway debut. With his busy schedule of radio broadcasts and lectures, he declined, and Monty Woolley played the part on stage and in the subsequent film adaptation. Woollcott did play Whiteside in the West Coast version of the play and was even joined by Harpo Marx, who portrayed his own referenced character, Banjo.

The printed edition of the play starts with the inscription "To Alexander Woollcott, for reasons that are nobody's business."

The original cast as billed:

Character notes

• Sheridan Whiteside was modeled on Alexander Woollcott.
• Beverly Carlton was modeled on Noël Coward.[5]
• Banjo was modeled on Harpo Marx,[5] and there is a dialogue reference to his brothers Groucho and Chico. When Sheridan Whiteside talks to Banjo on the phone, he asks him, "How are Wackko and Sloppo?"
• Professor Metz was based on Dr. Gustav Eckstein of Cincinnati (with cockroaches substituted for canaries), and Lorraine Sheldon was modeled after Gertrude Lawrence.[5]
• The character of Harriet Sedley, the alias of Harriet Stanley, is an homage to Lizzie Borden. The popular jump-rope rhyme immortalizing Borden is parodied in the play.[6]

A 1980 revival directed by Stephen Porter ran for 19 previews and 85 performances at the Circle in the Square Theatre. The cast included Ellis Rabb, Roderick Cook, Leonard Frey, Carrie Nye, and Jamey Sheridan. Drama Desk Award nominations went to Cook for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play and Nye for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play.

A 2000 revival, which ran for 85 performances, was produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company and directed by Jerry Zaks. The cast included Nathan Lane (Sheridan Whiteside), Jean Smart (Lorraine Sheldon), Harriet Sansom Harris (Maggie Cutler), and Lewis J. Stadlen (Banjo). In an interview prior to the opening, Lane said, "There's a danger in playing Whiteside. In the movie, Monty Woolley's portrayal at times came across as mean for mean's sake. It's when it gets nasty or bitchy that it goes off in the wrong direction."[2] He suggested that his performance was influenced by Woollcott's repressed sexuality, stating, "He had a lot of...things he didn't want to deal with."[2] The production received mixed reviews. Variety, The Advocate and Talkin' Broadway reviewed it positively,[11][12][13] and Entertainment Weekly gave the production a B+, calling it "as fresh a send-up as an SNL sketch and [with] an even more inspired plot" and singling out Smart's "swanning demonstration of ultimate showbiz phoniness" for praise.[14] In The New York Times, however, Ben Brantley disliked the production, writing that "What should be a buoyant balloon of an evening [is] more often an exercise in deflation." Brantley praised Stadlen but found most of the acting, including Lane's, to be "a series of flourishes that sell individual jokes and epigrams without being anchored to character."[15] Smart was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and Stadlen was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, though neither won.

Notes

• The Man Who Came to Dinner at the Internet Broadway Database
• 1946 Theatre Guild on the Air radio adaptation of play at Internet Archive