The Man Who Came to Dinner

The Man Who Came to Dinner claims to star Bette Davis, but this is not true. The real star – the person around whom the story revolves, who drives the plot and takes up most of the screen time – is Monty Woolley, as the eponymous “man”. He’s the hoity-toity metropolitan-elite writer who arrives in a nowheresville town along with his personal assistant Maggie (Davis), complaining loudly of having to have dinner with “mid-western barbarians”. The Stanleys (Grant Mitchell, Billie Burke) are middle-class stalwarts – he’s in ball bearings, she’s a fluttery wife – and she’s delighted that Sheridan Whiteside (Woolley) has deigned to grace them with his presence. Until Whiteside slips on the … Read more