yjudith I only came on here to say that yes, this movie tries real hard, but it was made during WW2. Many movie tried too hard...to bring some kind of distraction from the horrors of war. It's a well-known fact. That being said I thought it was a great movie.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . this flick calls for ME to throw MY hat into the ring for 2020, and then pull a rabbit out of it. According to the String Theory from the Quantum Physics Laws, Warner Bros. has tapped Yours Truly to interpret the Cosmic Warning Signs Warner embeds into the fabric of its 1900s film offerings, just as Doonesbury was called upon in the 1900s to Project a Trump Presidency. BOTH of my namesakes--Edgar Allan Poe (at 29:30) and Winnie the Pooh (at 34:03)--are written into the script here, as well as a paraphrase of my Lizzie Borden comment provided to this site earlier in the week (at 1:47:19), and even a reference to the beleaguered rabbit I found in my front yard yesterday is thrown in (at 1:38:05). With Doonesbury having the power to install a self-proclaimed Russian spy most notable otherwise for being a Draft Dodger, Tax Cheat, Serial Finger Rapist, Casino Swindler, Wage Short-Changer, Compulsive Liar, Fraudulent "University" Founder, Court-Documented Spouse Assaulter, Malignant Narcissist, Emmy-Losing Game Show Host, KGB Money Launderer, and Terrorist Invader of Nude Teenage Girls' Beauty Pageant Changing Rooms as the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, surely ANY normal Citizen turning age 25 by 2020 has an even more likely chance to poke Dr. Heisenberg in the eye from Our Oval Office!

Frank Cullen Robert Osborne of TCM said that Warners intended John Barrymore but the Great Profile was too ill by 1942) for the role of Sheridan Whiteside (whose real life model was columnist & broadcaster Alexander Woolcott. Monty Woolley, who originated the role on Broadway (if one can originate what is a copy of the original) brought his smart performance from stage to screen. Others including Clifton Webb, Orson Welles, Simon Callow, Vincent Price and Nathan Lane have attempted the role with various degrees of success, and no doubt Barrynmore would have been great in the juicy, flamboyant role. Indeed, The Man Who Came to Dinner (MWCD), like all scripts written by George S. Kaufman and his various collaborator (Edna Ferber, Mac Connolly and Moss Hart) offers a great roles for all its actors. The screen cast was excellent, especially Reginald Gardiner who, in the role of Mr Beverly Carlton) captured Noel Coward perfectly. Gardiner and Monty Woolley recreated their roles for TV in 1954 (CBS' Best of Broadway 1954). Surprising to me was that Bette Davis actually underplayed and fit very nicely into the ensemble as the sane counterweight to a bunch of madcap egoists. Ann Sheridan sparkled in the slightly unpleasant role based on Gertrude Lawrence. And when did Billie Burke ever disappoint? Jimmy Durante played Banjo (based on Harpo Marx who, as a bachelor, palled around with the same sophisticated set in real life). Davey Burns created Banjo on Broadway, but Durante worked as a more famous casting choice, though in the 1954 Best of Broadway TV revival of this play, Banjo was played by Bert Lahr, and I preferred Lahr's performance. Although Mary Wickes was perfect as the nurse (she played the role in the Broadway production as well as in the film), Zasu Pitts was even more suited to the nurse ("Miss Bedpan!") role in the telecast, and casting Buster Keaton as the doctor in the TV version was brilliant. Most Kaufman plays, including MWCD, written with various partners (who probably supplied structure), remain playable and funny today. He was a master.

jzappa "Form follows function" is not just a principle that applies to architecture but something that makes everything legitimate and well-designed. The shape or tone of something should be mainly anchored in its idea or meaning, for the most part, right? Well, The Man Who Came to Dinner is an account of one of surely countless similar episodes in the life of the biggest douchebag in the history of cinema, actually probably in the history of all vaginal cleaning agents. Whatever they were using before douche, he still outranks it. That's fine. If you have a character you fully develop, give presence and make a movie about, I'm there! Many of my favorite films center around less than sympathetic characters, but none of them work via the presumption that I must like him. This remarkably snooty romp seeks to lionize a character so vain and contemptible, and spend all of its energies on surefire formulas for farce, so that we don't stop to think about anything the script doesn't want us to.Everything accelerates with one contrivance after another, what with a boys' choir, an Egyptian mummy, a flock of penguins. The cast relishes the incisive, brightly sneering dialogue with delight, but it's only Bette Davis, in the sole straight part, who manages to overcome the common air of laugh-begging despair. The movie grovels for laughs while striving for the wittiest way to say any and everything that's said. And Davis and the rest of the cast don't serve the story so much as anchor it in our associations with the familiar faces and names, as well as graceful comportment and transatlantic accents. The film strains itself over impeccable form to compensate for its flimsy, snooty, cloying function.The pacing is not as rhythmic as it would like to think it is. This whole movie likes to think, and would especially like us to think, that it's a quick-witted, razor-sharp farce in the classic Hawksian or Capra-esquire sense. It doesn't really want us to care about elements and characters it's just placed to add bulk around what it has truly designed for us to care about, which is Bette Davis' love interest and how her controlling boss prevents her marriage to the Ohio newspaperman. Nearly every other character, no matter how significant the conflict is that they're presented with, is forcibly marginalized for the remainder only to be resolved in a hurry at the end. But it's OK because we're effectively engaged in the quandary between Davis and her giant douche of a boss. The trick is that we're not supposed to think about much outside of that.My earliest ventures in thinking about movies, not just watching them, not just putting them on and looking at them, showed me that thinking has much to do with keeping experiences alive long enough to take something away from them, making them valuable ones. Thinking may bring to light distressing realities or produce dead ends, but its real purpose is to strengthen an idea, to increase our connection to a subject by strengthening its value in our minds. In this way, thinking gives life some character and linkage, a narrative characteristic, as if our ideas, prompted by unembarrassed interest, were running through our minds like movies! A light-hearted movie is one thing, but a movie that disregards the expectation that its audience would like to actually sink its teeth into it is another.