Christmas Dinner, by Bob Connally

We all have our Christmas movie staples. It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Love Actually, any version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We also love our favorite genre films that happen to take place at Christmas. Die Hard, Gremlins, anything with Shane Black’s name on it. But each year I love to find other Christmas gems I haven’t seen before and occasionally they make their way into the rotation. I first watched the 1942 comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner five years ago and now I can’t imagine Christmastime without it.

Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley) is the beloved “first man of American letters.” He’s a respected drama critic, he gives radio addresses Americans make appointments to stay home for, and he’s in high demand to give lectures all over the country. He’s a personal friend to movie stars and President and Mrs. Roosevelt, and now he and his assistant Maggie (Bette Davis) are making a stop in the little town of Mesalia, Ohio. As a favor to an old friend he will be dining with some of the most prominent people in town, at the home of Ernest and Daisy Stanley (Grant Mitchell, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Billie Burke, The Wizard of Oz).

Whiteside is less than thrilled, eager to move on to a bigger city and people he deems worthy of his presence. However, a slip on the front steps of the Stanley home sees Whiteside moving in and taking it over, co-opting the living room, telephone, cook, and butler, all while promising to sue Mr. Stanley for $150,000 (which comes out to just north of $2.2 million in 2016 money). His aggravation with being a temporary invalid is compounded when Maggie informs him she’s fallen in love with local newspaperman and budding playwright Bert Jefferson (Richard Travis), and will shortly be losing her invaluable services.

With a screenplay by the Epstein brothers (Julius and Philip, Casablanca), and based on the 1939 play by well-regarded playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, The Man Who Came to Dinner is, not surprisingly, dialogue driven. The film is directed by William Keighley (co-director of The Adventures of Robin Hood) but this is a movie built on the writing and the performances, which are outstanding across the board.

In a way, it’s surprising that The Man Who Came to Dinner works as well as it does watching it today. Many of its characters are based on well-known celebrities of the time who are largely forgotten now. Whiteside is a fictionalized version of Alexander Woollcott who wore even more hats in reality than Whiteside does in this film. While the reference point is lost on the vast majority of us who discover this film on Turner Classic Movies, the character and the performance by Woolley are legendary all the same.

Woolley originated the role of Whiteside on Broadway but as he was unknown to movie audiences at the time, a bevy of higher profile actors were in the running to play the part in the film. John Barrymore, Charles Laughton, and even Cary Grant and Orson Welles (who would play the part in a 1972 TV production) were all looked at as possibilities. Ultimately, the right choice was made in keeping Woolley in the leading role. He infuses the caustic wit of the script with just the right hint of playfulness, making the character lovable rather than simply mean. It’s a gloriously funny and endlessly watchable performance, as he belittles his hosts, terrorizes his nurse (the very funny Mary Wickes, White Christmas), and schemes to hang on to Maggie as his assistant. We see he does have a heart over the course of the film, but it’s revealed in a way that doesn’t become saccharine. Like most everything else in The Man Who Came to Dinner, it is expertly handled.

As Maggie, Bette Davis is given what could have been a rather thankless role despite being the biggest name in the cast. It takes someone of Davis’ stature however to make the relationship Maggie has with Whiteside work. She’s never intimidated by him and speaks her mind very freely, no matter how annoyed he may be by what she has to say. Still, it’s clear she likes him very much and there’s a wonderful charm to their scenes together.

The romantic plot involving Maggie and Bert plays out in a fashion very typical to movies of that era, with Maggie deciding she wants to marry Bert after one night out and some melodramatic turns, but it’s sweet and enjoyable enough that it doesn’t slow the movie down much. If anything, it slows things in a helpful way, with all of the screwball proceedings (including a dining room full of penguins) going on throughout the film.

Besides Woolley and Davis, The Man Who Came to Dinner features brilliantly funny performances from Ann Sheridan, Reginald Gardiner, and Jimmy Durante, all of whom play characters based on celebrities of the day. Sheridan’s Lorraine Sheldon is the self-absorbed stage actress and romantic rival to Maggie, a character that some believe is a stand-in Gertrude Lawrence, while others believe it’s Tallulah Bankhead. Gardiner’s Beverly Carlton meanwhile, is undoubtedly based on English writer Noel Coward. It’s a brief appearance at a little past the halfway point but Gardiner makes the most of his short but important screen time and he gets to deliver some very funny lines. Again though, like Whiteside, the characters are strong enough and the comedy is funny enough that it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the real life connections.

In what’s essentially an extended cameo, Durante drops into the film’s final act like a bomb, bringing chaos and destruction into the Stanley home as he tries to help his old pal Whiteside out of the jam of his life. Durante plays a character named Banjo who is clearly based upon Harpo Marx (who in reality was great friends with Alexander Woollcott). He’s a fast-talking whirlwind for about 15 minutes and he helps The Man Who Came to Dinner pick up steam as it heads to the hilarious and ultimately inevitable ending.

Filmed just before but released just after America’s entry into WWII, this is the kind of witty screwball comedy that would never get made today. 75 years on though, it remains a very funny film that stands up to repeat viewings. This is a welcome addition to anyone’s Christmas movie collection, especially if you’re a fan of movies like Arsenic and Old Lace or the early films of the Marx Brothers.

It is currently streaming for free with an Amazon Prime subscription and will undoubtedly make at least one appearance on TCM between now and Christmas Day.