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The Man Who Came To DinnerBy Moss Hart and George S. KaufmanThe Plot:
About the Play:
Hart wondered out loud what would have happened if Woollcott had broken his leg on the way out and been forced to bivouac perpetually in the house. The proverbial light went on. "This can be a very funny play," Hart told Kaufman. "All we have to have now are three very funny acts," he replied. They worked through the spring of 1939, incorporating as many bits of Woollcott's personality into the character of Sheridan Whiteside as possible. Hart wrote: "In talking about Woollcott, we decided to use only public aspects of his character…his lectures, his broadcasts, his charm, his acidulousness, his interest in murders, and all of this had to be worked into the plot of the play." In the end, Woollcott balked at playing this version of himself. Relieved, the authors bandied about the names of John Barrymore, Adolphe Menjou, and Robert Morley before settling on Monty Woolley, a Yale professor and actor. Woollcott eventually starred in the second touring company on the West Coast. After the curtain calls, he would often step down to the footlights and say to the thrilled audience in his nasal, high-pitched, imperious voice: "It's not true that this role of the obnoxious Sheridan Whiteside was patterned after me. Whiteside is merely a composite of the better qualities of the play's two authors." Stage history:The Man Who Came to Dinner rolled onto Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on October 16, 1939. It became an overnight smash hit and stayed, rather like Whiteside, for a protracted visit of 739 performances. (During its Boston tryout, Paris had fallen to the Nazis, forcing a last-minute revision to the script where a phone call from Whiteside to Gertrude Stein in Paris became, instead, a call to Walt Disney in Hollywood.) A national touring company featuring Clifton Webb was also successful. Once its success had been assured, Woollcott became stage-hungry again. The authors agreed that he could star in the second touring company on the West Coast. A 1942 film starring Woolley, and featuring Bette Davis and Jimmy Durante was also a wartime hit (featuring a "cameo" by the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt). Hart himself played Whiteside in a U.S.O tour of the South Pacific in 1944. The play has been revived many times on stage and television: notable Whitesides have included Orson Welles, Ellis Rabb, and, mostly recently, Nathan Lane in a 2000 production at the Roundabout Theater Company. Production details:Cast size: 14 men, 9 women, doubling possible; one set For performance rights to The Man Who Came to Dinner, contact www.dramatists.com/text/licensing.html A glossary for the play, as well as additional information and articles can be found by clicking on "Archives" on the Home Page. Quotes:"The basic idea [of the play was inspired]... Is there any better opening line to delineate a character and foreshadow a promisingly delectable situation than the one delivered by Sheridan Whiteside, The Man Who Came to Dinner? The worthy small-town folk fuss nervously, hoping to please the great public figure forced to convalesce in their honored midst. Whiteside, entering a wheelchair, surveys his adulating hosts and says, 'I may vomit' ".
Flash box: Broadway's most hilarious and enduring comedy about celebrity; based on the outsized personality of Alexander Woollcott. |