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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 702
Released: May 30, 2006 |
| Our Price: $5.79 |
| Used Price: $8.50 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A pompous lecturer is forced to spend the winter inside a prominent Ohio family's home due to injury and proceeds to meddle with the lives of everyone in the household.
Description of The Man Who Came to Dinner:
A legendary Broadway tour de force comes to the screen with Monty Woolley's central performance in The Man Who Came to Dinner. And it's a turn well worth immortalizing. All goatish beard, snapping teeth, and plummy-voiced put-downs, Woolley fully inhabits the role of Sheridan Whiteside, a celebrated author and radio celebrity who gets waylaid by a cracked hip during a visit to small-town Ohio. Bossing the helpless homeowners and bewildered staff from his wheelchair, he quickly fills his hosts' house with his projects (including four penguins) and famous visitors (Ann Sheridan as a self-centered diva, Jimmy Durante as a comedian based on Harpo Marx). Bette Davis goes for a quieter role than usual as Whiteside's assistant; she falls for a local newspaperman, drippily played by Richard Travis. They all revolve around the seated figure of Woolley, his hands drumming on his armrests, his teeth bared as though ready to devour his inferiors. He's delicious. The script is larded with topical references and Broadway-style repartee, not all of which has aged well, and director William Keighley doesn't have a clear grasp of how to shoot jokes. But the basic situation is so durable, and Whiteside's character (based on famed Algonquin Round Table wit Alexander Woollcott) so unusual and nasty, that the movie remains great fun. --Robert Horton
The Man Who Came to Dinner Reviews:
Rollicking good fun! 
2009-12-17 - This is a fast-paced, witty drawing-room-Noel-Coward kind of comedy, and I loved it! There are a variety of characters, but not too many. There are so many great one-liners and comeback lines in this movie, you'll want to write them down! Monty Woolly steals the show; Bette Davis is surprisingly low-key, but whatever they do, it works!
Great transaction!
2009-08-26 - I love this movie, and after a friend lost our copy, I wanted to replace it right away. The movie arrived quickly & was exactly as the description noted.
Another side of Bette Davis 
2009-08-10 - This movie is closely related to 'Fashions of 1934" as in both instances Davis plays a subordinate role of a assistant/secretary that falls in love and leaves her career for the man she loves.
Here as as Maggie Cutler she is both more believable and witty, bouncing off the acid machine gun remarks of Monty Woolley playing a talented, egocentric writer (Sheridan Whiteside) that is trapped in an Ohio home due to an accident.
The story is not at all believalble, but that was standard Hollywoof fare back then.
The man literally takes over the house, invites prison inmates for dinner and keeps on receiving eccentrioc gifts, mostly in the animal kingdom: Four Penguins, an octopus in its own fish-tank-case, and finally, the sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian mommy that he uses to ship off Ann Sheridan. She plays the gold-digger-star of the theater Lorraine Sheldon, who is portrayed as the ultimate blond beauty, as everyman who sees her goes stupid and either walks on traffic or bangs against a door from this revelation of feminine seduction.
Davis is in love with a local newspaper editor who is as dull as the snowfalls that keep that town busy. We can only understand her falling for him becasue this accident has given her an unusual length of time in one place with her old goat of a boss pretty much inmobilized and it is the final move by an intelligent, good looking woman on the verge of old-maidenhood. Beleive it or not, she has to compete with Lorraine for this log of a man, that has a permanent smile similar to the Sphynx's in the way it can be relied to be always there when you look. Lorraine also found his play interesting and wants to steal him away to some lake-side property to learn the play and get the man in one swoop. However we must understand that this is 1942 and getting a man in America, which was completely immersed in the World War, must have required similar skills to winning a battle. Needless to say, Bette will get her man once she is made up her mind to balltle for him, and has warned Monty that this is a serious enterprise and not a passing infatuation.
Bette Davis looks almost normal in this role. She has very subdued outfits and her mannerisms are nowhere to be seen. She carries the authority of an assistant that has walked through several years of experience with a high maintenance creature and knows she can pretty much run a state with the energy she puts just in doing his correspondence. It was, as usual, just great to see her go at it.
Audio content 
2009-05-01 - ..My disappointment is solely with the audio content of the DVD...a bit fuzzy/grainy sounding. I'll live with it ..key point of reference, disclose that up front, if you tout an item in "very good" condition, audio is an essential component!
Hilarious if not a bit annoying!
2009-04-20 - Monty Wolley does a great job here in being an annoying character (his job in this film), but somehow with all the talent around him it ends up being a perfectly entertaining way to spend time with a movie. It's a must Christmas viewing every year - and sometimes inbetween!
