Man Who Came to Dinner, The

Man Who Came to Dinner, The (1939), a comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. [Music Box Theatre, 739 perf.] Having slipped on the ice on the Stanleys' doorstep, the celebrated but cantankerous celebrity Sheridan Whiteside ( Monty Woolley) is forced to convalesce at their home. He is unhappy about it and determined to see the Stanleys are as unhappy as he is. Whiteside runs up telephone bills, invites convicts to lunch, broadcasts on the radio from their living room, alienates the Stanley children from their parents, and turns his nurse, Miss Preen ( Mary Wickes), so misanthropic that she takes a job at a munitions factory in hopes of destroying the human race. When his secretary, Maggie Cutler ( Edith Atwater), falls in love with a local newsman, Bert Jefferson ( Theodore Newton), Whiteside tries (unsuccessfully) to break it up by inviting a glamorous actress, Lorraine Sheldon ( Carol Goodner), to lure the newsman away. He even blackmails the Stanleys by threatening to disclose that Mr. Stanley's sister was once acquitted of a celebrated ax murder. Everyone is relieved when Whiteside is finally well enough to leave. But as he departs he slips on the ice again and is brought back into the house, bellowing his threats to initiate another six weeks of despotism. The authors made little secret that Whiteside was patterned after their friend, Alexander Woollcott. Many felt the character of Lorraine Sheldon was modeled after Gertrude Lawrence, while two other supporting figures, the suave Beverly Carlton and the madcap Banjo, were suggested by Noel Coward and Harpo Marx respectively. John Anderson wrote in the Journal‐American that no such richly Falstaffian character as Whiteside had heretofore been created in American literature, “No one so full of the carbolic acid of human kindness; no one with the enthusiasm, the ruthless wit, the wayward taste, disarming prejudice, and relentless sentimentality of the man so carefully undisguised as the hero.” The Sam H. Harris production was an immediate hit, and the play remains one of the most‐frequently revived of all American comedies. Notable Whitesides on Broadway have included Ellis Rabb in 1980 and Nathan Lane in 2000. The play was turned into the short‐lived musical Sherry! in 1967.