In 1990, Browne stated in a televised biographical interview, broadcast on UK Channel 4 (entitled Caviar to the General), that she bought the rights to the play, borrowing money from her dentist to do so.

The famously outlandish New York City radio wit Sheridan Whiteside ('Sherry' to his friends) is invited to dine at the house of the well-to-do factory owner Ernest W. Stanley and his family.

Confined to the Stanleys' home, Whiteside is looked after by several professionals: Dr. Bradley, the absent-minded town physician, Miss Preen, his frantic nurse, and Maggie Cutler, his faithful secretary.

Unable to bear the thought of losing his secretary, Whiteside invites his friend, the glamorous and loose-living actress Lorraine Sheldon, to Mesalia to look at Bert's new play, hoping she can break up the marriage plans.

Whiteside encourages June Stanley to elope with a young union organizer whom her father disapproves of, and Richard to run away and pursue his dream of becoming a photographer.

[2] At the time the play was written, Woollcott was famous both as the theater critic who helped re-launch the career of the Marx Brothers and as the star of the national radio show The Town Crier.

The character of Professor Metz is after Gustav Eckstein, MD, a physician writer from Cincinnati who studied animal behavior and was a long-time friend of Alexander Woollcott.

With his busy schedule of radio broadcasts and lectures, he declined, and Monty Woolley played the part on stage and in the subsequent film adaptation.

The film featured Monty Woolley, Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Billie Burke, Jimmy Durante, Mary Wickes and Richard Travis.

The production starred Charles Boyer, Jack Benny, Gene Kelly, Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, and Rosalind Russell.

It was also adapted for the Lux Radio Theater on March 27, 1950, starring Clifton Webb as Sheridan Whiteside and Lucille Ball as Maggie Cutler.

For Christmas Day, 2000, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Marcy Kahan adaptation of The Man Who Came to Dinner approved by the Hart and Kaufman estates which starred Simon Callow as Whiteside, Elizabeth McGovern as Maggie, with Conleth Hill as Bert Jefferson, Cheryl Campbell as Lorraine Sheldon, John Sessions as Banjo and Professor Metz, Colin Stinton as Mr. Stanley, and Malcolm Sinclair as Beverly Carlton.

Moira Petty, writing in The Stage, said, "Director Ned Chaillet elicited from his cast ... a smart, gag-telling pace, which gave it a sensational period flavour."

The cast included Nathan Lane (Sheridan Whiteside), Jean Smart (Lorraine Sheldon), Harriet Sansom Harris (Maggie Cutler), and Lewis J. Stadlen (Banjo).

Variety, The Advocate and Talkin' Broadway reviewed it positively,[10][11][12] and Entertainment Weekly gave the production a B+, calling it "as fresh a send-up as an SNL sketch and [with] an even more inspired plot" and singling out Smart's "swanning demonstration of ultimate showbiz phoniness" for praise.

Alternative rock singer Morrissey quoted the play's "All those people, all those lives, where are they now" monologue in The Smiths' 1986 song "Cemetry Gates", and used the pseudonym "Sheridan Whiteside" when writing record reviews before his musical career began.