The Man Who Came to Dinner is a 1942 American screwball comedy film directed by William Keighley,[3][4] and starring Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan and, as the titular character, Monty Woolley.

The screenplay by Julius and Philip G. Epstein is based on the 1939 play The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman.

While passing through small-town Ohio during a cross-country lecture tour, notoriously acerbic New York radio personality Sheridan Whiteside injures his hip after slipping and falling on the icy steps of the house of the Stanleys, a prominent family with whom he's supposed to dine as a publicity stunt.

He bullies and exasperates his nurse to the point that she quits, declaring she has changed her mission in life from relieving the suffering of humanity to working at a munitions factory.

Whiteside encourages young adults Richard and June Stanley to pursue their dreams, contrary to the wishes of their conventional father.

Appealing to Lorraine’s vanity, they trick her into acting out a scenario and stepping into an Egyptian sarcophagus, slam it shut, and ship her off to Nova Scotia.

Finally fed up with his shenanigans, meddling, insults, and unbearable personality, Mr. Stanley swears out a warrant ordering Whiteside to leave in 15 minutes.

Sheridan Whiteside was inspired by celebrated critic and Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott, who eventually played the role on stage; Lorraine Sheldon by musical stage actress Gertrude Lawrence; Beverly Carlton by playwright and renowned wit Noël Coward; and Banjo by Algonguin Round Table member Harpo Marx.

He tested for the role of Whiteside but was deemed unsuitable when, as a result of his heavy drinking (or perhaps encroaching Alzheimers), he supposedly had difficulty delivering the complicated, fast-paced dialogue, even with his lines posted on cue cards throughout the set.

Both Charles Laughton and Orson Welles, who wanted to direct the film, campaigned for the role, and Laird Cregar and Robert Benchley made screen tests; but executive producer Hal B. Wallis thought the former was "overblown and extravagant" and the latter "too mild mannered."

For here, in the space of something like an hour and fifty-two minutes, is compacted what is unquestionably the most vicious but hilarious cat-clawing exhibition ever put on the screen, a deliciously wicked character portrait and a helter-skelter satire, withal."

His zest for rascality is delightful, he spouts alliterations as though he were spitting out orange seeds, and his dynamic dudgeons in a wheelchair are even mightier than those of Lionel Barrymore.

"[10] Variety made note of the "superb casting and nifty work by every member of the company" and thought the "only detracting angle in the entire film is [the] slowness of the first quarter.