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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Woolley's Career Breakthrough, May 18, 2002
Monty Woolley led the kind of life that could have been filmed as fascinating biography. Born into New York wealth, he was the silver-spooned son of the owner of Manhattan's Bristol Hotel. When it came time for Woolley to attend college it was no surprise that he went to Yale, and when he switched schools it was anything but a surprise that he also attended Harvard, only to return later to the New Haven campus to become a professor of English.Woolley always was attracted to acting, and started the Yale Drama Club while at Old Eli. His best friend at Yale was another silver spooner, the Indianan Cole Porter. The great songwriter helped jump start Woolley's acting career by using his impressive contact list. Since Woolley was a character performer and highly distinct type with his aristocratic New York accent, which, in the manner of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had a quasi-British sound, he was not as easy to place as authentic leading man types such as a Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne, but eventually the right role came along and Woolley's career soared, after which he would never look back. The comedy writing team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart found him the ideal role as the pompous broadcaster-literary critic Sheridan Whiteside in what became a resounding Broadway hit, "The Man Who Came to Dinner." It was so successful that the term became accepted in the American vernacular as someone who overstays his welcome. The role was modeled after the articulate and insufferably egomaniacal New York literary critic Alexander Wollcott. Thankfully, when it came time to cast the film version of the acclaimed play Woolley did not become victimized as have so many great performers who popularized roles on Broadway, and was named to star. He won a New York Film Critics Circle "Best Actor" award for his dazzling portrayal of an incurable egomaniac with a penchant for devastating insults. Woolley, playing the internationally renowned man of the world Sheridan Whiteside, slips on the porch of the couple hosting him for lunch the day he is to deliver a lecture in a small Ohio town. His injury results in Grant Mitchell and Billie Burke putting him up, after which he takes over their previously tranquil home and turns it upside down. Mitchell incessantly fumes over not being able to get rid of Woolley. Woolley's comedic skills are focused in the supreme area of timing, of which he is an accomplished master. He is reminiscent of Jack Benny in one basic respect; Benny would sometimes draw his biggest laughs as a conduit receiver rather than the deliverer of a punch line. Woolley reacts to comments with looks of bemusement, scorn, ridicule, or supreme joy, depending on the person or the occasion. One of this sidesplitting film's peak moments comes when Woolley's long suffering nurse, veteran character performer Mary Wickes, decides she has had enough. After enduring endless insults and boorish commands to action from Woolley, she delivers a stinging monologue, telling him she is quitting not only this case, but nursing altogether. Her final broadside to Woolley is that, "If Florence Nightingale ever had the misfortune to take care of you, she would have forgotten about founding the Red Cross, would have quit nursing, and would have married Jack the Ripper." When she storms away Woolley exudes his broadest smile of the film. He clearly enjoys receiving a stinging insult at least as much as delivering one, if not more so. The selfish Woolley seeks to prevent his secretary Bette Davis from marrying local newspaper editor and publisher Richard Travis. He spawns a scheme to keep her and break up the romance by promoting the play Travis has written to Ann Sheridan, who has never looked more glamorous in a role said to be modeled after British stage acting great Gertrude Lawrence. Reginald Gardner appears briefly in a role reflective of British stage legend Noel Coward, while Jimmy Durante flies in from Hollywood to visit his friend Woolley. His character was said to have been modeled after Harpo Marx, right down to his dogged persistence in chasing after women. At one point, egged on by Woolley, he seals the lid on an Egyptian mummy case, holding Sheridan captive, after which he flies her away in his private plane. Director William Keighley as well as the screenwriting twin brother Epstein team are shrewd enough to not tamper with the winning Kaufman-Hart formula of keeping the action perpetually moving through a series of quick sequences and interruptions by fascinating characters. The breakneck pace never slackens. Animals are even thrown into the picture as the world famous Woolley is gifted at one point with an octopus and at another with penguins. The talented Woolley would receive two Oscar nominations during his career for "The Pied Piper" and "Since You Went Away." As the real life best friend of Cole Porter at Yale he was recruited to play himself opposite Cary Grant as Porter in the cinema biography of the songwriter, "Night and Day."
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