I realize that this is regarded as a classic example of screwball comedy but it didn't work for me. The plot, what there is of it, is paper thin. Monty Woolley is Sheridan Whiteside, the renowned lecturer and radio personality who pals around with Churchill and Gypsy Rose Lee. He breaks his hip visiting a family in a small Ohio town and is stuck there until he's able to move about. His assistant is Bette Davis, who is courted by local reporter Richard Travis. It's directed with typical zest by Warners stalwart William Keighley. And it's from a successful play by Kaufman and Hart.
It would seem to have a lot going for it but I found the laughs sparse, despite the frenetic pace.
A lot depends on the central character. Monty Woolley had been a professor of English and drama at Yale and gave up his academic career for a life in the theater. He'd played this part on the stage, and it shows. He mostly sits in his wheelchair and bellows his lines. The director frequently cuts to a close up while Woolley is shouting, to emphasize that the line is supposed to be funny.
The problem is that the lines really aren't very funny. They're cutting, they're insulting, sure, but they lack poetry and wit.
"Now will you MOVE? Or shall I have my secretary move through you with a BASEBALL bat?" When told that someone looks strange: "STRANGE? She looks like something straight out of 'The Hound of the BASKERVILLES'." Do you find that sort of thing funny? I ask, because I don't. This role may have amused audiences in 1942 but it's dated now. It was less than ten years later that George Sanders perfected that persona -- closed the book on it -- in "All About Eve," where the lines really were funny. That's not to mention Oscar Wilde.
Woolley's character now seems more obnoxious than funny. Arrogant, intolerant, without sense of purpose, egotistical beyond belief, without charm of any kind. Who in the world could put up with an extended visit from such an unpleasant moron?
It would seem to have a lot going for it but I found the laughs sparse, despite the frenetic pace.
A lot depends on the central character. Monty Woolley had been a professor of English and drama at Yale and gave up his academic career for a life in the theater. He'd played this part on the stage, and it shows. He mostly sits in his wheelchair and bellows his lines. The director frequently cuts to a close up while Woolley is shouting, to emphasize that the line is supposed to be funny.
The problem is that the lines really aren't very funny. They're cutting, they're insulting, sure, but they lack poetry and wit.
"Now will you MOVE? Or shall I have my secretary move through you with a BASEBALL bat?" When told that someone looks strange: "STRANGE? She looks like something straight out of 'The Hound of the BASKERVILLES'." Do you find that sort of thing funny? I ask, because I don't. This role may have amused audiences in 1942 but it's dated now. It was less than ten years later that George Sanders perfected that persona -- closed the book on it -- in "All About Eve," where the lines really were funny. That's not to mention Oscar Wilde.
Woolley's character now seems more obnoxious than funny. Arrogant, intolerant, without sense of purpose, egotistical beyond belief, without charm of any kind. Who in the world could put up with an extended visit from such an unpleasant moron?