• Dinner at Eight

8/27/21 (Fri)

George Cukor’s all-star 1933 comedy based on the Kaufman/Ferber stage play of the previous year. It seemed odd to see a play set among the rich and their swanky dinner party at the height of the Depression. But it turns out that there was more than meets the eye.

Millicent, the wife of shipping magnate Oliver, has bagged a visiting English lord and lady for a big dinner party, which she hopes will burnish her social status. In her excitement over who else to invite, the menu and such, she fails to notice that Oliver is struggling to save both his dying company and his own failing heart, or that her daughter is clearly unexcited about the impending arrival of her socially impeccable fiancé due to her infatuation over Larry Renault, a well known actor who has seen better days.

Carlotta, a famous stage actress in the twilight of her career, arrives from Europe and visits her old friend Oliver. She confesses that she is broke and hopes that he will buy back her shares in his company. When he is unable to produce the money, she quietly sells the shares elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Packard, a mining magnate from Montana, is secretly conspiring to buy up the shares in Oliver’s shipping firm and drive him out of business. Oliver has enlisted his help in saving the firm, not realizing the man’s duplicitous ways. Packard’s trophy wife Kitty, a former hat-check girl from a low-end club, enjoys the trappings of her wealthy life but wants to get into society, a matter of no interest to her power-hungry husband. She receives house calls from a handsome doctor with unusual frequency, but Packard suspects nothing.

Millicent has trouble gathering sufficient guests on short notice. She is urged by Oliver to invite Packard. The snooty Millicent resists inviting him due to his common wife, but gives in to her husband’s pleading. Kitty, meanwhile, seeing this as her entry into society, puts pressure on Packard to accept. He initially refuses, preferring to stay away from Oliver while he’s planning to stab him in the back. However, he changes his tune when he learns that the lord and lady are coming and, to Kitty’s delight, accepts at once.

Carlotta has agreed to come, which, to Millicent’s despair, leaves an uneven number of men and women. Dismissing her cousin’s response (“They’re invited for dinner, not for mating”), Millicent decides to invite Larry, who she barely knows but is a friend of Carlotta’s and is sufficiently famous. He resists at first given that he is having an affair with the daughter, whose fiancé will also be there. But the daughter persuades him to come, secretly planning to publicly dump her intended and take up with the much older actor instead. What she doesn’t know is that Larry is an alcoholic much-married has-been who is completely broke and can’t find work. His big chance at a comeback is thwarted when the project is taken over by a new producer, who sees him as old hat. He is also ejected from his lodgings at a nice hotel, and even the bellboys refuse to serve him unless he pays in advance.

As the party approaches, disaster strikes. First, the staff drop the piece de resistance, an aspic in the shape of a lion (to honor the British guests – also a sly reference to the MGM mascot), due to a fight. Worse, that has put one in jail and the other in the hospital, leaving the party understaffed. Then, the hostess learns that the lord and lady have decided to go to Florida instead of her party, undercutting the entire motivation for the event and forcing her to invite her decidedly un-glamorous cousin and the cousin’s unenthusiastic husband as substitutes. She’s further upset when Oliver tries to get out of the party, saying he’s not feeling well – we know in fact that he may only have days to live. In addition, her daughter wants to confess her affair and break off her marriage, but is unable to get through to the hysterical mother. Unbeknownst to everyone, Larry, miserable and drunk, has made himself unavailable for the party by blocking the doors in his hotel room, turning on the gas, and sitting himself in a chair with profile perfectly placed as he waits for the effects.

Then the guests begin to arrive for the party, where the stories all come dizzily together. The movie had felt its age in the first hour with some leaden dialogue and unconvincing acting that hasn’t worn well (this was just a few years after talkies came into being). It was only in that final half hour, when all the strands of the plot fall into place at the host’s home, that everything begins, hilariously, to work. And how. That final 30 minutes with its sharp dialogue and character portrayals make the whole film worth it.

The acting was variable, but the most memorable performances were easily Jean Harlow as the not-so-dumb platinum blonde and Marie Dressler as the imperious aging actress. Harlow in particular gave her two-dimensional character an entirely new dimension in her determination to attend the party and meet true society folks in defiance of her boorish husband’s attempts to suppress her. Their fiery standoff in the bedroom was the film’s best scene, and her manipulation of him in the party scene, when she forces him to give back the shares and save the host rather than destroy him, was masterful. Dressler was over-the-top but did know how to squeeze the dialogue for all its worth, including the infamous final exchange with Harlow that made me fall out of my chair laughing. John Barrymore was typecast for the actor with a great profile and drinking issues, and he actually underplayed the role to good effect, especially in the final suicide scene. Wallace Beery gets honorable mention for his overbearing businessman who discovers his trophy wife is more formidable than she seemed. Billie Burke was way too jumpy as the party hostess, others were acceptable. (I did love the maid who turned the tables on Harlow by blackmailing her out of a bracelet in exchange for keeping quiet on the mistress’ dalliances.) That said, the chemistry among the cast as a whole is undeniable. The property was remade for television in the 1980s with Lauren Bacall, but I suspect that it’s impossible to recreate this ephemeral Depression-era sparkle on film today, especially in the inescapably white world being portrayed. A tremendously fun show about a long-lost time.