What if you had a horrible house guest, and they would never leave?  That was the premise which launched Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman to write The Man Who Came to Dinner.  This rip-roaring stage play was made into a 1942 movie starring Monty Woolley, Bette Davis (cast against type as a frump) and Ann Sheridan.  In it Woolley plays a high-maintenance famous personality who is stuck as a guest in a house in small town Ohio due to an injury.

Others in the cast include Jimmy Durante, Billie Burke, Mary Wickes, Richard Travis, Grant Mitchell, and Reginald Gardner.  This is definitely a period piece rife with references to people and events in the 1930s and early 1940s.  But it is a lot of fun.  Woolley gleefully skewers everyone and everything in sight as he plots and plans ploys.

Most Kaufman and Hart plays and movies have underlying social themes or pertinent messages. This one does not.  Its only aim is to have fun.  Brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, do a good job of condensing the Kaufman & Hart play into a 90 minute movie without losing the bite or the wit.

Why is it a Christmas movie?  It takes place at Christmastime. A Christmas Eve radio broadcast is a plot point that provides a great deal of upheaval for the characters. In addition, a unique Christmas present serves as one half of a deus ex machina that helps wrap up the plotlines nicely.

Orson Welles, Don Knotts, Lee Remick, Joan Collins and Marty Feldman starred in a 1972 remake. A 2000 Broadway revival was filmed and aired on PBS with Nathan Lane, Jean Smart and Harriet Harris.