I’m watching The Man Who Came to Dinner on TCM and am trying to decode it. I know, of course, that Sheridan Whiteside is supposed to be Alexander Woollcott, “Banjo” is Harpo Marx, and I highly suspect the fey British playwright Beverly Carlton is Noel Coward.
But who is Lorraine Sheldon? Gertrude Lawrence? The troublesome relationship with Beverly Carlton would suggest that, but the character doesn’t seem very Gertie at all. Any clues?
Every damn high school in the country does this show, I wonder if a revival would work using the real names?
Speaking of decoding, were Whiteside and Beverley intended to come off as gay as a pair of pink pincushions, or is my modern sensibility getting in the way?
Is there some particular reason people connect Gertrude Lawrence to Lorraine Sheldon? On the face of it, she doesn’t seem to fit very well. She was best known as a stage actress and made only a handful of films. According to the IMDB, she was a childhood friend of Noel Coward, so the feud with Beverly Carlton doesn’t make much sense.
I’ve always assumed Sheldon was no one in particular, just your average glamorous, not-too-talented, gold-digging starlet. It could be that Hart and Kaufman used bits of a lot of different women just to drive every actress in Hollywood crazy.
My first lead role in college was as Sheridan, and the director told us that Lorainne was Gertrud Lawrence. He claimed to have known someone from the original cast who told him all the dirt about who and what was being referred to in the play. He was old enough that we had no reason to disbelieve him, but…well, you know how theater people can embellish.
Well, Woollcott was a hugely (in every way) effeminate man, though pretty much assumed by his biographers to have been assexual, probably a virgin. And Monty Woolley was one of the few openly gay actors of his day (he and Cole Porter were best pals, though not “that way” about each other).
I think people assume Lorraine Sheldon was Gertie Lawrence because she’s linked with “Noel Coward” in this play (she and Noel had a love/hate relationship). But other than that, there is nothing “Gertie” about Lorraine. Gertie wasn’t self-adoring social-climbing bitch; nor was Tallulah. I wonder if it could have been some dark horse no one thinks of today, like Ina Claire, Lynne Fontanne, Ruth Gordon?
I’ve read an explanation as to how Sheldon’s Gertrude Lawrence in one of the books of theatrical manager/historian Steven Suskin, but I currently don’t have access to that book.
One problem with it being Lynn Fontanne: Where’s Alfred Lunt?
I checked two biographies of Kaufman and neither had much of anything to say beyond Woollcott. And of course Harpo Speaks doesn’t have an index, as that would have implied that someone read the book before publication.
So all I can add is that for a moment in the past that would be worth inventing a time machine for I nominate July 28, 1941. The place: the Bucks County Playhouse. The event: an amateur production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. Starring George S. Kaufman as Sheridan Whiteside, Moss Hart as Beverly Carlton, and, yes, Harpo as Banjo.
