Dinner at Eight

Film in Focus

By Jean-Paul Garrieux

Dinner at Eight (MGM, 1933) – Director: George Cukor. Writers: Frances Marion & Herman J. Mankiewicz (s/p). Edna Ferber & George S. Kaufman (play). Donald Ogden Stewart (add’l dialogue). John Meehan (uncredited). Stars: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Lee Tracy, Edmund Lowe, Billie Burke, Madge Evans, Jean Hersholt, Karen Morley, Louise Closser Hale, Phillips Holmes, May Robson & Grant Mitchell. B&W, 111 minutes.

Although the movie studios saw their mission as one to take people’s minds off the Great Depression, they, too, had to keep the wolves from the door. The studios cut back salaries, began the double feature, and sold off assets. Despite these economies, though, RKO, Fox and Paramount went into receivership. 

Competition for the moviegoers' dime or quarter intensified as each studio looked for that special formula that would pull them into the black. Of the larger studios, only MGM made a profit, though it was greatly reduced from years past and was partly achieved as a result of tightening its belt.

To keep ahead of the others and draw badly needed customers, MGM used its greatest asset: star power. Its 1932 ensemble drama, Grand Hotel, grossed $1,359,000 against a cost of $700,000 largely because of its star power. With things getting worse in 1933, MGM repeated the formula for a recently acquired Broadway hit comedy-drama called Dinner at Eight written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. The rights to the play were sold first to Joseph Schenck, president of United Artists, but he gradually lost interest in the project. The rights went back up for grabs and MGM quickly grabbed them. The studio took no chances, assembling another all-star cast. It was David O. Selznick’s first assignment as producer and George Cukor, considered adept at “drawing room” material and known for his skill in handling actors, was chosen to direct. The care paid off. Budgeted at $435,000, the film grossed $2,156,000 worldwide.

Though intended as escapist entertainment, even MGM could not escape the clutches of the Depression, which is all too evident in the film. The one thing shared by the main characters is a sense of desperation. Wealthy socialite Millicent Jordan (Burke) is planning an extravagant dinner at her home, bolstered in the knowledge that Lord and Lady Ferncliffe of England had accepted her invitation to dinner. 

What the flighty and oblivious Millicent doesn’t know or care to know (her only concern is in finding an extra man to balance out the presence of invitee Carlotta Vance) is that husband Oliver’s (Lionel Barrymore) shipping company is in deep trouble. Someone has been buying his stock out from under him and he is desperate for financing. His fretting over it is making a bad heart condition worse. 

Carlotta Vance (Dressler), an aging retired actress and former lover of Oliver, visits him at his office. Though she has been invited to the dinner, it isn’t her reason for visiting Oliver. She, too, is desperate for money and asks him to buy her stock in the company, the only wealth she has left, but he does not have the money.

After Carlotta leaves, Oliver is visited by Dan Packard (Beery) a nouveau riche mining magnate desperate for a Cabinet appointment and the status that goes with it. To get that appointment he will stop at nothing to crush his competition and amass all the money he can get get his hands on. Olivier pitches the idea of buying stock in his company to Dan, but Packard isn’t interested. He’s the one underhandedly buying Oliver’s stock. Later he will swindle Carlotta out of her stock at a reduced price, part of a plan he tells trophy-wife Kitty (Harlow) to take Oliver’s business right out from under his feet. Invited to dinner, Packard isn’t interested, but changes his mind when he learns the Ferncliffes are attending. 

Kitty is just as desperate as Dan, but in a different way. Coming from the other side of the tracks, she badly desires social acceptance and looks upon the Jordan’s invitation as a gesture of kindness. Because of that she opposes her husband’s planned hostile takeover and is determined to teach him manners as only a wife can, with personal blackmail.

Unknown to Dan is that Kitty is having an affair with her physician, Dr. Wayne Talbot (Lowe), who pretends to be attending to her various imaginary illnesses. Talbot, a friend of the Jordans and Oliver’s personal physician, will also be attending the dinner. His long-suffering wife, Lucy (Morley), discovers Wayne’s affair with Kitty, but assures him that as long as he promises to keep coming home to her, she’ll put up with anything.       

This little scene is interrupted by the sudden presence of Oliver in the doctor's office, suffering severe chest pains. Although Talbot tries to hide his prognosis of terminal thrombosis of the heart, Oliver guesses it anyway. Returning home, Oliver tries to explain his need for rest to Millicent, but she is too preoccupied to listen. Topping off an evening of minor disasters she has just gotten word that the Ferncliffes have canceled, deciding instead to go to Florida.  

On the eve of the dinner, Millicent is still short an extra man. She telephones Larry Renault (John Barrymore), a washed-up movie star, and extends him a last-minute invitation. He is inclined not to accept, but is talked into it by his newest lover, Paula Jordan (Evans), whose affair with Renault is unknown to her parents. Larry accepts the invitation, but advises Paula to forget about him and return to her fiancé, Ernest DeGraff (Holmes), whose return from Europe she has been anxiously awaiting. 

Later that evening, Larry is visited by his agent, Max Kane (Tracy). Larry, a hammy, hopelessly alcoholic silent movie star who could not make the transition to talkies, is living beyond his means at a New York hotel in the desperate hope that he will be able to land a starring role on Broadway. Max gives him the bad news that the stage play he was planning to star in has lost its original producer. Max then tells Larry that the new producer, Jo Stengel (Hersholt), wants another actor in the lead but is willing to consider Larry for a minor part. Although crushed, Larry agrees to think about the offer, and after Kane leaves sends a bellboy to pawn a few of his possessions and use the proceeds to buy a fresh bottle of booze.  

Events now reach a climax. Tired of her husband’s blustering and bullying, Kitty reveals the fact that she is having an affair to Dan. Threatened with divorce, she tells her husband that, if he wants his Cabinet appointment instead of a career-stopping revelation from her about his crooked dealings, he’d better forget about the takeover of Oliver's line and treat her with more respect.    

Events also come to a head for Renault. Just before he is to leave for the dinner, he’s visited by Max and Stengel. However, instead of accepting the producer’s offer, he drunkenly berates Stengel for insulting him with his paltry offer. After Stengel leaves in a huff, a frustrated Max lays into Larry, telling him that he just blew his last chance. This, combined with hotel management wanting to him vacate for non-payment of his bill, impels Larry to turn on his gas fireplace and commit suicide.     

As the guests are assembling for the ill-fated dinner, Carlotta confides in private with Paula, who is just about to break her engagement with Ernest, about Larry's suicide, advising her to stay with her fiancé. At the same time, Talbot tells Millicent about Oliver's illness. Finally shaken to reality, Millicent tells Oliver that she is ready to make sacrifices for the family and be a more attentive wife. And as everyone is about to go in to dinner, Dan, with prodding from Kitty, tells Oliver that he has learned about a secret takeover of the Jordan shipping line, but has put a stop to it. 

Afterwords

Dinner at Eight is a wonderfully entertaining film. Though it is a bit long and could have easily jettisoned the subplots with Dr. Talbot and Paula Jordan, which slow the film down, thanks to an excellent cast and Cukor’s direction it maintains its pace right until the end. 

If there is a message to be found in the film, it can be expressed in three little words: adjust or perish. As events overtake their world, each principal character must face the fact that the world is a different place. Those who can’t or won’t adapt either lose their money (Carlotta) or their lives (Larry). Millicent’s realization of her family situation finally compels her to take steps to keep her family from ruin. 

If there is an angel in the film, it’s Jean Harlow’s Kitty. Her intervention stops her brutish husband from completing his scheme of pulling the rug out from under Oliver’s feet, a move that would have both destroyed him and his family. The way the movie sees its characters is interesting. The old rich (Oliver, Carlotta and Larry) are seen as basically clueless, caught by the sudden winds of the Depression. The nouveau riche (Beery) are scheming, ruthless and unethical; nothing is out of bounds when it comes to acquiring money and power. But it’s the poor, those from the other side of the tracks, who are the truly virtuous. Kitty, although seen by her husband as a dope desperate for social acceptance, is actually a person with a heart. Gratified that the Jordans have overlooked her status and invited her to dinner as an equal, she is appalled at her husband’s lack of civility. What’s more, she does something about it, using her power to stop her husband dead in his tracks.

Speaking of Harlow, she was initially nervous going into the picture, unsure if she could hold her own with such a distinguished cast. But not only did she hold her own, she ends up stealing the film as Kitty Packard, the trophy-wife from the other side of the tracks and one-half of the battling Packards, even though she’s playing a version of her role in Red-Headed Woman, albeit with a good heart. 

Audiences at the time could feel the venom in Harlow’s speech to her husband in the midst of their battle: 

“Who do you think you’re talking to, that first wife of yours out in Montana? That poor, mealy-faced thing with the flat chest that didn’t have nerve enough to talk up to you? Washing out your greasy overalls, and cooking and slaving in some lousy mining shack? No wonder she died! Well, you can’t get me that way – you’re not going to step on my face to get where you want to go, you big windbag!”

There was an added reason why her scenes with Beery had such spice. In real life they thoroughly detested each other, a feeling that went back to their experience co-starring in The Secret Six (1931). Harlow regarded Beery as a hammy bully intent on stepping over everyone else in the cast, and he saw her as a peroxided no-talent who slept her way to stardom. Cukor wanted her right from the beginning, but Louis B. Mayer dissented, doubtful that she had the acting chops for such a prestigious project. But Cukor won out. Reviewing her work in Red-Headed Woman and Red Dust, he saw the vulnerability that lay beneath Harlow’s tough, wisecracking exterior. The performance cemented Harlow’s status as a star. In a side note, Harlow’s all-white bedroom, designed by Hobe Erwin and Fred Hope, helped popularize the Art Deco style.  

The other standout performance came from John Barrymore as the the hapless faded alcoholic star Larry Renault. Mayer had expressed doubts to Cukor about casting Barrymore, worried about his drinking and the chaotic behavior that went with it. But Cukor assured Mayer that he and Barrymore got along splendidly on A Bill of Divorcement (1932), and that he knew how to handle the temperamental actor. On the set Barrymore was not only cooperative, basing Renault on faded actors he had known on New York (including his father-in-law Maurice Costello and his brother-in-law Lowell Sherman), but seeing the resemblance between himself and the character, he suggested playing up the resemblance to writers Marion and Mankiewicz, even adding references to his nickname of “The Great Profile” and his marital history. 

The one actor Cukor did have doubts about was top-billed Marie Dressler. In the play, Carlotta Vance was not only a wealthy and flamboyant former stage star, but also a great beauty, which Dressler decidedly was not. Cukor also took Dressler’s history of playing low comedy into account in his estimation. Ironically, Dressler shared those doubts, thinking the project too prestigious and immense for her talents. But after her good friend Frances Marion told her that she specially tailored the role of Carlotta Vance to Dressler, the actress wanted in. Mayer also pressured Cukor to cast Dressler. She was the studio’s biggest draw and would add greatly to the box office take.

It would be Dressler and Harlow who made the film’s final scene not only the most memorable in the film, but one of the most memorable in history. Producer Selznick, unhappy with the play’s somber ending, brought in Donald Ogden Stewart to punch it up. This was the result: 

Kitty (to Carlotta): I’ve been reading a book.

Carlotta (after doing one of the greatest double-takes in history as she can’t believe her ears): Reading a book?

Kitty: Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?

Carlotta: “Oh, my dear, that's something you need never worry about.”

A perfect way to end a near perfect movie.