The Man Who Came To Dinner - Original Cast

Original Cast

The original cast as billed:

  • Virginia Hammond as Mrs. Ernest W. Stanley
  • Mary Wickes as Miss Preen
  • Gordon Merrick as Richard Stanley
  • Barbara Wooddell as June Stanley
  • George Probert as John
  • Priestley Morrison as Sarah
  • Barbara Adams as Mrs. Dexter
  • Edmonia Nolley as Mrs. McCutcheon
  • George Lessey as Mr. Stanley
  • Edith Atwater as Maggie Cutler
  • Dudley Clements as Dr. Bradley
  • Monty Woolley as Sheridan Whiteside
  • Ruth Vivian as Harriet Stanley
  • Theodore Newton as Bert Jefferson
  • LeRoi Operti as Professor Metz
  • Phil Sheridan, Charles Washington, William Postance as the luncheon guests
  • Carl Johnson as Mr. Baker
  • Harold Woolf as Expressman
  • Carol Goodner as Lorraine Sheldon
  • Michael Harvey as Sandy
  • John Hoysradt as Beverley Carlton
  • Edward Fisher as Westcott
  • Rodney Stewart, Carl Johnson, Liam Hooper as radio technicians
  • David Burns as Banjo
  • Curtis Karpe, Phil Sheridan, Liam Hooper as deputies
  • William Postance as a plainclothes man

Character notes

  • Beverly Carlton was modeled on Noël Coward.
  • Banjo was modeled on Harpo Marx, and there is a dialogue reference to his brothers Groucho and Chico. When Sheridan Whiteside talks to Banjo on the phone, he asks him, "How are Wackko and Sloppo?"
  • Professor Metz was based on Dr. Gustav Eckstein of Cincinnati (with cockroaches substituted for canaries), and Lorraine Sheldon was modeled after Gertrude Lawrence.
  • The character of Harriet Sedley, the alias of Harriet Stanley, is an homage to Lizzie Borden. The popular jump-rope rhyme immortalizing Borden is parodied in the play.

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