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.

Read more about this topic:  The Man Who Came To Dinner

Famous quotes containing the words original and/or cast:

    “Elsa Bannister: The Chinese say “It is difficult for love to last long; therefore one who loves passionately is cured of love, in the end.”
    Michael O’Hara: That’s a hard way of thinking.
    Elsa: There’s more to the proverb: “Human nature is eternal; therefore one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end.””
    —Orson Welles (1915–1985)

    “There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)