Her priceless facial expressions steal every scene in which she appears, and though she grabs the lion’s share of laughs (including the flat-out guffaws that always follow her immortal final remark - one of the most famous and quoted in movie history), she also exhibits a touching tenderness that helps give Dinner at Eight its heart. Few actresses get more mileage out of a line or look, or play comedy and pathos with equal aplomb, but Dressler always strikes just the right balance, and as the larger-than-life, slightly daffy Carlotta she files one of her finest portrayals. With her rubbery face, double chins, and plus-size figure, it's hard to imagine 67-year-old Marie Dressler as one of the era's top box office stars, but to watch her is to fall in love.
Tangled webs, indeed.Īlthough the plot shows its age, Dinner at Eight is all about the performances, and there's not a dud in the bunch.
Wayne Talbot (Edmund Lowe), a serial adulterer who's beginning to tire of his latest diversion, the wanton Kitty Packard. Packard's guilty conscience tells him to decline Millicent’s dinner invitation, but his "common" wife Kitty (Harlow) won't hear of it, as she's dying to mingle with and be accepted by the penthouse set.Īlso on the guest list are alcoholic actor Larry Renault (John Barrymore), whose career hit the skids with the advent of talkies and who just happens to be carrying on a clandestine affair with Oliver and Millicent's engaged daughter Paula (Madge Evans), and Dr. Millicent hopes only the cream of New York City society will attend, yet Oliver (who dismisses his nagging chest pain as "indigestion") throws a crimp in her plans by asking her to invite the visiting Carlotta Vance (Dressler), an eccentric grande dame actress for whom he romantically pined as a callow youth, and crass, nouveau riche businessman Dan Packard (Beery), who secretly schemes to take over Oliver's financially strapped company. To Millicent, England's Lord and Lady Ferncliffe are without question the social season's most coveted catch, and after craftily securing the couple for dinner, she labors to build a splashy party around them. And with apologies to Garbo, it's even grander than Grand Hotel.Ī host of mini-dramas unfold - and ultimately intertwine - against the backdrop of an impending soirée thrown by shipping magnate Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore) and his flighty, self-absorbed wife, Millicent (Burke). Selznick cast it perfectly, and with Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, and Billie Burke chewing the scenery under George Cukor's fluid direction, Dinner at Eight becomes a polished, entertaining romp that effortlessly merges melodrama and social satire with high camp. On its own, the play doesn't amount to much, but producer David O. Kaufman-Edna Ferber Broadway hit Dinner at Eight, a seriocomic look-in on the lives of several disparate socialites invited to a posh dinner party. It took a while to find a suitable property, but the studio finally settled on an adaptation of the George S. The all-star film was a new and exciting concept in the early 1930s, and after MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg (who pioneered the format) hit pay dirt with Grand Hotel in 1932, he quickly began corralling personalities for a follow-up.