MONTY WOOLLEY - THE MAN WHO CAME TO RADIO....AFTER DINNER.
WOOLLEY NOT SHEEPISH
Most show business buffs know Monty Woolley from his two dozen films, his two Academy Award nominations and most of all, his 1942 screwball classic, The Man Who Came To Dinner. Few are aware that he brought the comedy’s Sheridan Whiteside persona to Network Radio in the 1940’s and early ‘50’s with often hilarious, if not necessarily successful results.
Edgar Montillion Woolley was born to wealth in August, 1888, at the Hotel Bristol on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street in New York City, one of several hotels owned by his parents. The family moved to another of its properties, the Grand Union in Saratoga Springs when the Monty was three and his brother James was nine. When the rich and famous came to Saratoga every summer for the racing season, William and Jesse Woolley and their two young sons were welcoming hosts.
The family’s success could afford the finest education for the boys. For Monty it meant prep school, European tours and entrance into Yale University in 1907. Cole Porter entered Yale in 1909 and the two students, both homosexual intellectuals from wealthy families, became fast friends. They began a collaboration in the Yale Dramatic Association - aka The Dramat - that would extend into their professional lives.
Woolley got his degree from Yale in 1911, his Masters in 1912 and went to Harvard for a second MA in 1913. He returned to Yale in the fall of 1913 to teach English and coach The Dramat. At the urging of his parents he joined the Army in 1916, and was commissioned a lieutenant. He served for eight months in France in 1918 - if it can be called "serving" because he was reunited with Cole Porter who had moved to Paris with a socialite set of partying expatriates including his future wife, American divorcee Linda Thomas. (1) Led by Porter and Woolley, the group became stars in Paris nightlife.
After the Armistice and his discharge in November, 1918, Woolley decided to break into the Broadway theater scene as a director, but no work was found. So, the unemployed Shakespearean expert with two Masters degrees returned to New Haven as an assistant professor of drama and a second term as coach of The Dramat. Woolley remained at Yale for seven years, winning national acclaim for The Dramat and its productions. But after a series of administrative snubs he resigned in 1926 and left academia forever.
By this time his friend Cole Porter was establishing himself on Broadway and Woolley had the “in” he lacked earlier as a director. The two went to work on Porter’s hit musical Fifty Million Frenchmen and followed that with The New Yorkers and Jubilee. With three successful credits to his name, Woolley ventured to Hollywoood in 1936, seeking an assignment as a director. But again, no work was to be found for the 48 year old with no film experience.
Meanwhile, one of his former students, Dwight Deere Wiman, was producing a new play on Broadway. He called Woolley on the chance that his Yale mentor might accept a juicy acting job. It turned out to be the first of two phone calls that changed Woolley's life.
Woolley made his acting debut as pompous ballet impresario, Sergei Alexandrovitch, in the 1936 Rodgers & Hart musical comedy On Your Toes that ran for 315 performances. His domineering stage presence and booming voice attracted MGM talent scouts and led to a string of minor supporting film roles from 1937 to 1939 that called for bearded figures of authority - Live, Love & Learn, Everybody Sing, Three Comrades, Lord Jeff, The Girl of The Golden West, Young Dr. Kildare, etc.
While the underused Woolley was slipping lower in MGM cast credits producer Moss Hart having a drink with writer George S. Kaufman and describing a trying experience he had endured with their mutual friend, New Yorker magazine critic and CBS commentator Alexander Woolcott, a reputed curmudgeon and a recent guest at Hart’s country home. Hart described Woolcott’s petty demands and tantrums as creating, "the visit from hell," adding that he was lucky Woolcott didn’t break a leg and have to stay longer.
That was the spark of inspiration that led Kaufman & Hart to write The Man Who Came To Dinner and made Monty Woolley a star.
The comedy’s leading role, bombastic lecturer and radio star Sheridan Whiteside, was first offered to its model. But the 52 year old overweight Woollcott declined, claiming he was too busy and probably fearful of competing critcs turning the tables on him. (2) Then Hart offered the role to Robert Morely and Adolph Menjou who also turned it down.
Finallly, Hart remembered Woolley and called his old friend who just finished a minor role in Dancing Co-ed, a second-rate MGM musical starring Lana Turner and Artie Shaw’s orchestra. (3)
“Moss, are you drunk?” the startled Woolley is quoted as reacting Hart’s call in Robert Shanke & Kim Marra’s 1998 volume of essays, Passing Performances. “Then I thought, ’ Here was a Kaufman and Hart play and I was being offered the leading part! This was the chance of a lifetime and I grabbed it!”
Monty Woolley, 51, became The Man Who Came To Dinner when it opened for 739 performances on October 19, 1939. When the play closed in July, 1941, Woolly took his signature performance to Warner Brothers for the film adaptation of the comedy. Surprisingly, the bearded actor who claimed his Whiteside characterization was, “More Woolley than Woollcott,” wasn’t the first choice for the role. (4)
When the film opened in January, 1942, it drew raves - mostly for Woolley. From New York Times critic Bowsley Crowther: “Woolley makes The Man Who Came To Dinner a rare old goat. His zest for rascality is delightful… A more entertaining buttinsky could hardly be conceived and a less entertaining one would be murdered on the spot.”
Time summed it up: “Woolley plays Sheridan Whiteside with such vast authority and competence that it’s difficult to imagine anyone else attempting it.” (5)
Twentieth Century Fox signed Woolley immediately for the lead in two 1942 productions, the World War II drama, The Pied Piper, (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), and the melodrama Life Begins At 8:30. He was now a full-fledged star receiving top billing and for the first time in his long career, in great demand.
Producer Bill Bacher was first to discover the “new” star‘s potential for radio when he signed Woolley for Colgate’s Al Jolson Show in early 1943. (6) Woolley’s debut on the CBS show from Tuesday, January 5th features a verbal duel with Harry Einstein aka Parkyakarkus. Woolley joined the cast permanently on the show of January 26th when insult humor became the show’s thrust. As the post below illustrates, the tension between Jolson and Woolley is obvious, nevertheless, the actor’s presence helped the show win its 8:30 Tuesday time period and finish in the Annual Top 50
No air checks are available from his 1943-44 season on the CBS New Old Gold Show co-starring Sammy Kaye’s Swing & Sway orchestra, but the ratings lagged behind its Wednesday night completion, NBC’s Mr. & Mrs. North, a Top 30 show.
Woolley found a classy home for a split season between films on November 30, 1944, when he joined Rudy Vallee’s Drene Show on NBC’s powerful Thursday night lineup at 10:30. The actor was again a hot property after his performance in Selznick’s World War II tearjerker, Since You Went Away, for which he was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Woolley becomes Vallee’s houseguest on the program, (sound familiar?), on the show of January 11, 1945, and turns the place into a hotel - Villa Vallee.
The February 8, 1945, broadcast below is notable because of the show-stopping three minute performance of Nobody Cares by comedienne Irene Ryan that results in ten seconds of sustained applause. (7) Woolly and Ryan spar during Woolley’s farewell appearance on Valley’s show, April 19, 1945 which includes a guest appearance by Truth Or Consequences’ Ralph Edwards and a closing serenade to Yale, where Vallee had once been a student of assistant professor Woolley. The season paid off in double digit ratings for Vallee - a 12.7 and 38th place in the Annual Top 50.
Woolley made only seven more films in his career including the embarrassingly bad biopic of his friend Cole Porter, Warner Brothers’ Night & Day, in 1946 and the heartwarming Christmas story of The Bishop’s Wife in 1947.
He gave Network Radio one more shot in 1950-51, starring as The Magnificent Montigue, a sustaining NBC sitcom that debuted at 9:00 p.m. on Friday, November 10th opposite the high flying family sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet on ABC. Woolley’s portrayal of a formerly prominent Shakespearian actor forced into afternoon radio work as Uncle Goodheart was supported by Anne Seymour as his wife, Pert Kelton as the couple’s maid and Art Carney as his father - prominently featured in the January 5th episode posted below. (8) Additional shows are posted from January 12, January 26 and February 9, 1951.
The sitcom was moved to Saturday nights at 8:30 in May, 1951 - away from ABC’s Ozzie & Harriet but into the fire of Hopalong Cassidy on CBS, a fast climbing Western series. The Magnificent Montigue became a rated show with participating spots during its final three months on the air but only managed a meager 3.6 against the cowboy hero’s 8.5. A sample from this period is posted from September 8, 1951. The show left the air when Woolley's 52 week contract expired in November.
Woolley gave an encore performance as Sheridan Whiteside on CBS-TV's Best of Broadway one hour adaptation of The Man Who Came To Dinner in 1954. He returned to Hollywood for his final film role in the lavish musical Kismet in 1955.
But most of his time was spent near his boyhood home in Saratoga Springs where he held court every summer, usually with an entourage of admiring young men. Monty Woolley died on May 6, 1963, in nearby Albany, New York. His longtime partying pal. Cole Porter, died a year later. We can only imagine that the two are together again and having a gay old time somewhere in the afterlife.
(1) Cole and Linda Porter were married in 1919 and remained a devoted but celibate couple until her death in 1954.
(2) Woollcott was 56 when he collapsed during the CBS broadcast of The People’s Platform on January 23, 1943, and died of heart attack two hours later.
(3) Moss Hart, Cole Porter and Monty Woolley spent four and a half months together in 1935, sailing around the world aboard the S.S. Franconia while creating the musical comedy Jubilee.
(4) Although Woolley was the principal actor in The Man Who Came To Dinner, he had to accept third billing behind Warner Brothers stars Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan. Davis wanted John Barrymore for the role of Sheridan Whiteside, but Barrymore failed in his test for the part. Cary Grant was signed for the role but Davis forced him to withdraw, objecting that he was too young and handsome. Others considered for the role by producer Hal Wallis and director William Keighley were Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, Charles Coburn, Fredrick March and Robert Benchley. All of this avoidance of the obvious choice was because of studio heads' groundless fears that Woolley’s homosexuality was too blatant.
(5) Clifton Webb played Whiteside on the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of The Man Who Came To Dinner and Fred Allen played the role on Theater Guild On The Air. Woolley played the part once, on The Philip Morris Playhouse in July, 1942.
(6) The Jolson Show of 1942-43 was a throwback to the variety formats of the 1930’s - a song from the host, a set of jokes between the star and straight man, (in this case announcer Fred Uttal), a musical interlude, a spot with the stooge, a bit with the guest, a closing song from the host. It sounded dated against its time period competition, Horace Heidt’s Tums Treasure Chest on NBC and Duffy’s Tavern on Blue. Monty Woolley was brought to the show as a co-star to liven it up. Jolson is reported to have said, “Lookie here, they gave me a second banana who’s a real fruit!”
(7) Irene Noblett Ryan was a vaudeville and radio veteran before playing her signature television role, Granny Daisy Moses in The Beverly Hillbillies that ran for nine seasons on CBS-TV beginning in 1962.
(8) Anne Seymour was better known to soap opera fans as Mary Marlin. Pert Kelton and Art Carney were also active in the New York radio acting community. In 1951 Carney was just about to debut in his signature role as Ed Norton on The Honeymooners.
Most show business buffs know Monty Woolley from his two dozen films, his two Academy Award nominations and most of all, his 1942 screwball classic, The Man Who Came To Dinner. Few are aware that he brought the comedy’s Sheridan Whiteside persona to Network Radio in the 1940’s and early ‘50’s with often hilarious, if not necessarily successful results.
Edgar Montillion Woolley was born to wealth in August, 1888, at the Hotel Bristol on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street in New York City, one of several hotels owned by his parents. The family moved to another of its properties, the Grand Union in Saratoga Springs when the Monty was three and his brother James was nine. When the rich and famous came to Saratoga every summer for the racing season, William and Jesse Woolley and their two young sons were welcoming hosts.
The family’s success could afford the finest education for the boys. For Monty it meant prep school, European tours and entrance into Yale University in 1907. Cole Porter entered Yale in 1909 and the two students, both homosexual intellectuals from wealthy families, became fast friends. They began a collaboration in the Yale Dramatic Association - aka The Dramat - that would extend into their professional lives.
Woolley got his degree from Yale in 1911, his Masters in 1912 and went to Harvard for a second MA in 1913. He returned to Yale in the fall of 1913 to teach English and coach The Dramat. At the urging of his parents he joined the Army in 1916, and was commissioned a lieutenant. He served for eight months in France in 1918 - if it can be called "serving" because he was reunited with Cole Porter who had moved to Paris with a socialite set of partying expatriates including his future wife, American divorcee Linda Thomas. (1) Led by Porter and Woolley, the group became stars in Paris nightlife.
After the Armistice and his discharge in November, 1918, Woolley decided to break into the Broadway theater scene as a director, but no work was found. So, the unemployed Shakespearean expert with two Masters degrees returned to New Haven as an assistant professor of drama and a second term as coach of The Dramat. Woolley remained at Yale for seven years, winning national acclaim for The Dramat and its productions. But after a series of administrative snubs he resigned in 1926 and left academia forever.
By this time his friend Cole Porter was establishing himself on Broadway and Woolley had the “in” he lacked earlier as a director. The two went to work on Porter’s hit musical Fifty Million Frenchmen and followed that with The New Yorkers and Jubilee. With three successful credits to his name, Woolley ventured to Hollywoood in 1936, seeking an assignment as a director. But again, no work was to be found for the 48 year old with no film experience.
Meanwhile, one of his former students, Dwight Deere Wiman, was producing a new play on Broadway. He called Woolley on the chance that his Yale mentor might accept a juicy acting job. It turned out to be the first of two phone calls that changed Woolley's life.
Woolley made his acting debut as pompous ballet impresario, Sergei Alexandrovitch, in the 1936 Rodgers & Hart musical comedy On Your Toes that ran for 315 performances. His domineering stage presence and booming voice attracted MGM talent scouts and led to a string of minor supporting film roles from 1937 to 1939 that called for bearded figures of authority - Live, Love & Learn, Everybody Sing, Three Comrades, Lord Jeff, The Girl of The Golden West, Young Dr. Kildare, etc.
While the underused Woolley was slipping lower in MGM cast credits producer Moss Hart having a drink with writer George S. Kaufman and describing a trying experience he had endured with their mutual friend, New Yorker magazine critic and CBS commentator Alexander Woolcott, a reputed curmudgeon and a recent guest at Hart’s country home. Hart described Woolcott’s petty demands and tantrums as creating, "the visit from hell," adding that he was lucky Woolcott didn’t break a leg and have to stay longer.
That was the spark of inspiration that led Kaufman & Hart to write The Man Who Came To Dinner and made Monty Woolley a star.
The comedy’s leading role, bombastic lecturer and radio star Sheridan Whiteside, was first offered to its model. But the 52 year old overweight Woollcott declined, claiming he was too busy and probably fearful of competing critcs turning the tables on him. (2) Then Hart offered the role to Robert Morely and Adolph Menjou who also turned it down.
Finallly, Hart remembered Woolley and called his old friend who just finished a minor role in Dancing Co-ed, a second-rate MGM musical starring Lana Turner and Artie Shaw’s orchestra. (3)
“Moss, are you drunk?” the startled Woolley is quoted as reacting Hart’s call in Robert Shanke & Kim Marra’s 1998 volume of essays, Passing Performances. “Then I thought, ’ Here was a Kaufman and Hart play and I was being offered the leading part! This was the chance of a lifetime and I grabbed it!”
Monty Woolley, 51, became The Man Who Came To Dinner when it opened for 739 performances on October 19, 1939. When the play closed in July, 1941, Woolly took his signature performance to Warner Brothers for the film adaptation of the comedy. Surprisingly, the bearded actor who claimed his Whiteside characterization was, “More Woolley than Woollcott,” wasn’t the first choice for the role. (4)
When the film opened in January, 1942, it drew raves - mostly for Woolley. From New York Times critic Bowsley Crowther: “Woolley makes The Man Who Came To Dinner a rare old goat. His zest for rascality is delightful… A more entertaining buttinsky could hardly be conceived and a less entertaining one would be murdered on the spot.”
Time summed it up: “Woolley plays Sheridan Whiteside with such vast authority and competence that it’s difficult to imagine anyone else attempting it.” (5)
Twentieth Century Fox signed Woolley immediately for the lead in two 1942 productions, the World War II drama, The Pied Piper, (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), and the melodrama Life Begins At 8:30. He was now a full-fledged star receiving top billing and for the first time in his long career, in great demand.
Producer Bill Bacher was first to discover the “new” star‘s potential for radio when he signed Woolley for Colgate’s Al Jolson Show in early 1943. (6) Woolley’s debut on the CBS show from Tuesday, January 5th features a verbal duel with Harry Einstein aka Parkyakarkus. Woolley joined the cast permanently on the show of January 26th when insult humor became the show’s thrust. As the post below illustrates, the tension between Jolson and Woolley is obvious, nevertheless, the actor’s presence helped the show win its 8:30 Tuesday time period and finish in the Annual Top 50
No air checks are available from his 1943-44 season on the CBS New Old Gold Show co-starring Sammy Kaye’s Swing & Sway orchestra, but the ratings lagged behind its Wednesday night completion, NBC’s Mr. & Mrs. North, a Top 30 show.
Woolley found a classy home for a split season between films on November 30, 1944, when he joined Rudy Vallee’s Drene Show on NBC’s powerful Thursday night lineup at 10:30. The actor was again a hot property after his performance in Selznick’s World War II tearjerker, Since You Went Away, for which he was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Woolley becomes Vallee’s houseguest on the program, (sound familiar?), on the show of January 11, 1945, and turns the place into a hotel - Villa Vallee.
The February 8, 1945, broadcast below is notable because of the show-stopping three minute performance of Nobody Cares by comedienne Irene Ryan that results in ten seconds of sustained applause. (7) Woolly and Ryan spar during Woolley’s farewell appearance on Valley’s show, April 19, 1945 which includes a guest appearance by Truth Or Consequences’ Ralph Edwards and a closing serenade to Yale, where Vallee had once been a student of assistant professor Woolley. The season paid off in double digit ratings for Vallee - a 12.7 and 38th place in the Annual Top 50.
Woolley made only seven more films in his career including the embarrassingly bad biopic of his friend Cole Porter, Warner Brothers’ Night & Day, in 1946 and the heartwarming Christmas story of The Bishop’s Wife in 1947.
He gave Network Radio one more shot in 1950-51, starring as The Magnificent Montigue, a sustaining NBC sitcom that debuted at 9:00 p.m. on Friday, November 10th opposite the high flying family sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet on ABC. Woolley’s portrayal of a formerly prominent Shakespearian actor forced into afternoon radio work as Uncle Goodheart was supported by Anne Seymour as his wife, Pert Kelton as the couple’s maid and Art Carney as his father - prominently featured in the January 5th episode posted below. (8) Additional shows are posted from January 12, January 26 and February 9, 1951.
The sitcom was moved to Saturday nights at 8:30 in May, 1951 - away from ABC’s Ozzie & Harriet but into the fire of Hopalong Cassidy on CBS, a fast climbing Western series. The Magnificent Montigue became a rated show with participating spots during its final three months on the air but only managed a meager 3.6 against the cowboy hero’s 8.5. A sample from this period is posted from September 8, 1951. The show left the air when Woolley's 52 week contract expired in November.
Woolley gave an encore performance as Sheridan Whiteside on CBS-TV's Best of Broadway one hour adaptation of The Man Who Came To Dinner in 1954. He returned to Hollywood for his final film role in the lavish musical Kismet in 1955.
But most of his time was spent near his boyhood home in Saratoga Springs where he held court every summer, usually with an entourage of admiring young men. Monty Woolley died on May 6, 1963, in nearby Albany, New York. His longtime partying pal. Cole Porter, died a year later. We can only imagine that the two are together again and having a gay old time somewhere in the afterlife.
(1) Cole and Linda Porter were married in 1919 and remained a devoted but celibate couple until her death in 1954.
(2) Woollcott was 56 when he collapsed during the CBS broadcast of The People’s Platform on January 23, 1943, and died of heart attack two hours later.
(3) Moss Hart, Cole Porter and Monty Woolley spent four and a half months together in 1935, sailing around the world aboard the S.S. Franconia while creating the musical comedy Jubilee.
(4) Although Woolley was the principal actor in The Man Who Came To Dinner, he had to accept third billing behind Warner Brothers stars Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan. Davis wanted John Barrymore for the role of Sheridan Whiteside, but Barrymore failed in his test for the part. Cary Grant was signed for the role but Davis forced him to withdraw, objecting that he was too young and handsome. Others considered for the role by producer Hal Wallis and director William Keighley were Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, Charles Coburn, Fredrick March and Robert Benchley. All of this avoidance of the obvious choice was because of studio heads' groundless fears that Woolley’s homosexuality was too blatant.
(5) Clifton Webb played Whiteside on the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of The Man Who Came To Dinner and Fred Allen played the role on Theater Guild On The Air. Woolley played the part once, on The Philip Morris Playhouse in July, 1942.
(6) The Jolson Show of 1942-43 was a throwback to the variety formats of the 1930’s - a song from the host, a set of jokes between the star and straight man, (in this case announcer Fred Uttal), a musical interlude, a spot with the stooge, a bit with the guest, a closing song from the host. It sounded dated against its time period competition, Horace Heidt’s Tums Treasure Chest on NBC and Duffy’s Tavern on Blue. Monty Woolley was brought to the show as a co-star to liven it up. Jolson is reported to have said, “Lookie here, they gave me a second banana who’s a real fruit!”
(7) Irene Noblett Ryan was a vaudeville and radio veteran before playing her signature television role, Granny Daisy Moses in The Beverly Hillbillies that ran for nine seasons on CBS-TV beginning in 1962.
(8) Anne Seymour was better known to soap opera fans as Mary Marlin. Pert Kelton and Art Carney were also active in the New York radio acting community. In 1951 Carney was just about to debut in his signature role as Ed Norton on The Honeymooners.
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