The Hollywood classic will be shown at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 4, at the Dunaway Center, 23 School St. in Ogunquit and admission, parking and popcorn are free.
Directed by the legendary George Cukor and produced by David O. Selznick (“Gone with the Wind”) in his first work for MGM, the 1933 release was based upon the popular Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber and originally produced on the stage by Sam H. Harris.
It features a blockbuster cast of the greatest stars of the day, partially inspired by 1932s Academy Award-winning classic “Grand Hotel.” Appearing in “Dinner At Eight” is a Who’s Who list of all-time screen greats including John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Billie Burke, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Lee Tracy, Madge Evans, Edmund Lowe, Marie Dressler, and Jean Hersholt.
A romantic comedy that details the lives of guests and their conversations after being invited to attend a Manhattan formal dinner party during the height of the Great Depression, topics covered in “Dinner At Eight” span the range of human emotions from suicide, financial ruin, love, infidelity, economic pressures, class conflict, the dawn of the talking motion pictures, divorce, aging and fading careers, and how alcoholism affects their interactions with others.
The “Dinner At Eight” screenplay for the film was written by Herman Mankiewicz, Frances Marion, and Donald Ogden Stewart.
In the movie plot, the dinner party of the film’s title is hosted by scheming, social-climbing Millicent Jordan (Burke), wife of ailing and soon-to-be-bankrupt shipping magnate Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore).
Dinner guests include crusty tycoon Dan Packard (Beery) and his brassy wife Kitty (Harlow), her husband’s ex-lover and former stage beauty Carlotta Vance (Dressler), and a desperate, washed-up movie star (John Barrymore) who is secretly carrying on an affair with their young daughter (Evans), despite her engagement to another man.
It was Burke’s first screen role as an adult and she was perfect in the part as a distraught hostess leading to her being forever typecast in similar roles afterward, with the exception of her 1939 role as Glinda, Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the classic “The Wizard of Oz.”
John Barrymore’s casting in “Dinner At Eight” as has-been actor Larry Renault, a faded, alcoholic movie star who brags he earned $8,000 a week at one time, but now has only seven cents in his pocket, actually paralled his dwindling career in Hollywood at the time.
And Harlow’s performance in a small role in the film left a lasting impression with audiences and cemented her growing reputation in 1930s movies as a “Blonde Bombshell.”
For more information about the Classic Film series in Ogunquit and a list of upcoming films to be presented, visit www.ogunquitperformingarts.org.
— Executive Editor Ed Pierce can be reached at 282-1535 ext. 326 or by email at editor@journaltribune.com.
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