Dinner at Eight

Plot synopsis:
One week before her next society dinner, Millicent Jordan (Billie Burke) receives word that Lord and Lady Ferncliffe, whom she and her husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore), a New York shipping magnate, had met in England the previous year, have accepted her invitation. Overjoyed by this social coup, Millicent is oblivious to Oliver's lack of enthusiasm about the dinner and her daughter Paula's (Madge Evans) preoccupation about the impending return of her fiancé, Ernest DeGraff (Phillips Holmes), from Europe. Millicent fusses about finding an "extra man" for her single female guest, former stage star Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler), who resides in Europe.
Meanwhile, Oliver faces distressing news about his shipping business, which has been struck hard by the Depression. Carlotta, an aging retired actress and former lover of Oliver, visits Oliver at his office and asks him to buy her stock in the company, but he does not have the money. Dan Packard (Wallace Beery), a mining magnate, stops by long enough for Oliver to ask him to buy some company stock. Dan agrees only to consider the proposition, he then brags to his wife Kitty (Jean Harlow) that he will take the shipping business through deceit.
Unknown to Dan, Oliver has convinced Millicent to invite the Packards to her dinner with the hopes that it will increase Dan's wish to buy the stock. Dan's young trophy-wife, the ill-mannered but socially ambitious Kitty (Jean Harlow), eagerly has accepted. Although he at first refuses to go, Dan, who believes that he will soon be appointed to a Cabinet post, changes his mind about the dinner when he finds out that the Ferncliffes, the richest couple in England, are also invited. Also unknown to Dan, one of Millicent's other guests, Dr. Wayne Talbot (Edmund Lowe), has been having an affair with Kitty while pretending to be tending to her feigned illnesses.
On the eve of her dinner, Millicent, still short an extra man, telephones Larry Renault (John Barrymore), a washed-up silent movie star, and extends him a last-minute invitation, completely unaware that Paula is having a clandestine love affair with him. At Paula's urging, Larry, a three-time divorcé and hardened alcoholic, accepts the invitation, but advises the much younger Paula to forget about him and return to Ernest. After Paula stubbornly refuses to take Larry's admonitions seriously, she is seen leaving his room by Carlotta, who is residing at the same hotel.
Later that evening, Larry is visited by his agent, Max Kane (Lee Tracy), who tells him that the stage play he was planning to star in has lost its original producer. Max breaks the news to Larry that the play's new producer, Jo Stengel (Jean Hersholt), wants another actor in the lead but is willing to consider him in a bit part. Crushed, Larry takes to drink.
The next day, Talbot is discovered by his wife Lucy (Karen Morley) in a compromising telephone call with Kitty and confesses that, in spite of his love for her, he is addicted to women and needs help to overcome his weakness. Talbot then is rushed to see Oliver, who has come to the doctor's office with severe chest pains.
Although Talbot tries to hide his prognosis of terminal thrombosis of the heart, Oliver wisely deduces the seriousness of his illness. When he returns home, the weakened Oliver tries to explain to Millicent his need for rest, but she is too hysterical to hear because, among other minor disasters, the Ferncliffes have cancelled and are on their way to Florida. Although anxious to tell Millicent about Larry, Paula, too, is turned away by her upset mother and faces the prospect of facing Ernest alone.
At the Packards', meanwhile, Kitty reveals to Dan in a fit of anger that she is having an affair. When threatened with divorce, however, Kitty tells her husband that, if he wants his Cabinet appointment instead of a career-stopping revelation from her about his crooked dealings, he must back down from his takeover of Oliver's line and treat her with more respect.
Just before he is to leave for the dinner, Larry is visited by Max and Jo Stengel and drunkenly berates Stengel for insulting him with his paltry offer. After a frustrated Max denounces him for ruining his last career chance and the hotel management asks him to leave, Larry quietly turns on his gas fireplace and commits suicide.
At the ill-fated dinner, Carlotta confides in private with Paula, who is just about to break her engagement with Ernest, about Larry's demise and counsels the young woman to stay with her fiancé. At the same time, Millicent learns from Talbot about Oliver's illness. Finally awakened to her selfishness, Millicent announces to Oliver that she is ready to make sacrifices for the family and be a more attentive wife. Then, as the beleaguered guests are about to go in to dinner, Dan, with prodding from Kitty, tells Oliver that he has put a stop to the takeover of the Jordan shipping line.

Tags: satire, depressing

Review:
DINNER AT EIGHT takes a first class list of performers at the top of their form (Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke) and seamlessly, if a bit implausibly, weaves a plot full of comedy & tragedy which allows each star to strut their stuff.Dressler was Hollywood's top star at this time and she is wonderful, fingering her jewelry - each piece a remembrance of an ancient romance.
She has only one scene with gorgeous Harlow and that comes at the very end of the film, but it's a classic.The rest of the cast is a wonderful grab bag of talent: peppery Lee Tracy, elderly Louise Closser Hale, gentle Jean Hersholt, as well as Phillips Holmes, Edmund Lowe, Karen Morley, Madge Evans, Grant Mitchell, Elizabeth Patterson, May Robson, Herman Bing.Take a moment to consider Edward Woods, playing Eddie the bell boy.
Dressler heads a large ensemble cast, with several distinct but interlocking stories, all leading up to (but never quite making) a posh dinner party at the mansion of Billie Burke, wife of shipping magnate Lionel Barrymore.
Jean Harlow portrays his wife, the low life Kitty, who was two-timing Dan. In a way, Dan and Kitty seem to have been the prototypes for Garson Kanin's "Born Yesterday" because both characters bear a certain similarity in both films.The supporting members of the cast are impressive.
Edmund Lowe, Lee Tracy, Madge Evans, Louise Closser Hale, May Robson, Jean Hersholt, Karen Morley, and the rest, aside from giving good performances, leave their own mark in the film.A great cinematographer was behind the camera for this movie: William Daniels.
Dinner at Eight is one of the consummate movie buff's movies...It has romance, glamour, wit, charm, intrigue, interesting characters and a great story.The agonies that Mrs. Oliver Jordan (the incomparable Billie Burke [Are you a good witch or a bad witch?]) must go through to stage what is supposed to be a simple dinner party will leave you laughing, sympathizing and grateful you are not her.Jean Harlow is at her most beautiful.
John Barrymore is fantastic as a once famous actor from the silent era, who cannot accept the fact that his career is over.To me the film is just a perfect time capsule of so many typical topics of the era: the depression, the transition from silents to talkies, the continuous transformation of the upper crust of New York society, the traveling by ocean steamer to Europe...
DINNER AT EIGHT (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1933), directed by George Cukor, MGM's second attempt with an all-star production following the success to GRAND HOTEL (1932), is a remarkable as well as memorable movie that has benefited from repeated viewings over the past years.
The star in question is Marie Dressler, a top-name at the time, leaving a big impression with her limited performance, and yet, it is Billie Burke as Millicent Jordan whose presence is felt throughout mainly because it's her dinner party.
As with the stage production, the movie plays out in numerous acts: (a) "The Jordan Home": Introductory scenes focusing on Millicent (Burke), her husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore), head of a declining shipping company, and their troubled daughter, Paula (Madge Evans); (b) "At the Office": Oliver is visited by once acclaimed stage actress Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler), with whom he had loved in his youth, as well as one of the invited guests; and Dan Packard (Wallace Beery), a middle-aged promoter whom Oliver hopes could save him from his financial difficulties; (c) "The Battling Packards": As a favor to Oliver, Millicent reluctantly telephones Kitty (Jean Harlow) and invites the low-life couple to her dinner.
Being home all day doing nothing, Kitty secretly carries on a love affair with her family doctor, Wayne Talbot (Edmund Lowe), while her husband goes away on business, a secret known only by Kitty's maid (Hilda Vaughn); (d) "The Matinée Idol": In need of an extra dinner guest, Millicent invites matinée idol Larry Renault (John Barrymore), a friend of the family in town staying at the Versailles Hotel.
which concludes with a visit from gravely ill Oliver who is diagnosed with heart disease; (f) "Back to the Jordan Home": While Millicent is interacted between scenes involving the dinner guests, this segment involves Millicent's own domestic problems with her hired help as well as the news about her guests of honor departing for Florida, leaving Millicent to locate substitutes as the guests of honor; (g) "Final Showdown for the Packards": In their home getting ready for the function, Dan and Kitty come to a showdown revealing how they actually feel about one other, with all their secrets coming out; (h) "Renault's Tragic Performance": Renault turns down the one act part as a beachcomber in a forthcoming play offered to him by an important producer (Jean Hersholt).
When I think of comedy films from the 1930's,I tend to think of mile-a-minute Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy like romps.That's not what you get with Dinner at Eight.This was surprising,due to the fact that film placed 85th on the AFI's 100 Years,100 Laughs list some years ago.I'm not saying it is a poor film.Anything but.It's extremely well acted,well presented,and it does have it's humorous moments,but there are some depressing elements to the film as well that make me question why anyone would call it a comedy,let alone why it would make such a list.In the end,I would recommend it,but don't go in expecting a rip roaring slapstick film.You'll only be disappointed in that regard..
None of the cast from Broadway made it to Hollywood, but MGM put together one stellar cast of its own.The central figure in this American drama of manners is Billie Burke who plays Mrs. Millicent Jordan, society woman whose sole concern is seeing that a formal dinner she's given comes off just right.
Of course Beery's concerns are domestic, his wife Jean Harlow's been carrying on with her doctor, Edmund Lowe who in turn has got nurse Karen Morley on the side as well.Also on the Jordan domestic front, Barrymore and Burke's daughter Madge Evans is about to throw over her fiancé Phillips Holmes because she's gotten herself involved with a has been actor with a substance abuse problem, John Barrymore.
Through all of this Burke flounces her way through like a female version of Clifton Webb's Elliot Templeton from The Razor's Edge whose sole concern was gossip and making sure his clothes properly fit.Rounding out this cast and in fact first billed is Marie Dressler who plays an old musical comedy star who Lionel as a youth crushed out on big time.
It also deals quite maturely with adultery, illness, and aging.The movie follows a week in the lives of a number of New Yorkers who have been invited to a dinner party hosted by Oliver and Millicent Jordan (Lionel Barrymore and Billie Burke).
Marie Dressler as an aging grande dame of the theatre, Jean Harlow as a vulgar and ambitious young wife, and Billie Burke as the sublimely frivolous hostess all have great fun with their somewhat stereotypical roles, finding fresh gestures and intonations that make them very amusing.
John Barrymore is also excellent as a proud but washed-up matinée idol; in his last scene he is simultaneously funny and moving."Dinner at Eight"'s only flaw (but it's a big flaw) is that it still feels like a filmed play.
Quite a few things come to light, and you also feel that you have come to know about the characters and have a good idea where they are going in the future."Dinner At Eight" does justice to a fine cast, and is a movie that most fans of the classics will want to see..
Marie Dressler steals her scenes, to great effect, and is perfect up against Jean Harlow, with the famous reading a book double take at the end of the movie, for which this film is usually remembered.
The cast includes indominatable Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Edmund Lowe and Billie Burke to name a few.
Aside from the largely carefree Burke, the rest of the characters don't have much to look forward to with their impending affairs, bankruptcy, failing careers and illnesses.John Barrymore's story is my favourite; the quietly tragic demise of washed-up film star Larry Renault.
Are modern romantic comedies just so contrived and unreflective of real life, was adultery less frowned on back then or is it just a pre-code thing?The early 30's seems to be the one brief period in cinema history in which there was a number of older aged movie stars who box office draws; Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore.
Ms. Dressler often plays the matronly socialite for laughs; here she is a fully-developed character who is allowed to show her real acting talent.John Barrymore plays Larry Renault, an actor who is on the down-side of a career onstage and in film.
The story, characters, and setting are more related; they are all affected by the "Great Depression", and involved, directly or indirectly, with Lionel Barrymore (as Oliver Jordan) and Billie Burke (as Millicent Jordan)'s planned dinner party.One story, or subplot, in "Dinner at Eight" is much superior to the rest of the dramatic elements; it is the story of washed-up alcoholic actor John Barrymore (as Larry Renault).
Watch Barrymore's increasingly desperate "Larry Renault" and Dressler's wise overseeing "Carlotta Vance", for iconic performances from stars at their peak; in, at least, the best supporting characterizations of the year.********* Dinner at Eight (1933) George Cukor ~ Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy.
When New York society matron and relentless social climber Millicent Jordan has the opportunity to host a dinner for members of the English aristocracy, she determines to go all out--and the film follows the lives of her soon-to-be guests over the course of a week.Millicent (Billie Burke) is unaware that husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore) faces both a business and medical crisis.
By coincidence, Packard's wife Kitty (Jean Harlow) is having an affair with Oliver's doctor, Wayne Talbot (Edmund Lowe)--and if this were not complication enough, Oliver and Millicent's daughter Paula (Madge Evans) is on the verge of provoking a social scandal via an affair with aging and alcoholic movie star Larry Renault (John Barrymore.) And all of them are invited to dine.DINNER AT EIGHT is usually described as a comedy, and it is true that there are several notable comic performances.
The most famous of these are Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow, who give outrageous performances as the bickering Packards; Billie Burke and Marie Dressler also score as the harried hostess and the retired actress whose charms are long gone.
The performances are first rate, with the comic moments a true delight; there is dark irony in John Barrymore's performance; and the set designs and costuming are nothing short of iconographic: it is impossible to think of Jean Harlow, for instance, without envisioning her against a white-on-white Modern bedroom--and that, and a great deal more, comes straight out of this film.
The cast of stars is flawless.Also appearing are Karen Morley as Lowe's sad wife, Phillips Holmes as Evans' unknowing fiancée, May Robson as the cook, Louise Closser Hale as Burke's cousin, Grant Mitchell as Hale's husband, Hilda Vaughn as Harlow's sneaky maid, Lee Tracy as the actor's agent, Jean Hersholt as the producer, Elizabeth Patterson as the secretary, Harry Beresford as the clerk, and Edwin Maxwell as the hotel manager.The acting honors go to Marie Dressler (always superb), John Barrymore, Jean Harlow, and Billie Burke.
The all-star cast including John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Lee Tracy, Madge Evans, Jean Hersholt, Karen Morley, and Edmond Lowe works brilliantly together.
Wallace Beery & Jean Harlow are fantastic as the bickering couple, we get 2 Barrymore's (John & Lionel, Drew's grandfather & great uncle) & the priceless Marie Dressler who steals the show as a once grand dame of the stage now having to deal w/actual life..
Her ability to feign 'culture' - and then talk like a carnaval barker the next minute is delightful to regard.Being a 'pre-code' film, we also get some frankness that would have been excised only a few years later: Harlow is having an affair with a handsome family doctor, who, according to his faithful wife, is a frequent philanderer; Marie Dressler confesses that she has acquired expensive jewelry from men in her previous relationships that were not matrimonial; pretty Madge Evans--engaged to a very suitable partner--falls in love with a charming, but over-the-hill, alcoholic actor (John Barrymore).
George Cukor directed this effective drama that stars Billie Burke and Lionel Barrymore as Millicent & Oliver Jordan, who are planning a high society dinner party for different reasons: She is a social climber wanting to make a big impression, he is an ailing businessman who wants advice from fellow businessman Dan Packard(played by Wallace Beery) about his stock, since he is in financial trouble.
I'd say the cast of "Dinner at Eight" was even bigger than "Casablanca" -- both Lionel and John Barrymore (Lionel and Ethel both won Oscars, but the consensus of the time was that John was the best actor, and this movie is Exhibit 1), Oscar laureates Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler (could a 65-year-old veteran be first-billed in today's youth-obsessed Hollywood?
Not likely.), Jean Harlow (Marilyn was never like this), and Billie Burke (it's not clear whether she's the good witch or the bad witch).The "madcap" hub of the plot is Ms. Millicent Jordan's (Burke) plan to have a large dinner party, a custom of New York high society not interrupted by the Great Depression, featuring the elusive Ferncliffes, visiting America from London.
To round out the table settings, she invites Carlotta Vance (Dressler), an aging actress now relying on soured business investments to support her during the hard times; an American stage actor (John Barrymore), as a natural complement to Miss Vance; and a ruthless tycoon (Beery) as a favor to her husband (Lionel Barrymore), who needs help saving his shipping company, unbeknownst to Ms. Jordan, who is reluctant to invite a man married to a low-class woman (Harlow).
If you watch this film you'll be treated to some fine performances not only from the two people I've described; Barrymore and Dressler, but the incredible Jean Harlow, the amazing Billie Burke, Wallace Beery and even another Barrymore, John.
An answer to the film "Grand Hotel" from a few years earlier with similar elements, "Dinner At Eight" features an all- star cast for 1933, which includes, but is not limited to Marie Dressler (in a very memorable and perhaps show stopping role), Billie Burke (the future Glinda the Good Witch), John Barrymore (who will break your heart), Lionel Barrymore, Madge Evans, Wallace Beery, and Jean Harlow, who is divine in the role of the spoiled, self centered wife of Beery.
I have loved this film ever since seeing it some thirty or so years ago on TV.I am a big fan of older films, and this one is definitely before my time, but I cannot get over the fine and talented acting in each and every role of this fine dramatic film.Every character undergoes some sort of transformation from the time they are invited to the dinner, up until the time they actually arrive at the dinner party.You really get a good glimpse of what life was like back then in the worst years of the depression, when even the rich people had to make adjustments to the world that was rapidly changing around them.With a top notch cast and excellent production values (after all, it was an MGM film), this is a real favorite of mine, for many reasons, and I repeat again, It is not a comedy, by any stretch of the imagination..
If you've ever wondered what made Harlow so special, just watch Dinner at Eight.Without a doubt, my favorite character in the film is that of Carlotta played by Marie Dressler.
Perhaps Selznick wanted this year to be taken seriously, and perhaps it was but I'd recommend it for Lionel, Burke, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow, and the rest of the cast.Barrymore's quite good, but we found ourselves sitting through his scenes, and the Lowe scenes, uncertain if we were watching the movie which we had started watching not a while ago.
The film is a milestone in the number of high paying stars the producer was willing to hire in the early days of the talkies -John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke and Marie Dressler.
The stage play of this might be interesting, funny and warmful but George Cukor's film with all the classic stars from MGM didn't add anything to his career simply because is boring, tedious to the fullest and we, as audiences, have no other place to go other than watch this film because it is often mentioned in lists of great films of all time, and when you see the constellation of stars present in this tragedy, names like John Barrymore, Marie Dressler, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery among others you really would expect something at least decent.
Harlow and Beery were great, they have the funniest scenes in the movie as a rich couple that seems to never go along right; Lionel Barrymore and Marie Dressler are quite well too; John Barrymore plays a figure that resembles himself, a decadent and drunk actor who lives in a hotel without having money to pay for, and desperate to find a good play to act.
In this case the roles are played by Lionel and John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Lee Tracy, Edmund Lowe, Philips Holmes, Jean Hersholt, Marie Dressler, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke, Madge Blake, Karen Morley, Louise Closser Hale, and Grant Mitchell.
Yet "Dinner at Eight" is a fun movie for classic film fans all the same, not only because we now recognize it is a last gasp of the pre-Code era, with innuendo and heated bedroom exchanges galore, but because of remarkable performances from Marie Dressler, Billie Burke, and Jean Harlow.