Small Talk, by

The Man Who Came to Dinner,
by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart

Sheridan Whiteside —critic, lecturer, wit, radio orator, intimate friend of the great and near great— having dined at the home of the Stanleys, slips on their doorstep and breaks his hip. The result is a tumultuous six weeks of confinement. Possibility: "Christmas may be postponed this year." So runs the lead article in the Christmas 1939 issue of Time magazine. Whiteside turns the Stanley household upside down, forcing everyone in town to cater to his egotistical demands. Meanwhile, his essential secretary has given her notice after falling in love with a local reporter, and Whiteside must engage every weapon in his considerable arsenal of guile and manipulation to keep her in his employ—including blackmail, deceit, and the intervention of the fading sexpot actress Lorraine Sheldon and the elegant British wit of playwright Beverly Carlton. A three-ring circus of machinations and celebrity appearances ensues.

“The basic idea [of the play was inspired]….Is there any better opening line to delineate a character and foreshadow a promisingly delectable situation than the one delivered by Sheridan Whiteside, The Man Who Came to Dinner? The worthy small-town folk fuss nervously, hoping to please the great public figure forced to convalesce in their honored midst. Whiteside, entering a wheelchair, surveys his adulating hosts and says, ‘I may vomit.’”
—The New York Times