Oscar Profile #304: Monty Woolley

Born August 17, 1888 in New York, N.Y. to wealthy parents, Edgar Montillion (Monty) Woolley grew up in the highest social circles, his father having owned several Manhattan hotels. He received a Bachelor’s degree at Yale, where he was intimate friends with Cole Porter whom he later introduced to New York society. After obtaining Masters degrees from both Yale and Harvard, he became as assistant professor of English and an acting coach at Yale where his students included Thornton Wilder and Stephen Vincent Benet. He served as a 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Army in World War I, assigned to the general staff in Paris.

Woolley made his Broadway debut as the director of Porter’s Fifty Million Frenchmen in 1929. He would direct six more musicals including Jubilee before making his Broadway acting debut in On Your Toes in 1936. Acting on screen from 1937, he appeared in minor roles until he starred in the 1941 adaptation of the 1939 Broadway smash, The Man Who Came to Dinner in which he reprised his role of the acerbic theatre critic that made him famous.

For the next fourteen years, Woolley either played the lead or a prominent supporting role in every film he was in. In 1942 he was the Englishman who led a band of children out of Nazi occupied France in The Pied Piper, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination, losing to James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. That same year he was the aging alcoholic actor in Life Begins at Eight-Thirty. In 1943 he was the reclusive artist masquerading as his dead valet in Holy Matrimony. In 1944 he was the retired military lodger in Since You Went Away whose soldier grandson has an affair with his World War II landlady’s impressionable teenage daughter, earning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his efforts, losing to Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way. He then played a con man friend of the composer in the same year’s Irish Eyes Are Smiling, a crusty retired politician in 1945’s Molly and Me and himself in the heavily fictionalized 1946 Cole Porter biopic, Night and Day.

Woolley had one of his best character roles as the retired professor in the 1947 Christmas classic, The Bishop’s Wife. He was also at his hilarious best as one of the greedy uncles in 1948’s Miss Tatlock’s Millions. He would play his last starring role a 65-year-old who hatches a plan to avoid retirement in 1951’s As Young As You Feel.

The actor got to reprise his classic role in The Man Who Came to Dinner one more time in an all-star cast production for TV in 1954. He was fine, if under-utilized, in his last film, the 1955 production of Kismet in which he played a kindly government official who is the opponent of the evil vizier. He had a supporting role in a 1959 episode of the TV series, Five Fingers, after which he retired due to ill health.

Monty Woolley died on March 6, 1963 due to complications from kidney and heart ailments. He was 74.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, directed by William Keighley (1941)

Most sources will tell you that the film featuring Woolley’s signature role as theatre critic Sheridan Whiteside was a 1942 release. It opened, however, in New York on the last day of 1941, but wasn’t reviewed until January 2, 1942. Third billed behind Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, it is Woolley’s marvelous portrayal of the acerbic critic modeled on real-life theatre critic, Alexander Woollcott that still tickles audience’s funny bones. Davis’ and Sheridan’s could have been played by anyone. Other than Woolley, Billie Burke as his perplexed hostess, and Mary Wickes as a wise-cracking nurse come off best.

HOLY MATRIMONY, directed by John M. Stahl (1943)

Filmed once before with Roland Young and Lillian Gish as His Double Life and done much later as the Broadway musical Darling of the Day with Vincent Price and Tony-winning Patricia Routledge, this is nevertheless the definitive version of Arnold Bennett’s Buried Alive. Woolley is at his considerable best as the reclusive artist who masquerades as his recently deceased valet who is buried in his stead at Westminster Cathedral. He is matched quip for quip by Gracie Fields as the cockney correspondent of the late valet who is the first to mistake the two men for each other and the first to figure it all out.

SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, directed by John Cromwell (1944)

David O. Selznick’s tribute to the U.S. home-front during World War II was his most ambitious project since Gone With the Wind and his answer to MGM’s similarly themed exploration of the British home-front in Mrs. Miniver. Claudette Colbert was the woman whose husband is off fighting the war who rents a room to retired colonel Woolley. His visiting soldier grandson (Robert Walker) falls hard for Colbert’s oldest daughter (Jennifer Jones). Colbert, Woolley and Jones were all Oscar nominated as was the film. Joseph Cotton, Shirley Temple, Agnes Moorehead, Hattie McDaniel and more are featured.

THE BISHOP’S WIFE, directed by Henry Koster (1947)

Cary Grant and David Niven switched their intended roles in this Christmas classic, in which Grant plays an angel and Niven an unhappy Episcopalian bishop who is being coerced into building a cathedral to the liking of domineering Gladys Cooper. Woolley plays a retired professor and Latin scholar, an old friend of Niven and his wife, Loretta Young, who is smitten with Grant, unaware that he is an angel. James Gleason co-stars as a thoughtful cabbie and Elsa Lanchester is on hand as Niven and Young’s maid. The entire cast shines, but old pros Woolley and Cooper steal every scene they’re in.

AS YOUNG AS YOU FEEL, directed by Harmon Jones (1951)

In his last starring role, Woolley plays a 65-year-old printer being forced into retirement by his company’s policy. He puts together an elaborate scam in which he pretends to be his boss’s boss who comes up with a new company plan. Constance Bennett, also in her last major role, plays the boss’s amorous wife who falls for Woolley. David Wayne, Jean Peters, Allyn Joslyn, Albert Dekker, Russ Tamblyn and Marilyn Monroe also have their moments, but the best parts fall to Woolley and Thelma Ritter who is an absolute joy as Woolley’s daughter-in-law, a singer forced to give up her career when she married Woolley’s son.