the film, campaigned for the role, and Laird Cregar and Robert Benchley made screen tests; but executive producer Hal B. Wallis thought the former was "overblown and extravagant" and the latter "too mild mannered." Warner suggested Cary Grant, but Wallis felt he was "far too young and attractive." Although Monty Woolley, who had created the role on the Broadway stage, was not familiar to movie audiences, Wallis finally cast him in the role, despite Warner's concern that the actor's homosexuality would be obvious on screen. Orson Welles would later play Whiteside 30 years later in a television adaptation of the play. Bette Davis detested the casting of Woolley; she fought hard to cast John Barrymore but was overruled by the studio. In later years, she observed, "I felt the film was not directed in a very imaginative way. For me, it was not a happy film to make; that it was a success, of course, did make me happy. I guess I never got over my disappointment in not working with the great John Barrymore." Critical reception On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 7 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.8/10. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times observed, "Any one who happened to miss the original acid-throwing antic on the stage – and any one, for that matter, who happened not to have missed it – should pop around, by all means, and catch the cinematic reprise. For here, in the space of something like an hour and fifty-two minutes, is compacted what is unquestionably the most vicious but hilarious cat-clawing exhibition ever put on the screen, a deliciously wicked character portrait and a helter-skelter satire, withal." He added, "Woolley makes The Man Who Came to Dinner a rare old goat. His zest for rascality is delightful, he spouts alliterations as though he were spitting out orange seeds, and his dynamic dudgeons in a wheelchair are even mightier than those of Lionel Barrymore. A more entertaining buttinsky could hardly be conceived, and a less entertaining one would be murdered on the spot. One palm should be handed Bette Davis for accepting the secondary role of the secretary, and another palm should be handed her for playing it so moderately and well." In conclusion, he said, "The picture as a whole is a bit too long and internally complex for 100 per cent comprehension,