Dinner at Eight (Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer). An aging film actor, planning to recoup his fortunes on the stage; Lord & Lady Ferncliffe, just over from London and on their way to Florida; a thick-skinned tycoon named Dan Packard and his Tenth Avenue wife; Dr. and Mrs. Talbot; an elderly actress, Carlotta Vance, trying to squeeze an income out of her stocks: these, with her husband, her daughter, Paula, and her daughter's pleasant young fiance are the people for whom Mrs. Millicent Jordan has her cook concoct an aspic in the shape of a British lion, with flags in his forepaws. Between the time that she makes her arrangements and the time her guests assemble in the drawing room, the picture has revealed their private lives, rearranged their relations with each other. Carlotta Vance has sold her stock in Oliver Jordan's shaky shipping company. Packard—pretending to be Jordan's ally while he tries to ruin him—has bought it. Kitty Packard, because she thinks her social ambitions might be hampered if her husband swindles their hosts, blackmails him into giving it back, infuriates him by announcing that she has a lover. It never occurs to Packard that the lover might be young Dr. Talbot. Mrs. Talbot finds out when she hears the doctor talking to Kitty on his office telephone, just before the nurse comes in to say that Mr. Jordan is outside. Some of her guests have already arrived by the time that Mrs. Jordan, tormented by news that her cook has dropped the aspic, learns that her husband has an incurably bad heart. Some of her guests never do arrive. The Ferncliffes, "those miserable cockneys," have their secretary telephone to say they have left town. Larry Renault, the actor, harassed by poverty, conceit and a futile love affair with Paula Jordan, has committed suicide in his hotel room.
As a frame for juxtapositional drama of the type that came into fashion with Grand Hotel, a fashionable dinner party is ideal. As a frame for one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's all-star casts, the play by Edna Ferber and George Kaufman which was produced in Manhattan last winter was even better. The actors in Dinner at Eight selected by MGM's new producer David Selznick, make the cast of MGM's Grand Hotel, produced by Irving Thalberg, look like a road company, make the picture—less biting but more comprehensive than the play—superb entertainment. Under Director George Cukor, John Barrymore (Larry Renault), Lionel Barrymore (Oliver Jordan), Marie Dressier (Carlotta Vance), Jean Harlow (Kitty Packard), Wallace Beery (Dan Packard), Lee Tracy (Renault's agent), Billie Burke (Millicent Jordan), Edmund Lowe (Dr. Talbot) and Karen Morley (Mrs. Talbot), supported by such $1,000-a-week celebrities as Phillips Holmes, Jean Hersholt, Madge Evans, Grant Mitchell and the late Louise Closser Hale, perform brilliantly and avoid each others' toes. Good shot: Kitty Packard making up her mind to give her maid a bracelet. Paddy, the Next Best Thing (Fox) is very clearly Fox's notion of the next best thing to Metro's Peg 0' My Heart. It is an idyll of the Irish countryside, dripping with Hollywood blarney, Janet Gaynor's girlish charm and terms of endearment like "acushla."