Which Dead Film Stars Would You Invite To Dinner?

Which Dead Film Stars Would You Invite To Dinner?

Posted on Wednesday July 9, 2008, 16:14 by Olly Richards in Empire States

So there were Helen, James and I, chatting to Marilyn Monroe about her boyfriend, Elvis, and the upkeep involved in wearing a white dress most nights of the week, which was, all things considered, not where we had expected the night to lead. We were at a launch party for Smirnoff Black's season of classic films at the Bluebird Restaurant in Chelsea, which are happening all month (details here). Go, but don't do what I did and smash a glass menu, inviting a number of other guests, who have apparently never smashed anything in their lives, to look at me like a dog had just lavishly vomited me on the carpet.

'Marilyn' (actually a delightful lookalike named Suzie) spent a while chatting with us, because we are film website nerds and people from Chelsea appear not to be able to actually see us, let alone talk to us, and after a while we got on to the unusual discussion of which dead film stars each of us would invite to dinner. We'll brush swiftly over James' suggestion of Adolf Hitler because wanting "to know what it felt like to be the most hated man EVER" is not a good enough reason to give a genocidal maniac a free feed, and appearing in Triumph Of The Will does not make you a filmstar. Marilyn/Suzie then suggested we put it on the website, so I am.

I'm allowing myself five people, and will allow you the same. No more, or they all get sent back to the cemetery unsustained. They all have to be dead and proper film stars or directors. Mine would be, in no particular order:

Jack Lemmon – My favourite film star ever and a man whom I believe would have no end of stories and get on with anybody worth getting on with. Since one of the great disappointments of my life is that I never got to meet him, on account of his being sadly dead before I started working in film journalism, this would seem a good opportunity and one not to pass up. Also, if we ate spaghetti he could strain it with a tennis racket, which I think we'd all get rather a kick out of.

Klaus Kinski – Because he'd prevent the evening from ever becoming boring and would eat most anything you gave him, even if it was an old shoe.

Jimmy Stewart – Well why wouldn't you? He starred in several of the greatest films of all time – including the greatest, Rear Window – and was also a war hero. If he can't regail you with a few tales over an After Eight, then I don't know who can.

Marilyn Monroe – Because it would be rude not to invite the person who gave you the idea in the first place. Plus, I'd like to see if she really did have a near genius level IQ by making her play a post-dinner game of Trivial Pursuit, but a version from the early '90s when it was still actually difficult and didn't feature questions about Big Brother. Her invite might make Tony Curtis feel bad about not being invited to this Some Like It Hot reunion, but he's still alive, so that's his too bad.

Carmen Miranda – She'd bring dessert on her head, which would cut down on shopping.

Which film stars past would get an invite to your dream dinner?