“I’m going to be a lady if it kills me.” This dark, embittered comedy of manners was shot in a flurry of just over two weeks with a stellar cast: Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, Lionel and John Barrymore, and the great Jean Harlow (four years before her death at 26). They’ve all been invited to dinner by Billie Burke’s wannabe socialite, exposing a cross-section of affairs, deceptions, failures, and addictions. An unsparing send-up of upper-class pretentions and a fascinating window into the anxieties—social and economic—of mid-Depression America, Dinner at Eight teeters masterfully between stone-faced comedy and tragic farce.