First of Four Parts
Screwball Classics
by Jamie Jobb
This is a listing of eighteen classic black-and-white screwball comedies dating from 1932 to 1939. The format is the same as other film reviews on these pages – a condensed preview using quotations, characters, situations and plot points from each film so it explains itself in its own words. Most of the films contain links to each film, so it can be screened on line. The films in this first part of four lists:
Trouble in Paradise 1932
Million Dollar Legs 1932
Design for Living 1933
It Happened One Night 1934
Twentieth Century 1934
Ruggles of Red Gap 1935
Theodora Goes Wild 1936
Libeled Lady 1936
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 1936
My Man Godfrey 1936
Nothing Sacred 1937
Easy Living 1937
The Awful Truth 1937
Bringing Up Baby 1938
You Can’t Take It With you 1938
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife 1938
Joy of Living 1938
Fifth Avenue Girl 1939
Herbert Marshall impresses Miriam Hopkins with pickpocket sleight-of-hand
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
"If Casanova suddenly turned out to be Romeo having supper with Juliet who turned out to be Cleopatra, how would you start?" A melancholy yet suave, dastardly yet eloquent transatlantic imposter-aristocrat and gentleman safecracker is Gaston Monescu aka "Baron" aka "Doctor" aka Monsieur Gaston LaValle (perfectly unctuous Hebert Marshall). "I love you. I loved you the moment I saw you. I'm mad about you. My little shoplifter, my sweet little pickpocket! My darling."
Nimble pickpocket toothsome cat-woman imposter-aristocrat and lady safecracker is Lily Vautier aka "Countess" (effulgent Miriam Hopkins) who "gets so tired of one's own class -- princes and counts and dukes and kings! Everybody talking shop. Always trying to sell jewelry."
Monsieur Francois Filiba (hilarious birds-eye-full of Edward Everett Horton) is Paramour No. One and "the gentleman in 253, -5, -7 and -9" for all he can remember is "When I woke up I still had my tonsils, but my pocketbook was gone." Say Ah!
Venice: canals, garbage, 20,000 stolen lira, bejeweled missing handbag, cackling police inspectors, Grand Canal gossip and Grand Hotel prosperity are just around the corner. "If I like a man, I remember him. And if I don't like him, I never forget him."
Meanwhile in Paris at Colet and Companie perfume world headquarters, wealthy young widow Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) is high fragrance financer and continental spider-woman caught in her own embezzlement web. "I would give you a good spanking -- in a business way, of course."
Major (Charles Ruggles) is Paramour No. Two and stuffy duffer who admits "You know, I'm not the marrying type. I like to take my fun and leave it."
Ernest Lubitsch's perfect Touch uplifts Samson Raphaelson's perfect screenplay (based on play by Aladar Laszlo) to flip each immediate expectation downside-up with lightning grace of pickpockets fleecing everyone, including themselves. "Darling remember. You are Gaston Monescu. You are a crook. I want you as a crook. I love you as a crook. I worship you as a crook. Steal, swindle, rob. Oh, but don't become one of those useless, good-for-nothing gigolos!" (USA)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x246hmy
(1:22:46)
* * *
no man can resist Lyda Roberti
Million Dollar Legs (1932)
"Everything must be secret, surrounded by spies! Sometimes I mistrust myself." "Listen, don't talk to yourself and if you do – lie." Klopstokia is "a far away country. Chief exports: goats and nuts. Chief imports: goats and nuts. Chief inhabitants: goats and nuts."
So when traveling Baldwin Brush salesman Migg Tweeny (Jack Oakie), aka “Sweetheart”, bumps into native beauty Angela (Susan Fleming) – who admits she’s “not half the man my father is” – they both know it's true love. "Think I'm gonna leave all this beautiful territory unbrushed?"
Unfortunately, Angela's father is impatient Klopstokian President (W.C. Fields) who rules his land with iron fist but no brains. “Any you mugs been playing my harmonica?”
Out to depose him is cabinet cabal which enlists slinky spy Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti), "the woman no man can resist” – “Not responsible for men left over thirty days."
“They won’t hurt him, will they?” “Only for about two hours – then they’ll shoot him.” Plot thickens when Tweeny helps country enter Olympics in $8 million fast-buck bail-out scheme. "Just as I suspected, the country's starving and you with gold in your teeth!"
“Follow me not too close, or you’ll catch on fire.” Directed by Edward Cline, written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Henry Myers. Loony early-Talkie farce anticipates Marx Brothers' “Duck Soup”, relying on ridiculous sight gags with cross-eyed mute sleuth (Ben Turpin) and statue of The Thinker who asks: "How can I concentrate?" "I've given my last grunt for my country." (USA)
* * *
Miriam Hopkins drives Frederic March and Gary Cooper batty
Design for Living (1933)
"It's true we have a gentlemen's agreement. But unfortunately, I'm no gentleman." Bohemian muse and "mother of the arts" Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins) is "charming" commercial artist now far from Fargo in City of Light, unable to choose between two beaus: 1) struggling playwright Thomas B. Chambers (Fredric March) and 2) struggling painter George Curtis (Gary Cooper).
Tom, aka "Sgt. O'Toole", may be "a rattlesnake" while George, aka "Inspector Knox", can be "kind of barbaric" when he's "wise-cracking with paint", e.g. his Lady-Godiva-Riding-Bicycle. "No sex -- it's a gentlemen's agreement."
Together this menagerie-a-trios tries to "survive by miracles" from Paris garret to West End to Westchester.
"You can't change love by shaking hands with somebody. We're unreal, the three of us, trying to play jokes on nature." Meanwhile, Gilda's most solid suitor, advertising mogul Max Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton), understands his peculiar prenuptial predicament. "It's true, I didn't get to first base, but lots of other people didn't either."
"Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, screenplay by Ben Hecht, loosely based on Noel Coward play. Pre-screwball comedy of pagan manners thrives on tuxedos for breakfast, twin tulips and “We have to tell him the truth, regardless of what happens to the furniture." (USA)
(1:13:14)
* * *
Claudette Colbert out-on-a-limb with Clark Gable
It Happened One Night(1934)
"I wish you'd take those things off the Walls of Jericho." Runaway heiress and "dizzy dame" Ellen Andrews aka "Ellie" (radiant Claudette Colbert) comes "from a long line of stubborn idiots" but would rather "change places with a plumber's daughter any day" than go on as a "spoiled brat of a rich father."
Patriarch Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly) would shanghai that defiant daughter aboard his own yacht if he thought it would protect her from unkempt hoards brought on by headline-grabbing fortune-hunting celebrity aviator playboy fiancee King Westley (Jameson Thomas), aka "the Pill of the Century". No wonder Ellie escapes on Miami "Night Bus" to New York. "Nurses, governesses, chaperons, even bodyguards. Oh, it's been a lot of fun!"
Tracking her is New York Mail roving reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), "a peculiar chap" with an "absolutely colossal" ego and $39.60 in unpaid legitimate business expenses. "Remember me, I'm the fellow you slept with last night." Peter swears "prying eyes annoy me", especially when he's chasing "the biggest scoop of the year" all by his lonesome. "Excuse me lady, but that upon which you sit is mine."
Who will it be, Ellie: Peter or first-class cad Oscar Shapeley (Roscoe Karns)? "Shapeley's the name and that's the way I like 'em!" This film -- along with Twentieth Century -- launched screwball comedy as an art form in response to the Production Code. "But don't hold it against me, I'm a little screwy myself."
Directed by Frank Capra, written by Robert Riskin. Elegant and funky road romance really doesn't need Joshua's Trumpet to fall The Walls of Jericho, dare The Man on the Flying Trapeze, heed The Hitchhiker's Hail, or fly The Autogyro. "Once a plumber's daughter, always a plumber's daughter."(USA)
https://archive.org/details/it.-happened.-one.-night.-1934.1080p.-blu-ray.x-264.-yify
(1:45:15)
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Twentieth Century (1934)
"Nobody can stop this train – Oscar Jaffe or no Oscar Jaffe. Fires, floods or blizzards. This is the Twentieth Century and we get to New York on time!" Broadway producer and megalomaniacal Oscar "O.J." Jaffe (wild-hair John Barrymore) would just as soon "sit here and discuss his genius" as "close the iron door on you".
O.J. transforms lingerie model and "Hoboken cinderella" Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into Lily Garland, Broadway star of his own dominion. "The diamond was there, I merely supplied a little polish."
But gilded Lily eventually tires of Jaffe's emotional terrorism and bolts Broadway for Hollywood to end up on covers of Photoplay/Silver Screen. "For three years I've never done anything, read anything, eaten anything without asking your permission ... I can't even see my own mother! That's not love, it's pure tyranny."
After Lily abandoned him and "took his genius with her", O.J. finds he can no longer mount successful productions. "He's gonna end up in a bread line unless he finds out that these dithering horse operas with a lot of people staggering around in foul iron suits ain't entertainment."
But doomed lovers converge again between Chicago and New York on legendary Twentieth Century, Ltd. "If that egomaniac were in his grave, the way I feel right now, I'd take a rope and tie it around his neck and take him on a cooks tour. He's played his last dirty trick on me."
Directed by Howard Hawks, screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on play by Charles Bruce Millholland. Rambunctious breakneck farce ranks with "It Happened One Night" as Hollywood’s first screwball comedy. "In some Humpty-Dumpty way, that was true love." (USA)
(1:21:13)
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Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
"You don't seem to realize what this will mean to us socially. Why, in Red Gap it will give us ... tone!" Red Gap, "State of Washington, USA" is "quite an untamed country, I understand."
Proper British valet Marmaduke Ruggles (brilliant Charles Laughton) finds himself Way Out West after his master, Honorable George Van Bassingwell, Earl of Burnstead, (Roland Young) learns meaning of Blind Man's Bluff. "If I do say it myself, I'm particularly good at it."
How else would one find oneself in Red Gap as manservant for "sort of a millionaire" Egbert "Sourdough" Floud (Charles Ruggles, no-relation)? Egbert's "wild cat" wife Effie (Mary Boland) wants to transform her crude husband into "a gentleman ... a man well turned out".
Although he gets that duty, Ruggles -- aka "Colonel" and Bill -- may be "too damned polite" to work for three masters at once. "To the cleaners? I want the whole lot taken out and burned. Burned to ashes ... And then burn the ashes!"
While Effie's mother, Ma Pettingill (Maude Eburne), has "made a barrel of dough in oil", widowed Prunella Judson (ZaSu Pitts) pines for her old "English cowboy".
Directed by Leo McCarey, written by Walter De Leon and Harlan Thompson based on novel by Harry Leon Wilson. McCarey’s splendid ensemble casts itself into classic cross-cultural farce of ladies and gents, class and gumption, galleries and saloons, Lincoln and Gettysburg . "Equal to what? ... Men are created equal to women. That way, you have no right to order me around the way ya do. Abe Lincoln said so!" (USA)
RENTAL: https://youtu.be/75bSFdHQfgI
(1:30:34)
* * *
small-town girl Irene Dunne finds fame in Gotham
Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
"No quaking rabbit was ever happy. And for a lovely woman with talent, it's a sin." Theodora Lynn (Irene Dunne) leads double life in Lynnfield (pop. 4,426), "the biggest little town in Connecticut". As Sunday-school teacher and church organist since she was 15, Theodora "couldn't do anything sinful"living alone at home with two maiden aunts in small town that bears their family name. Despite her reputation as "unholy terror on wheels", "brazen hussy" and "love thief" – spicy Caroline Adams (Dunne also) "won't let down her back hair" but has "a terrific constitution and it doesn't show".
Author Caroline writes "sexy trash – modern ... difficult ... thrilling!" which doesn't sit well with Lynnfield's "Literary Circle" and town gossip Rebecca Perry (Spring Byington) who “wouldn’t say a word.”
"If civilization is like Caroline Adams writes about, then it's best that our children get along without civilization." Helping Theodora reconcile Caroline's secret life is Park Avenue artist and Lt. Governor's scion Michael Grant (Melvyn Douglas), aka "Dewberry" the Gardener, "a good-for-nothing loafer" who whistles while he sleeps and "only goes where he's not invited".
But Theodora/Caroline sees through Michael as "this carefree rollicking spirit, who's been going around for years, sticking his nose in everybody's business and now he's finally got it caught in a meat-grinder".
“It’s yours, grandma.” Directed by Richard Boleslawski, screenplay by Sidney Buchman. Dunne sings "Rock of Ages" and "Be Still My Heart" while "Eve and the Serpent" confront small-town Creation. "Oh by the way, your mother sent some cookies for you, but I met a hungry man and he ate them up." (USA)
(1:34:10)
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hot-wired Jean Harlow can’t spark Spencer Tracy
Libeled Lady (1936)
"I can't bust up his wedding." "If we don't it's our funeral." New York Evening Star Managing Editor Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) can't stop Truck No. 7 from circulating 50 copies of libelous headlines into Times Square.
"Rich Playgirl" Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) may be "so fragile", but she won't "damage so easily": her defamation will cost Star $5 million. "There ain't that much money!"
Gladys Benton (Jean Harlow), is either "a case" or "a swell kid, one girl in a million" who's again all dressed up and abandoned at alter. "She may be his wife, but she's engaged to me!"
Gladys doesn't know what to think of her sudden temporary marriage to ace reporter and "strange egg" Bill Chandler (William Powell). "Well this certainly looks married -- a little too married!"
Directed by Jack Conway, written by Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George Oppenheimer. MGM throws studio's weight behind screwball alienation of affection and ends up stuck in Queen Anne's steerage. "I told him fish stories that would curl your hair, and I never even had a rod in my hands." (USA)
https://arc018.com/watch-movie/watch-libeled-lady-free-14923.5354851
(1:38:15)
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reporter Jean Arthur commands Gary Cooper in court
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
"If that man's crazy, Your Honor, then the rest of us belong in straight jackets." Mandrake Falls Vermont tuba-playing volunteer-fireman and "pixilated" poet Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is corn-fed jingle author whose hometown would never consider him "Cinderella Man" nor "a money-grabbing hick" -- despite windfall inheritance of $20 million from estate of Longfellow's distant uncle, financier Martin W. Semple. "One nice thing about being rich: you ring a bell, and things happen."
New York Daily Mail star reporter Louise Bennett, aka Babe and Mary Dawson, (Jean Arthur) has "a lot of pride" and could be "a double dose of cyanide" -- although Deeds quickly ceases to believe she's "really just a nobody".
Cedar, Cedar, Cedar & Buddington senior partner John Cedar, Esq. (Douglass Dumbrille) ought to know cost of "nuisance value" in Gotham, but Deeds simply can not comprehend price of urbanwealth and fame. "I wonder why he left me all that money. I don't need it."
Deeds' street-wise guardian and ex-newshound flack Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander) believes "I've gotten the sockeroo in many ways, but never in rhyme." Deeds needs no bodyguard, that much is certain. "No matter what we see, we don't see nothin' -- See?"
Directed by Frank Capra, written by Robert Riskin. Capra's socially-conscious Gee-Gosh-and-Swell Fifth Avenue mansion echo and monkey suit banister slide is nose-twitching knuckle-cracker for doodling "o-fillers" that sparkles of Cooper and Arthur. "A poet with a straight left and a right hook, delicious!" (USA)
(1:56:04)
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Forgotten-Man William Powell buttles Alice Brady’s “pixies”
My Man Godfrey (1936)
"Prosperity's just around the corner." "Yeah, it's been there a long time -- I wish I knew which corner!" Godfrey "Duke" Parks (William Powell) is "very mysterious person" who "notices everything" as he moves uptown overnight from City Dump-32 to 1011 Fifth Avenue as newest butler for "nutty" Bullocks. "I'm the Forgotten Man." "So many people have such bad memories."
Daffy Irene Bullock (wonderful Carole Lombard) considers Godfrey her "protege" although obviously she's got sugar-plum visions. "Not only does it occupy my mind, but I think it's character-building too."
Sister Cornelia (Gail Patrick) is "high-spirited girl" and "Park Avenue brat" who "likes to see things wriggle". Mother Angelica (Alice Brady) also "sees pixies" but knows "you can't rush genius".
Patriarch Alexander (Eugene Pallette) knows his women "have confused me with the Treasury Department" and soon finds himself picking his nits at wits end. "I don't care who broke the horse or rode the windows up the steps or ya-ya-ya ... This family's got to settle down!"
Meanwhile old friend Tommy Gray (Alan Mowbray) wants to know "why you're buttling when your family's telling everybody that you're in South America doing something about rubber or sheep or something?"
Gregory LaCava. Screenplay by Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch, based on Hatch's novel. Wondrous riches-to-rags noir-screwball tale turns on Carlo's gorilla, missing pearl necklace and "forgotten-men-with steam, sounds like something that ought to be on the menu". "It's hard to make beds when they're full of people." (USA)
(1:33:06)
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Carole Lombard hand-delivers sock to Frederic March’s jaw
Nothing Sacred (1937)
"For good clean fun, there's nothing like a wake." "Oh please, please. Let's not talk shop." Woeful working girl Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) appears "doomed to death from radium poisoning" in woeful Warsaw, Vermont. "Everybody has to have a funeral some time."
Hazel has never left Warsaw and longs to be "just a flash in the pan of Manhattan". Enter N.Y. Morning Star cynic and ace reporter Wallace "Wally" Cook (Frederic March) who's prone to chase cheap scoops.
Cook's boss, publisher Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly), thinks his ace is "a cross between a ferris wheel and a werewolf". Tipsy Warsaw general practitioner, Dr. Enoch Downer (Charles Winninger), doesn't "like to chew my cabbage twice" and knows Hazel's malady is pure hokum. "Doctor I wanna know the worst. I don't want you to spare our feelings. We go to press in 15 minutes!"
Directed by William A. Wellman, screenplay by Ben Hecht. Wellman's lone screwball venture turns technicolor yellow journalism expose on open spit of Heroines of History, Finger of God, raw hangover eggs, escaped pocket squirrel, "tootsies of all nations" and ten seconds of ringside silence. "Take that ice pack off your head and fight!" (USA)
https://archive.org/details/NothingSacredVideoQualityUpgrade
(1:13:55)
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Jean Arthur may not know art, but she knows what she’s likes
Easy Living (1937)
"You will notice when J.B. Ball wants to peccadillo, he doesn't pick it here." In fit of family frugality, banker J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold), aka The Bull of Broad Street, tosses wife's $58,000 sable coat off penthouse rooftop. "How can a fur coat get out of style? A skunk smells the same today as he did in nineteen-hundred and six!"
In street below, Boys' Constant Companion typist Mary Smith (Jean Arthur) rides to work on upper deck of Fifth Avenue bus. And just like "Kismet", Mrs. Ball's fur magic-carpet lands right on Mary's head!
Big Apple gets yacking when gossip columnist Wallace Whistling (William Demarest) spies Mary in "Imperial suit" of Hotel Louis "in the sablest sable coat they ever sabled."
Proprietor Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni) doesn't "beat around the bush to come in the back door". He knows his hotel "is a fizzle", so he invites Mary to stay in his penthouse for $1 a week. "Until you have lived in the Hotel Louis, you ain't."
Things might have been hunky-dory had Mary not invited JB's "muttonhead" son John Ball, Jr. (Ray Milland) up to her suite after Automat food fight. "Don't be a sucker sister, the beef pie is a wow!"
Directed by Mitchell Leisen, written by Preston Sturges. Slangy Depression era screwball farce finds Cinderella gone bananas. "The less we know, dear, the happier we're apt to be." (USA)
https://archive.org/details/el00955674
(1:27:53)
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Irene Dunne and Asta hide Cary Grant’s hat in “Continental” comedy
The Awful Truth (1937)
“You’ve come home and caught me in a truth, and it seems there’s nothing less logical than the truth.” Gotham playboy-husband Jerry Warriner, aka “Jerry-The-Nipper” (Cary Grant), returns home from “Florida” with California oranges. Even their dog (Asta) can’t believe his story. “I mean, things could be the same if things were different.”
Although playgirl-wife Lucy, aka Lola (Irene Dunne), knows he’s fibbing about his “vacation”, she arrives in furry ballgown from overnight spin with French voice coach Armand Duvalle (Alexander D’Arcy) who is “a great teacher, not a great lover.”
“Your husband is not like the average American man. No no, he’s free from any mean suspicion. He has more the Continental mind.” But what’s Continental American couple to do after Armand abruptly departs and Oklahoma oil man Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy) arrives? “I certainly learned about women from you!”
“Back on my ranch, I got a little red rooster and a little brown hen and they fight all the time too, but every once in a while they make up again and they’re right friendly.”
Should Jerry and Lucy divorce ... or make up? “The road to Reno is paved with suspicions.”
“I guess it was easier to change her name than for her whole family to change theirs.” Make-up scene with the Warriners retiring to separate knotty-pine bedrooms of rustic Connecticut summer cabin is screwball classic. “They forgot to touch second.”
“I know how I’d feel if I was sitting with a girl and her husband walked in.” Directed by Leo McCarey. Screenplay by Vina Delmar based on play by Arthur Richman. “I told him the truth and strangely enough he believed me.” (USA).
https://archive.org/details/the.-awful.-truth.-1937.1080p.-blu-ray.x-264-yts.-am
(1:31:03)
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Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant find his Intercostal Clavicle
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
“If you had an aunt who was going to give you a million dollars if she liked you, and you knew she wouldn't like you if she found a leopard in your apartment, what would you do?” Rattle-brained mad-cap heiress Susan Vance (terrific Katherine Hepburn) castigates obsessive paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) who may be no “regular Don Swan” but he’s at wit’s end of long search for “the intercostal clavicle”, the final bone needed to complete his skeleton brontosaurus. “Nonsense. You tried it in the tail yesterday, and it didn’t fit.”
“You mean this is Your Car? Your Golf Ball? Your CAR! Is there nothing in the world that doesn’t belong to you?” And while David knows he’s “not quite myself today”, he’s also at the tail of long engagement to cold-fish fiance Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) who believes “Our marriage must entail no domestic entanglements of any kind.”
Unfortunately, David needs Susan’s Aunt Elizabeth, Mrs. Carlton Random (Ray Robson), for million-dollar endowment to continue his scientific research. Susan just needs David befuddled. “I don’t want another lunatic in the family, I have lunatics enough all ready.”
“Constable, she’s making all this up out of motion pictures she’s seen!” Convoluted classic screwball plot involves golfballs and pilfered vehicles, torn coats and ball gowns, large wild animals in unlocked cages and unfamiliar domestic settings. “I’ve got my head, I’ve lost my leopard!”
“First you drop an olive, and then I sit on my hat. It all fits perfectly!” Directed by Howard Hawks. Playful script laced with double-entendre by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde – a pair of writers falling in love during their collaboration – masterfully sets up Hepburn’s first flat-out farce. And she certainly gallops with it, once she realizes that “The love impulse in man very frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict”. (USA)
https://archive.org/details/bringing-up-baby-1938_202006
(1:42:32)
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Jimmy Steward brings home Jean Arthur to meet his oddball kin
You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
"Well, this would be a fine country if we all spent our time in the zoo and played the harmonica." Banker A.P. Kirby (Edward Arnold) esteems himself as most powerful businessman in America, but associates know A.P. has "ice-water in his veins".
Young son Tony (James Stewart) is heir to family fortune and believes "I never in my life wanted anything that I couldn't get, if I just yelled loud enough. Worked like a charm when I was a baby."Hopelessly smitten with stenographer Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur), Tony realizes uptight Kirbys will ask: "What kind of a family is she from?" What kind of family, indeed!
Alice's father (Samuel S. Hinds) is fireworks fanatic, and mother (Spring Byington) writes plays just because someone delivered typewriter to her by mistake. Alice's fun-loving Grandpa, Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), keeps their home brimming with artists, musicians, printers, inventors, practical jokers and sundry misfits. "You know if I were really clever I could answer the telephone without the use of my hands."
Directed by Frank Capra, screenplay by Robert Riskin based on classic play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. Plot boils over when A.P. sets sights on leveraged-buyout of Grandpa's neighborhood for munitions factory. Cracking good Depression-era yarn pits penniless wackos against Big Money over true purpose of harmonicas, heart failure, Home Sweet Home and "Polly Wolly Doddle All the Day". "People spend their whole lives building castles in the air, then nothing ever comes of them." (USA)
RENTAL: https://youtu.be/tRdPA42PK8M
(2:06:19)
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Bluebeard Gary Cooper meets his match in Claudette Colbert
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)
"Ah, the story writes itself doesn't it? ... A beautiful lady buys a pair of pajamas for a gentleman. She has no husband, she has no brother. Voila ... A lady in love!" Michigan millionaire and oft-married Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper) may be tenacious "man full of innuendo" who at least realizes what he means when he says: "There's not a laugh in me before breakfast."
Prudent Michael doesn't "buy stuff I don't use" but believes in marriage -- "And how!"
But who'll accommodate him this time, here in this Riviera haberdashery? Perhaps the stylish Nicole De Loiselle (Claudette Colbert), daughter of impoverished French aristocrat/opportunist Marquis De Loiselle (Edward Everett Horton). "Are you a father, or an auctioneer?"
Don't ask wishy-washy Albert de Regnier (David Niven) who loves a knockout, and is perhaps "the only living man with just one tonsil". It's all so simply complicated: "Love-making is the red tape of marriage. It doesn't get ya anywhere."
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder based on play by Alfred Savoir. Slap-happy art-deco screwball farce flies above Brackett-Wilder script full of "pre-marriage settlement", hunt-and-peck "flapdoodle", Taming of the Shrew, The Glowworm's Birthday, straight-jacket phone-call, Czechoslovakia-spelled-backwards and "the one and only bathtub of Louis the Fourteenth". "Now listen, you want a divorce as soon as possible ... Let me give you a tip. Stop keeping me at a distance, be nice to me, and in three weeks I'll probably beg you on my knees to give me a divorce." (USA)
https://www.roku.com/whats-on/movies/bluebeards-eighth-wife?id=1139bb16913c52069045308d11d1fc86
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Broadway beauty Irene Dunne can’t find time for her man
Joy of Living (1938)
"She's not who she is. I thought she was who she is not, but she ain't." Opening night "Glamour" and "Bravo" cheers, standing ovations and photographic hordes, dressing-room well wishers and stage-door autograph hounds, friends ... and family. Beautiful Broadway musical-comedy star Margaret Garret aka Maggie (Irene Dunne) was "born full-grown" and has it all. Except her own man.
Not that she'd have a minute for him, mind you. Career takes all her time, family takes all her money. Sis Salina (Lucille Ball) is her envious understudy. Mom Minerva (Alice Brady) and Pop Dennis (Guy Kibbee) are has-been thespians who still wannabe.
"Those darlings are floating through life on a lemon meringue pie." But life's not the same after Maggie relents to $1.85 night-on-town with "shipowner and sidewalk Sir Galahad", Dan Brewster (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.). "Why not ask him in, so we can sit down and hate him in comfort?"
Directed Tay Garnett, written by Gene Towne, C. Graham Baker and Allan G. Scott. Off-speed screwball not quite up to Dunne's top form. "What can a lot of money get you that two bucks can't?"(USA)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87v3e
AND
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87vqlj
(1:31:06)
** *
Ginger Rogers moves from park bench to Fifth Avenue digs
Fifth Avenue Girl (1939)
"I guess rich people are just poor people with money." Amalgamated Pump baron Timothy Borden (Walter Connolly) is "a simple old-fashioned man" who's "tired and bewildered" as his $10 million business faces bankruptcy and labor strife on his birthday. "Birthdays are all right, but you never get over the first one."
To clear his head, Borden strolls into Central Park where he meets out-of-work wise-cracker Mary Grey (Ginger Rogers) on seal-pond bench. With week's rent paid and $5 to her name, hungry Mary accepts Borden's dinner offer of ringside table at the Flamingo Club. "Well, if you're fool enough to spend it, I'm smart enough to help ya."
Later they retreat to his upper Fifth Ave. mansion to meet his wife Martha (terrific Verree Teasdale) who is "dancing her way to Reno with what well-known playboy", polo-player son Tim, Jr. (Tim Holt) who has his "name on a door down at the office", and debutante daughter Katherine (Kathryn Adams) who knows "nobody pays any attention to Dad."
Directed by Gregory LaCava, written by Allan Scott. Lavish cinderella screwball is chock full of quips but light on its loafers. "Look, I've had a wonderful evening. I've been out with society. I've got a wonderful headache. I couldn't be happier. But I really have to run along." (USA)
https://www.roku.com/whats-on/movies/fifth-avenue-girl?id=d4362d4674f255fca8786db4b738e6f5
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FURTHERMORE
https://www.criterion.com/films/723-trouble-in-paradise
https://www.criterion.com/films/27872-design-for-living
https://www.criterion.com/films/27900-it-happened-one-night
http://decentfilms.com/reviews/twentiethcentury
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/88738/ruggles-of-red-gap/#overview
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3797/theodora-goes-wild/#overview
https://www.filmsite.org/mrde.html
https://www.criterion.com/films/653-my-man-godfrey
https://drinkinthemovies.com/2021/01/12/easy-living-1937/
https://www.criterion.com/films/27904-the-awful-truth
https://www.criterion.com/films/29010-bringing-up-baby
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/4336/you-cant-take-it-with-you/#overview
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/69247/bluebeards-eighth-wife#overview
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3024/joy-of-living/#overview
https://www.filmsite.org/5thavegirl.html
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