The love of screwball comedies is what this blog is all about. Discussing and sharing everyone's favorite films and actors in them. Should be a fun experience for all involved.
Just rewatched this comedy classic this evening. One of my favorite screwball comedies, Hands Across The Table pairs my girl Carole Lombard with Fred MacMurray and the results are hilarious. Carole plays manicurist Regi Allen, who works at a swank hotel, and is determined to land a millionaire.One of her regular clients is Allen Macklyn, a rich man who was paralyzed in a plane crash. He's played by Ralph Bellamy. They get along great. Fred MacMurray enters the picture as poor playboy Theodore Drew, III, and the two are instantly attracted to each other. Wrongly believing Theodore to be wealthy, Regi invites him to live in her apartment -- until she discovers he's broke. Theodore wants to marry rich too, and so he gets engaged to an heiress he doesn't love. In classic screwball fashion, Regi and Theodore desperately try to ignore their growing passion for one another in favor of the promise of money -- and fail miserably. Carole and Fred make a great team and Hands Across the Table is a great looking and funny film. It does get a little serious towards the end, but never gets too serious. Carole is on the mark as usual and looks fabulous. Fred is pretty good as well. Great support by Bellamy and Ruth Donnelly as Regi's boss. One of the best screwball comedies ever. B+
Irene Dunne won Favorite Classic Movie Actress on my main blog All Good Things a few days ago and here is a film clip from one of her best screwball comedies, The Awful Truth. Irene is hilarious, pretending to be Cary's ditzy sister.
Check out this great photo from the classic screwball comedy You Can't Take It With You (1938). It's got the entire cast and director Frank Capra with their signatures right below their image. Very cool.
I recently made a list of my favorite Carole Lombard films for my sister blog All Good Things honoring Carole as the classic movie goddess of the month. I thought I would break that list down even further and list my favorite screwball comedies of hers. So here we go:
MR. AND MRS. SMITH (1941) This delightful battle of the sexes that was surprisingly directed by master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. It cast Carole and Robert Montgomery as a bickering couple who learn they are not really married. So now thinking they have to do it all over again, they wonder if it's worth it. This is my favorite film of Carole that she did for no other reason than it's a simple and fun little comedy. Lombard and Montgomery mesh well too. Great directing job by Hitch.
MY MAN GODFREY (1936) Carole is perfect as the dizzy socialite Irene Bullock who hires a vagrant played by William Powell) to be her family's butler. One of the best screwball comedies ever made. Lombard showed that her and Powell still had a great chemistry, considering they had just divorced a few years earlier.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942) The last film Carole made before her tragic death is one of her best. She plays actress Maria Tura, who is part of acting troupe in Poland contending with Nazis. Jack Benny plays her husband and they make for an entertaining pair.
HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE (1935) Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray team up for this delightful comedy about a manicurist and a no gooder who team up to find each their golden goose. Trouble is, they end up falling for each other. Another great comedy from Carole.
NOTHING SACRED (1937) As doomed Hazel Flagg, who thinks she is dying from radium poisoning, Carole is excellent. Fredric March is on hand as the reporter covering her story who begins to like her. Who knew that the subject of death would make such a great comedy. Well it does.
TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934) WOW! Lombard and John Barrymore go at it as a Broadway producer and a Hollywood diva who get back together for a new play. Hilarious hi jinks ensue.
Also notable films include The Princess Comes Across and We're Not Dressing.
After years of melodramas and period romance films, the usually serious minded Greta Garbo gets to have some fun in this very entertaining comedy. She plays a special envoy from Russia named Ninotchka who is sent to Paris to investigate the rather unorthodox and generally inefficient way in which three Russian ambassadors (Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalskia) are carrying out their job. She gets sidetracked by the unwanted advances of Count Leon d'Algout (played by the irrepressible Melvyn Douglas). His constant attempts to woo her and her not giving make up the bulk of the story. This entire film hinges on whether Garbo could perform in a comedy. And she passes with flying colors. Her Russian envoy is pretty much serious and has no time for games and she nails that portion with no problem. It's when she finally gets to lighten up, is when Garbo really shines. Ninotchka is a wonderful film with plenty of humor and a nice helping of romance as well. GARBO DELIVERS!
Me and Dawn have been posting about great on screen couples on Noir and Chick Flicks this month in celebration of Valentine's Day. One of my recent picks was the underrated team of Jane Wyman and Jack Carson. So I wanted to expand on Jane Wyman here and focus on her contributions to the screwball comedy genre. Most people know Jane for her serious films such as The Yearling, The Lost Weekend, Johnny Belinda (her only Oscar win), Stage Fright, and All That Heaven Allows. But Jane got her start in film early in her career with some great screwball comedies. During the mid 30's she had bit parts (both uncredited) in several comedies headlining Carole Lombard: My Man Godfrey and Fools For Scandals. She took over playing Torchy Blane, the wise-cracking reporter in 1939's Playing With Dynamite and she was off. Films during this period included Wide Open Faces (1938) with Joe E. Brown; the Brother Rat films with Ronald Reagan, Priscilla Lane and Eddie Albert; and Honeymoon For Three (1941) with Ann Sheridan. All these films provided Jane to work on her comedic skills and she would get better with each subsequent role.
with Ronald Reagan
Her break-out comedy film would be 1941's You're In The Army Now, co-starring Phil Silvers and Jimmy Durante. Jane was the girl caught between the two guys and I think she would learn a lot from working with these two comedians. She would pair up with frequent co-star Jack Carson for the first time in the gangster comedy Larceny, Inc. co-starring Edward G. Robinson.
with Jack Carson
From that point on Jane and Jack would team up for 3 more comedies: Princess O'Rourke (1943 with Olivia de Havilland); Make Your Own Bed (1944) and the classic screwball film The Doughgirls (1944) featuring an all-star cast of Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith, Eve Arden and Charlie Ruggles.
with Kay Kyser
Jane would also star in 1942's My Favorite Spy with Kay Kyser and Footlight Serenade with Betty Grable. So while she may be known more for her dramas and to be fair she did win an Oscar for Johnny Belinda, I think Jane was very underrated when it came to comedy and she was very good at it. Her chemistry with Jack Carson was a plus in those films and her willingness to be a team player in those other films only helped make her a better all around actress. Hats off to Jane Wyman, one of the best.
The Doughgirls: Eve Arden, Jane Wyman, Alexis Smith and Ann Sheridan
Check out this clip from Torchy Blane starring the first Torchy (Glenda Farrell) asking a slightly confused but funny Jane Wyman some questions. It's cool that Jane would later go on to play Torchy in one of the sequels.
One of the earliest screwball comedies and one of the best is the 1937 classic, The Awful Truth, which paired Irene Dunne and Cary Grant for the very first time. It's no secret that I have always thought Cary and Irene made the best on screen couple. And Cary has worked with some of the top actresses in the world but he was never better than when paired with Dunnie. The plot of this film has Jerry and Lucy Warriner preparing to divorce and trying their best to ruin each other's chances of remarriage. As one of the early screwball comedies, Truth doesn't hold anything back. The dialogue is crisp and biting. Cary and Irene have wonderful chemistry in their first film together and Irene is positively firing on all cylinders. She is funny from the word go. I believe the great Katherine Hepburn had to have seen this film prior to making Bringing Up Baby and based her performance on what Irene did. She had too. Dunnie was just that good in Truth. The film moves at a brisk pace given the fact it's running time is 92 minutes and not one single second is wasted. In addition to Dunne and Grant, there is terrific support from Cecil Cunningham as Aunt Patsy and Ralph Bellamy in his typical role of the stand up guy. Also Asta the dog from The Thin Man series is a hoot as Mr. Smith. Expert direction from Leo McCarey, who won an Oscar for Best Director for his work here and he deserved it. So if you have never watched The Awful Truth, find it online or rent it or better yet buy it, because you will want to watch this film over and over again.
Jerry: I'm going out to get some popcorn and pink lemonade. I've just seen a three-ring circus.
A fun-loving and handsome couple (Cary Grant, Constance Bennett) are killed when they smash their sporty roadster into a tree while returning from a bender. As ghosts in limbo, they decide that one good deed will send them to heaven, so they choose to enliven the life of their dull friend Topper (Roland Young) by showing him how to live as they did -- fast and loose. One of the best screwball comedies of the 1930's with the entire cast clicking on all cylinders. In addition to Grant, Bennett, and Young, look for the great Billie Burke as Mrs. Topper. She's a hoot as usual. Followed by two more entertaining sequels, Topper Takes A Trip (1938) and Topper Returns (1941).
Happy Birthday to Irene Dunne, a grand actress who starred in all kinds of films: musicals, westerns, dramas, and of course screwball comedies. Her pairings with Cary Grant are legendary with The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife and Penny Serenade. And Irene was sensational in the screwball comedy classic Theodora Goes Wild. Other films include Love Affair (1939), A Guy Named Joe (1943), The White Cliffs Of dover (1944), and Life With Father (1947). Happy Birthday Dunnie, as my friend Renata calls her.
