Popularized during the Great Depression, the screwball comedy is a subgenre that enjoyed a brief heyday, but has influenced everything that came after it. Indebted to Shakespeare's comedies of marriage, the screwball genre, in effect, satirizes the traditional love story with witty repartee, farce, disguises, and slapstick, among other touchstones.
Central to this subgenre is the immortal battle-of-the-sexes, which was a fresh concept to audiences at the time, and class conflict, a daily concern for those affected by the stock market crash of 1929. Though these elements were given weight, the screwball comedy was, foremost, an escapist genre, and by 1942, its time had ended. Kick-off your love affair with this most delightful, most American of genres with these 10 unforgettable screwball comedies listed below!
10 Design For Living (1933)
Two American artist pals, George (Gary Cooper) and Thomas (Fredric March) butt heads over the attentions of the charming Gilda (Miriam Hopkins), while sharing an apartment in Paris. Since she can't bring herself to choose one or the other, the three decide to make a go at a platonic friendship ... with the expected results.
Based on a play by Noel Coward, Ernst Lubitsch's pre-code marvel sparkles with the director's signature touch and features a central, star-studded ménage à trois that wouldn't have made it past the censors just a year later.
9 It Happened One Night (1934)
Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is an heiress on the run from her overbearing father who crosses paths with an opportunistic reporter, Peter Warne (Clark Gable). Having escaped from the family yacht after an ill-advised marriage, Ellie takes Peter up on his offer to get her back to her beau in exchange for the scoop, but, on the way, the two start to fall for each other, despite their socioeconomic disparities.
The first film to win the "Big Five" at the Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay) and a major template setter not just for screwball comedies but romantic comedies, more broadly, It Happened One Night remains an indelible and influential classic to this day.
8 My Man Godfrey (1936)
Tapped by Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) to serve as a butler to her blue-blooded family, down on his luck Godfrey Park (William Powell) sees an opportunity to teach the spoiled members of the upper-crust a lesson.
Though screwball comedies are primarily films about romance, the pliable genre also works when it features a more satirical eye, as in Gregory La Cava's celebrated Depression-era skewering of class. Eat the rich, indeed!
7 The Awful Truth (1937)
Cary Grant and Irene Dunne star as Jerry and Lucy Grant, a well-heeled couple who both accuse the other of being unfaithful. After getting the ball rolling on a divorce, they each realize they still carry a torch for the other but refuse to admit it, seeking instead to throw a wrench in each other's plans for remarriage.
Perhaps no actor is more associated with screwball comedy than Cary Grant, and Leo McCarey's "comedy of re-marriage," The Awful Truth, is the film that made him a star.
6 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Hapless paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) desperately needs the cool million promised by Mrs. Random (May Robson) to help fund his museum. The only problem? Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), the socialite's daffy niece, draws him into a wild caper involving a missing fossil and a hungry leopard.
Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant make for comedy magic in this, the zaniest of screwball films. Though directed by Hollywood heavyweight Howard Hawks and featuring two of the era's most recognizable stars, Bringing Up Baby was a veritable flop, released the same year that Hepburn was labeled "box-office poison," a marker she wouldn't have been able to shed without the help of playwright Philip Barry and The Philadelphia Story, a couple of years later.
5 His Girl Friday (1939)
After she gets engaged to a strait-laced insurance agent, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) is read the riot act by her ex-husband, Walter Burns (Cary Grant), a hard-bitten newspaper editor. An investigative reporter, herself, Hildy is tempted away from her tidy marriage when Walter assigns her to cover a story about a convicted murderer, who may not be so guilty after all.
Adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page (which, itself received a screen adaptation in 1931) Howard Hawks' sharp, witty, talk-a-thon is considered by many to be the definitive screwball comedy.
4 The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Cantankerous socialite Tracy Lord's (Katharine Hepburn) impending marriage to the newly-moneyed George Kittredge (John Howard) is the talk of Philadelphia, so much so that columnist Macaulay Connor (James Stewart) comes up with a plan to weasel his way into an exclusive story for his gossip rag. As if his imposition wasn't bad enough, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), Tracy's ex-husband, shows up to really muck up the supposedly happy occasion.
Playing a part written for her by Philip Barry, The Philadelphia Story was Hepburn's mea culpa to the American audience who had grown tired of her haughty ways. She didn't take home an Oscar for her role (though Stewart did), but she got her career back, while at the same time starring in what's come to be known as one of the best-loved pieces of American cinema, made all the more unforgettable by an incandescent triumvirate of star players rarely seen in movies.
3 The Lady Eve (1941)
Pairing Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda as a con artist and her mark, The Lady Eve sees Stanwyck falling for the man she's planning to swindle out of his fortune. When he begins to suspect her true intentions, he dumps her, leading Stanwyck on a quest to make amends and get him back by inventing an identity, Lady Eve Sidwich.
If Cary Grant is the screwball comedy's ultimate leading man, then Preston Sturges is its eternal scribe. The writer/director's The Lady Eve is a boffo battle-of-the-sexes farce, with Stanwyck at her magnetic best.
2 The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Financial troubles lead Gerry (Claudette Colbert) to split from her husband, Tom (Joel McCrea), and make her way to Palm Beach in search of a financier to fund his architectural projects. Not so thrilled with the plan, Tom trails his wife and gets mixed up with eccentric millionaire John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee) and his amorous sister, Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor), who really complicate things.
Giddily absurd and cheekily subversive, The Palm Beach Story isn't typically mentioned among Sturges' greatest works, but it's one of the last great screwball comedies before the genre lost steam.
1 What's Up, Doc? (1972)
Howard Banister (Ryan O'Neal) and Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand) both find themselves in San Francisco competing for the same musical research grant before they're both drawn into a complex and nutty plot involving stolen jewels, top-secret government papers, and a bag of musical rocks.
Though many later films have been influenced by classic screwball comedy, Peter Bogdonavich's forgotten 70s gem is a shameless ode to the genre that nails the tone and style like no other.
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