Full Transcript for Screwball Comedy: Love, Class, Chaos (with Wes Gehring)

when he switched -- when the cartoonists switched newspapers is classic screwball. I mean, the guy is an antihero and he's got kind of a controlling wife. And he's anxious to be out with the boys or maybe have a girlfriend somewhere or something like that. So it's really pop culture oriented. And then in Vaudeville in the 1930s, there was what was called kind of a bad name for it, the "Dum Dora" acts. And it was usually a couple. And the best example of it would be George Burns and Gracie Allen. But the woman wasn't dumb. She was just -- replaced that with very eccentric. And it was almost like we're in a world now in the 20th century where man continues to -- men continue to try to make sense of an irrational odd world. And the women in most screwball comedies and in a lot of antiheroic writing, the women are kind of very eccentric. And so you have to be kind of eccentric and not trying to be rational to get through this life. So that's at the very heart of pop culture, Vaudeville, cartoons, the New Yorker writers. And that all kind of comes to fruition with screwball comedy in the 1930s. That's all there. Well, and that's really interesting. And obviously we'll talk about a lot of the other elements that kind of go into screwball comedies. But I think part of it is like there's -- it's quick-witted dialogue, the way that the characters speak. And as you've been talking about, kind of like these -- the female characters, you know, yeah, you kind of talked about the two different female characters that often you find in them. But I think you could just say also one of them, there's this empowerment with the female character that we're kind of getting this stronger female character. What do you think as far as like how that was pioneering the way that women were being portrayed in film that may have also led to some of the appeal of these films? Well, it even goes beyond this particular genre. Maybe the top-selling novel of the '30s was Gone With the Wind. And the center of the woman was -- you know, I'm not wild about her, but she was doing anything to save the home. And a lot of sociologists have suggested part of the drama of Gone With the Women was the fact that -- and again, this is -- in doing a lot of research on screwball comedy, I found that there was a lot of immigration in the early part of the 20th century into America. And studies have shown that women, they hit the ground running. They adapt. They make it go. And men have trouble in a new setting of, you know, just making a living or, you know, kind of -- they can't let go of wherever they came from. Whereas, you know, women were sewing and washing and just doing anything that they could do. And they really kind of held the home together. So this isn't a knock on women or anything like that. It just seems like they were more adjustable to a world gone kind of crazy, which is the 20th century. Interesting. I want to talk a little bit about kind of where all of this came from, as far as the screwball comedy and everything. And I think talking about the 20th century and I think a key part of this era that we're in right here is the Great Depression. Obviously, that was a big element that was going on when the stock market crashed and kind of this downturn really changed the entire world. I mean, is there an element where, as like Solvez Travels suggested, where people just needed escapism? Is that part of it? Or is it really that it's saying something more? I think one of the reasons why people wanted to cut off screwball comedy after the 30s is because it was very escapist. Most people were down to their last dime, but they could get into the movie and for two hours they could escape bad things. And screwball comedies always are high profile, mansions, rich people, fast cars, things like that. So, yeah, that's very much escapism. Were the filmmakers pushing to get the social commentary in there because people also wanted some of that? Or was that just kind of like part and parcel with how they started telling these stories? Well, most screwball comedies you wouldn't know there was a depression on them. My Man Godfrey is kind of unusual in that way that we talk about Forgotten Man and the William Paul character. And so that's different. Most screwball comedies don't want people to think at all about what's outside the theater. They want to just imagine themselves rich and famous, not necessarily famous, but just in a good place. Yeah, you're certainly seeing a lot of rich characters as you watch these films. That's definitely the case. In doing some digging myself, other than kind of the depression and looking for escapism, I was also looking at what other sorts of storytelling was going on. And there were certainly like kind of the stage farce was popular at the time as well as far as like kind of just farcical storytelling. Do you feel like that there was an element in that sort of comedy that translated well when they were writing these sorts of comedies? I think very much so. Sort of the comedy of manners. I think the best example would be Noel Coward, his place between the wars. And Blythe Spirit is pure screwball comedy. Again, a male call between, except it gets into screwball comedy and fantasy, but he's called between two controlling ex-wives who have passed away and he ends up getting out of town, except that the play is slightly different. He gets away from him. The Ruxar is a movie adaptation. He's kind of stuck there. So the novel is somewhat different. But yeah, Noel Coward shouts sort of screwball comedy. I was lucky enough to see Kevin Kline on Broadway in which you got Tony for in Present Laughter, which is another Noel Coward play, which is pure screwball comedy. It's almost about minutia among the rich. You could almost say that. And that's why it still plays well. And when you have a kind of a revisionist, retro revisionist look at it like in Arthur. Arthur's a billionaire, you know, and he's just living

the dream, but he's threatened with this forced marriage with his father-in-law, a wealthy businessman, as somebody who's going to give him a job and he's going to suddenly be rigid, tied up. He can't have his freedom. So I think that's part of the draw. It's not at all like the escapism of wonderful places and have three squares a day and all that good stuff. But it's just the freedom that it represents. There's also a lot of I think it's called like comedy of remarriage where you have couples who are divorcing that ends up being a part of the story as we go into like, are they going to reconcile? Like, how is all of this going to play as far as their relationship, almost as they're re-figuring things out over the course of that? That seems like another element that we'd see a bit in these. Yeah. That's definitely a key element. The only unfortunate thing about that is that there's actually a book written called comedy of remarriage, but they kind of implied all scribble of comedies were that way and they're really not. I mean, a good example of it though would be, um, Leo McCary did a film called The Awful Truth, which he won an Academy Award for as best director. With that particular film, we can just back up the truck a minute and say McCary mastered all the comedy genres, whether it was Belza St. Mary, Going My Way, Papias, the 40s, or Shubaw in the 30s. But anyway, he knew he had a really, really good film. They sneak previewed and it didn't do well. And so he was a really good script doctor. He pondered and pondered it. And it opens with a divorce. And in the 30s, a divorce was, you know, kind of sad. People didn't want to, you know, this attractive young couple and they're getting divorced. And so what he did is he shot one three minute scene that I show in my classes sometimes. And if people have seen The Awful Truth, it starts off with Irene Dunn is calling the family lawyer and saying, we're going to get a divorce. And so the divorce, their friend and lawyer is basically saying, no, no, I forgot her name, but we'll say just no, no, Irene, you know, marriage is a wonderful, wonderful thing. So while he's talking in the phone, his wife comes in and says, your food is getting cold, you know, we got any, you know, kind of like bug off, you know, I'm talking here like that. And so he's going, marriage is a wonderful, beautiful thing. And so she interrupts him again and he's a little more hostile with her. And then the third time, which is again in comedy, we always do sets of threes and we top each time. But the third time she comes in, he's frustrated with his wife and he goes, just get out of here. I don't really, I'm paraphrasing, but it's like, I don't want to hear from you. And he's still these negative thing is as negative as you could get during the censorship code. And then he gets right back in the phone and says, you know, Irene, marriage is a lovely and beautiful thing. And he just dropped that into the beginning of the film. And

the awful truth was like, I think the top gross in comedy of 1937. And he got an Oscar, but just that one scene had to tell the audience that, okay, things are going to work out. This is a comedy we're not going to worry about, you know, and that is a comedy of remarriage because we spend the next 90 minutes trying to get Cary Grant and Irene done back together again. I think that's part of the comedy nature of it is you're putting your characters into a lot of these different situations that in a different film are very serious sorts of situations, you know, divorce, death, you can name a bunch of other things that tie into these stories. But they're done in such fun and lighthearted ways that it kind of allows for just and it's the nature of comedy anyway, right? But I think when you put it into screwball comedy with kind of the frantic nature of the story that it really kind of amps things up even more as they're going. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. I want to talk about the Hays Code because that obviously becomes a key player in not just screwball comedy, but film in general, but certainly screwball comedy. There was an impact in the way that comedy films were being told because of the Hays Code. Can you talk a little bit about the Hays Code, the restrictions that it imposed and how writers and filmmakers ended up kind of shifting their storytelling and like what that did with screwball comedy? Well, I don't think anybody in Hollywood sat down and said, OK, we're going to have to we're going to actually make a sex comedy without sex. But that's essentially the message that the Hays Code sent. There had been a code during the silent era, but it had been really heavily enforced. And without language, it was easier to censor anyway. But once you got into language and end up on tundra and all these kinds of things, then it became tricky. And they always say, you know, the censorship code was largely brought about by Mae West and gangster films. I mean, that was the big component because she was always saying things like, you know, I feel like a million just one at a time, you know, and things like that. But I think it's often neglected as there were a number of relationship films made prior to the code like Lubitsch's Paradise film. Trouble in Paradise? Trouble in Paradise. Yeah, it was made in like 33, 34 right in there. And it was very suggestive of a lot of things. And that's the cream of the crop. But there were a number of films along those lines that suggested a lot of a good example would be like it's not screwball comedy, but Clark Gable and Jean Harlow were in a film called Red Dust. It was easily suggestive that she was a sex worker and that they were caught off in a rubber plantation and Southeast Asian stuff like that. Or another, again, not a screwball comedy, but public enemy with Cagney and stuff. People are living together and they're not married or they have a mistress on the side and things like that. And I was when I

was rethinking all of this stuff from my first screwball comic book, you know, it dawned on me, even though it happened one night comes out when the code is coming together. But the code doesn't really fully come together until well into 1934, even though we often date it from 33. And it happened one night, came out in February of 34. I had never thought about that as a racy kind of movie. But the scene when they stay at the motels, which are little cabins, and they put up the blanket, even something like that wouldn't have been done after 1934. Two unmarried people spending the night together in a cabin. So sometimes what was controversial then we actually kind of miss because it just doesn't seem that much. And another one I was in some clips again, not a screwball comedy. Queen Christina, a Greta Garbo film that was made right in that particular period. It set centuries ago and ends off and you shared a bed or bedroom with a stranger. And John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, he thinks that she's a man. And when it all comes out, you know, we fade to black. It's got a real Lubitch feel to it. Again, that never could have happened now any kind of implication along those particular lines. So there were a lot of quality and B movies made just prior to the code that just randomly were realistic, you know, that people went on a date, maybe slept together or lived together to get married, things like that. But yeah, the code tried to cover everything, you know, no suggestion of being gay, narcotics or an out. You couldn't again, I don't know how Chaplin got the great dictator through, but the code said you were supposed to make fun of a leader of a country. The country, right. Everything they could think of, they threw into that code. But lots of times directors would get by whatever the genre by packing it with all kinds of controversial stuff and knowing it would be cut. But some things that were kind of on the bubble, the censorship people, it would get through. So like Miracle of Morgan's Creek, that Preston Sturgis film, I think James Agee reviewed that and said Preston Sturgis raped Hayes office, you know, because there are things in that that are overly seductive. And again, there's a screwball comedy outside the realm of the 30s. It was made in 1944 during World War Two. So it sort of satirizes screwball comedy, satirizes America during the war years. And somebody going to a party for the boys that were going off and the next morning she's pregnant. She doesn't remember the boys. She doesn't remember anything else. And the Hayes office said, OK, you've got to stick something in there where somebody kept saying, we've got to get married. We've got to get married. Everybody needs one need to get married. So theoretically, she was married, but she doesn't remember who the person was. I think that so it's it was a crazy period. It really was. And it's it's interesting to hear that because like nowadays you hear how filmmakers will put more into their their directors cut their their their raw cut that they submit aiming for an R knowing that stuff's going to have to get cut. But hoping that they'll still be able to leave some of it in like, you know, it sounds like they were doing the exact same thing with the Hays Code back then. Like we'll put a whole bunch in and they'll cut some stuff, but hopefully we'll still get away with some of it. Yeah, yeah, it's a good it's a good plan to do. Yeah, right. It's interesting the way that they were kind of always playing the game. I guess that's what you got to do with these sorts of things. But then they would also use that to find ways to to change their comedy or like playing with the double entendres everything like the trains and everything like, you know, the the the example that I think of as far as trains being used to allude to a sexual encounter. Like, I don't think you can find a better one like that. The end of Vevacious Lady when you have the train whistle, but it's like a whoo, whoo, you know, it's like the whole wolf call. Yeah, yeah. There's more of my favorite since what I did. I recently did a book on Hitchcock and humor. I wanted to underline the fact that most of his films are really romantic comic thrillers. He only basically did three or four out and out more films. But my favorite film of his is North by Northwest. And that ends with a train going into a tunnel just as Cary Grant is pulled even more sane up in the bed. Yeah. And George Carlin used to even do a routine about that. He goes, you don't need to be full. You need to know what that implies or what that means. Right. Exactly. Very funny. Well, let's talk a little bit. We've been talking a lot about screwball comedy, but I want to make sure that we kind of have a sense as to how we're distinguishing this from comedy, the broader sense of comedy as a genre. But also, and I think this is where some people end up getting confused, romantic comedy, because I feel like the lines of those can can end up. Crossing a little bit and obviously blending sometimes. But I do think that they each have their own unique flavor. Well, what I try to tell my students and it usually soaks in, but a lot of times it doesn't. But if you don't remember anything else, remember this in screwball comedy, you just take the person for who they are. It's like squirrel. You know, it's that kind of thing. You know, you don't try to change or anything else. Whereas in romantic comedy, maybe the other person is enforcing you to. But one person is wanting to change to be a part of a couple. And probably the best example is like, and as good as it gets when Jack Nicholson says, you make me want to be a better person. That's a key factor. And then another key factor is the women are more in charge in screwball, a controlling person in a free spirit. Whereas in a romantic comedy, the woman is still a strong person, but she's in a situation where, how should I say this? Nora Epran always said all screwball

comedy start with pride and prejudice. And Darcy in that particular film, I mean, our leading lady in the novel is very strong and determined, but she's wrong about Darcy. So it's not that the men are in charge, but they have to learn that the situation, the total situation, and they do the right thing. And it's a more equal, equal grounds kind of genre. But in screwball, the women definitely dominate. And that gets back to what we mentioned with the New Yorker and the literary connection. And then another thing about romantic and screwball comedy is romantic comedy, love is on a pedestal. Think of when Harry met Sally and Rob Reiner has got periodically, we just break into the narrative and we see an older couple in a love seat and saying, you know, we fell in love in high school and then he moved away and now, you know, we met again and all that kind of thing. Whereas screwball comedy, another way of looking at screwball comedy is it's a parody. It's a parody of romantic comedy because our central couple is usually fighting throughout the thing. And it's only at the end that they kind of come together. And there's often an implication that it ain't going to work. Those are central things to the two. You don't make fun of love in a romantic comedy. And that's all you do kind of. And it's reinforced throughout the film. Nothing so direct as Rob Reiner putting an older, very much in love couple together on a love seat. But in most, I'll say, yeah, I'll say in most screwball comedies, any other married relationship you're in, like the one I mentioned just now about the awful truth and the judge when they called about the divorce, married couples in screwball comedies are depicted as usually unhappy, argumentative, you know, things aren't working out. So those are those are some easy kind of template things to think about with the two differentiating to. But that being said, I'll give you two examples from two generations that you could see going either way. The Philadelphia story ultimately to me is a romantic comedy because Catherine Hepburn stops being an ice goddess. She gets thawed out by the end of the film. And another one you could make a great case for either way would be knocked up. But again, it's got all kinds of screwball comic characters. But ultimately, if you put a dull butter knife to my neck, I always force the truth. I would say it's a romantic comedy because our our druggy is going to change up, change and be good for his upwardly mobile girlfriend eventual wife. But again, I don't see that lasting. Again, that's an element of school. OK, another another differential differential between screwball and romantic comedy is romantic comedies often start on a sad note. And then we work our way into falling in love again. It shows the importance of it. So like in sleepless in Seattle starts in a cemetery where our central character Tom Anks has lost his wife. And the rest of it is, you know, his son is playing matchmaker in that particular film or like in an affair to remember the first half of that particular film is is very screwball comic nature like. But both Deborah Carr and Cary Grant are in other relationships and they're on a steamer and they make a pact that if in six months they're still happy with whoever their width, they're going to meet at the top of the Empire State Building. I was to my co-eds watch when you cross the street if you're meeting your lover, you know, we don't you don't get hit by a car. And so the second half is romantic slash kind of melodrama. So screwball comedies tend to speed up with kind of a negative beginning, working its way towards something positive and happy that love lives on. Whereas in screwball comedy, it's it's a constant kind of rush like the ending of what's up, Doc, it gets faster and faster. And it's almost as if to suggest, don't try to make sense out of this thing. We're just going to give you the narrative on very quickly. So those are those are some cues to look for. And do you find in I feel like I know the answer to this, but between the two screwball comedy is where you're going to find more of the satire and kind of mocking institutions and the rich and all that. You're not necessarily getting that sort of storytelling so much in the romantic comedies, right? Yeah, yeah, I would definitely agree. It comes out, I think, in my man Godfrey, especially the implication being it's a conservative implication, actually, that we don't need benefits from the government. You know, these forgotten men at the dump, we can we're just a little help. We can turn the dump into this high profile nightclub or whatever. Yeah. All we need is the chance to work again. Yeah, exactly. As far as how it ends up evolving over time, I mean, it has this kind of peak in popularity, like 30s, early 40s. What about this particular period in time made audiences so receptive to these films? I think part of it was, and this is another basic component of screwball comedy, it's implosive. And implosive, I'll do the contrast. If a film is explosive, it's something like the Marx Brothers and our anarchy and, you know, let's satirize everything under the sun. Screwball comedy is implosive in that oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes it's people from different classes falling in love. Go back to heaven one night, we've got a reporter in a runaway heiress, you know, and they fall in love. And we have constantly a number of those. And the message being that we have to remember that in the 30s, you know, America is hoping we're going to have democracy and everything's going to work out, but people are trying all kinds of isms and things like that. And actually, Marxist critics in the 30s hated screwball comedies because the implication was blue collar and wealth, they can get together and it'll all work out. Usually it's the blue collar that's making things work and everything like that. I think part of it is there, the possibility that there's a lot of

poor people out there and they can meet a very wealthy prince charming or whatever and go from there. So I think that's a key component of it in the 30s. Obviously, we're, time-wise, World War II is right around the corner. And with that, is there kind of a shift away as far as what people were looking for in this sort of comedy? I think part of it was for some, I mean, screwball comedy was alive and well during the war, just not as prevalent as it had been in the 30s. But anytime you go to war, and I tell my students this about, especially when we talk about gangster films and film war, there were very few gangster films made during World War II. And part of it is we're at war and it's very nationalistic and everything about America or whatever country you're from. If you're at war, you prop up all the positives. So there's all kinds of biography films of great Americans and there's everything that's positive about it. We don't want to show anything negative like gangster film or something like that. And with screwball comedy, there were probably less in the sense that some people felt, okay, this is serious. We've got to win the war. We can't have something kind of lighthearted along those lines. But here's where something comes in that people don't always take into account with screwball. Genres are constantly morphing into something else. And it's essential in the beginning screwball comedy was about just being eccentric. But by the end of the 30s, they needed another thing to make people eccentric in a screwball comedy. And fantasy comes in with a topper series. And during World War II, that worked very well because a lot of people were in denial about lost loved ones or hoping that they would meet in another world or something like that. So that was one way that screwball comedy used fantasy to have people act eccentrically. Now, the topper story starts before the war, but a lot of the, I won't say a lot, but several of the screwball comics during World War II have a fantasy element in there somewhere. Like here comes Mr. Jordan, which is just right on the cusp of World War II. So there's that, the fantasy element of there's something beyond here. Yeah. And that's interesting because I hadn't ever really thought about that much. But it's interesting because like the ghost story films that you would end up getting, not necessarily even just screwball comedy, but dramas or whatever. It's like you can see how that shift in society wanting to tell those stories about your lost loved ones coming back in some capacity. That's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that. Yeah. Because the topper series, that evolves from the film, which came out in the 30s too. And I know they made a few films, but then also there was a TV show, right? Didn't they make a TV show? Yeah, it's a phenomenally popular property because it was on, there was a popular radio show of it in the 40s. And then we go into the 50s and it's a very popular TV series too. Yeah.

I know we're not talking about the movies, but they're fun movies. It was fun to see what they were doing at the time with effects also. Like they were really, it was just kind of very creative and everything. Now, we've kind of already mentioned this, the idea of the debate as to whether the genre ended with kind of like when World War II hit or even before, or if it has continued. And certainly, I think it's fair to say that you feel that it continued. And I think after watching all these films that we're talking about that, I think so too. But what is it that led so many people to say, oh no, hard and fast, this is a sub genre. It ended at this particular point in time as opposed to recognizing that there's possibility it continued. Well, I think part of it was just the fact that war is serious, we have to win, and we can't have these lighthearted kind of comedies. And people just assumed that, okay, screwball comedy was over. But the way I look at screwball comedy, I call it American farce. And farce is never going to go away. Probably maybe the most central director of all time is Howard Hawks. And he single handedly kept it going, you know, from bringing up baby all the way up through each decade had a classic, like, oh, what, monkey business in 1952 with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. And then in the 60s, there was like man's favorite sport with Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss. And he did screwball comedies over like three or four decades. I mean, so he's like a one man marching band for it. But I mean, there were other people that were making screwball comedies at that time. And then in looking through the years, it seems we reached a point where people wanted them back in a bigger way. And in the 80s, we just had a ton of them really coming out. Arthur maybe being the best, but Victor Victoria would be another one. It's a Neil Simon play. Seems like old times. And in fact, I've got one of the I collect original posters, but on the original poster for seems like old times, you've got Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn kind of Goldie Hawn being the new Carol Lombard type eccentric. But on the original posters that you would go to the theater at each side of the of the poster, they would have three or four stills from classic screwball comedies from the 30s. You didn't even have to, you know, I wonder if they're thinking about that. I mean, it was right in your face. So every decade, I can tell you a few, but it just seemed to really explode in the 80s. But we had mentioned before in an email, I see it going to TV. I think I Love Lucy is with some tweaks here and there has a lot of screwball comic tendencies because it was such white bread television other than maybe the honeymooners or something like that. And suddenly you've got we're in we're in New York. And we've got a nightclub performer. You know, he's always got free time like they always do in screwball comedy. It's a very zany wife and things like that. We just kind of repackaged it, you know, but Steve Martin, just L.A. story, House sitter, all of me. He was kind of like a cottage industry of making screwball comedies, often with Carl Reiner. Man with two brains. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting bringing up television because I feel like in some ways, maybe also because in TV, it wasn't necessarily a Hays Code sort of thing, but they had codes as far as what they could and could not show and talk about on TV. And it certainly seems like that gave them the opportunities to write sitcoms the same way that they were writing screwball comedies in the 30s, where they had to think about ways where they could play with language and play with the double entendres and do those things to kind of suggest that sexual situations or whatever the case may be in ways that could pass by the TV sensors. So yeah, and some major directors from the 30s and 40s of screwball comedies ended up in American television. Now, he's not a fan favorite of Billy Wilder or Preston Sturgis because they always thought he ruined the scripts, but Mitchell Lyson ended up doing screwball-esque type comedies on American television in the 50s. And so when the bottom dropped off and TV sucked up much of the audience, a lot of the talent went to television. So it makes sense that like I married a witch and we ended up later on with a variation of sorts with bewitched. There's always that kind of continuity thing going on. But later in the century, I mean, in the 90s, if you deal with stereotypes, the male in screwball comedy is rigid and either he's rigid or he's threatened with rigidity. Well, Richard Curtis, the screenwriter and now director in Britain, a film like Four Weddings and a Funeral, is paint by number, pen template of screwball comedies. And then I think it came out in '88, but a fish called Wanda, John Cleese, that's again, paint by number. One of the things that maybe throws off people with later screwball comedies is it seems like every genre, just to be safe and to get as many people in the audience, they throw in another element. Well, screwball comedy has a lot of elements that are close to dark comedy and like a fish called Wanda, you can easily see that as a dark comedy. You can also see it kind of as almost a cartoon, which screwball comedies get very cartoonish at times. Like Buck's Money is based on Clark Gable, if something happened one night. Shooting those carrots, right? Yeah. Yeah. So a fish called Wanda, you can't watch that well, thinking of Wiley Coyote and, you know, things being dropped on. Steamroller is rolling over people who survive. Yeah, yeah, who survived without any problem. Exactly. Exactly. Well, okay. So this, it's interesting because obviously there, there's been some adaptation within screwball comedy as time has gone on. You have the, the Hays Code, which is, we mentioned, but it comes to an end. But screwball comedies don't necessarily, or maybe they do, do they get more rebald? Do they, do they

change in ways that are reflecting kind of the attitudes of the times and audience expectations as we kind of walk through the decades? Well, every genre has to have some little change going by. And like I mentioned, I said, like the first one in screwball, and they don't have to, but I mean, there's, there's often a nuance with something. And in the late thirties, it was fantasy. But when you go through, further into the 20th century, one element would be fame. Julia Roberts did a film called Runaway Bride, I think was the name of something like that. And Richard Gere was the, I mean, it was like a retro because he was a newspaper person again for USA Today. And, but anyway, when he arrived or whatever, people just acted eccentric. And so fame was the new reason explanation why people would act kind of screwy. Nodding Hill is another example, you know, everybody's suddenly all messed up because it's Julia Roberts playing a movie star and Drew Roberts is a movie, you know, the whole thing. So they're, they're always kind of undergoing a change and it usually doesn't take place real quickly. But one example, I can think of as night and day, it's not screwball, but in 1960, Psycho and Peeping Tom came out and suddenly, not that we didn't have films in Europe and, you know, Zombie, Zombie's, you know, Jack the Ripper and stuff like that. But suddenly after 1960, the number of domestic horror films were prevalent with about the boy next door. Most of the films were like, oh, that's Old World, that's superstitious. And suddenly it made it very contemporary. But most genres, that doesn't happen, you know, it takes a while and just slowly merges into something. But Cheers would be a variation on a screwball comic, you know, you've got the two poles of difference, you know, and that dancing isn't really an antihero except he plays a dumb jock, you know, so he's, and he's called between, you know, an intellectual and whoever he's dating at the time or going out with that kind of thing. There's that triangle variation again. So you just have to kind of tweak it here and there, but it's, it's, it's there. It's still there. Yeah, yeah. With screwball comedies kind of continuing and we're seeing this evolution of the, of this sub genre, and especially as somebody who's teaching them, do you find that audiences are still connecting with these classic screwball comedies? And even though there's, you know, obviously a separation of time, and in some cases, cultural context, are they still as effective? Yeah, and something like It Happened One Night is still very, very popular with my students. In fact, they kind of go around the barn the other way, they realize that Mel Brooks in Spaceballs uses several components from It Happened One Night and they go, Oh, he got that from I mean, they're, they're suddenly, I mean, they're entertained, but it had to have happened in the last two or three years within six blocks of the mall, or they don't, they don't know the you know, you're, you're standing on the shoulders of other people and you're making movies. And so part of my students, I think, interest in older films is one, they still hold up, but two, they're starting to see where these things came from, plot points, components of this side or the other thing. Right. There's a whole history there. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, we're going to take a quick break, we'll be right back, and we'll jump into kind of talking through some of these components and start talking about these 10 films that we're going to discuss. We've talked a lot about the components before we jump into the films, I just want to have kind of like, just a quick conversation about like all of the different things that kind of make up screwball comedies we've talked about kind of like fast pace, rapid, clever dialogue, you get the kind of misunderstandings through the dialogue a lot of the double entendres. And I just want it like as a quick example, can you think of a scene that from a screwball comedy where there's a misunderstanding or double entendre that leads to something that's particularly hilarious or memorable moment? In bringing up baby, she doesn't have very big part his fiance, but people who have seen bringing up baby is about reconstructing up on a source or something like that. And they're waiting for this one last bone. Well, the bone goes right where a penis would go, and people don't pick up on that. But anyway, his fiance isn't into having children. She goes, this is what I'm going to do. And she goes, this will be our baby, meaning the, you know, the brontosaurus kind of thing, which kind of chills Cary Grant, but he's he's stuck with her. And there's all kinds of the dialogue is always very such as her name is Miss swallow. And I mean, there's, there's, there's all kinds of things along those particular lines that make you pause, but the screwball comedies goes through such a pace. I think that's part of the reason the pacing is there, because they want to get by the sensor. And if they if they throw enough spaghetti on the wall, you know, some of it's going to be able to stick, you know, yeah, right, right, right. But yeah, I mean, to me, it's that triangle. It's the controlling woman and a free spirited woman, and a male threatened with rigidity or he's already rigid and I can bring up baby I keep going back there but it is like the film but Cary Grant, the symbol of his rigidity is this brontosaurus skeleton and Catherine Hebron the free spirit as a pet leopard that's gorgeous and kind of sexy and dangerous, you know, I mean, it's, it's almost paint by number, you know, it's like you want to stay with the dead bones or you want to get involved with Catherine Hebron there. Yeah, right, right. You know, I think those are the keys plus the fact that one is probably going to be forever the romantic comedy and screwball comedy if you ponder very long, they're not. It's like at the ending of some like it hot it

has a screwball comedy stuff plot with Tony Curtis as Cary Grant kind of a Maryland row. Well if you remember at the end of the film. We don't even focus on them it's it we focus on Joey Brown and Jack lemon in interviews I've got a book that's going to be coming out sometime next year on on why that is considered the greatest comedy of the 20th century. And in putting that all together I found an interview with Cary Grant and he basically said, I mean there were other. It was difficult time for melon rope but Tony Curtis basically says an interview, they weren't going to work as a couple so why in the film with with those two you know focusing on them. So it's kind of again at the time, it's funny if you get an original screenplay for that it's it never appeared on screen nobody ever says it, but Billy Wilder the writer director was constantly asked what was going to happen after well nobody's perfect that line and in the script, it's it basically just says America is not ready for what's going to happen you know, but that is a very progressive film and if you've seen the musical comedy remake on Broadway, they have opened it up completely and Joey Brown knows from moment one that the Jack lemon character is a man, you know, so. I just find that interesting. Yeah, no, it is. It really is. Another element that we're just keeping in mind is you know we've got this kind of these farcical situations physical comedy, but there's also this blend of like highbrow sophistication in it in the story so we've talked about kind of like a lot of these stories were featuring these rich people and everything. Is there something to be said about kind of contributing to the overall comedic effect by blending such physical humor with kind of highbrow sophistication. I can I can do a couple a couple variations on it. In the awful truth, we almost have a situation like we have in later in Hawks where the woman almost is more like the anti hero in that but we in in that particular film Irene Dunn is trying to divorce Carrie Grant and she gets involved with Ralph Bellamy and in that particular film. Grant knows it isn't going to work with Ralph Bellamy but because I gotta move back back to Oklahoma or whatever, you know, and he says some sort of line. Whenever you get tired of wherever the ranch is you can always go down to Tulsa and have some fun something like that. So there's an element of sophistication with somebody who are intelligent and witty and everything but the majority of rich people and screwball comedies. Aren't always very bright and it's the blue collar implosion relationship that makes it work along those particular lines. But I'm trying to think of a good example that would. Another one that you might claim to be an exception and it doesn't seem to fit the template but in my man Godfrey William Paul's character is bright sophisticated. He knows his way around the whole thing but Gregor LaCava who co wrote it with Eric Hatch who wrote the novel. If

you read the novel, William Paul is on the scrap heat in the dump yard or whatever because he's tried to kill his first wife's secret lover. He's very wealthy but it's almost a crime of passion but since he doesn't fight anything he gives all his money to his ex-wife and everything. He gets out after just two or three years so people are always wondering how did this guy end up down there and he actually is the perfect example of that anti-heroic hero because he was so frustrated that he actually tried to kill his competition. It didn't work so he's sophisticated and cool and helps out the family but the family has run the fortune into the ground and if he hadn't made investments for them and everything they would have been poor too. Eugene Pallett is a very rotund guy with a kind of strange voice who's the father in My Man Godfrey and Lady Eve and the ghost goes west. A whole number of screwball comedies. He usually plays that wealthy individual who isn't very, I mean it's all about the business, there's no culture there, there's something like that. So that's the satire of it if you want to have the satire and that's why the Marxists didn't like it because they said well yeah the rich caused all these problems. Why are you blue collar people getting and falling in love with them and all this kind of stuff? Yeah right, interesting. The other things we've talked about like the strong eccentric female characters who are challenging traditional gender roles. We've got romantic plots with the couples in an antagonistic yet sexually charged relationships and social satire and critiques of class and gender norms and then also mentioning some of these films that bring in fantasy and dark comedy. They're fascinating and I think it's time to start digging into them in a little more detail. So let's start with It Happened One Night. This is Frank Capra's film. Spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews escapes from her father's yacht determined to reunite with her new husband King Wesley. On a bus to New York she meets Peter Warren, a recently fired reporter who sees her story as his ticket back to the big time. As they embark on a madcap journey filled with hitchhiking, bus breakdowns and a memorable night sleeping under a hay in a field, Ellie and Peter engage in witty repartee slowly falling for each other despite their initial clashes. Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable shine in this quintessential screwball comedy that proves love can blossom in unexpected places. This is again we're contrasting social classes in this. Ellie is this heiress, she's very spoiled and Peter is this down on his luck newspaper reporter. Often we're getting reporters in these stories. How does that kind of contribute to what we're seeing here as far as the comedic elements, the development of the romantic relationship and then also like how how is this exemplifying a screwball comedy, especially as you were saying this came out like right when things with the Hayes code were finally getting locked in. It's a screwball comedy, but it's not really a perfect example. When people go back to 1934, they talk about three films that are kind of the bedrock or kind of there. One of them is it happened one night and that's the closest thing to what we call screwball comedy, but two other ones that are almost screwball comedies are The Thin Man, which became a franchise in the 30s and 40s. And 20th century, which was with Caroline Byrd and a very strong wealth producer, and that John Barrymore. So you had three kind of variations on what we would call screwball comedy. It doesn't really become officially named screwball comedy till My Man Godfrey. That's the first time he's already called that, but it still has all kinds of key elements in it. And one key element is that implosive thing, you know, Runaway Bride. We get a lot of that in other films like Julia Roberts basically, you know, uses that as a major later example. We also have the blue collar guy who's very practical and knows how to do this. And I think why I say it isn't the perfect example is Clark Gable is not really an anti-hero in it so much except in say the hitchhiking scene where he can't stop. He's supposed to be a master of every kind of hitchhiking gesture with his thumb. And all Claudia Colbert needs to do is just lift up her dress and the light stops the film. The thing that kind of throws a lot of people in you, you still find in older literature about screwball comedy, they instantly called Frank Capra a screwball comedy director. The movie came out in '34, and Will Rogers was somebody he greatly admired and helped his early career. Will Rogers is the populist capable character, and he died the following year in '35 in an aviation crash. And after that, Frank Capra kind of picks up more the populist sort of film. Mr. Deeds goes to town and Mr. Nicholas Washington, Meet John Doe, things like that. So that's why I've always kind of hedged a little bit on It Happened Tonight. But again, you've got Runaway Heiress, the wealthy setting because the father is very rich. And you also have, when sound came into the films, for fans of 30s films, you might have wondered why are there so many reporters as leading men in that? And it's because anybody who wrote, whether it was poetry or novels, but especially newspapers of people, they gravitated to the West Coast because Hollywood panicked. They didn't know what to do with talking movies, you know. And so that's another basic component. So many of the script about colonies, the leading man is a reporter, like Nothing Sacred being an example. Runaway Prize is another example. My man Friday is another -- >> His girlfriend. >> His girlfriend, I'm sorry. Everybody's a reporter. I mean, you know, that kind of thing. And that is of the era, but I always find it interesting. Frequently, when you do a kind of retro later one, like Runaway Pride, they bring that back that it's a reporter. So it provides the wealth, a couple of two

different classes. It combines the whole -- it's kind of sexy without being sexy, even though it wouldn't have been made if it had been made later in the year that way because they wouldn't have allowed the cabin scene with that. >> Wall of Jericho. >> Wall of Jericho. But yeah, it has a lot of the basic components and it had a lot of copycat films that would follow. >> I'm trying to remember watching through all -- or thinking through all the films that I've watched for this. This one, there's a road trip narrative to it, which also kind of can become its own subgenre of film that you would see kind of weave through a variety of different films. But I'm trying to think, does the road trip narrative, does that maybe just lent to putting them into kind of absurd situations? Did you see that often in screwball comedies? >> There's not a ton of them, but actually the best example -- and here's another argument for screwball comedies later on, but Rob Reiner did a film called The Sure Thing. >> Oh, yeah, yeah, right. >> It has a lot of screwball comedy characteristics. And it's a road picture, classic road picture, you know, where two people are kind of forced to be together for an external relationship. But yeah, road picture can be part of the subplot in something like it's hot, you know, I mean, it's on a train and that whole thing. So yeah, that can be a component in the genre. >> Yeah, I just I find that to be an interesting element of this particular film. And again, I can't think of like of the films we're discussing, I don't think it really comes up again. But I do think that's an interesting element in just like what it allows as far as the scenes, because we get the different cabins that they're in a couple times, the different interactions with different types of people that they're thrust into situations with. And I think that's you end up kind of creating a lot of situations that allows for that over the course of it. >> And I always tell my students that their first script, if they they've never done anything long, a road picture is the best thing because it allows your character to be in a setting that's maybe just instantly funny because he or she just isn't in that setting. You can milk it for everything you can. Plus the people in that setting might be strange or hot or whatever. And then once you've exhausted that, then you move to another setting. And it's really kind of like a collection of short stories that you put together kind of like, again, not a screw up comedy, but Cabaret, Kes22, Mr. Roberts are all stories, novels that essentially are almost short stories, but one character kind of weaves his or her way through the whole thing, like Sally Bowles in that particular. >> Cabaret, yeah. >> So yeah, a road picture is helpful in any genre. >> Sure, sure, sure, yeah. Let's talk about our next film. We've talked about a little bit, My Man Godfrey, directed by Gregory Lekava. In the midst of the Great Depression, eccentric socialite Irene Bullock stumbles upon the cynical and down on his luck forgotten man Godfrey Park during a scavenger hunt. Captivated by his wit and charm, Irene impulsively offers Godfrey a job as the family butler. As Godfrey navigates the zany antics of the Bullock household, he finds himself drawn to the kind hearted Irene while contending with the hostility of her snobbish sister, Cornelia. William Powell and Carol Lombard deliver sparkling performances in this satirical gem that skewers the frivolities of high society while celebrating the transformative power of love and compassion. Considering that we kind of had some class dynamics, not exactly to the level, but it happened one night, how does this film really kind of further develop and kind of satirize everything, especially this one very much specifically in the context of the Great Depression? >> Well, it underlines the fact that, you know, the father's, you know, blown his mind. He's not a good businessman, even though it's a wealthy setting and everything like that. And it also has, if you factor in the original novel, it has that triangle thing going on. And then with Carol Lombard, she became the definitive screwball girl. In fact, the Saturday Evening Post, I think in '36 or '7, actually, she's on the cover. In any film she did, there was that comedic element along those lines. >> Is this the first film that she -- was this her first screwball comedy? >> Her first, technically, it's not a perfect example of it, but Howard Hawks cast her in 20th Century. And he had seen her in earlier films and not been impressed. And I guess this is another element that we need to throw in with screwball comedies, is the fact that -- I guess you can say this about any genre, but it's underlined more and more in screwball comedies. You're essentially trying to play yourself if you're an eccentric kind of person. And he met her at a party, and she was a scream. And so he cast her in it. And then the first day of shooting, first couple days, she was, at least according to John Barrymore and Hawks, who directed the 20th Century, she was just kind of stiff. And so Hawks told Barrymore, "Take her for a walk and explain that, you know, this isn't working." And Barrymore, basically, after hitting on her, he hit on everybody in the world. But anyway, he basically said, "You got to play yourself. That's why Hawks cast you. So just do your eccentric thing." And a lot of people think it's hard to just be yourself, but it is hard. But anyway, that was her ticket into screwball comedy. And she never did it better. And in fact, in terms of background, she'd been married to William Powell, but they divorced and remained friends. And when he was cast, her part had not been cast yet. And so he went to battle for her, and I thought they were going to say no. But he said, "Paral Lombard will be a scream in this part. You got to cast her in this particular role." So that's how she got the part with William Powell

doing that, because they had literally been married at one time earlier and then parted amicably. In fact, in Hollywood, from what I've done research on, he was almost as bereaved as Clark Gable was when she was in that plane accident a number of years later. But anyway, so yeah, that was that eccentricity factor. And then another element in it is, I don't know if you, if viewers remember or if you remember this scene where he's, it's kind of like his first day at work, and he's trying to deliver breakfast to everybody. And when he goes into, I don't know if it's Irene Dunn's bedroom or her mother's to with the door, but there's a little twinkling sound on the soundtrack. And it almost feels like this is another world, like he's puck, you know, in a mid-sum night's dream. And it's just, it's just other world. And I always thought that that was just, you know, such a key element of this is real, but yet it isn't really real. Real life isn't quite like a screwball colony, though sometimes, obviously, we're incredibly frustrated with stuff. So there's that to it. And here's another point to keep in mind. We mentioned you try to be yourself. LaCava did not believe in scripts. Leo McCary did not believe in scripts. So when they went and asked her for best screenplay or best story or something like that, it's stuff they, they're the Abraham Lincoln's of screwball comedies. It's stuff they wrote on an envelope and brought in. And so Greg LaCava, even though he co-scripted it with the the novelists who wrote it, Eric Hatch, he improvised a whole lot of stuff, like the whole bit with, oh, who's Art Gigolo in that film? I'm forgetting. Oh, what is his name? But anyway, the whole scene with when he does the monkey bit, you know, he climbs a mature shore hour or something like that. He got an Oscar nomination for it. But there's a scene where he he acts like a monkey or something and balances around. You know, that that was improvised. In fact, later on, LaCava did a film that wasn't really screwball comedy, but it has maybe a couple elements called stage short. But when he adapted it, he changed so many things that in Hollywood, they called it screen door. Because he would just change everything about his script. But again, a lot of them do. And you have to remember some of the best screwball comedy directors came out of the silent era. So like Leo McCary's motto was always do it visually. And that should be the motto of any director. But there's an awful lot of visual humor in little McCary type films. And there is in, you know, my man Godfrey, too, like the monkey scene. Yeah, that was Carlo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and I'm curious because this is definitely one of these examples of a film of the time where you've got an eccentric family. They're all kind of quirky characters. Everyone has their own quirks. And Godfrey is the one who's kind of coming into this world, getting to know all of them. I wonder, like, if there's a comparison to be made

with a film that would come out a couple of years later, you can't take it with you. Going back to Frank Capra, because I don't know if I have ever thought of it necessarily as a screwball comedy. I always kind of thought it was more of a romantic comedy. But I see it more as a romantic or just a populist kind of comedy because Barrymore and that Lionel Barrymore. And that is, you know, kind of the wise older mentor type kind of takes care of people and things and stuff like that. And one of the elements of populist. I mean, lately, populism is in a place where people don't like the word. But if you take out certain elements, ideally, populism is what the country was founded on, you know, do the right thing, basically, and help people out and be ages, wisdom and things like that. And so one of the elements of populism is people often will change in that too. And so at the end of that, Jimmy Stewart's stiff, wealthy father gets transferred to being more open minded and happy and becomes a friend. In fact, he ended up playing harmonica. There's been a long time since I've seen that. But Nicky plays harmonica with Lionel Barrymore. Yeah, they play Polly Wolly Doodle on the harmonica together. Yeah. I think other things, I'm wondering, Godfrey, for one thing, it's I would actually put money on this. I think it's the most beautifully shot film. If you get a pristine print of that, I don't know, is any film kind of illuminates the beauty or the gorgeousness of being wealthy and something along those lines. It's also very biting against the rich because not only is the father a failure eventually, and I'm forgetting if he tried anything nefarious or anything. I don't think he was nefarious. I think it was just inept, really. And his wife blew a lot of it too, his whole family. But you also have just the aspect of Richard's cruel, like a scavenger hunt where one of the things that needs to be picked up is a forgotten man. And so that's kind of like a satirical dig into what's going on. That's one of, we need this, that, and another thing for your scavenger hunt. Let's get some bomb and bring him to the Waldorf or wherever they're met. And so yeah, that would be another element that sometimes comes up in in script about comedy as a satirical point. It doesn't have to, but it can. Well, it definitely was pointed in this particular film because like right before, right before it's the forgotten man scene, it's that baby, baby goat, I believe that they are dealing with. And you're getting this sense that they're looking at these, these forgotten man, these homeless people as nothing more than just some animal to be found. And it was quite interesting to see how they were treating that in this film. Yeah. And her sister at the, Gail Patrick, I think is her name, is the snooty one. She gets there first, but Godfrey will have nothing to do with her. In fact, he almost threatens her or something like that. Pushes her down into a pile of. Yeah. Yeah. But he's, for whatever reason, Carol Lombard is realizing this is bad. She actually tells Godfrey, I think, I'm starting to think this is not a good idea. So out of curiosity, he goes with her basically. Yeah. Right. They come up with an interesting reason in context of the story to make it work. So you buy him going along with this, which I thought was actually worked quite well so he could see exactly what are you going to be doing with the forgotten man? Like, what is this? Like, yeah, they play that, I thought, in a really interesting way. Yeah. And if listeners or fans, the scroll comedy would want to know another element connected to that was the idea that when Paul's character would once been rich and lost it all, he kind of wanted to see the other side of the coin anyway, you know, the blue collar, the servant. That was part of a motive there, too. Well, and that's interesting because he does recognize in Cornelia, who is terrible to him. He says later how much he recognizes of himself in her. And, you know, I think that plays interestingly. And that was an interesting line because in the scope of the idea of, and I guess it's not necessarily the love story, but in the screwball comedy, in just kind of talking about the screwball comedy versus romantic comedies, like that seemed to be taking things a lot more seriously as far as like what he was saying that you'd normally think of in a screwball comedy. Right. Yeah. And it's more obvious and it plays more effectively if you read the novel, you know, because it's all kind of laid out there. But I can I can understand LaCava cutting that because we get a we get a little deep dish and this way God frees a little bit more mysterious in terms of, you know, how he got there and what happened. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's shift gears and talk about Howard Hawks bringing a baby. Again, we've brought that one up a few times. The story here, mild-mannered paleontologist David Huxley finds his orderly life turned upside down when he encounters the free-spirited and mischievous heiress Susan Vance. As David attempts to secure a million dollar donation for his museum and the missing intercostal clavicle from his blunt brontosaurus skeleton, Susan's madcap antics continually throw him off course. When Susan's aunt's pet leopard baby escapes, the duo embarks on a wild pursuit through Connecticut filled with mistaken identities, misunderstandings and a growing attraction between the unlikely pair. Carrie Grant and Catherine Hepburn are at their comedic best in this uproarious and fast-paced screwball classic that proves love can strike even the most unsuspecting hearts. In our previous conversations before we got on the line today, you talked about, like, if you had to, like, pick a screwball comedy that represented, like, all screwball comedies, this might be the one. Do you want to say anything a little bit about that as far as this film? It perfectly follows all of the components. I mean, it literally becomes the

template for all screwball comedies and remains so. And plus, it ends with the most effective example of what screwball comedies are about. She wants to loosen up this rigid professor for her lover or husband or whatever. And she destroys accidentally the brontosaurus. I mean, I always call it the most meaningful, effective, you know, bit of physical humor in any screwball comic at all. It says it all when it collapses and he kind of has surrendered to her as, okay, I'll go with you. He's basically been worn down by then, but yeah, it has that symbolic scene in it. And then it does all of the wealthy people and great settings. And then there's a lot of physical comedy in the film. And plus, it showcases a lot of different things, I think, of interest with how should I say this? You don't usually work in a screwball comedy. You're wealthy. Well, Cary Granis is a wealthy. He's a professor or quasi-professor. And much of America doesn't consider professors a job. We just, I don't know, we don't do any work and we get summers off and we try to change the minds of the children of America and stuff like that. So if it's not a reporter, there's a full lot of professors in screwball comedies. And it's because Americana doesn't necessarily think of them as a real job, you know, that kind of thing. So there's that element in it too. And plus, if you want to think of a professor, you probably think of maybe somebody who's very rigid and he just, he or she just reads books and, you know, boring and thinks along those particular lines. So she's rescuing him. But it doesn't necessarily mean that she's taking him away from what he wants to do. That comes out more in the remake, the Bogdanovich remake with What's Up Doc? Because, you know, Barbra Streisand is going to follow Ryan O'Neill to Ames, Iowa, and probably be the greatest TA and helper and whatever. So it doesn't mean that the male can still have his passion or whoever the antihero is can keep their work passion or whatever, but they can just, they're introduced to life, you know, and fun and other things. They don't just have blinders on and something like that. But yeah, it's such a fun film. Plus, it's refreshing because much of it was shot outdoors. You know, there's that whole golf scene. It just, you know, you're so used to studio sets and things from that era that he opens it up so much along those lines. And then he throws in that scene in the in the forest when they're when they're looking for the leopard and the dog ends up being there. And that, again, sort of like my man Godfrey, it almost reminds me of the way it shot. It's almost like a Midsummer Night's Dream sort of thing. They're going through the forest and I don't know, I just, there are no, no problems with that one. I just, you can check all the boxes I'm bringing up, baby, as a great example of screw up highway. Well, and, you know, Cary Grant, who we'll talk about in our next film, I think plays so well to that type of comedy. And

I think that is fun to see how an actor can tap into the nature of what the genre is asking of them. Because he is, you know, he's pretty different here than we'll see in My Favorite Wife, you know, and I think it's really enjoyable to see Cary Grant be so flustered and flummoxed by this woman who is like without even intending to do so, just ends up pushing all of his buttons. But in a way where, as you said, he kind of is worn down and succumbs by the time we get to the end and, and kind of recognizes. And I think part of it is that conversation you were talking about earlier with the woman that he is engaged to about how she doesn't want kids. And this Brontosaurus is our kid and stuff like that. And his reactions to that, it's like, oh, it's not exactly what I had in mind. You can see how that leads to him being okay to let himself get worn down by, by the crazy antics of Susan over the course of the film. Yeah. And almost another thing from that era, just having Cary Grant in a movie from that era, he was in so many classic screwball comedies that you think more along narrative lines or basic components for a genre. But it's almost like Cary Grant is the one actor who I just think screwball comedy. And, you know, I mean, he played all kinds of different genres, but he's at his best there. And he, I think he probably did more classic screwball comedies than anything else. Yeah. Well, let's talk about my favorite wife. This was directed by Garcin Canan. The story Nick Arden, believing his wife, Ellen, to be dead after she went missing seven years ago, has her legally declared dead and remarries. However, Ellen returns home the day of his honeymoon with his new bride, Bianca. Shocked to find her husband newly married, Ellen schemes to win back Nick's affections. As Nick tries to keep Ellen's sudden reappearance a secret from Bianca, he becomes increasingly entangled in a web of lies and misunderstandings. And matters are further complicated when it's revealed that Ellen wasn't alone on the island. Irene Dunn and Cary Grant reunite in this delightful screwball comedy that showcases their impeccable comic timing and on-screen chemistry. Yeah, I love that particular film. I see it as a McCarry film, even though Garcin Canan directed, but it's from McCarry's story and he produced it. And it has so many components or characteristics of the awful truth, including the Irene Dunn and Cary Grant. Again, it's got the McCarry courtroom scene. It's got a couple of them. Yeah, I don't think we've talked about that offline, but as far as the McCarry courtroom scene, what is that? Because it's a key component in so many of his films, you were saying. Yeah, well, he's passed now. But Peter McDonough, I've been on panels with him and we've talked about comedy. And I had never really thought about it as he had. But Leo McCarry was originally a lawyer in Real Life and ended up being a director. But he would always or usually have a courtroom scene in his screwball comedies. And so when Peter McDonough did his homage to bringing up Baby with What's Up, Doc, he had the Adam McCarry courtroom scene at the end of it. And when you think about it, it's in the awful truth, I mean, they make it silly, like there's a custody fight over their dog and things like that. But when you think about it, a courtroom scene is just perfect for this genre because this genre is about how irrational and zany the world is. And in a courtroom, you know, you're supposed to be going by the law and there are rules and regulations and things like that. So it's the perfect thing to make fun of, satirize judges in courtroom scenes and the law and expectations and even the genre itself. Is this couple going to end up together for the long run? You know, that kind of thing. Another thing we need to mention too is McCarry was not as good looking as Cary Grant. In some early pictures, he was kind of like, ultimately, he hit the bottle too much and it kind of aged him. But he represents Cary Grant's persona in the movies. And that's not just me saying that. I've read interviews with lots of people, but Garcin Canem had the strongest argument with it. And it's best demonstrated with my favorite wife because I've done books on like, I did a dissertation on Liam McCarry and a book on Liam McCarry. And so I know him pretty well in a way. But anybody that I've talked to said that he just used his hands so much in speaking and talking and things like that. And there's a scene in my favorite wife when he's taken his new bride to the same hotel where he had taken his original honeymoon with Irene Dunn. He's a classic anti-hero because he really loves Irene Dunn, but he's basically frightened of Gail Patrick again from "My Man Godfrey." How do I tell her this? And there's a scene on a staircase and he's trying to make sense and he's practicing and he puts his arm out at length. And he's actually just kind of almost miming through what he's going to do. And the manager of the hotel comes up on him and he keeps his hand out and then he looks over at his hand and he looks back at the manager and he pulls it in and things like that. And according to my research, there are lots of like movements that Stan Laurel did because Liam McCarry teamed Laurel and Hardy. And like I said, he was kind of a player, Liam McCarry good looking and liked the women and everything like that and was really a cool, cool guy. And everybody in Hollywood feels that Cary Grant based his persona as when he wasn't an anti-hero in being the cool, north by northwest type character. He based that on Liam McCarry. Interesting. That's an interesting point. But I always think of there's so many visual touches in that. Like when he's for an excuse to meet with Irene Dunn at one point, his wife has tried to call him and he pretends he's gone off on a case or something like that. And he pretends there's an airplane blade or whatever, but he sticks his pen in a fan in this walk-in

telephone booth. And then he runs, he barges into it because she's calling him literally six feet away from him like that. So there's all kinds of this wonderful physical comedy that we say is a component of a screwball comedy. And that's something else I tell my students that there are all these types of screwball comedy, but slapstick is not a genre of screwball comedy. But it's most frequently used in either personality comedies or screwball comedies. And nobody did it better than McCarry. But, you know, like Peter McDonovich's remake of What's Up, Doc, there's that delightful dragon. Yeah, right. The Chinese dragon on the parade. Yeah. It's out of control. They're going through the What's a Man, the plate glass that's broken in that. So screwball comedies are all about a lot of physical humor and there's a lot of physical humor in My Favorite Wife. Yeah. No, it's a very, very funny film. Definitely people should check that one out. Let's jump to Preston Sturgis. This is his film, The Lady Eve. Jean Harrington, a beautiful con artist, sets her sights on the wealthy but naive brewery heir, Charles Pike. With the help of her card sharp father, Jean schemes to swindle Charles out of his fortune. However, as she spends more time with him, Jean finds herself unexpectedly falling for her mark. When Charles discovers Jean's true identity, he breaks off their relationship. Determined to win him back, Jean reinvents herself as Lady Eve Sidwich and reenters Charles' life, setting off a series of comedic misunderstandings and romantic entanglements. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda display their comedic prowess in this clever and enchanting screwball comedy, directed by Sturgis, as I said. Here we're getting a different type of character, con artist, who falls for her mark. How does this kind of contribute to screwball comedies? We're getting the tropes of deception and disguise here and it's kind of an interesting element that we're seeing. Lots of screwball comedies. The leading lady is named Eve. We even have an apple and stuff at the beginning and, you know, Garden of Eden, the control of the woman, you know, there's that kind of aspect. And wealthy family, again, Eugene Pallot is the wealthy father and all that. Also, even though Henry Fonda's character isn't technically a professor, he's essentially a professor of snakes. He studies and says, "Well, big." He's just, again, it's that stiff sort of, he just lives to study snakes, you know. He's been up the Amazon for forever. And in fact, I think you probably have seen it more recently than me, but he said, you know, when he puts on her, she's broken her heel and he's putting on her shoe or something like that. He's just trying to explain why he's so enamored of her and he said, "Well, I've been up the Amazon for two months or however long." And she said, "Well, it's lucky it wasn't, you know, much longer than that, you know, because you're repressed." But yeah, I think one way in terms of the con artist thing, we're starting to show the side of screwball comedy that we can almost slip into dark comedy. What? Two or three years after that was made, we got double indemnity. And we got Barbara Stanwyck, who was basically just latching onto this insurance salesman so she can get rid of her husband and get rid of him. And that kind of thing. And so screwball comedy and film war are alike in the sense that women are in control. But in screwball comedy, it's love, you know, basically. Whereas in film war, women have a past, men have no future. That's one way somebody described film war once. And so I think it's a good example of we're moving towards how that element is more high profile in screwball comedies. But I mean, you can go all the way back to The Thin Man, and there's so many elements of screwball comedy in that. And it's a murder mystery. And I should mention, or I should footnote, there are an awful lot of screwball comedies where there's a death in them. And it's treated as kind of like a, you know, a sidelight, especially in Carol Lombard once. I don't know particularly why that is. But yeah, that kind of crime element. And even in that Neil Simon seems like old times, again, Chevy Chase's character is on the run, you know. And she's married to the district attorney or something like that. So you have all kinds of criminal element type things going on in a lot of screwball comedies. So that would be my explanation for the fact that, yeah, she falls in love with her mark, you know. Right, right. As far as the directors, Preston Sturgis doesn't strike me as somebody who's regularly, called a screwball comedy director. Would you, I'm trying to think, is this his only screwball comedy that he does? No, no. He did The Lady, we're talking about The Lady, he did The Palm Beach Story. Oh, sure, yeah. Right. Billy Wilder. The screwball comedy stuff, and someone like it, Hot, he super cherry picks The Palm Beach Story. I mean, that's almost like he should have thrown Preston Sturgis' name on his screenplay for something like it, Hot. Because almost all of the elements in the Tony Curtis pretending to be Cary Grant, he's very much like the pretend John Rockefeller character, you know, in Palm Beach Story. So he did Palm Beach Story, he did The Lady Eve, and he did Sullivan's Travels. There are elements of screwball comedy in that. And then Miracle of Morgan's Creek is a send off or send up of America and wartime and screwball comedy and all kinds of things like things along those particular lines. So yeah, he did two completely paint by number, exactly, and then two other ones that were, you can make an argument that they're screwball comics. And what's so wild about it, Paramount's my favorite theater because, a studio, because they always allowed talent and comedy to do their thing. Whereas other studios, you had to follow the script. But he broke the glass ceiling as far as writers becoming directors. So he did a film called The Great

McGinty, which was actually the first, I mean, they gave Oscars for writing, but that was the first one for best original screenplay. And so that Billy Wilder, if Lou Bitch was his superhero, Preston Sturgis was right in second place. So from about 1938 to about 1948, he just seemed to have the pulse of the public right there. And then he lost it, you know, and I was really, oh, another one he did that didn't get any release time, but, and it's satirical. And, you know, rigid male, but the sins of Henry Diddlebach or something, it's not as mad Wednesday, I think is what it's called. But that's another one that you could put in the screwball comedy. Well, and does Unfaithful Yours fit in there? I know that's he did that one. Yeah, that would be another one. And again, very much dark comedy, all the Rex Harrison's imagining how he's going to kill his wife, who he thinks is having an affair. Yeah, right. And which should not do well at the box office. It was dark comedy just was not working for critics or the public in general. I mean, there were exceptions, arsenic and old lace would be, but generally speaking, it took Dr. Strangelove for people to finally commit to, you know, I mean, everybody, I mean, Chaplin did Miserie Redoux, you know, and, you know, Unfaithful Yours. It just in the 40s, you just couldn't do dark comedy. It was harder. Yeah. Well, let's jump to one of our fantasies. I Married a Witch, directed by Renee Claire. Wallace Woolley, a descendant of the Puritan, Jonathan Woolley, is set to marry the wealthiest Stell Masterson. However, things take a supernatural turn when Jennifer, a mischievous witch burned at the stake by Jonathan centuries ago, returns to seek revenge. Accidentally falling in love with Wallace after love potion goes awry, Jennifer uses her magical powers to sabotage his wedding and political aspirations. As Wallace finds himself drawn to the enchanting Jennifer, he must navigate the complications arising from his newfound love. Veronica Lake and Frederick March are a bewitching duo in this delightful romantic fantasy directed by Renee Claire. So this, I mean, you mentioned kind of the fantasy we talked about topper a little bit. We're definitely getting a lot of that here as far as expanding screwball comedy beyond what you would say are kind of like the traditional settings in the real world. How does this kind of show how screwball comedy is evolving here? Well, in a way, it's almost like it's expanding the idea of the antihero through the ages because we go all the way back to the pilgrims. And then we go literally to the forties and all the hip dialogue for the forties and things like that. But I have to put a plug in here for he was writing and it was finished by somebody else, but it's based on a novel by Thorne Smith. And he wrote the topper, the first topper. Wow. I mean, the connection is just amazing. But yeah, it has it has all the all the key elements that we've talked about, except we're now wearing kind of a fantasy mold here along those lines. And it was again, it's during the war, you know, it comes down the forties. And again, Veronica Lake, who's in Sullivan's travels to she had a very short shelf life, but she was a major pinup girl during during World War Two and with the peekaboo hairstyle and everything like that. In fact, one of my favorite school of the Warriors is the major and the minor, which Billy Wilder. Wilder. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a footnote about her and that particular film, too. And again, another reason why Preston Sturgis is so important to Billy Wilder was the fact that he did the same thing with Paramount. You know, he wrote he co-wrote the screenplay and they paid him. But I think because of Gil girls, I think they paid him a dollar to direct the, you know, the major and the minor. But it was a smash hit and classic screwball comedy. But yeah, I'm married to which I just think it's fun that we go into. I mean, you can have a fantasy, any kind of genre. But I think fantasy seems to just work so well with screwball comedy. And I think part of the reason is screwball comedy is kind of like other otherworldly, other realm, like almost cartoonish in a positive way. But I like the idea that it's sort of the last book I did was on kind of combining film comedy with print humor. And I like the idea in that particular film. We should set it up. Veronica Lake is a witch and back in Pilgrim times. She curses the Willy family that he'll never be happy and love. So we in the very beginning, there's kind of a montage through the years of various Willys, you know, and they all have awful relationships. In fact, one is like Abraham Lincoln, which is doubly funny because historians say Mary Todd was, you know, a scary, scary wife. So anyway, I like that we've always had these anti heroes and there's always been these battle of the sexes, that kind of thing. And the men have often taken it on the chin sort of thing. Another backstory to that, it shows the international nature of the genre too. Yeah, I was going to bring that up because René Claire is French. Yeah, René Claire is French. And when he got out of France, when it was occupied, he stayed a while in Great Britain. And he did a really good screwball comedy called The Ghost Goes West, where Eugene Pallatt as this wealthy American businessman with no culture, but he buys a castle and it has to be relocated to Florida. And so I'm taking it apart. And so The Ghost, Richard Dannott, you might know best from The 39 Steps, the Hitchcock film. But anyway, So The Ghost Goes West. But he made a classic screwball comedy in England in what, '35, '36, something like that. And then he ends up doing another classic. And he's sort of under the wing of Preston Sturgis. Preston Sturgis is kind of running interference for him and opening up things at Paramount for him for doing I Married a Witch. So between, I think it's just a delightful script and story and having a crush on

Veronica Lake and it fitting that screwball template. Yeah, you just can't go wrong with that. And it's very popular with my students because the special effects are a little hokey and stuff. But my students love them. They just, because a lot of my students are in production and working on special effects. And so they kind of, it's like, oh, they were doing that kind of, you know, they have an affection outside of the genre just for how it was put together. Well, I think there's something that especially students now can appreciate when they see practical effects and how it's done in a way where it's not just all done on a computer. And the fact that people would actually come up with ways to make a broom fly across the room or whatever it is, but just the simple types of effects that they were working on coming up with. I think that can be exciting for people to see that there were ways to do it before computers came along. And something else comes to mind. You know, Veronica Lake, her character becomes mortal and stuff, but her father is, I don't know what he's going to do to her, but he ends up in a bottle of whiskey or wine or something corked in there. And it didn't make a big effort to show that he's never going to get out of there. But we need to mention that. And this might be part of the reason why in the 40s they were a little bit, well, screwball comedy is a little too loose. But screwball comedies are like nonstop drinking, not always, but oftentimes. And that's why if you haven't seen the original Thin Man, it is. Yeah, they drink a lot. Oh, they put away a lot in that. And most screwball comedies, there's a lot of drinking them. And I was lucky enough when I was a really green professor a zillion years ago. Actually, I was a graduate student. I had my mentor wrote a bunch of letters of introduction and I went out to L.A. to get info from my dissertation. But I got to interview Pandrel S. Berman, and he's the one that teamed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He gifted me with all kinds of information that he took me out to lunch and he was a principal guy. But he basically said all of the Fred and Ginger films from the 30s, not Barclays of whatever in the 40s, the last one, but the vast mass of the films, he produced them as if they were all screwball comedies yet set the song and dance. And I thought that was like a brilliant kind of insight because they are. All rich, famous people, Lottie Doss settings, you know, escapism, you know, the whole kind of thing. And then getting back to the alcohol thing, he was very close friends with Gregory LaCava. And he said he remembered going on the set of My Man Godfrey. And he said it was like going to a cocktail party. Evidently there was just drinks all over because regular Lottie Doss was very much like Liam McCarry into the bottle, you know, that kind of thing. So that might seem trivial, but if you see enough screwball comedies, there's a whole lot of drinks. And even Arthur, I mean, Arthur is so funny because Dudley Moore, and I know it's not politically correct to say this, but he plays the most amusing drunk and so witty, you know, and he's pointing to it, too. He goes, you know, that line about, he says, you know, we don't drink for this. We drink because we can't have this or something like that. But he puts a very poetic handle on why he drinks so much. Well, and you see that, like you're saying, through a lot of these films that we're talking about, it's not just the Thin Man and stuff, but you see a lot of people drinking a lot and getting drunk. And the actors having to act drunk quite a bit over the course of these films where you're really getting a sense of that lifestyle. It becomes like part of that rich lifestyle. They're so rich, they can just drink all the time and not have any worries. They don't have to work. They have to deal with hangovers in the morning. That's the roughest thing they have to suffer through. In fact, I think that's one of the physical comedy gags in. It might be the second Topper film, but I think Topper, who's the lead title character, I think he's drunk and passed out. And I guess that would have been Joan Bennett and Cary Grant, but that would have been the first one. But anyway, they have to fix him up because he's going to appear in court and he's still not awake, really kind of drunk. And so they're kind of taking him into the courtroom, but they're invisible because they're ghosts. They've passed away at the beginning of the film, but it's the funniest thing. He's just sort of shambling along and he's not really awake. And you know, and you suddenly you're seeing his hair being combed and it's like, where's that? So yeah, the drinking, the whole fantasy element, it all kind of goes together. Yeah, right. Totally ties in. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And that was just as a random little note, but her dad, when he's drunk, he sings that song that I can't remember what it is now. But then one of these other films, in fact, I think it was My Man Godfrey, Eugene Pallet is also singing that same drinking. It's like a drinking song, you know, that is I was like, it must have been just a common drinking song at this particular point in time, because we hear it through a number of them. In fact, one of the gags in Lady Eve is his father's made his fortune on some sort of ale, the ale that won for Yale or something like that. So they make a lot of jokes about that too. So sometimes it's just literally in the script. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's jump a few decades and we've talked to, we've mentioned it a few times, Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up doc. In this hilarious homage to screwball comedies, four identical plaid overnight bags lead to a series of zany mixups. Judy Maxwell, an eccentric young woman, pursues the uptight musicologist Howard Bannister, who's engaged to the tightly wound Eunice Burns. As the bags containing valuable jewels, top secret documents and igneous rocks get switched,

the characters find themselves in a madcap chase through San Francisco. Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neill are a perfect comedic match, delivering rapid fire dialogue and slapstick moments with impeccable timing. Directed by Bogdanovich, this uproarious farce pays tribute to the golden age of Hollywood comedy. Here we're jumping a few decades, but we're also kind of seeing how screwball comedies have evolved and kind of continued. And, you know, we're getting this fantastic trope of mixed up bags, but also mistaken identities and all sorts of confusion. Bogdanovich was obviously a fan of the genre. You talked to him about, you mentioned that. How does that play when it comes to making an homage to it, but also genuinely actually making a screwball comedy? Because I think there can be a line separating the two, but I think he somehow masterfully does both quite well. Yeah, he does. He does an excellent job. And again, it's a good example of how in screwball comedy, as the years pass, you need more reasons for eccentricity. So you basically have the two subplots. The hotel manager wants to do the robbery, and then we have government agents or spies or something. And so we have those three bags. So it's a screwball comedy, but he has lots of balls on the air with it. And I must say it is very inventive and very, very well done. It's probably, I'll go out on a limb here, but of all the screwball comedies I show in class, I think it's probably the favorite of, and they like the period screwball comedies too, but I think it's their favorite of all the screwball comedies from different eras that I've shown. Interesting. And again, as we said, again, it's a footnote to "Bucks Bunny" was based on, you know, Clark Gable and the big ears from it. It happened one night. And so we have the title, and it even ends with there's a "Bucks Bunny" cartoon on the plane as we're flying back to Iowa. So yeah, he not only does the homage to Hawks, he does it to McCarry with the courtroom scene at the end. And I love that judge who plays Barbara Streisand's father. You know what this pill is for? This pill is to remind me to take, I mean, that's, again, the courtroom scenes often are the funniest almost of all the scenes, even though it's nonstop funny. The only thing I always felt sorry, on one side of me is a little sentimental, and in "Bringing Up Baby," I always felt kind of sad for her and I always felt that there, and here's some trivia for you. There was an in joke from Miss Swan, the fiance from "Bringing Up Baby." She was actually a very attractive model from the era, and they've had her made up to look older and old librarian-ish and, you know, kind of, you know, that kind of thing. But anyway, I always felt bad because what happens for her? Well, Bogdanovich fixes that. Madeleine Ton, who steals almost every scene that she's in, she's with the in-line-safe controlling person, she gets her man too, and it's an appropriate person. He needs somebody to organize

his life and tell him what to do. So it wasn't really that big a problem for me. But, you know, he's covered all the bases, you know, everybody is with somebody. And anyway, I really like that film. Well, that's, I think, definitely an interesting point because, yeah, in the scope of, like, this sort of film, I guess we're left in a place where we don't worry so much if the—I don't want to say stick in the mud, but just the uptight, we'll say, the uptight fiance ends up not getting anything. Like, she's left in the dust. Yeah, totally is left by the wayside in the story. But to your point, and maybe that's just part of the evolution, is that, okay, we're going to have Eunice be just as uptight, but we're still gonna resolve that story. And we're gonna give her somebody, you know, as she ends up with Austin Pendleton's character by the end. And that's really a great way to kind of have us kind of change things up where we're like, okay, she's annoying, but she still gets to be with somebody. And I think that's a great bit here because, you know, he's also one of those people you're like, okay, I can buy them together. Yeah, yeah. I'm just realizing this now, we're thinking about this now, but, you know, all of our classic screwball-calling males are upright and everything like that. And Ryan O'Neill is a good guy in this film, but when he realizes that he has a better chance to—he's in San Francisco for a Grant possibility. When he realizes that Barbara Saizan is gonna be much more helpful in getting the Grant, he claims to his fiancé, I don't know who this woman is, you know what I mean? Whatever. So, you know, so in that way, we've made our male just maybe a little more realistic or a little more harsher or whatever like that. Because he goes, I don't know her. I do. Yeah, right, right, right. I do think it's funny also, and I don't know if this is just Bogdanovich and the screenwriters. Obviously, he's got a great team of screenwriters, Buck Henry, David Newman, Robert Benton working on the script for this, but also throwing in some meta jokes. And there must have been some in the earlier screwball comedies that I might not have noticed, but the fact that on the airplane, we have Judy throw a line out from Love Story that Ryan O'Neill had just done before. And then she does that like wacky batting, like over emphasized batting of her eyelashes. It was so funny, like to have a little meta joke like that thrown in. Did you see a lot of that through screwball comedy with the performers and everything? Yeah. And in fact, I was bemused by the fact that Pauline Kale, when she reviewed What's Up, Doc, she felt she kind of trashed Ryan O'Neill for making fun of Love Story. Love never means having to say a sign. He's saying that's the stupidest thing. And, you know, he got an Oscar nomination for a love story for you there. And he's trashing that. And I'm thinking Pauline, look at all these 30s comedies. They have lots of references to that. His Go Friday. In that particular film, remember when Cary Grant wants Ralph Bellamy tailed in the film because he's going to have him arrested or something like that. Cary Grant literally plays says he looks a lot like that actor Ralph Bellamy. He actually says that. And then there's a reference to Archie Leach in the film, which is Cary Grant's real name. Right. And that just isn't random because in A Fish Called Wanda, Cleese's real name is Archie Leach. You know, so there's all kinds of I mean, all films can have in jokes, but it seems as from me watching way too many films, it seems like screwball comedies are more apt to do that. And I think it plays upon the fact that directors wanted you to be as close to your real person. Like, Leo McCary always had his listen to screwball comedies. He would have Cary Grant and Irene Dunn or whoever wear their own clothing. And he wanted them to feel like, you know, they were just playing themselves. You know, that kind of interesting. So I think the in joke thing is is is is real well. That's definitely part of it. Yeah. One thing I forgot if we have just a minute to talk about, I meant to mention since the the freeing woman is very much kind of in control. And this is something that was my proudest moment with I was on a panel once with Gerald Mass years ago, who was an important film writer. But anyway, I come up with the idea that not a lot, but several screwball comedies. We have that controlling woman, but she's almost like a film director within the film. So like in the Lady Eve, we have Barbara Stanwick as she has a mirror in her hand and she's following all the women that are going past Henry Fonda. And she's it's almost like she's directing the scene and comment on what their line is or because they want to meet Henry Fonda because he's a wealthy bachelor, that kind of thing. And then if you if you jump back to my favorite wife, when Cary Grant is he's in his first wife's suite, but he's I don't know what to do. Irene Dunn not only coaches him, but she makes him repeat everything that she's coached him in. And she goes, no, no, no. Step back and just come in and do what we said. So in some screwball comedies, the women actually are almost like directors within a film in and of themselves. So interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually an interesting idea to note because you get a sense that they're I don't know. You talk about kind of like the director is God sort of way of looking at a film as far as like Hitchcock and how he would construct his shots and everything. But here you have a story where these stories where you're actually allowing the the director themselves to put a character into the film who's also kind of directing everything. Now that I think about it, Carol Lombard kind of does that at the end of My Man Godfrey in that wedding she sets up at the end between him, her and William Paul. There's there's elements of her almost as director on that because he's by then he's kind of like Cary

Grant and bringing a baby. He's he's worn out by her, you know, whatever. Let's jump to jump a few years to Arthur Steve, Steve Gordon's film. Arthur Bach, a wealthy and perpetually drunk playboy, is set to marry the proper but boring Susan Johnson to maintain his inheritance. However, his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Linda Marolla, a quirky waitress from Queens, falling head over heels for Linda. Arthur must choose between love and fortune all while under the disapproving eye of his valet, Hobson. Dudley Moore shines as the titular character bringing an endearing vulnerability to the role while Liza Minnelli's Linda is a breath of fresh air. And of course, John Gilgood's dry wit as Hobson, of course, earned him an Oscar for best supporting actor for the film. Which embarrassed him. He did not like getting this for that particular film. That's amazing. Well, it's a very heartwarming and humorous tale of love and personal growth. Definitely we're talking about we're talking about the alcoholism and just like the massive drinking that people do in these films. Yeah, but also we're getting kind of like this flawed but very endearing character, very well off, doesn't really have to do anything in his life, has lessons to learn, I guess we'll say. But what are you seeing in this particular film by this point as far as any updates to the genre for the contemporary audience? McCarrie did this and I had a few other directors did it in the classic age, but Gordon underlines the fact of the anti-hero male being very childlike when we get to his bedroom and he's picked up a sex worker that night and everything. And he's got a train set in there and there's a poster up of Chaplin and I think there's a poster of Superman. It's like a kid's room. Totally. And he acts like a kid and it just so happens Dudley Moore is size wise. Right. Cudley Dudley, I think they used to call him. Did they really? Yeah, so he... That's funny, yeah. Gordon emphasizes that all the more and then we have all these other elements. We said that screwball comedy is you just see somebody and you love them. So he sees Liza Minnelli and it's like squirrel. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then also there was another element I was going to go to with that. I love the fact that they do retro. I mean, he drives a 30s car, a very cool car and even all the expensive cars. It's almost like it's a modern day, but it's a period piece almost in terms of what they're driving and all of these things. Plus they make a cartoonish in that we underline the fact that all the other potential father-in-laws are going to be awful and be rigid and make him whatever. The person he's supposed to marry is like a Nazi or a fascist. He's going to kill him because he's standing up his wife. And that's another one I need to mention. Not always, but many romantic comedies end with a marriage, whereas screwball comedies frequently end up with you breaking up a marriage because the person is not with the right individual. And that's in spades in this one, this big wedding. And he gets done more, gets beaten up by his almost father-in-law and stuff. But it's very much no wedding at the end of that film, but it's very funny. The idea of the weddings, because we're seeing that in a couple of these films, "I'm Married to Witch," we also have that where it literally is a wedding in both cases that then things get broken up as far as separating them apart so that the man can end up with the "right woman" before we get to the end of it. And I think that's definitely an interesting touch that we have here. As far as the performances here, you talked about what you're getting with Dudley Moore as far as the performance and stuff, but I think Liza Minnelli is bringing a lot to the role too. And we didn't talk too much about Barbara Streisand either, but these are modern actresses who definitely are tapping into elements of that screwball comedy style. How do they kind of work as far as screwball actresses, I guess, in the more modern age as far as '70s and '80s go? Well, Liza Minnelli's character is, she's been around the block. She knows what's going on, and she's not going to be a mistress or anything like that. So she's not like Squirrel, like Katherine Hepburn in "Bringing a Baby." But at the same time, she's sort of a celebration of the best of a blue collar type person. She's not going to be a kept woman or anything like that. And she refuses. Even when he doesn't do that, he's just giving her some money for her acting lessons or whatever. She just doesn't want anything to do that. She's in love with him and wants to be a couple, but if it ain't going to work, whatever. So it's sort of a celebration of blue collars better than these wealthy individuals. So there's that aspect of it. And Barbara Streisand's character, I love her in that, but I hadn't really thought about it in terms of the '30s. She's almost more the ditzy kind of, I mean, she's been to all these colleges. I mean, she has all this knowledge, and she's so eccentric. And she's always causing things to happen and then walking away from them innocently. So she, I think, is more in the tradition of what we would call a Carol Lombard or more recently, Goldie Hawn type eccentric characters. Yeah. And kind of the Katherine Hepburn "Bringing a Baby," obviously, because the patterning that Bogdanovich did out of that. Yeah. No, I enjoy them so much. I think it's fun to see. Now, as far as the John Gilgood character, I'm trying to think, do we see many characters like that that kind of represent the less comedic? I mean, he's very comedic because he's so dry in the way he delivers his performance, but it's not necessarily like the zany comedy lines that we get otherwise. I'm embarrassed to not have any character actor names on you, but it usually seemed like all of the, any kind of blue collar in the wealthy mansion or whatever like that, they ran the whole show and they were funny in and of

themselves because, well, going back to the Jean Dixon, the, from "My Man Godfrey," is she the, she works in the kitchen and is one of the servants. Oh, yeah, is that... Yeah. And she's funny in and of herself, but she never said that like comedic stuff, but it's like, are you still here? You know, after he's, he's gone to Gail Patrick's room and they've just been, she's thrown the lunch, the breakfast at wind pile and everything like that. And, and he goes, she goes, well, good luck. We'll see if you're still here in the next one. And she gives him the tray for the next wealthy person. So, yeah, most of the classic screwball comedies have a wealth of character performers who play servants, but they're all pretty much deadpan. They, in fact, I needed to mention this, I haven't mentioned this, but screwball comedy is the first type of overly comedic couple films where the main characters are the comedic ones. Before, if you had anything remotely connected or related to something like a screwball comedy in the silent era, the comedy came more from the supporting players. It wasn't so much the couple. And with, it happened one night, we've got that brilliant scene when they're imitating being married. And again, another black eye and, you know, stereotype of what male, I mean, what a marriage is like and everything when they're trying to kid, Claudette Colbert's detectives who are trying to track her down the runaway bride, one way princess, so to speak. They play it straight, but because they play it straight, so effectively, they're funny. That actually ties into, you can't take it with you going back to that one again, because again, that couple is the more serious one, and it's her family that is all the crazy eccentric ones. So, yeah. Oh, and I should put a footnote with this because I find it zany now because we're so into comedy, but bringing up baby at the time was not a commercial hit. Howard Hawks, his theory was I just made everybody zany, you know, I shouldn't have done it. But back in the 30s, the feeling even among comedy writers was you can't have 90 minutes of funny. You have to you have to break it up. And now the same thing with Duck Soup. It's it's the best of the Mark Spose films, but there's no McCary did it. So, you know, I'm proud of that. But it's very tight. There's nothing extra. And I think one of the reasons it wasn't a big success, then, is he cut out Harpo playing the harp. He cut out Chico doing the comic stuff on the piano and things like that. And he cut it to the bone. It's just all funny. And films like Bring Up Baby, Duck Soup, they're brilliant, but they're more for our era. They anticipate us wanting just nonstop comedy. We just want it all the time. Whereas back in the day, they sometimes felt even the comic writers that, OK, we need to catch our breath here. But yeah, yeah. Well, even today, I think you see that in and it could be I don't know, I think Hollywood has gone through so many different periods as far as like what a screenplay needs to look like as far as the act structure and the character arcs and all of that. And I think in today's screenplays, even in the comedy films, I think they feel like, well, we we have to have this, but we have to have this beat here where it's the serious contemplation or whatever the case may be to kind of like have a screenplay that fits the correct mold. And I think that's perpetually a struggle that you have with screenwriters who feel they have to fit the mold as opposed to just writing something that actually works, you know, or producers who ask them to even come up with something like that. Yeah, good point. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about Carl Reiner's All of Me. This is Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin. Roger Cobb, a lawyer and Edwina Cutwater, a wealthy eccentric, find their lives intertwined when Edwina's soul accidentally enters Roger's body after her death. With Edwina controlling the right half of his body and Roger the left, the two must navigate a series of hilarious misunderstandings and awkward situations. Steve Martin delivers a brilliant performance as Roger, seamlessly portraying the physical comedy required by the premise. Lily Tomlin shines as Edwina, bringing her trademark wit and charm to the role. And Carl Reiner directs with the deaf touch, balancing the film's fantastical elements with its heartfelt exploration of love and self discovery. So we're going back to the fantasy elements in screwball comedy here and kind of the tropes of kind of role reversal, plus a lot of physical comedy here. I don't know. I guess the fantasy lets it be a little more innovative and unconventional. I think that's one of the things that I enjoy so much about this because in a story that is dealing with kind of identity and romance and everything, I feel like that still is being subversive with the way that it's portraying everything. Yeah. Yeah. Just to start off, again, it's a perfect match on our template as far as, you know, he's got a controlling fiancé and he's working. He's already working for his father and he's unhappy and he wants to be a more free spirited jazz performer. You know, that's not going to be a problem when he ends up with a little Tomlin later. So we've got the triangle thing going on. And we also have the fact that I love the fact it's based on a novel called Me Too, which I like that title also because. Yeah. But it does another literal thing that screwball comedy is all about. Screwball comedies are about women getting under men's skin until they finally kind of surrender to them and she literally enters his body. And then it's a throwback to the past because that Thorne Smith, that novelist I mentioned that was like the topper guy and I'm married to which he did a film called Turnabout. He did a novel called Turnabout where this couple get in a fight and they one of them, they have some sort of statue in their home that they don't know where they got it. They just know

it's ancient. But one of them makes a wish. Well, I just wish I could be you for whatever. And they switch bodies internally. And again, I don't know how they got by the censorship code because it seems to be flaunting homosexuality in 1940. But it's if I was to write an article or something about this particular theme on film, I would have to mention Turnabout from back in the golden age because they do a lot of the same things because a lot of the jokes are he's inadvertently acting overly effeminate when she's inside and he's she's trying to act like a tough guy. She's she's that's that's that's she does something with her nose. Yeah, so, yeah, I just it works on some levels and Steve Martin is I'm a huge I mean, Chaplin fan and nobody does the better than Chaplin. But I would literally put the scene where Steve Martin first has Lloyd Tomlin enter his body when the pan comes out the window and he's trying to get from the door to the from his part of the door and back. It's this one of the most brilliant bits of physical comedy you're going to see. He actually I think I mean, he's one of the Mark Twain award. He's won lots of awards, but I think one of his few acting awards was he won the Newark Film Critics Award for Best Actor for that performance. And I to this day, I still think it's his best performance as a just from that scene alone. Well, that's what's so fun to watch. It's it's not just the moments where I mean, yeah, you're right. It's like when he's portraying a Dweena speaking and he's like, I can't go in there. That's the men's room. Like that's perfect. But it's also like it's a very singular. He's just the one character coming out. But that moment that you're talking about is is brilliant because it is literally him acting as if two different entities are controlling each half of his body and essentially trying to figure out how to move again. Right. And that's what makes it so funny because like even just like getting his hands up to do the different things and the way that he's portraying everything. I mean, it's it's impeccable and it's just Martin at his best. It's it's so funny to watch. So yeah, I agree. It's it's really it's top notch. And then we had the foot. Foot nudge on McCary with with the lawyer bet. I mean, he literally is a lawyer. We are in court a lot, you know, and stuff like that. So yeah, it has to me everything going for it. And then another kind of we were saying that they kind of play variations of their self or stuff like that. I love the extended ending when they when they dance. So eventually we see a little Tomlin in in a mirror. And because what's wrong, Victoria Tana is the right a future wife and then divorced. Yeah. But anyway, that's kind of a variation on a sketch he had done with Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live a few years before. So it's almost a footnote to just his personal his personal life. You know, and then at some point in there, I think he even says, excuse me, or something like that. One of his catchphrases went in his stand up and stuff like that. So it definitely is a kind of a variation on what he was known for just as a general comedian. But yeah, yeah. And the another point, the controlling fiance, who he's working for, his his birthday present is that is a tombstone, you know, an ancient relic from Africa, from right. And there's nothing that says rigid better than your dad. Here's a tombstone for your birthday. Right. I know. So it's like they checked off. I mean, I know they didn't, but I mean, they seem to have checked off all the things we've been talking about. Yeah, no, they did. Also, I think it's interesting. And this goes back to what we were talking about as far as like the meta contextual nature of the scripts and stuff. And with Steve Martin throwing that line in also correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't going back to Arthur didn't Dudley Moore, like in a lot of his comedy sketches, wasn't he like didn't like he played. Drunk. That was kind of one of his bits. Yeah. Yeah. So again, and that goes back to when to Britain with. Who's the British comedian cook became famous for his drunken characters. But anyway, a lot of Dudley Moore's comedy career in England before he made it in America involved working with some of the money Python people and some. Marty Fellman and people like that. And one of his sketches was a. And for that matter, that's that's almost like American TV in the 50s and 60s. Every character I'm from in. I mean, I'm in a school in Indiana and you know, red skeleton is here. And so I've written some stuff on him. A lot of stuff on him and his TV show. He had all of these characters and he was like every major comedian who had a television show in the 50s had an assortment of characters and they always every one of them had a drunk character and and he was one of them. So yeah, was that Peter Cook you were talking about? Yeah, Peter Cook. Yeah. Let's talk about our last film here. We're jumping across the pond and I think that's interesting to include that in the conversation about a fish called Wanda directed by Charles Crichton. This hilarious heist comedy brings the spirit of classic screwball comedies to the other side of the pond. The film follows a group of eccentric characters, including a seductive con artist, a stuttering animal lover and a bored barrister as they double cross each other in pursuit of stolen diamonds. The all star cast delivers standout performances with Kevin Kline's Oscar winning turn as the unhinged Nietzsche quoting Otto being a particular highlight. Director Crichton known for his work on Ealing Studios comedies masterfully blends British wit with American style slapstick creating a unique and side splitting transatlantic comedy. The Ealing Studios background that Crichton brought and then working with Cleese on the script who of course came up from like Monty Python and everything crafting this script. I think there's an interesting element that they they

bring to this multiple countries. We're getting the Americans were getting the Brits and the views of each other. But then we're also aside from a screwball comedy. We're also mixing a heist film into this whole thing. Yeah, it's doing that kind of compound genre thing and we've got the courtroom thing with Cleese being a barrister and we also have he actually picked out the director from from Ealing Studios because the Ealing Studios were known for dark comedies for American viewers and listeners and everything. Probably the the best example, the Coen brothers did a remake of Lady Killers. Yeah, yeah. So again, it brings us back to the fact that screwball comedy is close to dark comedy. There's all kinds of cartoonish dark comedy in it when our Monty Python character is trying to kill the dog and it seems like a wily coyote kind of sequence every time he's he's attempting to do that. And in this case, it's instead of a controlling fiance, it's a controlling wife and Jamie Lee Curtis. I were never really certain even at the end if if she loves him or isn't. But anyway, she's obviously a free spirit, you know, in terms of a person opening things up, you know, and then it's much more sexually open than that. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm speaking as anything any foreign language seems to just get her aroused on those lines. So yeah, and plus dealing with stereotypes. And I said it's in a positive way, but because they mock themselves too. I mean, the most uptight stiff, whatever, and Hugh Grant used that wonderfully in the stuff he did with Richard Curtis, you know, because he was real inept anti hero stiff type and Cleese is very uptight, at least in the beginning to sometimes you can't transfer a genre to another country. But I think in this case, you might all say that's an improvement on the stereotype of the, you know, the rigid male kind of thing. Yeah, no, it really is. And playing with all the different tropes and everything that we've come to expect and everything, even the meta nature of it and just little things. But I love the fact that Tom Georgeson plays George Thomas in the film, like just what a weird thing to have the character like named that way after after the character. But also, this particular group had so much fun that they would go on to make Fierce Creatures. And there's a bit where John Cleese's character says to Jamie Lee Curtis's character whose name is Willa in that film, he says, I love you Wanda. I mean, Willa. And it's just like, you know, they continue finding ways to find meta jokes that, you know, are appreciated the more you know about everything else going on around them. Yeah, yeah. The multiple subplots. And again, I was, you know, I was talking about the dark comedy kind of thing, but it almost has a film warish quality to it too, because she's quite willing to get rid of any male in sight. I mean, she's essentially kind of a goals there. And then another satirical thing that they do is Richard Curtis does this too in his films, but he always portrays American women as sexually free spirit, we'll say, diplomatic kind of way. So it gives you the screwball comedy from another country's perspective, which follows the template. I think that there's a nature, especially as again, here we're getting British filmmakers, British writers crafting a story that involves the Americans and the Brits. We're moving across the pond. So we're taking a lot of those screwball elements that again, this is a heist film. So it's a little different, but still like different class and everything. Because even though it's not like the class that we're seeing necessarily in screwball comedy, which we're just upper class often here, we're getting criminals, not necessarily upper class, but even there you have the criminals. And then you have Otto, who is like, kind of so far below them, but thinks he's so high above them because he reads Nietzsche and everything. And he speaks Italian, but it's only saying things like rigatoni, you know, he's like just saying any word that he's seen that happens to be Italian without necessarily knowing any of it, which is hilarious. And of all of them, I guess, John Cleese, who's just kind of like you said, the standard British man, very kind of stiff upper crust, has the quiet life with his family where he and his wife rarely say words to each other. But I think that becomes kind of the class becomes, it shifts a little bit, but we're still getting a sense of class, right? Yeah, we really are. And I need to mention that there's a scene in Lady Eve where Barbara Stanwyck's character is just torturing Anne Refonda about her past love life and everything like that. But she's pretending it isn't true. And then in Four Weddings in a Funeral, the leading lady, I'm drawing a blank on her name, but tells you. Andy McDowell. Yeah. Tying her past love life, but it's real, you know. So it fits perfectly in with this loose Jamie Lee Curtis and her sexuality in a fish called Wanda. So there's a consistency there in terms of Brits and their images of our stereotypes. Yeah, absolutely. And their own stereotypes. Yeah, they're definitely having fun with all of that. Yeah. Well, let's take another break and we'll come back and we'll chat a little bit more about screwball comedy, where it's gone from here and all of that good stuff. We talked a lot about a number of different films and filmmakers. And before we jump into kind of what screwballs gone on to influence, I want to just throw out some other names of directors, writers, actors that we haven't necessarily mentioned, but who are prominent and should be considered when you're looking at screwball comedies. You know, we mentioned Howard Hawks, Capra, Sturgis, Leo McCary, plus actors like Lombard, of course, and Cary Grant. As far as other directors and filmmakers, are there others that their unique styles kind of fit well with screwball comedy that are certainly worth bringing up?

George Kukor is kind of always around there. His stuff ends up, I think, being more romantic comedy. But he did a holiday with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in '37 or '38. And it's definitely a screwball comedy and considered a really good one right now. At the time, Katherine Hepburn had been in a lot of costume dramas and stuff, and she was kind of being pushed with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich as being a little too deep dish, stereotypically stiff. And there was this article in The Hollywood Reporter in '38, calling her and a lot of people box office poison and stuff like that. But anyway, Kukor is someone who's always kind of in the mix and you can't always differentiate. Is this a screwball comedy? It's a romantic comedy. But holiday is definitely one. Ernest Lubitsch, his stuff again, would play more towards, to me anyway, the romantic comedy, but like Nanachka, he did with Greta Garbo. And the first half of that is very screwball combination, except she's the rigid one. She's the strict, by-the-book, communist coming to America and basically saying they're talking about five-year plans and the purges and there's a line in there. So in the future, there will be fewer, a bit better Soviets and stuff like that. But it eventually dovetails into a romantic comedy. And Trouble in Paradise has a lot of those particular elements of screwball. It's just it's enough free that I'm uncomfortable calling it a screwball comedy. But Lubitsch is definitely somebody in it. And then that Mitchell Lison did a lot of great screwball comedies, but he was the one that Billy Wilder and Sturgis and a couple other screenwriters were always trashing because they weren't making the films that they had written. But his name is still on some really great ones. My favorite one is a film he did in '39, I think called Midnight. Oh yeah, just watch that one. Very funny. Yeah, with Don Amici and Barry Moore and... Cledical Bear. Cledical Bear. So he would have to, I mean, yeah, he's working from a great script, but if you gave me a great script, I'm not necessarily going to produce a really good comedy. So I'm trying to think of other people that pop up again. What about modern? Are there any that you would say like of modern filmmakers who I know you've brought like a few things up like or like Richard Curtis and stuff, but I mean, is there anybody else that stands out as real screwball? Not enough so he would, he or she would have a like two or three that I could string out for you. Yeah, I guess that's the trick. They might throw one out there, but they're not necessarily like a screwball comedy director, right? Yeah. Yeah. What about other actors? Are there, I mean, you know, we've mentioned a few, but others that really stand out as like iconic in as far as what they would bring to the screwball comedy genre? In the classic era, it was all Cary Grant. I mean, but somebody and again, they often dovetail more into romantic comedy, but John Cusack was in up until

like maybe 2010 or so, was in a lot of comedies that were like America's Sweethearts, when it comes to the sure thing. He was in enough that we're, I think we could put him in some sort of special category along those lines. Okay. So as far as like where screwball comedy has gone on from here, as far as like what it has influenced, like where do we see its influence over time? Not just necessarily in future screwball comedies, but other genres. I mean, from screwball comedies, we talked about kind of like these fast talking assertive female characters in these films. Do you see that translating outside of screwball comedy and other elements that other genres and filmmakers started tapping into saying, we love that, let's bring that, but put it into our film? Like, where do we see influences of screwball comedy? To me, one thing, and again, we're going back to Britain, but the whole Bridget Jones diary films, to me, are a reversal with the woman being the anti-heroic caught between the Caddies, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in the original one. Really plays as a screwball comedy. It's just that in this case, it's the anti-heroic woman who's kind of a putz at everything. And one person is taking advantage of her and is not a good. It's Hugh Grant goes from the sweet Brit to the Caddish and I don't even know where he's at now. He's going different directions. But the Bridget Jones diary films, I would say screwball comedy is now kind of turning on its ear and we're getting more women as the anti-heroic. Central character and that's probably the best example because it's a, you know, it became a minor franchise and I'm told in Britain, it's held really, really, really highly. I mean, it isn't here, but it's much more somewhat like a hot unique in Britain than it is here in the United States. Well, to the point where I think there's a new film coming out this coming year, like the next in the line of the Bridget's, the Bridget franchise, whatever they're calling that particular franchise. But I think that they just keep making them. So clearly they're popular. Bridget Jones, Mad About the Boy coming out in a couple months. There you go. Like I tell my students in terms of, you know, any genre, all relationships in any kind of genre, any kind of movie opposites attract and then the comedy comes from that. So it might not be a technically a screwball comedy, but that's just a stereotype that we see in a lot of films. Because if they were on the same page, then we wouldn't have a storyline there because sometimes I'll have students try to, you know, fit a film that obviously isn't a screwball comedy in there, but they're saying, but yeah, but it has that kind of dynamic of opposites attract kind of thing. But for the rest of the film, it just doesn't quite flow along those particular lines. Do you see, do you see other filmmakers like, I mean, we've talked about obviously a number of them, Bogdanovich, Richard Curtis, other filmmakers like and writers, Neil

Simon, Woody Allen, the Coen brothers that are using the screwball element, screwball comedy elements in their own comedy that is kind of like been influenced by it. Yeah, I mean, I go round and round about with Woody Allen. I don't use a lot of Woody Allen now because of the whole woke thing and stuff like that. But like Annie Hall, to me is Pygmalion basically. There are a lot of screwball comedy elements in it, but I can't call it a screwball element completely because he will not change for Diane Keaton. I mean, if it was a true screwball comedy, he would get with a program or they would agree on something. But that being said, there's a lot of, I was doing some reading last night. This is just out of the booth. Just last night I read this. I was reading something on Seinfeld and the guy that plays Kramer and Michael Richards is the same, I think, and everything like that. He says very early on, I'm just getting into his autobiography, very early on in there, he says George in Seinfeld was constantly channeling Woody Allen. That's what he based that particular character on. And even though I've just said Woody Allen doesn't really change in most of the, essentially what ends up being more of a romantic comedy, I still see him as having a lot of screwball elements to him there. The whole Seinfeld thing, you could say, in a way, has with George anyway a screwball comedy kind of component because he just is no good with women and it just doesn't work. So yeah, I think it pops up all over. It's just not as high profile and it's easier to just tuck things in a certain place. So I think a lot of people just want to put it in the 30s and then kind of move on. But it's too primal to me to do that. Last but not least, I want to chat a little bit about issues that we might find with screwball comedy. As far as it does feel like as a subgenre it was progressive in some ways, but at the same time there was some relying on some stereotypes, there was some limited representation. Granted, it was also the era in which it was made. But do you feel like are there elements that end up as we look back that just aren't aging as well because of those sorts of things that, I don't know, maybe that's part of the evolution. Like maybe we're moving past those sorts of things in today's versions? I think it's always kind of sticky wicket when you get into the battle of the sexist thing, especially since we're in such a world community now. And I always have to, when I teach screwball comedy, I have to pouch everything in a controlling woman in a free spirit. I have to negotiate that very carefully along those lines. But I really do believe you can get deep dish in your study of humor. And the basic formula for screwball comedy, that act of you have to be a little eccentric to get along in this world. If you take everything seriously, or if you try to make sense out of everything, it isn't going to work. And I think that's probably the greatest gift screwball gives to

us. And in fact, I wrote an article, I'm tired of hearing this, you know, the TV show "Sign and Fell" is supposedly based on nothing, you know, it's just like a show, you know, everything like that. And the 20th century anti hero is based on minutia. I mean, that was the whole thing. The world got to a point where awful things were happening. We had the depression, we had World War Two, we had the bomb, and then, you know, everything. You don't want to think about these things. You want to put your head in the ground. So that whole idea of minutia has been 20th century humor on the go. It wasn't something that what Larry Edwards and Seinfeld made up for Seinfeld in the 90s, you know, it is about minutia. But the whole 20th century, at least when you deal with the anti hero, is about minutia because that Cracker Barrel, Populous, Will Rogers type, he couldn't solve the atomic bomb or you know, you just, there's no, I mean, I like the concept of, you know, since I'm getting to be an old dude, you know, there is, there is wisdom with age, but there's no wisdom that's going to get us through all of this stuff, you know, I mean, we've reached a point where nobody can do that. Nobody can fix it. It's busted, you know, and I think that's the ongoing legacy of screwball comedy or any comedy basically that deals with, well, I have to take a little bit of the craziness with whatever decision I make, because otherwise I'll go nuts trying to make sense out of life, you know. Yeah, I think that's the kind of is probably the best way to wrap things up because I think that it says everything about like this, the nature of where we are, you don't want to over read into everything you want to be able to kind of look at things for what they are, and things change and I think tapping into kind of like the minutia of this type of story or like the minutia that these people are looking or living through in these stories that we're watching. And how it translates, I think it's just an element in life really, and we're all moving through it. And this is, again, I guess going back to what we were saying at the beginning, how there's this element from Sullivan's travels that there's an element that we're here just, we're needing to be entertained in some capacity. And yes, you can judge these things based on what they're lacking or what they're doing wrong or all of these things, but at the same time, it's like, you know, look at it for what it's doing, especially for the time and you can still find a lot of joy and interesting storytelling in these. Yeah. And even though I've said that he leans more towards like the romantic eventually getting back to Woody Allen, he said a quote that kind of probably pulls that all together. He said something like, romance is like the Middle East. There's no answer. And I think that says it all about relationships and everything like that. It's like, yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. Well, I mean, Wes, thank you so much for being here to this lengthy conversation about screwball comedy and its history in these particular films and and more. I mean, it's been a wonderful conversation with you. Thank you so much. Well, thanks. Thanks for giving me that opportunity. I hope I was up to what you wanted. So, oh, it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. As far as finding you, if people want to learn more about you or check out your books is your website the best place to go. I think it's just wesgaring.com, right? A comic live colon Wes Garing website. We'll make sure we put that in the show notes so people can check you out and your books and everything and just keep up the great work. Again, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Now I know normally I tell everybody at this point what we're talking about next month, but instead of that, we have a surprise. We're going to kick off the new year with. That's right. Next week, I'll be dropping a bonus episode of more screwball comedy. Greg War Halbot, a film professor and author of Hollywood screwball comedy, 1934 to 1945 sex, love and democratic ideals will be joining me to talk about seven more screwball comedies that are a little less well known, but just as good. Make sure you tune in for that one. Thanks everybody for joining us on CinemaScope, part of the True Story FM Entertainment Podcast Network, music by Orkus and Ziv Grinberg. Find us in the entire NextReal family of film podcast at trustore.fm. Follow us on social media at TheNextReal and please rate and review us if your podcast app allows. And as we part ways, remember, your cinematic journey never ends. Stay curious. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]