Just watched this again - I'm pretty severely unfamiliar with the screwball genre, for instance I've not seen any of Hawks' screwballs. Are they all this good, or at least close? I fell in love with the characters all over again. Great great great great great. Great!
What's the Spanish for drunken bum?
Howard Hawks' films define the screwball comedy.
This...doesn't.
"...if that was off, I'd be whoopin' your ass up and down this street." ~ an irate Tarantino
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My Hawks screwball favorites are 'His Girl Friday' and 'Bringing Up Baby.' Both are excellent, at least as good as this, and in 'Baby,' Katharine Hepburn plays a ditsy society girl... who might remind you more than a little of Lombard's Irene.
shareLombard's Irene also made me think of a very similar role Hepburn also did in Cukor's Holiday, also 1938 as Bringing Up Baby, and another excellent screwball.
sharePersonally I don't really care for Howard Hawks comedies. Twentieth Century and His Girl Friday are both excellent, but just a bit frenetic for my taste. Bringing up Baby was a box office flop in 1938, and nothing has really changed since then! A bunch of critics have brainwashed almost everyone into thinking it is a good film, which it never was.
In my opinion the best screwball comedies of that era are Trouble in Paradise, It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, the Awful Truth, Ninotchka, Palm Beach Story, and To Be Or Not To Be. Theodora Goes Wild and The Great McGinty are also well worth watching!
I don't know Doug, but yes, Bringing Up Baby is overrated, yes, His Girl Friday is better, and yes, better use was made of Grant in The Awful Truth than in Bringing Up Baby. Hepburn trying to show us that she can copy Lombard (in My Man Godfrey) works out just fine, but too much has been made of it.
shareI would agree that this is a great film. Every movie William Powell did was great. Someone mentioned "It happened One Night", that is a must, must see. Also anything by Preston Sturges, my favorite would be Sullivan's Travels. For Howard Hawks, Ball of Fire -with beautiful Barbara Stanwyck. Monkey Business and Gentlemen prefer Blondes also by Hawks.
shareScrewball comedies have become my passion over the past two years. Here are some of the definitive ones you just have to check out:
His Girl Friday (directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell)
Bringing Up Baby (directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant & Katharine Hepburn)
It Happened One Night (directed by Frank Capra, starring Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert)
The Lady Eve (directed by Preston Struges, starring Barbara Stanwyck & Henry Fonda)
You Can't Take It With You (directed by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart & Jean Arthur)
And the following two films don't really count as "screwball comedies", but they are incredibly wonderful romantic comedies:
The Philadelphia Story (directed by George Cukor, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, & James Stewart)
The Shop Around the Corner (directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring James Stewart & Margaret Sullivan)
Thanks. Interestingly, since I made the original post I've actually seen quite a few of those. I have not been able to see any Preston Struges though, which is a shame.
What's the Spanish for drunken bum?
i have seen all these movies on your list. great list! the only one i didn't really care for too much was Bringing Up Baby.
The Lady Eve is the definitive Screwball Comedy when people ask me what a screwball comedy is.
another famous one, that i don't particularly care for although it is extremely famous and popular, is Arsenic and Old Lace dir. Frank Capra. I saw it on stage in london and loved it (starring Michael Richards), but the movie didn't do it for me.
I have seen all on the list. And then some (boy, and then some).
sharePerfect is non existent
shareA couple of underrated screwball comedies that are both now available on DVD:
The Rage Of Paris (and yes, Westley in Princess Bride _is_ based on Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.)
I Married A Witch (would you guess Veronica Lake wasn't funny? you'd guess wrong)
A great screwball comedy from 2003:
Down With Love
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