Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Something for Everyone, 

A Comedy Tonight*

        I’d been feeling a little low and was casting about for something to snap me out of it. Browsing my collection of DVDs, I realized that there were many films that had the power to suspend the blahs, and so, naturally, I made a list.

 

There was a time in Hollywood when there were stars in such abundance – men and women who excelled in drama and comedy, they could move from one genre to the other seamlessly.  Benefitting from great scripts and great directors, certain actors, although dependable in drama, had a unique ability that transformed scripts into the classic comedies that still make us laugh.

 

So many to choose from as examples.  But starting with the women (and why not?), I offer six actresses who had the ability to make comedies great.  There are those women who are funny – their voices, their expressions, the situations where they may not look glamorous.  Then there are women who know how to carry a comedy by the way they master the dialogue and match it with expressions and attitude.

 

Jean Arthur

Arthur has been convincing in some serious dramas like History is Made at Night, directed by Frank Borzage, where she shines in a love story opposite Charles Boyer and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington directed by Frank Capra, where she supports brand-new senator, James Stewart. But there’s no doubt she is known for her ability to sell a comedy, usually, as the victim of circumstances beyond her control. Two of the best known of these are from director, George Stevens: The More the Merrier with Joel McCrea and The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant,

Less well-known are If Only You Could Cook from 1935, directed by William A. Seiter, and my favorite, Easy Living from 1937, directed by Mitchell Leisen, with a script by Preston Sturges.

If Only You Could Cook co-stars Herbert Marshall as the head of an automobile company who, in a dispute with his board of directors, walks out in a huff and finds himself in the park, sharing a bench with Arthur.  Arthur is unemployed and reading the help-wanted ads, and assuming Marshall is also looking for a job, comments that there seem to only be jobs available for couples.  Thus the plan evolves that they will pretend to be a married couple – a cook and butler.  They land a job with an amiable gangster, played by Leo Carillo, who has a suspicious sidekick, played by Lionel Stander. Marshall’s character goes along with the ruse on a lark, and because he likes Arthur’s character and goes to a lot of trouble to keep his identity a secret.

 

Easy Living starts with an angry Edward Arnold throwing his over-extravagant wife’s mink coat off the roof of their Park Avenue home, and then having second thoughts.  The coat has landed on Arthur, ruining her hat, and Arnold tells her to keep the coat and buys her a new hat while driving her to work.  While in the car, he tries to explain to her how compound interest works, which is one of best scenes that Preston Sturges ever wrote.  The plot of the film is about how people treat unemployed Arthur when she is wearing a mink coat and they think she is ‘sponsored’ by tycoon. J.B. Ball (Arnold). Conveniently J.B. Ball has a son, played by Ray Milland, who provides the love interest. Another hilarious scene is in the automat, for those who remember what that was.

Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne, best known in a long career for dramas like George Stevens’ Penny Serenade from 1941, and I Remember Mama from 1948, was equally famous for her comedies with Cary Grant: The Awful Truth from 1937 and My Favorite Wife from 1940,  directed by Leo McCarey.

Less known, but worth a look: Charles Vidor’s Together Again from 1944, Tay Garnett’s Joy of Living  from 1938 and my favorite, Richard Boleslawski’s Theodora Goes Wild from 1936.

Together Again costars Charles Boyer as a sophisticated New York sculptor who thinks he has been commissioned to create a statue of the beloved former mayor of a small town by his widow. The widow, played by Dunne, who has succeeded her husband as mayor, and is the soul of respectability, got into a bit of scandalous trouble while in the big city and wants to forget about New York and Boyer. Although this is a lot like the plot of the earlier Theodora Goes Wild, the chemistry with Boyer, who excels in a comedy role, adds a different element. Note: The title wins the prize for most misleading, having nothing to do with the plot.

 

Joy of Living is the story of Dunne as a successful Broadway musical star who supports a demanding and ungrateful family, played by an ensemble of familiar faces:  Alice Brady, Guy Kibbee, Lucille Ball, Billy Gilbert.  She is pursued by an admirer, played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who tries to convince her to run away with him to the South Sea Island where he’s heading. (Some might notice a similar theme to Bombshell from 1933, the Jean Harlow vehicle of the ultimate put upon star, mentioned below.)  But there are some very funny scenes here and Dunne’s lovely rendition of the musical score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields.

Theodora Goes Wild is the best known of the three.  Small town girl, Dunne, lives an ultra-respectable life with her two aunts. But she has a dark secret.  She has written a best-selling romance novel under a pseudonym. While visiting her uncle in New York, and living the life of her alter-ego, she meets and attracts a friend of her publisher, played by Melvyn Douglas, who accidentally gets a clue to her real identity.  He follows her home and forces her to give him a job to keep her secret. How they work it out is complicated and makes for a delightful romcom.

Jean Harlow

Harlow’s short life was spectacularly brilliant in Hollywood terms. If you only know Jean from clips – like the often-shown scene with Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight, you tend to dismiss her as a glamorous, but kind-of-cheap, confection given predictable lines to match. But if you actually watch her films, you will realize what a polished comedy actress she was – that the tinny, cheap voice is one she uses when the role calls for it and is absent when she is playing another kind of character.

Red-Headed Woman from 1932 is a pre-code gem that leaves no doubt why gold-digger Harlow was irresistible. The Girl from Missouri from 1934 is very similar to the plot of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because Anita Loos wrote both.  Unlike the Marilyn Monroe character, Harlow’s character is very much out to accept jewels from rich men. 

Bombshell from 1933 seemed to be a parody of Harlow’s real life. She plays a big star named Lola Burns, with a troop of hangers-on: her ne’er-do-well father and brother, played by Frank Morgan and Ted Healy, respectively, her personal assistant, played by Una Merkel, her maid, played by Louise Beavers, her director, played by Pat O’Brien, and particularly, her nemesis/agent, played by Lee Tracy, who is always thwarting Harlow’s every attempt to change her image, of which she is sincerely tired. She thinks that she has finally found a way to escape his non-stop publicity stunts – she plans to adopt a baby and acquire a new image. The dialogue is rapid fire in this hilarious pre-code comedy, directed by Victor Fleming.

Harlow is a little less manic, but no less funny, playing Spencer Tracy’s fiancée in Libeled Lady from 1936. Tracy runs a newspaper and to hear his fiancée’s opinion, the newspaper runs him. Every time they are supposed to be married, a crisis at the paper requires a postponement. This time the paper is being sued by socialite, Myrna Loy, for libel and millions are at stake. The only one who can save the day is a former reporter played by William Powell, who devises a plan that involves Harlow’s character pretending to marry him. Tracy sees no problem with marrying his fiancée off to Powell for the sake of the paper, and Harlow’s character spends much of the film resenting the way she is disrespected and misused. But Powell’s character has an equal number of hilarious scenes (Powell fishing for trout is laugh-out-loud). Deftly directed by Jack Conway in a time when a studio could put four of Hollywood’s biggest stars in one film. They just don’t make them like this anymore.

Katherine Hepburn

 

Katherine Hepburn made quite a few comedies in her career of more than five decades. Most of her early film career was serious drama, the first film that could be considered a comedy was, in fact, the definitive screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby from 1938 with Cary Grant, followed by the 1940 hit, The Philadelphia Story, with Cary Grant and James Stewart.  After that, nothing in the comedy line until Adam’s Rib with Spencer Tracy in 1949, which is not on my favorite list, despite being a showcase for the comedy talents of Jean Hagen and Judy Holliday.  And despite being written by the same couple (Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin) and directed by the same director (George Cukor) as Pat and Mike from 1952, also with Tracy, which is on my list of favorites. I should mention that The African Queen from 1951, which is usually considered an adventure/romance, contains great comic performances by both Hepburn and co-star Humphrey Bogart.  Almost twenty years after Bringing Up Baby, she made Desk Set in 1957, also with Tracy, which is my second favorite Hepburn comedy.

 

Desk Set, directed by Walter Lang, is the story of Bunny Watson (Hepburn), the head of the research department of a television network – in the dark ages before everything was computerized. The women in this department relied on books! If the film had nothing else, I would still have enjoyed it, as I have always been partial to stories in libraries. But this film has more -- a fine cast:  Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall, as Hepburn’s research department associates, Gig Young as her consistently disappointing beau, and Spencer Tracy as the man who is tasked with bringing efficiency to the department. This cast works very well together and gives the impression at times that they are ad-libbing, thanks to the script adapted from the stage by Henry and Phoebe Ephron. There are some truly funny and memorable (for me) scenes, particularly the interplay between Hepburn and Blondell and the alcohol-loosened Hepburn at the office Christmas party.

The other great screenwriting team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin who were responsible for the 1949 film, Adam’s Rib, seemed to have acquired a more modern model for the relationship between men and women by 1952 when they wrote Pat and Mike.  Whereas in Adam’s Rib, attorney, Hepburn, defends the woman her husband, district attorney, Spencer Tracy, is prosecuting, and seems to be accused of wrecking their marriage for doing so, in Pat and Mike, Mike, played again by Tracy, promotes multi-athlete, Pat (Hepburn) in a relationship he describes as five-0 – five-0.  Just the titles of the two films tells you about the way women are considered in them. 

Hepburn’s character in Pat and Mike is Pat Pemberton, a three-sport athlete who tends to freeze up whenever her fiancé is in the audience.  Mike, played by Spencer Tracy, is a sports promoter/agent who sees the financial potential in her talent and having her with his agency, as long as he can keep the fiancé away.  They are from two very different worlds, which he recognizes, she from the upper class, and he from the more streetwise set. She knows she needs help and decides to trust him.  He thinks his street smarts put him in control. As their relationship develops, some truly funny scenes occur to disabuse him of that idea.

In spite of the fact that she was depicted as a scatterbrained disaster for Cary Grant’s character, Hepburn’s character in the 1938 film, Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, seemed to me the most liberated, perhaps reflecting the times. Katherine Hepburn was comfortable in the role of the upper-class young woman commanding a certain respect, even when she is playing an idiot like her character, Susan Vance. She operates with ease in a summer frock or a Chinese costume, in an evening gown or golf togs, dealing with servants, driving cars, and generally getting her way. When she plays tennis or golf on film, we get the impression that she really plays tennis and golf. There is a confidence in the way she wears clothes, including trousers, which along with the Bryn Mawr accent, tells us that she may be a scatterbrain but she is definitely in charge of her life. In the end, we are not sure if Susan relentlessly intruded into the life of Cary Grant’s character, David Huxley, unintentionally, or if it was her plan all along, because the end result was what she wanted – David breaks his engagement to his fiancée and confesses his love to her.

Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard played comedy roles with great abandon, unafraid to shed the glamorous image for a laugh. She, too, died young, in 1942, but had made 80 films in her short life, since the silent era, getting some comedy training in Mack Sennett shorts in 1928. By 1934, she had become one of Paramount’s top stars, and starred in the comic Twentieth Century with John Barrymore, where she showed that she had a real talent for comedy.

Lombard plays the actress, Lily Garland, who has graduated from the ingenue creation of director, Oscar Jaffe, played by Barrymore, to Hollywood star.  Barrymore wants her back in his latest play to save his failing company and tries to get her under contract when they are on the Twentieth Century, the Chicago/New York train. Lily has no intention of returning to the controlling Jaffe. Barrymore chews up the scenery, and Lombard, in her first big film, is a match. Howard Hawks directs one of the first screwball comedies, an experience that is honed in his later classics, Bringing Up Baby in 1938, and His Girl Friday in 1940 (with the help of the writing of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who also wrote The Front Page, the play and two earlier film versions before His Girl Friday).

Lombard best-known comedy is probably My Man Godfrey from 1936, nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including best actress. Also in 1936, one of four films she made with Fred MacMurray, The Princess Comes Across, where she tries to pass herself off as a princess, doing a broad impersonation of Garbo, in order to further her acting career. My favorite with MacMurray is Hands Across the Table, with Lombard as a manicurist who is intent on marrying a rich man and helping MacMurray marry a rich woman. Predictably, their plans fall through. She and MacMurray had good chemistry, and there are some very romantic scenes as well as comedy, skillfully directed by Mitchell Leisen.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith from 1941 has the distinction of being the only real comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Co-starring Robert Montgomery, as Lombard’s husband, this happily married couple has their life turned upside down when it turns out that through a technicality, their marriage has been invalidated. Montgomery, who I think is rather good in comedy roles, has trouble convincing Lombard that he is sufficiently anxious to exchange their vows again.  His situation is made worse by his partner and friend, played by Gene Raymond, deciding to court Lombard, now that he has the chance.  And of course there is the meddling, disapproving mother-in-law, played by Esther Dale.

 

Her last film was the 1942 To Be or Not to Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch (remade in 1983 by Mel Brooks with Anne Bancroft). Her co-star, Jack Benny, had the all the funny bits, but Lombard carries the comedy drama well. They play the Turas, stars of an acting company in Poland when the Germans invade in 1939, and the company becomes involved in a plan to save a list of names in the underground.  It was rather daring, an anti-Nazi comedy in 1942 (it was made a year earlier, but withheld until the U.S. entered the war), but it makes a clear case for art versus barbarity with sharp wit and a matchless cast of characters.   

Rosalind Russell

I could not finish this list without a mention of Rosalind Russell who is the costar of my favorite comedy, His Girl Friday, with Cary Grant. After that role of ace reporter, Hildy Johnson, Russell’s comedies throughout the forties are less screwball than morality plays, with Russell playing no less than ten successful career women who eventually realize that being a wife is real success, although This Thing Called Love with Melvyn Douglas (1940), Tell it to the Judge (1949) are less offensive screwball types.

In This Thing Called Love, directed by Alexander Hall, Roz is a consultant to an insurance company, who has written an article suggesting the divorce rate would decrease if prospective couples would take the time to know each other outside the bedroom before consummating the marriage.  She suggests three months as a good trial period, and she is convinced that she should try out the theory in her own life, informing fiancé, Melvyn Douglas, of the plan. Naturally he thinks she will change her mind as soon as they are living together. Douglas and Russell are so good at this kind of comedy and they are backed by a fine supporting cast:  Binnie Barnes, Allen Joslyn and Lee J. Cobb.

By 1949, career women were even less in favor, but in Tell it to the Judge, directed by Norman Foster, Russell’s character, Marsha, a lawyer, is being considered for an appointment to the bench, and is worried that her divorce from Pete, played by Robert Cummings, might work against her. The couple divorced due to a misunderstanding, are still in love, and decide to remarry, Her father, played by Harry Davenport, tries to thwart their plans because he thinks it will ruin her chances for the appointment. There follows a surfeit of misunderstandings that include Gig Young and Marie McDonald, as plans are thwarted and double thwarted. Although Russell is her usual master of snappy dialogue, it is Robert Cummings, that shines in a role that showed his gift for comedy, which may have been why he successfully transitioned to television sitcom.

One film that stands out among the career woman formula plot is Take a Letter Darling from 1942. Yes, Roz is a high-powered business executive, and yes, she does end up falling in love, but the path of this story has some great dialogue, wonderful performances by a small cast, and great direction – once again, by the highly recognized as underrated, Mitchell Leisen, (who, if you recall is responsible for the superb comedies, Easy Living with Jean Arthur, and Hands Across the Table with Carole Lombard, mentioned above).

This time Russell is a partner in an advertising agency with Robert Benchley . She needs a male ‘secretary’ to act as a buffer at various social affairs that are vital to getting agency business. As she puts it, it keeps the wives from being jealous and the men from making passes. Fred MacMurray plays a penniless artist who desperately needs the good salary so he can pay his debts and move to Mexico to paint. It is not an easy relationship and things fall apart when they are at the estate of prospective clients, tobacco company heirs, brother and sister, played by MacDonald Carey and Constance Moore, who present amorous temptations to the fake couple. It was a rather unusual, quasi gender-bending story for its time. If it were made today, you can imagine the predictable situations that were not so predictable in 1942.

Playing ace reporter, Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday, besides being a time-tested, comedy classic (a play and two previous film versions by Hecht and MacArthur), Russell followed a slightly different career woman narrative.  In this version of the story, Hildy is a woman, and is tired of the news business and her ex-husband, ex-boss, Walter Burns, played by Cary Grant.  When the film begins, she is off to get married, when Walter tricks her into turning in one last story and possibly saving a man’s life. For the rest of the film she is constantly trying to get away, but is always drawn back to by the lure of a scoop.  This conflict is played out with rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, the signature of director, Howard Hawks, and hilarious scenes courtesy of the Hecht/MacArthur script and a great cast.  I have watched this classic many, many times and each time I am able to discover something new to laugh at.

 

Although, my subject matter is usually confined to the Golden Age of cinema in Hollywood, I need to point out that Rosalind Russell continued to prove her ability to dominate in a comedy. For example, her performance in Auntie Mame in 1958, directed by Morton DeCosta, showed she hadn’t lost a step. And in 1962, she starred with Hayley Mills in the beloved and hilarious The Trouble with Angels, directed by Ida Lupino. Although the comedy was supplied by Mills and her best friend and follower, June Harding, Russell’s reactions were as necessary as their hijinks.

 

 

 * A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim