Screwball comedy

Screwball comedy is a film subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1950s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary characteristics similar to film noir, distinguished by a female character who dominates the relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged, and the two engaging in a humorous battle of the sexes.
The genre also featured romantic attachments between members of different social classes, as in It Happened One Night and My Man Godfrey.
What sets the screwball comedy apart from the generic romantic comedy is that "screwball comedy puts the emphasis on a funny spoofing of love, while the more traditional romantic comedy ultimately accents love." Other elements of the screwball comedy include fast-paced, overlapping repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, physical battle of the sexes, disguise and masquerade, and plot lines involving courtship and marriage. Some comic plays are also described as screwball comedies.

Name

Screwball comedy gets its name from the screwball, a type of breaking pitch in baseball and fastpitch softball that moves in the opposite direction from all other breaking pitches. These features of the screwball pitch also describe the dynamics between the lead characters in screwball comedy films. According to Gehring :

Still, screwball comedy probably drew its name from the term's entertainingly unorthodox use in the national pastime. Before the term's application in 1930s film criticism, "screwball" had been used in baseball to describe both an oddball player and "any pitched ball that moves in an unusual or unexpected way." Obviously, these characteristics also describe performers in screwball comedy films, from oddball Carole Lombard to the unusual or unexpected movement of Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. As with the crazy period antics in baseball, screwball comedy uses nutty behavior as a prism through which to view a topsy-turvy period in American history.

History

Screwball comedy has proved to be a popular and enduring film genre. Three-Cornered Moon, starring Claudette Colbert, is often credited as the first true screwball, though Bombshell starring Jean Harlow followed it in the same year. Although many film scholars agree that its classic period had effectively ended by 1942, elements of the genre have persisted or have been paid homage to in later films. Other film scholars argue that the screwball comedy lives on.
During the Great Depression, there was a general demand for films with a strong social class critique and hopeful, escapist-oriented themes. The screwball format arose largely due to the major film studios' desire to avoid censorship by the increasingly enforced Hays Code. Filmmakers resorted to handling these elements covertly to incorporate prohibited risqué elements into their plots. The verbal sparring between the sexes served as a stand-in for physical and sexual tension. Though some film scholars, such as William K. Everson, argue that "screwball comedies were not so much rebelling against the Production Code as they were attacking and ridiculing the dull, lifeless respectability that the Code insisted on for family viewing."
The screwball comedy has close links with the theatrical genre of farce, and some comic plays are also described as screwball comedies. Other genres with which screwball comedy is associated include slapstick, situation comedy, romantic comedy and bedroom farce.

Characteristics

Films that are definitive of the genre usually feature farcical situations, a combination of slapstick and fast-paced repartee, and show the struggle between economic classes. They also generally feature a self-confident and often stubborn central female protagonist and a plot involving courtship, marriage, or remarriage. These traits can be seen in both It Happened One Night and My Man Godfrey. The film critic Andrew Sarris has defined the screwball comedy as "a sex comedy without the sex."
Like farce, screwball comedies often involve masquerades and disguises in which a character or characters resort to secrecy. Sometimes screwball comedies feature male characters cross-dressing, further contributing to elements of masquerade, Love Crazy, I Was a Male War Bride, and Some Like It Hot ). At first, the couple seems mismatched and even hostile to each other, but eventually overcome their differences amusingly or entertainingly, leading to romance. Often, this mismatch comes about when the man is of a lower social class than the woman. The woman often plans the final romantic union from the outset, and the man is seemingly oblivious to this. In Bringing Up Baby, the woman tells a third party: "He's the man I'm going to marry. He doesn't know it, but I am."
File:The-Lady-Eve.jpg|thumb|In The Lady Eve, Jean passes herself off as an upper-class woman.
These pictures also offered a cultural escape valve: a safe battleground to explore serious issues such as class under a comedic and non-threatening framework. Class issues are a strong component of screwball comedies: the upper class is represented as idle, pampered, and having difficulty coping with the real world. By contrast, when lower-class people attempt to pass themselves off as upper class or otherwise insinuate themselves into high society, they can do so with relative ease. Some critics believe that the portrayal of the upper class in It Happened One Night was brought about by the Great Depression, and the financially struggling moviegoing public's desire to see the upper class taught a lesson in humanity.
Another common element of the screwball comedy is fast-talking, witty repartee, such as in You Can't Take It with You and His Girl Friday. This stylistic device did not originate in the genre: it is also found in many of the old Hollywood cycles, including gangster films and traditional romantic comedies.
Screwball comedies also tend to contain ridiculous, farcical situations, such as in Bringing Up Baby, where a couple must take care of a pet leopard during much of the film. Slapstick elements are also frequently present, such as the numerous pratfalls Henry Fonda takes in The Lady Eve.
One subgenre of screwball is known as the comedy of remarriage, in which characters divorce and then remarry one another, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story ). Some scholars point to this frequent device as evidence of the shift in the American moral code, as it showed freer attitudes toward divorce
Another subgenre of screwball comedy is the woman chasing a man who is oblivious to or uninterested in her. Examples include Barbara Stanwyck chasing Henry Fonda ; Sonja Henie chasing John Payne ; Marion Davies chasing Antonio Moreno ; Marion Davies chasing Bing Crosby ; and Carole Lombard chasing William Powell.
The philosopher Stanley Cavell has noted that many classic screwball comedies turn on an interlude in the state of Connecticut. In Christmas in Connecticut, the action moves to Connecticut and remains there for the duration of the film. New York City is also featured in a lot of screwball comedies, which critics have noted may be because of the economic diversity of the city and the ability to contrast different social classes during the Great Depression. The screwball comedies It Happened One Night and The Palm Beach Story also feature characters traveling to and from Florida by train. Trains, another staple of screwball comedies and romantic comedies from the era, are also featured prominently in Design for Living, Twentieth Century and Vivacious Lady.

Examples from the classic period

Year	Title	Director	Stars	Ref
1928			Marion Davies, Marie Dressler, and Lawrence Gray
1931	Platinum Blonde		Loretta Young, Robert Williams and Jean Harlow
1931			Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien
1932	Trouble in Paradise		Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, and Herbert Marshall
1933	Three-Cornered Moon	Elliott Nugent	Claudette Colbert and Richard Arlen
1933	Bombshell	Victor Fleming	Jean Harlow and Lee Tracy
1934	Design for Living		Fredric March, Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins
1934	It Happened One Night		Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert
1934	Twentieth Century		John Barrymore and Carole Lombard
1934	The Richest Girl in the World	William A. Seiter	Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, and Fay Wray
1935	Hands Across the Table		Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy
1935	She Couldn't Take It		George Raft and Joan Bennett
1935	If You Could Only Cook	William A. Seiter	Herbert Marshall and Jean Arthur
1936	Mr. Deeds Goes to Town		Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur
1936	The Ex-Mrs. Bradford	Stephen Roberts	William Powell and Jean Arthur
1936	My Man Godfrey		William Powell and Carole Lombard
1936	Cain and Mabel		Marion Davies and Clark Gable
1936	Libeled Lady		Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy
1936	Theodora Goes Wild		Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas
1936	Love on the Run	W. S. Van Dyke	Joan Crawford and Clark Gable
1937	Love Is News		Tyrone Power, Loretta Young, and Don Ameche
1937	Easy Living		Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold and Ray Milland
1937	Topper		Constance Bennett and Cary Grant
1937			Irene Dunne, Cary Grant and Ralph Bellamy
1937	Double Wedding		William Powell and Myrna Loy
1937	Nothing Sacred		Carole Lombard and Fredric March
1937	True Confession		Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray and John Barrymore
1938	The Divorce of Lady X	Tim Whelan	Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier
1938	Merrily We Live		Constance Bennett and Brian Aherne
1938	Bringing Up Baby		Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant
1938	Bluebeard's Eighth Wife		Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper
1938	Joy of Living		Irene Dunne and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
1938	Vivacious Lady		Ginger Rogers and James Stewart
1938	Holiday		Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant
1938	You Can't Take It with You		Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart and Edward Arnold
1938	Three Loves Has Nancy		Janet Gaynor, Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone
1938	The Mad Miss Manton	Leigh Jason	Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda
1938	Say It in French	Andrew L. Stone	Ray Milland and Olympe Bradna
1939	Midnight		Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche
1939	It's a Wonderful World		Claudette Colbert and James Stewart
1939	Bachelor Mother		Ginger Rogers, David Niven and Charles Coburn
1939	Ninotchka		Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas
1940	His Girl Friday		Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy
1940	Too Many Husbands		Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas
1940	My Favorite Wife		Cary Grant and Irene Dunne
1940	The Great McGinty		Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus and Akim Tamiroff
1940	I Love You Again		William Powell and Myrna Loy
1940	Christmas in July		Dick Powell and Ellen Drew
1940			Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart
1941	Mr. and Mrs. Smith		Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard
1941			Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda
1941	The Devil and Miss Jones	Sam Wood	Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn
1941	Love Crazy	Jack Conway	William Powell and Myrna Loy
1941	Tom, Dick and Harry	Garson Kanin	Ginger Rogers
1941	The Bride Came C.O.D.	William Keighley	James Cagney and Bette Davis
1941	Unfinished Business		Robert Montgomery and Irene Dunne
1941	You Belong to Me		Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda
1941	Ball of Fire		Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper
1941	Sullivan's Travels		Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake
1942	To Be or Not To Be		Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack
1942	The Major and the Minor	Billy Wilder	Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland
1942	Girl Trouble	Harold Schuster	Don Ameche and Joan Bennett
1942	I Married a Witch	René Clair	Fredric March and Veronica Lake
1942			Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea
1943	The More the Merrier		Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea
1944	The Miracle of Morgan's Creek		Betty Hutton and Eddie Bracken
1944	Arsenic and Old Lace		Cary Grant and Priscilla Lane
1944	Bride by Mistake ''		Alan Marshal and Laraine Day
1945	Eve Knew Her Apples	Will Jason	Ann Miller and William Wright
1945	Christmas in Connecticut	Peter Godfrey	Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan
1946	Cluny Brown		Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones
1946	Easy to Wed	Edward Buzzell	Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn
1947	The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer	Irving Reis	Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple
1948	Romance on the High Seas	Michael Curtiz	Jack Carson and Doris Day
1948	A Song Is Born		Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo
1948	That Wonderful Urge	Robert B. Sinclair	Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney
1949	I Was a Male War Bride		Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan

Other films from this period in other genres incorporate elements of the screwball comedy. For example, Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The 39 Steps features the gimmick of a young couple who finds themselves handcuffed together and who eventually, almost despite themselves, fall in love with one another, and Woody Van Dyke's detective comedy The Thin Man, which portrays a witty, urbane couple who trade barbs as they solve mysteries together. Some of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals of the 1930s also feature screwball comedy plots, such as The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, and Carefree, which costars Ralph Bellamy. The Eddie Cantor musicals Whoopee! and Roman Scandals, and slapstick road movies such as Six of a Kind include screwball elements. Some of the Joe E. Brown comedies also fall into this category, particularly Broadminded and Earthworm Tractors. Screwball comedies such as The Philadelphia Story and Ball of Fire also received musical remakes, High Society and A Song is Born.
Actors and actresses featured in or associated with screwball comedy:

Jean Arthur
Fred Astaire
Ralph Bellamy
Constance Bennett
Eric Blore
Jack Carson
Charles Coburn
Claudette Colbert
Gary Cooper
Marion Davies
William Demarest
Melvyn Douglas
Irene Dunne
Kay Francis
Clark Gable
Cary Grant
Jean Harlow
Katharine Hepburn
Edward Everett Horton
Harold Lloyd
Carole Lombard
Myrna Loy
Fred MacMurray
Fredric March
Joel McCrea
Ray Milland
William Powell
Tyrone Power
Ginger Rogers
Rosalind Russell
Barbara Stanwyck
James Stewart

Directors of screwball comedies: