Laughter is the Best Medicine. Thus, the spate of shelter-in-place jokes. Such as:
“Of course I have plans for tonight! After dinner, I’m going to the living room.”
“In Germany, there’s panic buying of sausages and cheese. It’s their Wurst Kase scenario.”
“Speaking of shortages, when I ran out of toilet paper, I had to use newspapers. The Times are rough.”
There may be no better antidote for the pandemic blues than a good smile, chortle or guffaw. And there is no better way to find comedic nuggets to induce such laughter than in a classic Screwball Comedy.
As the lady said, the times are rough, and we likely are facing a good deal more roughness before we’re through. No one knows the long-term economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic just yet (even if some pundits confidently claim to). But let’s compare what we do know with some facts about the Great Depression of the 1930s – a very hard time indeed for most people – and the period when the comedic genre known as “screwball” was born. As you’ll see, there are parallels that bear upon todays topic.
While the US unemployment rate had been holding pretty steady at just 3.5% before the covid-19 shut-down, total US unemployment is currently in the neighborhood of 15% - the highest since the early days of the Great Depression which, however, was much worse (see below). American production (GDP) fell by something like 1.4% in the first quarter of 2020 (often reported as an annualized rate of around 5%, which assumes 12 months of the same). The decline has probably tripled by now, halfway through the second quarter. What this portends for the rest of the year and beyond is a matter of wide disagreement among economists and other fortune tellers. Perhaps we are in for a protracted, years long period of tough times. Or, we may bounce back fairly quickly. Take your pick.
The Great Depression, the longest and deepest depression in the Twentieth Century - in the US and throughout the world - is the benchmark for modern economic contraction. It lasted from October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday) until the US entry into WW II - an exceedingly protracted period. Worldwide GDP fell by something like 15%. (By comparison, it was under 1% in the “great recession of 2008-09). US foreign trade dropped by nearly 70%. Accordingly, US unemployment rose precipitously, topping out at over 25%; and remaining between 15% and 20% through 1940. Needless to say, human misery and desperation rose immeasurably.
What we’ve all endured to date, economically at least, pales in comparison to those days. But unlike the depression generation, many of us are stuck at home, unable to go nearly anywhere - to restaurants or the local pub, to shops, to ballgames , to concerts, or even to socialize - other than digitally. Even as things start to open up, many of our normal pastimes and diversions are expected to be off-limits for quite a while yet.
So, how did people endure the great depression of the 1930s? How did they cope? Well, they went to the movies, of course. What kind of movies? Not, for the most part, pictures about life in a depression! On the contrary, they thronged to pictures offering an escape from dreary reality – movies that offered adventure, thrills, music, and lots of laughter. The number one movie in 1930 was Tom Sawyer, featuring tough but cute child star Jackie Coogan. In 1931 it was Frankenstein. By 1933, fully half of the top ten grossing films were extravagant musicals, headed by Gold Diggers of 1933 (still a terrific watch, btw). In 1934, the biggest cinema draw was The Merry Widow, a musical comedy featuring superstars Jeanette MacDonald and. Maurice Chevalier. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were big, too. Tarzan was big. And Screwball Comedies had their heyday.
Generally, a screwball comedy is a story built for laughs, set on a romantic frame. They are a subgenre of the romantic comedy, but where the comedy predominates. Also referred to as “madcap”, the laughs come from fast-paced, witty (or sometimes downright silly) dialogue, verbal and physical slapstick, and brisk, ridiculous, frequently zany plots. Some of the biggest stars of the day made their mark in screwball comedies – stars like Jean Harlow, Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, William Powell and Carole Lombard. There are plenty of good screwball comedies, and they are definitely worth your time – now especially.
I’m going to highlight what I consider the ten best screwball comedies available for home viewing,
plus a few more besides. As usual, I’ll also tell you where you can find each movie to stream. “Best” is a subjective judgment of course, and if you’ve seen a lot of these pictures you may well disagree with my list or my rankings. If you do, I’d love to hear from you. And, if you are unfamiliar with screwball, you are in for quite a treat.
Do keep in mind that all of the films I’m recommending were made between seventy and almost ninety years ago, so you’ll want to adjust your expectations accordingly. All these pictures are in black and white. The pacing in some is slower than in modern comedies. Sexual mores (at least publicly) were more modest. You will hear no vulgarity. On the other hand, the differences are interesting and revealing. For many, this glimpse into the past is one of the great pleasures of watching classic films. Still, funny is funny, so let’s get started.
The top 5:
1. His Girl Friday (1940) – Starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday is about the newspaper business. It is an absolute hoot from start to finish. It’s directed by the great Howard Hawks, who not so incidentally has a total of four films in my top ten; but he was also versatile and directed a trove of other remarkable non-screwball films, such asScarface (1932), To Have and Have Not (1944), Red River (1948) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Make sure you’ve cleaned the wax out of your ears and are reasonably awake, because the patter in His Girl Friday comes fast and furious, and you don’t want to miss any of it. In fact, it’s claimed that the dialogue here is the fastest in any movie ever! Based on the Ben Hecht’s Broadway hit comedy, The Front Page, it starts wild and gains energy as it goes along. Walter Burns (Grant) is the hard-driving editor of “The Morning Post” and Hildy Johnson (Russell) is his star reporter and former wife. Hildy thinks she wants to settle down with a mild, unassuming insurance salesman, “Bruce”, played by Ralph Bellamy, but Walter has other ideas. The frenetic plot involves something about an escaped murderer on the loose, but really, it’s all Hildy and Walter. This is one of those pictures that makes me smile just thinking about it!
Available free with membership on Prime video, The Criterion Channel, Kanopy, Hoopla and Epix; or for rent on Amazon (non-members), GooglePlay. iTunes and other services.
2. Bringing Up Baby (1938) – It’s Cary Grant again, this time paired with Katherine Hepburn in another Howard Hawks classic. Kate is Susan, a flighty young heiress who has set her sights on David Huxley (Grant), a presumably bright paleontologist at a natural history museum. I say “presumably” because once Susan has David in her clutches, he becomes (charmingly) one of the most befuddled creatures on earth. David has been seeking a proposed $1 million endowment from a wealthy patron, who just happens to be Susan’s Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson), and it’s hard to make a good impression when one is as stupefied as David becomes under Susan’s spell. Then there is the bit of a mix-up having to do with Susan’s pet leopard, Baby. Again, we have the rapid dialogue, especially from Hepburn’s Susan; and quite a bit of physical comedy as well. The result is one of the funniest movies of all time.
Available to rent on most streaming services (not named Netflix) for about $2.99, and worth every nickel.
3. Ball of Fire (1941) – Here is another great movie directed by Howard Hawks. This one is co-written by Charles Bracket (who also penned classics like Ninotchka (1939) and Sunset Boulevard (1950)) and Billy Wilder (co-writer of the above with Brackett; among many other gems, such as Double Indemnity (1944) and Some Like It Hot (1959)). Ball of Fire stars the great Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O’Shea (yep!), a sassy, sexy nightclub singer and the moll of gangster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews). Her co-star, though, is the handsome, diffident, laconic Gary Cooper as Prof. Bertram Potts, a perfect head-in-the-clouds foil for the dynamic Sugarpuss. Potts is a linguist doing some field research on American slang, a topic with which he is totally unfamiliar, when he meets Sugarpuss at the club and is smitten . . . by her knowledge of the vernacular – words like dish, boogie, mooch and yum yum. She gradually, surprisingly becomes smitten with him, a guy unlike any other she’s ever met. One thing leads to another, of course. Plus, you’ve got gangsters, a manhunt, a bunch of other goofy eggheads, and a couple of neat nightclub scenes, featuring a very cool bit with superstar drummer Gene Krupa. All of which results in a very jazzy, nifty, funny picture.
Available free with membership in the Criterion Channel or the library-affiliated site Hoopla.
4. Born Yesterday (1950) – This one is a relative latecomer to the genre but still one of the best. Sometimes I put it at the very top of my list. It’s an adaptation of the hit play by Garson Kanin (who also wrote the screenplay for Adam’s Rib (1949)). The film stars the brilliant Judy Holliday in the lead as Billie Dawn, a role she originated in the stage production, and for which she won the Oscar for best actress in 1950. Billie is a former showgirl, now the mistress of crass, uncouth Harry Brock [Broderick Crawford – All the King’s Men (1949), Highway Patrol (1955-1959)] – a canny ditz, in the mode of many Jean Harlow characters. Brock is big enough and rich enough that he has come to Washington, DC to buy himself a few politicians; but he knows that Billie isn’t very presentable in civilized society, so hires a newspaperman (William Holden) to tutor her in culture and polite speech, Pygmalion-like. Holden is good as a moral influence and straight man. There are so many funny moments in Born Yesterday – a gut-busting gin rummy game, Billie dancing to big-beat swing on the radio, the call and response between Harry and Billie around their huge DC digs, in fact pretty much anything Billie says! If this movie doesn’t crack you up, you may need to get your sense of humor checked.
Available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and most streaming services other than Netflix.
5. It Happened One Night (1934) – This is not quite as madcap as many of the others on this list – with a heavier emphasis on plot and romance – yet it’s not short on laughs. It Happened One Night makes the top five because it is very much a classic, it comes from earlier in the depression than some of the others on the list, and, in keeping with those times, it makes a point of highlighting the class differences between the ultra-rich, epitomized by Claudette Colbert as Ellie (along with Walter Connolly as Mr. Andrews her powerful, megabucks father) and ordinary folks, represented by newspaperman Peter Warne (new star Clark Gable). Ellie, the heiress, has just escaped her father’s clutches but is bereft of cash and trying to return to her paramour – a daring aviator that Daddy disapproves. Her escape is big news, making headlines in all the papers. Peter, down on his luck himself, recognizes Ellie and offers to help her, in exchange for exclusive rights to her story. Seemingly polar opposites, they are naturally attracted to each other – and their journey together is charming and humorous. If not totally screwball, It Happened One Night is the epitome of a great romantic comedy.
Available to rent on most streaming services (not named Netflix) for about $2.99,
To see the second half of the list AND 7 other recommendations Click Here
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