GREATEST SCREWBALL COMEDIES, Vote for your top three

Definitions of screwball vary so much. To me its primarly a 30s genre which took potshots at the higher classes and had fun with the battle of the sexes. The Preston Sturges movies possibly have an anarchic style all their own but the titles I've included do deal with those themes.

You can select up to THREE choices.

My choices are It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday.

There are so many to choose from, but when I want a movie that will make me forget the troubles of the day, BRINGING UP BABY does it for me. Without a doubt, it is the one of the funniest movies to watch time and again.

There are other choices on the list, Adam's Rib and The Philadelphia Story are two more of better ones.

THE AWFUL TRUTH
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
THE LADY EVE


Geoff.

These are among my favorite movies and I can laugh every time I see them.... A good screwball comedy is better than about anything else.... I guess I'd vote for what may be the first.... IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT..... flawless performances by Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable....

The wall of Jericho, the hitch hiking scene, the bus ride when they start singing "The Man on the Flying Trapeze," are just wondrous....

I know the list is a sampling but I would now add THEODORA GOES WILD to my list of tops in screwball.....

Somewhere along the line, some cinema mogul decided what a screwball comedy is and what one isn't ... And it sorta stuck ... But it's still too vague for me to fully understand. Surely the sex element is a mild requirement but what else qualifies it, and what doesn't ? Did the film have to be a monstrous success to qualify ? I'm asking because I don't know. A simple comedy or a funny movie in of itself, does not make it a screwballer, I understand that. There is a wry sophistication, an adult element with emphasis on quick-paced, witty dialogue focusing on the dysfunctionalities of the characters more than on any physical routine. Oftimes the nutcase families and ineffectual spouses are showcased, while the siblings pursue sex or marriage ...

Noel Cowards "Private Lives" is as funny and as screwbally as any of the others I've seen. If "Bombshell" and "Jewell Robbery" do not fit in as classic screwball comedies, then I'm simply missing the genre as defined ... Perhaps "It Happened One Night" is so recognized as the first because of it's success and it's Oscars, but these three are at least pre-genre screwball comedies that would qualify if made a few years later ...

Anyway, so as to not stir up the hornets nest ... lol ... I voted for:

It Happened One Night 1934 ...
My Man Godfrey 1936 ...
Miracle Of Morgans Creek 1944 ...

damn I misread it and voted for ONE.....

Screwball usually has the sex/romance element (seemingly unsuited lovers) and seems to often lampoon money (but not always)..... The heroine is usually a "madcap" and busts loose.....

THE MAD MISS MANTON is another (lesser known) screwball with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.... and MURDER, HE SAYS probably fits in here also.....

my other two votes WOULD HAVE BEEN

MY MAN GODREY
NOTHING SACRED

So many good ones listed there! But without a doubt my favourites are IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and THE LADY EVE.

Not so sure I consider "The Thin Man" a "screwball" comedy, so I didn't vote for it in that category. However, the mother of them all (even the ones that came before it!!), "My Man Godfrey" certainly stands at the acme for me for this genre. Then I'll take "The Awful Truth" and "It Happened One Night". But "Bringing Up Baby", "The Philadelphia Story", "Holiday" (both versions), "Theodora Goes Wild", and even "Arsenic and Old Lace" are right there with them. All of these make me laugh - time after time after time after time...

and now that I've seen it: MURDER, HE SAYS

Actually I think I'd go with Twentieth Century. That movie suceeds on so many levels.

For one of my choices I selected "other," namely EASY LIVING (1937) with Jean Arthur and Ray Milland. This is my #1 favorite screwball comedy, although HIS GIRL FRIDAY is a strong second with me. Mitchell Leisen directed EASY LIVING but Preston Sturges wrote it, and I think you can see his hand in some of the superfluous gags (like the lady's hat that gets caught on Milland's tray--a detail which is never followed up) and especially in the feeding frenzy scene in the automat. There aren't as many twists and turns in the plot as you might expect from Sturges, but just about every scene has something hilarious. There are great supporting performances (actually better than Milland's starring performance IMO) from Edward Arnold, Franklin Pangborn, Luis Alberni, and Esther Dale. There's even a scene that reminds me of the telephone scene in HIS GIRL FRIDAY, with frenzied, overlapping conversations and criss-crossing telephone wires, and the boss shouting a barrage of conflicting instructions. Sturges and/or Leisen may have been inspired by THE FRONT PAGE (1931), of which HIS GIRL FRIDAY was a remake, but it's very well done here. But now I'm getting too analytical. It's just a great screwball comedy.

I chose two favorite films, Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth but I added Other for an unsung favorite, Merrily We Live. I still say that scene toward the end of the film where they're all hitting each other in the face with the kitchen door is one of the best ever.

I notice Sullivan's Travels isn't on the list; is this because it wasn't deemed to meet the criteria for what defines a screwball comedy? If this is the case then I'd probably agree. But I think I'm like a few other people here in finding it difficult to pin down exactly what the term means. The best I can do is to say that to me, among Sturges' work The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek qualifies as screwball but Sullivan's Travels doesn't. That probably doesn't make matters any clearer! Anyway my choices were:

The Awful Truth
Nothing Sacred
The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek

And another honourable mention for the unlisted Easy Living

By the way, sorry for resurrecting such an old thread.

Nothing wrong with resurrecting an old thread at all. In fact, it prevents people from creating duplicate threads which happens all the time. Good to see this poll is still up.

Personally, I love Screwball comedies but I am largely partial to Cary Grant comedies although, ironically, I did not like His Girl Friday. I thought that was one of Cary's weakest screwballs! I also thought that Billy Wilder's "One, Two, Three" is one of the best comedies of all time, but never gets the credit of his lesser works like "Some Like it Hot", so that tells you that popular is not always better, at least I think not.

Dr. David

Sullivan's Travels (1941) is a wonderful movie, it does have its madcap stretches but I think its overall too dark to be a screwball comedy.

As for what is screwball comedy and what isn't ; the peak time for them I believe was the Depression, they often made fun of the upper classes, included a battle of the sexes and were often quite physical. I'm not sure for me any of the Preston Sturges movies really qualify though the ones in the list have some of those elements. I think Sturges had a style all his own particularly in his dialogue.

I couldn't agree more with this; One, Two, Three is practically a throwback to classic 1930s screwball. I've often wondered why it's almost forgotten compared to some of what I'd consider Wilder's lesser works. I certainly consider it superior to Some Like It Hot. But why do you think it's overlooked; did it perhaps perform poorly at the time (maybe due to the overtly political context)? Or perhaps it was just too manic for current tastes... Either way, it's long overdue re-evaluation! I'd be interested to know what you think.

Wow- it's difficult to choose just 3. I love all of those movies. My 3 picks would be It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey and Libeled Lady.

I was happy to see Libeled Lady on the list. I feel like that is a forgotten movie. You never hear much about it and a lot of people I've talked to have never even heard of it. It's one of those movies I can watch over and over and never get sick of it.

I haven't voted in this poll, and I probably won't. There does not seem to be a consensus here about what does, and what does not, constitute a "screwball comedy."

Michael Mills of Palace Classic Films traces the term to "films where everything was a juxtaposition: educated and uneducated, rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, honest and dishonest, and most of all male and female. When two people fell in love, they did not simply surrender to their feelings, they battled it out."

But he also cites film critic James Agee's description of a Laurel and Hardy scene in which the two men are moving a piano across a narrow suspension bridge in the alps, and halfway across they meet a gorilla.

Very funny, I'm sure, but notice that in the L&H example, there is no sex.

On this very thread, our own Precoder wrote:

"Somewhere along the line, some cinema mogul decided what a screwball comedy is and what one isn't ... And it sorta stuck ... But it's still too vague for me to fully understand. Surely the sex element is a mild requirement but what else qualifies it, and what doesn't?"

I'd still like to know.

Wikipedia says, in part:

"While there is no authoritative list of the defining characteristics of the screwball comedy genre, films considered to be definitive of the genre usually feature farcical situations, a combination of slapstick with fast-paced repartee, and a plot involving courtship and marriage or remarriage."

Someone here cited The Philadelphia Story (1940) as a screwball comedy. The fast-paced repartee is there, and the courtship, but WHERE is the slapstick?

Okay, taking all the above -- the romance angle, the farce, the slapstick, especially the fast-paced repartee -- I'd have to say the premier screwball comedy of all time is: (drum roll, please)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).

It isn't on your list, but I'd say this one fits "screwball comedy" to a T!

Cheers,
Dan

http://www.silentfilmguide.com

I love screwball comedies! I think they're my favourite genre

Some I love are (not in order)

His Girl Friday 1940
The Philadelphia Story 1940
Bringing Up Baby 1938
My Man Godfrey 1936
Libeled Lady 1936
It Happened One Night 1934
The Awful Truth 1937
Arsenic and Old Lace 1944
Wife vs Secretery 1936
The Seven Year Itch 1955
Some Like It Hot 1959

Bringing Up Baby
The Philadephia Story
Adam's Rib

I notice that here, as in other polls, Bringing up Baby (1938) gets the number one position as "best screwball comedy."

But I've never warmed up to that movie. It never makes me laugh, and when it comes on Turner Classic Movies, I avoid it like the plague.

No, I'm not being ornery. I wasn't sure why Bringing up Baby wasn't ringing my chimes, but I recently read that Howard Hawks, its director, pointed out its main flaw. Hawks -- as reported by Roger Ebert, dean of American film criticism -- said that the flaw in his film is that everyone in it is a screwball; there's no baseline of sanity to measure the characters against.

That may be it. In another classic screwball comedy, The Lady Eve (1941), the placid Henry Fonda provides the rock. He is completely sane and proper, and it is the world around him (populated by such comic actors as Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn) that acts crazy.

With that ideal in mind, I would say that the greatest screwball comedy of them all would be Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). In that one, the Cary Grant character is very much the sane, sensible center; it is all the rest of the people in his world that are "screwballs."

Cheers,
Dan

I,m so-so about BRINGING UP BABY but several of my friends, past and present, love it because of cats - big cats! It would seem the leopard steals the film.

I love some of the lesser known comedies.

Mad Miss Manton
The Ex Mrs Bradford
Star Of Midnight
Mother is a Freshman

I think the greatest screwball comedy of all - and there were some truly wonderful ones - is "Adam's Rib". Witty, sophisticated, beautifully acted and directed and with contemporary issues about sexual politics it just hasn't ever dated! The magic between Tracy/Hepburn/Cukor has never been equalled on the screen IMO. I remember Gavin Lambert saying on a DVD Special Features, "when I was at film school we watched it and we all thought 'this is what we want: this is perfection". Agree 20 times over!!